From the monthly archives:

October 2006

One Nation, One Story?

by Patrick on October 23, 2006

Last Friday, Reuters UK ran a short piece on Dutch libraries giving away more than a half million copies of the 1973 novel Dubbelspel (Double Play) in hopes of creating a nationwide reading group discussion. Every year I hear about the difficulty the panel goes through in selecting a single novel for Pasadena’s One City, [...]

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Overlooked Fiction

by Patrick on October 16, 2006

Last week’s issue of Slate ran a great article on “Overlooked Fiction.” They asked bloggers and independent booksellers around the country to recommend wonderful books that readers might have missed. Vroman’s own book department manager, Christina Sheldon, contributed a glowing review of Dara Horn’s new paperback, The World to Come.

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Unexpected Book-of-the-Week

by Patrick on October 10, 2006

Our buyers ordered just one copy, but what a wonderful surprise! In unrelated news, I can feel an undercurrent of excitement among many of my co-workers today. The Booker Prize will be announced any minute now, and the participants in the betting pool are starting to salivate — there’s a felafel waiting for the winner.

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Too Much of a Good Thing?

by Patrick on October 2, 2006

Yesterday’s L.A. Times ran an article about the multitude of worthwhile books being published this fall; it asks whether publishers’ decisions to release so many strong titles at once is a bad choice. To which most of the seasoned staff here at Vroman’s reply, “Huh?” Our own general manager, Allison Hill, is quoted in the [...]

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