From the monthly archives:
The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao routed The Remainder to win the 2008 Tournament of Books. As a bookseller, I’m curious to see whether this impacts sales at all. Most awards don’t seem to have an immediate or overwhelming impact, at least not at the places I’ve worked. Looking for a bookshelf? Don’t [...]
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So I’ve been busy today, and haven’t had much time to write anything (What’s that you say? Yes, yes this is my job…I just didn’t have a whole lot of time between my lunch break, my coffee break, and the forty or so minutes I spent looking for my pen, to write much of anything…I [...]
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The second episode of Titlepage is up (although, according to this writeup on Jacket Copy, it was filmed before the first episode). It features four debut authors, including Keith Gessen, who will be presenting and signing his book at Vroman’s on April 28. The other panelists are Sloane Crosley, Julie Klam, and Ceridwen Dovey. There [...]
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Via The Morning News, comes this story from the Independent about the new market for “superbooks.” These gargantuan tomes, typically priced over $2,000 (₤1,000), “target wealthy sports enthusiasts – the kind who can afford a corporate box at a cup final.” German publisher Taschen has long led the field in this category, producing the fabulously [...]
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Two very nice write-ups about Vroman’s on the interweb this past weekend. First the Pasadena Star News gave us a little front page treatment with a very nice interview with our owner Joel Sheldon. Then LAist, the LAest of the LA blogs, gave us a fine tip of the cap, complete with color photograph of [...]
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A couple of bits of literary and non-literary news that have grabbed my attention today: The 2008 Book Sense Book of the Year Awards have been announced. These titles represent, according to Shelf Awareness, “the books ABA members most enjoyed handselling this year.” The winners are as follows: Fiction: A Thousand Splendid Suns, by Khaled [...]
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The NCAA Tournament kicks off today, and as my bracket comes apart at the seams (pull it together, Xavier!), I find myself thinking of the best book I’ve ever read about the tournament or college basketball in general. John McPhee’s first book, A Sense of Where You Are, is a portrait of Bill Bradley before [...]
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Anthony Minghella, director of a great many literary adaptations, died yesterday in London of “complications from surgery to treat tonsil cancer,” according to the New York Times. Minghella was working on an adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series of novels for HBO.
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Maud Newton has written an excellent review of Richard Price’s new book Lush Life for the Boston Globe. It ends with this lovely paragraph: At a friend’s wedding last fall, I was talking with the jazz singer Mary Foster Conklin about the transformation we’ve seen over the past decade. “Do you think the city has [...]
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You might want to head over the Vroman’s website, where someone has arranged all the staff picks into useful and sometimes shockingly irreverent categories for easy browsing. Browse away!
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