At the heart of it all, I’m a fan. A fan of books and bookstores. A fan of fiction and non-fiction. A fan of authors and publishers. And most of all I’m a fan of great conversations sparked by books. All that to say - I really need more bookshelves.
“. . . you don’t get to be the best-read man in America by giving a damn about someone else’s taste.”
Oh to bump into Michael Dirda, who says he has about 10,000 books and is “a sucker for pretty books”, in a book store aisle. Over the course of the article Dirda declares Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel as “. . . the greatest book ever”. So that one is now on my ‘books to read’ list.
I also took the time to make a list of the books that Dirda recommends or buys throughout the story. So if you’re looking for something worthwhile, these might be worth looking up. What’s fun is that not all of them are “stuffy”. There are spaceships and sailboats too!
Rick Brant’s ‘Electronic Adventure’ series
anything by Tom Swift
Arnold Bennett’s The Card Pym (the edition edited and annotated by Harold Beaver)
M.F.K. Fisher’s Two Towns in Provence
Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel
Alberto Manguel’s Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Fiction
Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man
Dorothy Sayers’s Omnibus of Crime
Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time
Harry Kemelman’s The Nine-Mile Walk
Ross Thomas’s Chinaman’s Chance
The statement says that the United Methodist Publishing House and Cokesbury are bowing to their customers’ trending to buying online, which makes the overhead of keeping stores open too high.
They tried to spin a little positive angle by announcing a new online selling system called CokesburyNEXT, but it just won’t be the same as being able to go into a bookstore and thumb through the weighty texts that make up many religious books. It’s really too bad. The local Cokesbury staff has always been great and helpful. So sad to see another bookstore close.
Here are three bookish-type events going on this week in the Birmingham-area. If you know of any upcoming author signings, book sales or library events around the Birmingham area, please share via email or in the comments.
It looks to be a great read of not only some of nation’s neatest local bookstores that writers enjoy, but also dives into WHY they enjoy them. Rick Bragg wrote the feature on the Alabama Booksmith while Fannie Flagg wrote about Page & Palette (where the rumor is she got locked in a closet!?) I hear the book is indeed a true celebration of the impact bookstores have on their communities and the creative readers that pass through the doors. This is one book I am really looking forward to.
Here is a complete listing of all the bookstores and the author’s that wrote about them:
Fannie Flagg—Page & Palette, Fairhope, AL
Rick Bragg—Alabama Booksmith, Homewood, AL
John Grisham—That Bookstore in Blytheville, Blytheville, AR
Ron Carlson—Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, AZ
Ann Packer—Capitola Book Café, Capitola, CA
Isabel Allende—Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA
Mahbod Seraji—Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park, CA
Lisa See—Vroman’s Bookstore, Pasadena, CA
Meg Waite Clayton—Books Inc., San Francisco, CA
Daniel Handler and Lisa Brown—The Booksmith, San Francisco, CA
Dave Eggers—Green Apple Books, San Francisco, CA
Pico Iyer—Chaucer’s Books, Santa Barbara, CA
Laurie R. King—Bookshop Santa Cruz, CA
Scott Lasser—Explore Booksellers, Aspen, CO
Stephen White—Tattered Cover Book Store, Devner, CO
Kate Niles—Maria’s Bookshop, Durango, CO
Ann Haywood Leal—Bank Square Books, Mystic, CT
Florence and Wendell Minor—The Hickory Stick Bookshop, Washington Depot, CT
Rick Atkinson—Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, DC
Les Standiford—Books & Books, Coral Gables, FL
Robert Macomber—The Muse Book Shop, Deland, FL
David Fulmer—Eagle Eye Book Shop, Decatur, GA
Abraham Verghese—Prairie Lights, Iowa City, IA
Luis Alberto Urrea—Anderson’s Bookshops, Naperville, IL
Mike Leonard—The Book Stall Chestnut Court, Winnetka, IL
Albert Goldbarth—Watermark Books, Wichita, KS
Wendell Berry—Carmichael’s Bookstore, Louisville, KY
Edith Pearlman—Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, MA
Mameve Medwed—Porter Square Books, Cambridge, MA
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.—Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA
Simon Winchester—The Bookloft, Great Barrington, MA
Nancy Thayer—Mitchell’s Book Corner, Nantucket, MA
Elin Hilderbrand—Nantucket Bookworks, Nantucket, MA
Jeanne Birdsall—Broadside Bookshop, Northampton, MA
Martha Ackmann—Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, MA
Ward Just—Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, Vineyard Haven, MA
Ron Currie, Jr.—Longfellow Books, Portland, ME
Nancy Shaw—Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor, MI
Katrina Kittle—Saturn Booksellers, Gaylord, MI
Ann Patchett—Mclean & Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, MI
