Gwenda referred readers to Bookdwarf today, and a question of independent vs chain bookstores. Jessa tackles the same subject at the Book Standard, wondering also why we keep asking ourselves this question. As for me - I worked at the furthest north independent in the US for two years (Waldenbooks was just a wee bit further north in the same town or I think we would have had the all over northernmost book title!) Everybody came into Gulliver's because Waldenbooks was just a tiny little mall store and we had a coffee shop/luncheonette and a whole second floor dedicated to used books. Plus we were right down the hill from the university, so location was everything. I don't think we had any posers; it was just the main place in town to buy books. Are the folks at Powells pretending they are cool by shopping there? I don't think so - to store is just fantastic and that's why it's busy. The same goes for Elliott Bay Books in Seattle. As for me, I shop at amazon sometimes, Barnes and Noble when we are in one section of Seattle (huge escalator that the kid loves and huge magazine section) and in town we have two independents plus a great used bookstore. All of them have gotten my cash. The only difference I have found between chains and independents is the displays are always predictable at a chain, but never predictable at an independent. I think that is pretty great and that's why Powells always gets my money.
i received a copy of David Goddis's Black Friday from Serpent's Tail the other day and it looks like a great noir detective story. I'm insanely excited about it, but as I'm knee deep in Shaman Pass right now (really well written mystery in Alaska) and have The Death Collector on my nightstand. Goddis will have to wait.
From the big Kirkus Previews Guide, I see two books I'm jazzed about: The Thirteenth Tale and Special Topics in Calamity Physics.
Congrats to Laila for her Caine Prize nomination!
And now I must go - a literary magazine has asked for another excerpt from the AK flying book after reading "Our Missing Airmen" in Failbetter. And an essay I wrote about my father and baseball needs a bit of work and then might end up in print. (I'll keep you posted.) And my agent sent several pages of notes on the manuscript - mostly favorable but some complex and complicated. Not sure how to do what she thinks I might need to do. So I need to get going on a response.
