What are you reading? And when?
I had an undergraduate literature professor who frequently liked to reference earlier works by the authors of the assigned reading during lectures, usually to underscore how little we earnest, bespectacled English majors actually knew about the context of the work we were discussing. “In your mythical free time,” he would intone dryly, “you might peruse ….. (insert three or four titles here) … ,”  which had those of us in the front two rows frantically scribbling titles in the margins of our looseleaf paper binders. (No laptops in class for those of us of a certain age.)
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Not by design, Spellbound has always seemed to reach very different audiences on Facebook and on Twitter, which in turn has informed the tone and content of what I post on each platform.
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Movie adaptations can create exciting bubbles of energy and enthusiasm around beloved titles in a bookstore. Regardless of the box office performance, this can be a really great thing for a book. And why not? Who can resist the allure of seeing a beloved story or world brought to life? Of course, sales following the movie surge taper off and can even be impacted by a film’s reception, but the heightened media awareness definitely helps get the book in readers’ hands. We’ve seen a huge surge in Captain Underpants series sales all summer; Everything, Everything is going strong; and now we’re starting to see a ramp up on A Wrinkle in Time.
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Sometimes the relevance of a book to contemporary events is not linear, even if that is the author’s intent. An old-fashioned sensibility, and a commitment to the truth, layer even the most current of event topics with the upsides and downsides of a personal attachment which reaches beyond literary pragmatism. Take Trell, for example.
Dick Lehr, a one-time Boston Globe Spotlight investigative reporter, current Boston University Journalism professor and author of many well regarded nonfiction books, has written an upper middle grade novel. If we imagine justice as an overturned cart, Trell explores the role that journalism and law can play in working to set the wheels of the cart back on the ground even when set against the competing pressures of racial politics and corruption. For a book whose primary sell in point is its immediacy to current events Trell is surprisingly, and in many senses pleasantly old fashioned.
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A is for alphabetizing, the simplest and yet most challenging of frontline bookseller tasks. It’s on every day/s “to do” list, yet will never, ever be truly done.
B is for Board Books, which exponentially expand each buying season. As the phenomenon of childhood compression continues, longer and longer stories are reduced to cardboard pages with flaps. Where do we shelve the Touch and Feel version of the City of Bones series, now?
C: Camp care packages, the salvation of the July end-of-day ztape, as padded envelopes are filled and mailed to Lake Mosquitogotcha, replacing the weekly shopping trips for wrapped birthday gifts.
 
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The fastest-growing, fastest-selling section of our store over the past year has been graphic novels for younger readers. Long ago, it outgrew its shelves and graduated to a full wall case. Truth be told, we need a bigger wall case for middle grade graphic novels. Here are a few recent and upcoming titles the kids in our region are excited about:

The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship by Philip Pullman and Fred Fordham (Graphix; out now) The marketing materials say 8-12, but I think 10-13 is the sweet spot for this spooky/dark action adventure tale from Philip Pullman.
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If you’ve worked in a bookstore, you’ve probably had some experience with (and some opinions about) the ubiquitous floor display known as the “permanent spinner rack.”
Presumably the “permanent” tag differentiates it from cardboard displays, or “dumps,” that usually end up in the recycling bin after a season or so; though I’ve never seen a temporary spinner, cardboard or otherwise, so I sometimes wonder at the nomenclature. But I digress…
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Hello again! Returning from a two-and-a-half-week vacation is overwhelming and comforting at the same time, between getting caught up and getting back into a routine. I admit I had grand plans of posting from the road, but between my kids’ unpredictable sleep schedules and computer issues, my various plans all fell apart. But I had a great time off, and as with any good vacation, books played a big role.
For just over a week of our trip, my husband Samir and I went to Iceland to drive the famous Ring Road. Inspired by a stack of books in a remote gas station gift shop, I decided that the best way to while away the 30+ hours was to read the brutal (and lengthy) Njál’s Saga aloud. Trapped in the car, Samir couldn’t exactly stop me, but he ended up warming to the literary adventure.
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