All posts by trav

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.

Little Professor Book Center is Moving to New Location

The Little Professor bookstore in downtown Homewood is moving again. This time it’s relocating down the street to the old Nadeau building, located at 2738 18th St. S, which puts it across the street from a previous location which is now the big new Valley Hotel. As reported in the Homewood Star, the store owners plan to open the new spot sometime this spring. The Little Professor also has a shop in Pepper Place.

No doubt this will be a good move with lots of foot traffic as their sign will be staring every hotel guest in the face as they check-in. I hope Homewood addresses the walkability of that intersection, though. You can spend what feels like half of a lifetime waiting there to cross. There is so much car traffic. I’m excited to see how The Little Professor solves the parking issue there as well.

According to the piece in the Homewood Star, it sounds like The Little Professor owners will use this second move (they moved to their current location in 2017) to update their stock and fixtures.

I remember Nadeau having their mezzanine level. Wouldn’t it be fun if The Little Professor brought back their mezzanine of used books? I never sold anything to them, but I always enjoyed shopping those used shelves.

They will also have a new outdoor space to sit and chat over coffee.
According to that Homewood Star article, the new location will house about 20% more inventory, about 50% more seating space, and a larger children’s area.

Here’s to another wonderful move in downtown Homewood. Book people are the best, and as impressive as the Pepper Place store is, I am excited to see what the owners of The Little Professor create in their new Homewood location.

SILO, based on Hugh Howey’s WOOL, is coming to AppleTV+

Hugh Howey’s SILO book series is coming to AppleTV+, and the first teaser trailer dropped today. Anyone can watch the teaser trailer below:

Howey became one of the first hugely successful self-published authors when he took his debut story Wool, which he wrote while working as a bookstore clerk and first published by a small press in 2011. He then independently published each chapter on Amazon’s Kindle platform. Things took off from there. After Wool grew into a novel, it became a trilogy that spawned Howey’s meteoric career.

silo tv show movie poster

Wool takes place during a post-apocalyptic period on Earth. What’s left of the human race is living in a Silo that stretches 144 levels underground. Eventually, the main characters discover the truth of their situation and unravel the hidden secrets proving just how far some people will go to stay in control.

I always look forward to Hugh Howey’s writing, and while the SILO trilogy gets all of the press, his other stories are also fun. His books and stories scratch the same itch as John Scazli’s books.

I read Sand a few years ago. While it was fast-paced and imaginative, it did not have the same depth as the Wool trilogy. So I am glad that Wool is the first of Howey’s series headed to the small screen. Though, I still have Across the Sand about halfway down my ‘to be read’ pile and look forward to reading it.

I thought AppleTV+ did an excellent job with their new Foundation series based on Isaac Asimov’s book series. The visuals and production quality were amazing. I’m not a purist, which is probably why I liked it as much as I did. Not being a purist will likely serve me well, too, with the SILO series

silo is based on the wool books
The box set covers designed by Heads of State. Beacon 23 design by Hugh Howey. Half Way Holme cover designed by Carly Miller. Across the Sand cover art by M.S. Corely.

Rereading is something that I have never been very big on. There are just too many good books and fresh ideas to take in. I did enjoy my Asimov reread for the Foundation series, so I may have to go back and pick up the books and spend some more time with Holston, Juilette, and the world’s last human survivors as they try and make a life down in the silo.

More Terry Pratchett Stories Have Been Found

I love stories like this one. In the 1970s and 1980s, Terry Pratchett wrote under a different name. Now someone has connected the dots, and 20 of his “lost to time” stories are being brought back and published in a new book.

Terry Pratchett
Terry Pratchett from WikiPedia

The publisher is Pratchett’s longtime publisher Transworld, though none of these stories are set in Pratchett’s well-loved Discworld universe. It sounds like the new book is titled A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories.

Pratchett died in 2015, and it’s exciting to think about new-to-us stories being released.

Pratchett’s career spanned decades. Officially he was Sir Terry Pratchett, and he penned more than 41 novels, plus short stories, plus articles, plus essays… the man was prolific.

According to The Guardian story, the twenty-story collection will be released on October 5th. They have some tidbits to share about what kinds of stories have been found. You’ll have to click through to that news story to read about those.

Terry Pratchett cover
This is not the final cover design.

My favorite part of this whole saga is that it was fans that did the digging and connected all the dots to find these once-published-but-lost stories.

And since these stories have technically been published before – they’re “free game” and not covered by Pratchett’s wishes that “no unpublished works be released after his death.” A final wish that his assistant carried out by running a steam roller over Pratchett’s hard drives.

This whole discovery is undoubtedly one for the Sir Terry Pratchett fans. Here is hoping the novelist’s early short stories are as interesting as his longer speculative writings!

You can pre-order Terry Pratchett’s new book here.

Join Wayne Flynt as he talks about his new book & friend Harper Lee

Hey Birmingham, AL book readers and history buffs… I just saw that Wayne Flynt is speaking this weekend at the Avondale public library. It’s a free event (Flynt is on a 40-city book tour) where he’ll discuss and answer questions about his book Afternoons with Harper Lee. 

The event is:

  • Sunday, February 26, 2023
  • 2:00 pm–3:00 pm
  • Avondale Library
  • 509 40th Street South

The folks from Thank You Books will be there too, selling Flynt’s book so you can walk out with a signed copy as well as get to hear from one of Alabama’s best historians and storytellers. Flynt’s books are always some of the best-researched and poignant. 

wayne flynt book about harper lee
Cover design by Randall Williams

Wayne Flynt and Harper Lee were longtime friends, so he knows the very private novelist well enough to write a book like this. It sounds like most of the stories and reflections come from his visiting Lee during the last years of her life (she died in 2016). No doubt Flynt has some unique insights to share from all of his discussions with Lee.

Afternoons with Harper Lee is published by New South Books which was recently acquired by the University of Georgia Press. While it’s sad that Alabama lost a publisher it is great to see that they have landed somewhere as srong as the UGA Press program is.

I love this praise quote that is inside the book:

“Wayne Flynt is the great Talmudic scholar of Alabama, and this vivid, affecting deconstruction of his friendship with Harper Lee through the history that produced them both is a huge reward and pleasure for those of us who understand that, unaccountably, all roads seem to lead to our grand and terrifying state.”
Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama–The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Have a good weekend, everyone!