Recently I mused about the benefits of putting a bookstore in every mall and wouldn't you know Japan's leading entertainment retailer Tsutaya has just hit it out of the park with the opening of their latest store Shonan T-Site, located 30 miles outside of Tokyo. Tsutaya returned to architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham to help create their second retail outlet. Their first venture together, the Daikanyama project, won numerous awards including World’s Best Shopping Center at the World Architecture Festival and the 2013 Grand Prize at Design For Asia. Says Dytham: Shonan T-Site continues the reinvention of the modern-day bookstore as initiated by the Daikanyama project. However, the new space takes this...
Of Interest: Library of Unrequited Love, On Used Bookstores, Lauren Ipsum, Lou Reed, Mrs. Darwin’s Recipe Book and more
Welcome to the first installment of Of Interest for 2015. Lots of good stuff to kick off the New Year. Pictured above: The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry Published by Maclehose Press. Translated from the French by Siân Reynolds. One morning a librarian finds a reader who has been locked in overnight. She starts to talk to him, a one-way conversation that soon gathers pace as an outpouring of frustrations, observations and anguishes. Two things shine through: her shy, unrequited passion for a quiet researcher named Martin, and an ardent and absolute love of books. Bestseller in France. Buy: Publisher |...
Profile of Phinney Books: An Indie Bookseller in Amazon Territory
When Leigh Burmesch moved to Seattle a few months ago she wanted to know if Seattle’s bookstores really do embrace the gorilla in their backyard, Amazon. What a better place to start then a visit to Phinney Books and chat with Tom Nissley, a former Amazon employee and “Jeopardy!” champ , about his opening and running a new bookstore in the Age of Amazon. [vimeo width="640" height="300"]http://vimeo.com/115480898[/vimeo] More at Flip the Media
Seattle: The Book Buying Capital of America
The results are in and Seattle takes the cake when it comes to buying books. For her New York Time Opinion Piece, What People Buy and Where, Elizabeth Currid-Halkett utilized the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey to track differences among cities in household spending in various categories from 2007 to 2012. In the book category Seattle ran away from the field by spending a whopping 68% more than the national average on books! Full disclosure: I live here and I buy a lot of books :-)
Let’s put a bookstore in every mall
To magnify the ridiculousness of what has become Black Friday, The Stranger, one of Seattle's few remaining papers that publishes with any integrity, produced a whole issue that originated in a mall. Setting up shop 17 miles outside of Seattle at the Alderwood Mall they went to work. It started this way: It's easy to feel superior in a shopping mall, as anyone who lives in a city should know by now. But easy ironies no longer offer cheap thrills, and capitalism is in exactly no danger of being replaced or overthrown. Shopping malls have been a major cultural reality for...