The Flame Alphabet is one of those books that seems to have it all on the front end, for me: GREAT cover in the syfy-ish category back cover blurb by MichaelChabon (he’s never lead me astray) interesting book trailer (ok, so I’ve yet to jump on the book trailer bandwagon, but this one was particularly [...]

Little Professor in Homewood have set up a space for $1 books. I stopped in to see what was there so I could share. Most of the books are in used condition and from big name authors (Kind, Patterson, Steele, etc.). They are stocked on shelves below the table top. There are some ‘new’ books [...]

Last week someone started the #bkstoreluv to help folks celebrate their favorite local book shops. GalleyCat picked up on this and has started compiling a list of great bookstore twitter accounts. I’ve already submitted my two local favorites here in Birmingham – @81churchstreet and @little_prof. Hopefully they will get added to the main directory listing [...]

BookTV is building a network of local content. Birmingham’s part start airing this past weekend and some of the videos are already online. Very cool! Click through and scroll down the left column to see videos filmed in the Alabama Booksmith and around town, all focused on Birmingham’s “literary scene”. The column on the right [...]

Mark your calendars for December 3rd, 10:00am-3:00pm. That’s when the sixth annual Local Authors Expo is slated to take place. As always, the event will take place downtown at the Central Library. The expo is always an interesting mix of authors and books. Most of the tables are stacked with books by self-published authors. So [...]

I just finished The Unit by Ninni Homqvist and published by Other Press. It’s a great read that shines a light on what can happen when society starts looking at the population as numbers and statistics and quits seeing the people behind the numbers. I picked up this book because I really liked the thought-provoking [...]

I encourage you to check out this post on book collecting over on Exile Bibliophile. I recently discovered that blog while clicking around the discussions over on LibraryThing. Here’s one of my favorite snippets: “Not everyone who owns a lot of books is a book collector.  Granted.  I wear pants most days, and own many [...]

There are 11 of Harper Lee’s letters set to be sold by November 8th. You can get the full details and keep up with the results over on the auction site. I was surprised how unique many of the letters are. There seems to be a personal tone to each of them. Most correspondence we [...]

I’m reading fiction again. And it feels good. Last year my non-fiction TBR pile was massive. I was so behind on reading stuff for work and other topics, that I imposed a self-inflicted fiction fast for 12 months. It ended earlier this week. It was certainly worth it. I read 32 non-fiction books over the [...]

I just wanted to mention the survey that The Bookseller has up right now. It takes a solid five minutes to click through it, but it seems worthwhile. So if you’re involved in publishing or just like to keep up with all things book (both e- and p-) then click on over and give your [...]