From the monthly archives:
Looking at the 100 Notable Books of 2008 as compiled by the New York Times, I was struck by several key omissions (of course), but also by how several of the books’ authors had visited our store in the past year. Going down the list, which is presented alphabetically by author name and divided into [...]
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It’s been quiet around here, I know. I’ve got a lot going on, big things are brewing, etc. Anyway, regular dispatches from Planet Vroman’s will resume after Thanksgiving. In the meantime, William S. Burroughs. Via This Isn’t Happiness.
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Be honest — you’re groggy at work today because you went to a midnight screening of Twilight, right? I knew it. To go with your fourth cup of coffee, here are the links: This site is interesting. You can get a book recommendation based on your preferred level of happiness/sadness, violence/no violence, sex/no sex. I [...]
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And that can mean only one thing…links! Via the Book People blog (one of the great indie stores in the world), comes the story of Lauren Myracle’s book ttyl, which has been removed from the Round Rock, TX middle school library for being “vulgar.” You know what I’ve just noticed, it’s always the mothers who [...]
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Pasadena has announced its choice for 2009 One City One Story. This year’s book will be Luis Alberto Urrea’s novel The Hummingbird’s Daughter. According to Publishers Weekly: “[Urrea] fashions an astonishing novel set against the guerrilla violence of post–Civil War southwestern border disputes and incipient revolution. His brilliant prose is saturated with the cadences and [...]
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I am at home obsessively refreshing my twitter feed as sarahw live-tweets from the National Book Award presentation ceremony. So far, the winners are: Young People’s Fiction: Judy BundellPoetry: Mark DotyNon-Fiction: Annette Gordon Reed (and it’s her birthday today!) And I just found out that Peter Metthiessen has won the fiction prize for the revised [...]
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From Kottke.org comes this utterly confounding footage of recent Vroman’s guest Martha Stewart making cognac mashed potatoes with, yep, Snoop Dog. For shizzle. You will need to use your mental to understand it.
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A few weeks back, I heard an interesting report on NPR about what happens when big box retailers like Walmart and Best Buy abandon their stores for bigger stores. In one town in Kentucky, this has happened several times (Apparently Walmart is a bit like a hermit crab, abandoning its shell for a larger one [...]
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A sign from Saturday’s “No on Prop 8″ rally at City Hall in Los Angeles.
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I’ve said before that books make great gifts, and now there’s a blog dedicated to that very notion. Some bloggers have banded together to form Books for the Holidays. At their site, you can get gift recommendations, wish list ideas, and even suggest a gift. In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d offer [...]
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