Category Archives: Book Talk

Book Column, Book Talk, News

Thanksgiving Eve = Busiest Reading Day

Leave a comment

The day before Thanksgiving has been declared the busiest reading day by Barnes & Noble. They’re basing this fact on research done during a survey project they had done.

Busiest Reading DayTheir numbers show that more than 75% of Americans will read a book, newspaper or magazine during Thanksgiving travel this year and that more than 70% of them say reading makes their travels more enjoyable and relaxing.

I always travel with a book and magazines. I often leave my magazines at the airports, on planes and such. I guess I hope the next passenger will appreciate the magazine as much as I did, but maybe they just think “how rude!” of me for leaving my used magazines laying around.

I’ve even stumbled on BookCrossing books in the past. Even though I was not interested in reading either, I thought it was awesome that someone would pay money for a book and then leave it out so that serendipity can play a hand in landing it in the lap of another reader.

I’ve yet to leave a BookCrossing book out and about, but I probably should.

Anyway. . . one of the quirkiest numbers to come out of the Barnes & Noble study is that:

25% of Americans think bringing a great book for Thanksgiving could get them out of an awkward family conversation.

I’d have to think about that one. I’m picturing sauntering into dinner with some kind of book holster (is there such a thing?) clipped to my belt, ready to draw my paperback at the first sound of an uncomfortable topic of conversation.

Today, I picked up Matthew Weiner’s (the writer/creator behind the TV show Mad Men) first fiction book Heather, the Totality and it’s only 138 pages. I’m not sure that’s long enough to keep anyone out of many conversations.

Hope you’re planning on reading something good next week.

Book Talk, Events, News, On the TV

Watch the National Book Awards LIVE

Leave a comment

This year’s National Book Awards will be broadcast live over Facebook (as well as on their website) on Wednesday, November 15th, starting at 6:20pm CST. But then they’ll roll pre-recorded videos of the finalists reading, during the dinner portion of the gala, and then pick up the live broadcast when they’re done eating to begin handing out the actual awards.

Last year’s awards were fun to watch, with Colson Whitehead winning the 2016 fiction prize for The Underground Railroad, and this year’s evening looks to be brimming with more bookish greatness.

It looks like all you have to do is click over to the National Book Foundation’s Facebook page to watch the event. I watched last year on the foundation’s site, but this year it looks like they’re going after a more social-share plan. They even made a PDF ballot to download so you can play along at home.

They are @nationalbook on Twitter and they are using #NBAwards as the official hashtag for the 2017 event.

Hopefully it’ll work. It’d be fun if people outside of the industry started tuning in and looking forward to these awards.

There are four awards being handed out, one for fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young adult literature. I’m anxious to see this year’s winners as out of all 20 books nominated – I have only read Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing. And if one of the other fiction finalists is deemed better than that one (which was a great read, though I appreciated her Men We Reaped more.) I certainly want to read it!

Hope you get to tune in next Wednesday night, starting at 6:20pm CST, for the 68th year of the National Book Awards. Here is the slate of finalists for this year’s awards:

Fiction

Non-fiction

Poetry

Young Adult

Book Column, Book Talk, Books About Books, Recommendations

Week 2: Book Pairing #nonficnov

9 Comments

This week’s host for Nonfiction November 2017 is Sarah over at Sarah’s Book Shelves. This week all of the participants are to “pair up a nonfiction book with a fiction title”. As best as I can tell this is not limited to just books we’ve read in 2017.

So. . . we’re going to dig deep into the blacklists, blow the dust off some covers and recommend two reads that I think most any bibliophile would enjoy reading.

First up is my fiction pick with John Dunning’s BookedTo Die. This book hit store shelves in 1992 (so you can find a cheap paperback these days) and is a mystery read through-and-through. But it’s all about books and first editions and libraries. It’s hard to beat a good bibliomystery and Dunning’s book is a good one. It’s the first in his Cliff Janeway series. Janeway is a Book Scout and spends his days going through book stalls, stores, thrift stores, yard sales, and trash bins trying to find books he buy for a quarter and sell for $200. His eyes are always peeled for that “lost” first edition treasure while he’s appraising people’s private book collections. Lots of fun and solid (real world) facts about book collecting. So if you like Raymond Chandler-ish reads with a twist, you might want to check this one out.

A nice follow up to a bibliomystery about rare first editions is Nabokov’s Butterfly by Rick Gekoski. Gekoski is a real life bookman and makes his living in the world of rare manuscripts and antiquarian books. At under 250 pages, his book is an easy read. It shares some amazing stories about rare editions, publishing lore and backstories on a few famous authors. Many book collector’s and sales folks have written of their journeys, but where Gekoski’s excels is that he focuses more on the books and less on his career. Which is nice. So where Janeway is trying to track down old books, Gekoski has probably bought them, held them and sold them again. It’s a fun peek into a world many of us book lovers don’t get to participate in.

So that’s my pairing, one fiction and nonfiction read for folks who love to read about books.

I’m anxious to click around the blogs and see what other pairings people are putting out there this week.

Book Reviews, Book Talk, Books About Books

Book Review: A Great Bookstore in Action

Leave a comment

A Great Bookstore in Action is a slim 32-page volume printed in 1939. It’s a record of a speech given by Adolph Kroch (here is a detail rich obituary), who was a very successful Chicago-based bookseller, active in the 20’s and 30’s.

In just these few pages, Kroch comes across as a like minded soul that I’d love to have had coffee with. The book starts up with his recounting how he got started in book selling and ends with his sharing ideas of how to fix all that was broken with the bookselling industry.

I have to admit that it was fun to read his thoughts, from my 2017 armchair, and have the luxury of looking back to see what all has changed and, sadly, what things have not.

Appreciating the value of a good book while realizing the amazing event that takes place when a thoughtful bookseller connects the right book with the right reader, informs every page. Even today, this idea of a local community bookstore being able to guide its surrounding neighbors to worthwhile books is a lofty service.

He was an advocate for professionally training booksellers and publishers in some way. Thankfully we have much of that covered these days between what’s offered at the Denver Institute and all the classes the ABA have.

Kroch rightly saw the implications of good books over the cheap fluff that some publishers and sellers were pushing. He was very concerned about successful authors that were able to write a book a year. He was not happy about the growing number of books publishers were cranking out each year either. But even that what not a new concern in 1939. Here’s a poem he shared from the 1600’s:

Can you imagine what he’d think of the industry today?

He also offered up a few sentences about the trend in the reading public to pull away from books and look to the growing movie scene and music for entertainment. Imagine how flustered he’d be today with every prospective reader having the entire internet in their pocket.

This book certainly isn’t a “must read” for folks, but it’s a wonderful peek at what the book industry was like in the 1930’s in the United States.

I’m giving the book 3 out of 5 stars and recommend it to anyone interested in the history of bookstores.