USED BOOKWhat luck—an open bookstore up aheadas rain lashed awnings over Royal Street,and then to find the books were secondhand,with one whole wall assigned to poetry;and then, as if that wasn’t luck enough,to find, between Jarrell and Weldon Kees,the blue-on-cream, familiar backbone ofmy chapbook, out of print since ’83—its cover very slightly coffee-stained,but aging (all in all) no worse than fleshthrough all those cycles of the seasons sinceits publication by a London press.Then, out of luck, I read the name inside:The man I thought would love me till I died.Julie Kane is an Associate Professor in English at Northwestern State...
82% Still Curl : Zogby Polls Readers
Random House hired Zogby International to get out there and find out what is going on in the world of reading and book-buying. They polled a little over 8,000 people and here are some of the highlights and lowlights:82% say they still prefer to "curl up with a printed book" rather than reading online or using an e-reader or smartphone.Only 3% of those surveyed currently own an e-book reader, and only 4% have plans to purchase one.A whopping 80% reported that they have no plans to purchase an e-book reader!Independent bookselling did not fare so well in the survey either:The...
Last Call, Bohemia
In this month's Vanity Fair, Christopher Hitchens considers the role of Bohemia in the health of a city and mourns its loss to gentrification. Included in his catalog of endangered Bohemiana, bookstores (emphasis mine):It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never...
Unusual Shelving Methods
Picking up (somewhat) where Michael's last post left off, Idlewild Books, a new travel bookstore in NYC, has devised an innovative shelving technique for its shop:“I was in a chain bookstore and realized I would have to go to five different sections to get what I needed—a travel guide, a map, a language book, a novel,” he noted. “At Idlewild, everything will be shelved by country, and in the case of the United States, by state—that way people will be able to browse according to the place of their interest.”Del Vecchio emphasized that he believes literature about a country—be it...
Stimulated Reading
The Written Nerd has been one of my favorite bookseller blogs for some time now. The author, Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, details her experiences working at one of NYC's best independent bookstores (including this jealousy-inducing run-in with Jonathan Lethem), all the while planning to "have a bookstore of my own in Brooklyn." Stockton recently won the $15,000 Power Up! business-plan competition sponsored by the Brooklyn Public Library in order to help bring her bookstore plans closer to fruition. And closer to fruition they are: I opened a small business money market account with the prize money, which will also be the...