Category Archives: Book Column

Bibliophile Travels, Book Column, Bookstore Tourism, Bookstore Travels

The Booklegger -Huntsville, AL

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I found a fantastic used bookstore in Huntsville, AL while on a recent trip. My time at Booklegger Used Books (4001 Holmes Ave NW; Huntsville, Alabama 35816) was way too short. This small shop is worth visiting if you find yourself in the Rocket City.

As soon as you walk in, you can tell you have entered a book lover’s world. Most of the books I picked up were good-condition hardbacks and priced in the $5-$8 range. The shelves and bookcases all go 8-feet high and they are fully loaded. Even though they are stocked full, they are well tended to and organzied. It’s was fun to meander throughout the bookshelf-lined aisles.

Once you enter, the non-fiction is mostly in the room to your immediate left. Those topics run the gamut. It’s all there. If you’ve been in many bookstores then you know it’s a special thing when to find one with so many sub-categories clearly marked and stocked well.

But the non-fiction I was most interested in was straight ahead – “Books About Books”, plus shelves & shelves of Literary Critcism and Essays. It was amazing! I’ve found very few bookstores (new or used) that had essays like this, much less have them in hardback (plus, a whole other shelf over in the “paperback” room).

From the front door, fiction starts off to the right and runs on into the “paperback room” off to the right just past all of the new comics.

They must do a constant business at Booklegger Used Books. The phone was ringing throughout my visit and I bet a dozen folks were in and out during my all too short time there. All that to say, I think it’d be worth it to check the “Newly Arrived” wall (just inside the non-fiction room) every visit. One can tell that these shelves have yet to be picked through, but the turnover is quick.

After a quick conversation there it sounds like they only buy hardbacks for around $1 per book, depending on demand. They will buy paperback books but for store credit only and the do limit how many “Walmart bags” you can drop on his counter during a week. Which is a pretty great metric to use for a used bookstore.

My one complaint is the way they manage their $1 Discount Books. Every book available for $1 is marked with an marker across the top with an X or O or XO. I totally get why they do this. When you buy as many used-books from patrons as they do, it doesn’t work to keep buying the same books that don’t sell. Plus, it helps with inventory and so forth and so on. I get it. I really do. It’s just always better to have books without those permanent markings. But for $1 per book, they’ll never hear me complain. 😉

Days and times of operation change, so I’d recommend giving them a call as I can’t find a good online presence for them.

Book Column, Book Talk

Week 1: My Year in Nonfiction #nonficnov

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This week kicks off Nonfiction November 2017 and I’m excited to participate. Thank you to all the kind souls who have taken the time to coordinate and pull all the prompts and dates together.

This week is being hosted over at JulzRead, who is a new blogger to me, but after reading how she likes “books about books” and is working on a book spine staircase, I know we’d have tons of books to share and recommend. Anyway, here we go. . .

What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?

This year I finally found a copy of Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated By My Illness and was not disappointed. His writing, sense of self and the decision to tackle death head on with his eyes (and humor) wide open all tied together wonderfully for this book. Death is a tough topic but Broyard pulled no punches when remembering his life, those around him and his work as a literary critic.

What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?

I really have not recommended many books this year, but the nonfiction book I’ve talked about the most Robert Moor’s On Trails: An Exploration. Moor does a good job showing the impact of trails, maps and paths in our world. Everything from the historical (thinking about how today’s interstates follow ancient Native American paths) to the philosophical (the mindset that’s needed to walk a looooooooong way) to the future (big international groups still get together to debate the start/stop of the Appalachian Trail as it gains new land each year). It was a very specific and peculiar book. Fortunately, it was done very well.

What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet?

I can never, ever, get enough ‘books about books’. It’s a passion. It’s never ending and it’s always hard to find other people taking the deep dive into bibliophilia. One of my faves this year was the coffee table book The Library Book by Thomas Schiff. Schiff takes these amazing 360 degree photos of libraries from around the world to give the reader a new perspective on the places, shelves and books. It’s a slow book. One where you want to study pages where massive ceiling frescoes warp and bend down to touch the tops of floor to ceiling bookshelves. It was a lot of fun.

What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

Hands down, I want to discover new great books to read. But getting to meet all of the other book loving folks participating is certainly the icing on the cake.

If you’re interested in participating this year’s Nonfiction November, just check out any of the hosts’ blogs or follow along on all the socials by checking out the hashtag #nonficnov

Book Column, Book Talk, On the TV

H is for Hawk: A New Chapter

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Tonight, PBS will air the first episode of H is for Hawk: A New Chapter which could loosely be billed as a “follow up” to Helen McDonald’s best-selling book H is for Hawk. 

H is for Hawk is a book that’s been in the middle of my TBR pile since it came out in paperback. I’ve heard so many good things about this memoir, but I’ve just never gotten around to moving it to the “excited to read next” pile. I’m not 100% sure why that is, but I think I’m going to pick it up and read (that is after my current read Want Not by Miles) before I watch the show.

In the book, McDonald trains a goshawk as part of her coping with the death of her father. The show starts next week, which is about 10 years after the events in the book. And again she’s back to raising and training birds.

Here’s a 41-second preview to watch:
The movie rights to the book have also been sold. They were bought by Lena Headey who plays Cersei in HBO’s Game of Thrones.

The show has the potential to add some great visuals and color to what has already proven to be a great selling book. I’m looking forward to diving into both.

Book Column, Book Reviews

The Almost Sisters – Book Review

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No one does Southern family dysfunction quite like Joshilyn Jackson. Her newest book The Almost Sisters is no exception. She has introduced us to a new family of Southerners with layers of good intentions, questionable judgement, and conflicting emotions. Graphic novelist, Leia Birch Briggs finds herself pregnant as a result of a one-night stand (with a masked man, at that!) Before she can even get a handle on how her life is about to change, she must rush to Alabama, with her precocious tween niece in tow (due to her stepsister’s impending marriage explosion) to care for her grandmother, who, by all local accounts, is out of her ever-loving mind.)

The characters are interesting and believable and the plot is compelling and if that was all there was to this book, I’d still recommend it to all my friends. But what still has me chewing on this novel is the theme of “Two Souths,” an idea that due to our races, experiences, ages, and/or geographical locations, we don’t really live in or experience the same South. That’s a clunky way of wording it, but you get the gist. Maybe the current climate of the country is peppering my view, but I don’t think she’s ever taken racism on as directly as she has in The Almost Sisters. It was an uncomfortable read, at times, for this white Southerner. I came out on the other end of the story, though, with a new understanding of how little I understand of modern-day racial injustices.

This is a book review, not a social or political commentary and I don’t want to tell anyone what to learn from a story, so, I’ll leave it at this: come for the intriguing, flawed, characters (that will probably remind you of someone you know or are kin to), and a “oh no, she did not!” story, but be prepared to leave with a little extra empathy and social awareness.

Don’t be scared. It’s a good thing.

Jackson’s The Almost Sisters is available today!

(This book review is a guest post by B and it’s really appreciated as she did a great job with a book that I just would not have done justice with. Please note we receive an advanced reader’s copy, from the publisher, for review.)