A Bookseller in Your Pocket

I finally took the time today to read Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Bookstores. I found it stimulating on the one hand and discouraging on the other.

Stimulating because here are twenty-five independent booksellers who obviously love books and have generously shared their picks of the fifty books they love to recommend. Discouraging because although I recognized many of the titles (and according to the book there are 1194) there are so, so many I have never, ever heard of. 

Of course there are the Faulkners, the Hemingways, the Austens and even the Wodehouses (a personal favorite) but I am not familiar with, just to name a few at random, Roberto Balono (The Savage Detectives), Patrick Leigh Fermor (A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube) or Dai Sijie (Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress).

I see I have a lot of investigating to do. And that is what makes this slim volume so much fun.

I liked that each section included answers to a question or two by the store's owner or other bookslinger (as one fellow called himself) and that each person got to elaborate a bit on three or four of the books from his or her list. 

Also, it was nice to be reminded of titles of books that I had read and had forgotten. (The Phantom Tollbooth, for example. I want to run out right now and buy it.)

In a perfect world, though, the titles would have some sort of shorthand notation as to the type of book it is (for those of us not in the know) such as F, NF, SS, P, or J (Fiction, Non-fiction, Short Story, Poetry or Juvenile). 

I also find it surprising that the book is listed on Amazon and Barnes and Noble -- at a discount, of course. Somehow I thought, or hoped, that maybe it wouldn't be. I mean, we are talking about indie booksellers here.  Just sayin'...

Three new/old books

Jean Hersey
The Shape of a Year

Lucky me! I scored three new/old books today and that always makes for a good day.

Read This! Handpicked Favorites from Indie Bookstores:

This little red book is, according to its back cover, "a reference for those who can never have enough to read. It offers booklovers an insider's guide to the treasured titles that have flown under the radar, but off of bookstore shelves."

In it 25 independent booksellers offer their picks of 50 books they love and love to pass on to readers. Michael Bogg's, co-owner of Carmichael's Bookstore in my hometown, has a list included here. Of his 50, I have read eight. I guess I have a lot of catching up to do. 

I hope to interview Mr. Boggs for Belle, Book, and Candle and will keep you posted on that project.

The Private Patient by P.D. James:
I picked this paperback copy off the Books for Sale table at the library. I just finished James's The Murder Room published in 2003. This is her latest (and last?) Adam Dalgliesh mystery published in 2008. 

The Shape of a Year by Jean Hersey:
This is a lovely prize also found on the library's sale table. According to the flyleaf, "it is a month-by-month chronicle of events in one woman's life, in her Connecticut house set in a meadow bounded by a rushing brook and hills covered with maples and hemlocks." 

It was published in 1967 and has chapter illustrations by John Pimlott.

I do so love a journal written by a woman that features the turning of the seasons and comments on daily life. It is in excellent condition for a hardcover book that is 45 years old. Not a tear or a bent page.

Here is her opening entry for November:

November is chill, frosted mornings with a silver sun rising behind the trees, red cardinals at the feeders, and squirrels running scallops along the tops of the gray stone walls.

Ahhh. A treasure indeed.

Read This! postponed

Carmichaels's Bookstore
featured in Read This!

I headed out to Carmichael's Bookstore to pick up the copy of Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Booksellers that I had on hold. And therein lies the tale...

I browsed a bit in the store and then went to the counter to get my copy of the book. No problem. I took it with me next door to the coffee shop and as I was waiting for the barista to froth my latte, I carefully paged through the little red book. To my chagrin, on the title page there was a handwritten inscription. 

Huh? 

I finally deciphered the writing and saw that it was signed 'For Michael' by  Hans Weyandt the fellow who put this book of lists together. Michael is the owner of Carmichael's and his pick of the 50 books that he loves to hand-sell is included in the book. There was a personal note as well, so after I got my coffee I headed back to the bookstore. 

Unfortunately for me, the only other copy of Read This! in stock was the counter copy that had been manhandled and thumbed through and was not in pristine condition which is how I like my books to be. 

Sigh.

Jay, the nice clerk, called their other store and a copy is on its way to me either tomorrow or Monday. A disappointment for sure but something to look forward to another day.

Read This!

Last weekend, when I was in Poor Richard's Bookstore in Frankfort, I picked up a red bookmark from a stack sitting on the counter because in my experience one can never  have too many bookmarks. In large type it exclaims Read This! and I just got around to actually looking at the bookmark to see what it wanted me to read. 

It is an announcement of a new book entitled Read This! Handpicked Favorites from America's Indie Booksellers in which "twenty-five independent booksellers across the country share the joy and wonder of books with their own must-read lists that put a 'bookseller in your pocket.'"

After a bit of research, I discovered these two articles about how this palm-sized book of lists came to be. You can read about it here Read This! and Read This! too.

Of the twenty-five independent bookstores included in the book, which has an introduction by author and independent bookstore owner Ann Patchett, one is Carmichael's here in my hometown and of course I have visited it often. Another is Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi which I visited on my Grand Southern Literary Tour. 

This book calls to mind a novel I read last year, A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cosse, about a bookstore in Paris which stocks only books recommended by a select committee of writers. I say that because the idea of opening a bookstore that only carries books on these lists (there are 25 booksellers times 50 books each) would make for mighty interesting shelves. Especially considering that Hans Weyandt, the blogger (Mr. Micawber Enters the Internets) who started this project, received all sorts of replies to his request for lists and the shelves could grow and grow as more indie booksellers recommended the books they love to hand-sell.

I am on my way to purchase Read This! (who doesn't love a book of lists of books?) published by Coffee House Press and costing a mere $12 (the royalties of which will be donated to the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression).  

So there you have a fine example of the power of a blog and a bookmark.