Village Books Blog

Mid-July This and That

You may have noticed (I hope) that I've been missing in action for a couple of weeks.  Somehow the sun's belated arrival, and my recent devotion to my new bike have lulled me into blogging lethargy.  But here's something I came across around the 4th of July in the online newsletter of Diesel, A Bookstore -- independent bookstores in Oakland and Malibu, California.  It's well worth reading if you're a fan of Indie bookstores.  I certainly couldn't have said it better.

Hi All,

With Independence Day celebrations beginning it seems as good a time as any to celebrate our independents. With the closing of several prominent, internationally-recognized bookstores in the last couple of months -- Dutton's in Brentwood, Cody's Books and the Graduate Theological Bookstore in Berkeley --- it seems important to take stock of where independent bookselling stands, what it stands for, and what stands against it. Simply put, many stores like ours are doing well, supported by dedicated, intelligent communities of readers who understand the pleasures, virtues, and vital services neighborhood bookstores offer. The closures of these stores should not be misread as some fateful indication of the inevitable decline of independent businesses. However, they do reveal the risks threatening independent businesses these days: escalating overhead costs including rent; reader choices gravitating toward media-encouraged internet purchasing; publisher accommodation to the pressures from increasingly consolidated clients (Amazon, Costco, Walmart, chains) leveraging their power to secure preferential terms. All of these forces work against the greater health of the culture and combine to threaten neighborhood bookstores. Most of them can be alleviated through very simple acts: do not heed the media's predictions and recommendations for "consumer" behavior; do not increase, through your purchases, the centralized power of large internet and chain companies which distort the markets of cultural goods; and support your local stores. (For more on independent bookstores, check out IndieBound.) Please excuse the rant, but it just has to be said. We hope you enjoy our recommendations and have a summer full of wonderful books.

Happy Reading!
John & all Dieselfolk

Yet Another View From BEA

Sarah Hutton is the children's and young adult's book buyer at Village Books.  Here is her take on the recent Book Expo America (BEA) conference in L.A.:

Of course, being the resident kids book nerd, my highlights from BEA were
kids author functions.  The first was the annual Children's Author Breakfast
with an all-star lineup of Jon Scieszka, Eoin Colfer, Judy Blume, Sherman
Alexie, and Neil Gaiman.  Despite the early start time, the authors were
simultaneously poignant and hilarious and grateful that so many booksellers,
librarians, and readers had embraced their books and spread the word about
them.

Another event that really sticks out in my mind was a party sponsored by
Little, Brown Publishing on Friday after the convention floor had closed
for the day.  On a rooftop terrace sat Trenton Lee Stewart, Lisi Harrison,
Todd Parr, Pseudonymous Bosch, Sherman Alexie (again!), and Paul Feig.  Holy
cow.  The format was designed so that those of us attending the function
could chat with the authors themselves which led to me talking with Sherman
Alexie about the Sonics and lamenting the state of television with Paul Feig
(aka the creator of Freaks and Geeks).  May I just say Holy cow again please?
Finally, I was able to briefly meet Jay Asher, the author of one of my favorite
books published in the last year, 13 Reasons Why.  Although we weren't able
to talk much, he was very thankful for my enthusiasm (read: getting misty-eyed
and utterly fangeek-y as I approached his table).  He signed a copy of his
book for me and I headed back out to the mayhem of the convention floor.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Book Expo America...Another Perspective

Sheri Toomey is the Events Coordinator at Village Books.  Though she has attended a previous BEA when her Mother owned a bookstore several years ago, this was her first as a VB staffer.  Here's her take on the event:

BEA was a whirlwind. Amy Goodman's presentation on the day of education was phenomenal and inspiring. Riding the train to the convention center and talking to other booksellers about their favorite books. Going to the Book Sense lunch and watching all the authors stand up and speak and tell each other how much they admire each other's work, especially Ray Bradbury, who received a standing ovation. Having the booksellers sitting on my right and my left recommending the same book. Standing in line for Vincent Bugliosi's book, a very long line which is encouraging, for The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. Talking to publicists about great new books for people and for dogs. Books and people that love books. Hope to read as many as possible and be recommending more to you.

We're Indie Bound

One of the major announcements at the recent gathering of booksellers at Book Expo America in L.A. was the launch of Indie Bound.  I'll be blogging more about Indie Bound in the future but I thought this video would give you a taste of the new program.

As Sweet as Dandelion Wine

Each year at Book Expo America the American Booksellers Association holds a luncheon to honor the authors who have had their books recommended by independent booksellers in our national monthly publication, now called the Indie Next List.  This year I was thrilled to be seated next to literary icon, Ray Bradbury.  Mr. Bradbury, now 88, is confined to a wheelchair and is very hard-of-hearing but he's sharp as can be and incredibly charming.  Each of the authors at the luncheon--more than forty in all--received enthusiastic applause from the room full of booksellers.  However, when Ray Bradbury's name was announced, the room exploded in a spontaneous standing ovation.  The visit with him sent me back to read Dandelion Wine, a book he wrote in 1957 and set in Green Town--a fictional substitute for his own hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, not far from my own hometown.  A couple of years ago Bradbury published a sequel to Dandelion Wine titled Farewell Summer.  The signed copy given to me at the luncheon is next on my reading list.

Summer (or anytime) Reading

Book Expo America and some vacation time took me away from the blog for several weeks.  Now, with summer arriving with tomorrow's dawn, I'm back.  It seems appropriate to recommend some books for summer reading.  Admittedly, I hardly ever see a copy of Entertainment Weekly.  However, I was intrigued when I learned that the current issue is dedicated to "the new classics" (created in the last 25 years) in a variety of areas, including music, film and books.   So, if you're looking for a place to begin your summer reading you may need to look no further than this list.

Book Expo America...Back to the Three R's

I've been around the book business long enough that it takes some effort to say BEA (Book Expo America) when referring to the national trade show and booksellers' convention.  When I began in 1980, and for more than 15 years thereafter, the show was referred to as the ABA (American Booksellers Association) Convention and Trade Show.  I was the president of ABA in the early 90's when we sold 49% of the trade show to Reed Exhibitions.  Later the remainder was sold to them as well.  But, no matter what it's called, it's always something that I look forward to.  Tomorrow morning Dee and I will board a train for L.A. where BEA will begin later in the week.  It will be a time to see the fall list of books, meet numerous authors, attend some seminars, be wined and dined and, perhaps most important to us, a time to renew acquaintances and share ideas with colleagues and friends.  It's a time for us to get back to the three r's--recreation, renewal and reunion.  After the show we'll take a bit of vacation and return to Bellingham refreshed and ready to recommend lots of great books.  Now, if I were just packed.

So Many Books, So Little Time

OK, so it's not a very original title for a post. However, it fits exactly what I'm feeling right now--overwhelmed with books I want to read and not nearly enough time to read them. Steve Leveen, in his book The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life (one of my favorite books on reading, which is, unfortunately, out-of-print), suggests that one should put books on a "list of candidates" rather than a reading list. He believes that "reading list" takes us back to school days and assignments and that "the term carries a tweed-jacketed pall of obligation." So, I have a list of candidates. And, though I don't feel a "tweed-jacketed pall of obligation" to read them, there are a lot of books on that list that I have a burning desire to read. I certainly won't bore you with the entire list but, here are a few. Two novels that have just recently hit our shelves--both Book Sense Picks--are The God of War by Marisa Silver and The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. Both come highly recommended. As a bookseller I have the great advantage of receiving pre-publication copies of many books but, it's only an advantage if I have time to read them. Three pre-pub books that are currently on my candidates list are The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (this one, which should arrive very soon, seems to be in the vein of The Tipping Point and Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, both of which I loved); Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry (you may know he's a bookseller as well as author) and The Little Book, a novel by Selden Edwards (this one has great blurbs from both Pat Conroy and Richard Ford). Now, maybe I should just stop writing and go read...

A Doggone Good Read

I recently read, in advance of it's publication next week, a book I dearly loved.  Because of the unusual nature of the novel, I've struggled with how to write about it.  Then, this morning, I read a review in Shelf Awareness by my friend Marilyn Dahl.  I realized that she nailed it.  So, rather than writing a review of the book, with her permission, here is her review:

Mandahla: The Art of Racing in the Rain
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

I did not want to love this book. I put it down several times, once on a plane, halfway read, because I knew I was about to cry. I don't like being manipulated, perhaps because I'm a pushover. I also thought, the story is too melodramatic; how can one man have so much bad karma? And yet . . . I kept reading, I kept weeping (many thanks to the server at 35th St. Bistro for the extra napkins; I think I made a sale), and I was won over.

The narrator, Enzo, is a dog, a charmer, and erudite, too. He's learned about life from his owner, Denny, by watching and listening carefully (what else can he do?), and from TV. He and Denny especially like to watch racing tapes together, for Denny is a race car driver, when he can afford it, and Enzo is a racer at heart.

Racing, both in fact and metaphor, anchor the book. Racing in the rain requires a relaxed posture, a light foot on the pedals, a deft touch with the steering wheel, the ability to anticipate. When Enzo finally makes his peace with Eve, Denny's wife, he says: "She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of the rain; a racer should embrace the rain . . . By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery."

Enzo has strong opinions about destiny, about people and about dogs, believing that man's closest relative is not the chimpanzee, but is, in fact, the dog. His logic: The so-called dew-claw is evidence of a pre-emergent thumb, and this is either snipped off or bred out of dogs in order to prevent them from becoming dexterous. And the clincher? Consider the werewolf:
The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into . . .

A monkey?

I think not.

For all of Enzo's philosophizing, he is still a dog, and his doggishness frustrates him--gestures are all he has, and he wields them judiciously, barking at Denny when he starts to drink too much, chewing up court papers when Denny starts to capitulate to his in-laws' lawsuit and transforming a hot pepper into an act of richly deserved retribution. In a wild moment of grief, reverting to pure dog, he kills and eats a squirrel.

At the end of the book, feeling both sorrow and joy, I turned back to something Enzo said about Denny, which also sums up this remarkable dog: "The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles--preferably of his own making--in order to triumph. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe." Enzo, and Denny, are heroes truly worth our attention.--Marilyn Dahl

Video Stars - Interview With Chuck & Dee Robinson

While we were in London last month Praveen Madan and Christin Evans, relatively new owners of The Booksmith in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco and fellow-travelers to the London Book Fair, interviewed Dee and me after a grand lunch at the Atlas Pub. Take a look at the interviews:

First Half of Interview

The Interview Continues

For Praveen and Christin's take on London and more interviews with booksellers check out Litminds.