From the monthly archives:
I’m off to Salt Lake City, Utah, where I’ll be participating in the ABA’s fourth annual Winter Institute. I’m looking forward to mingling with my fellow booksellers and hopefully getting some great new ideas to share with all of you. If I can secure some WiFi, I will post blog updates (I may even Jott [...]
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Lots of posts about John Updike are popping up at the moment, as you would expect. I thought I’d provide a link to a few of them that are truly worthwhile. Ed Champion’s interview with John Updike on Episode 50 of the Bat Segundo Show. The full text of Updike’s famous essay “Hub Fans Bid [...]
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According to the New York Times, John Updike has passed away. He was 76. He was a towering figure in American literature, and better eulogies than this are forthcoming. I will say that Updike wrote several stories had a massive impact on me. When I read his short story “The Christian Roommates,” about two dissimilar [...]
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It’s a busy Monday in the book world, and we’re here to cover it all. The National Book Critics Circle announced its finalists on Saturday. You can read the full list here, but the fiction and non fiction finalists are as follows: Fiction 2666, by Roberto Bolano Home, by Marilynne Robinson The Lazarus Project, by [...]
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Okay, so it’s not quite the National Book Critics Circle Award (more on that later) but congratulations are due to E, who took home first place in the first annual Vroman’s Trivia Contest with 13 points. He won a $10 gift card to Vroman’s Bookstore. Efren took second place with 7 points, and as such, [...]
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To go with your hot toddy, a few interesting articles and items of note. This was pointed out earlier today on Twitter by @sarahw, but take a look at the New York Times Paperback Bestsellers list. The number one book is a fifty year-old novel (and a good one, at that). I’m not sure how [...]
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Yesterday’s quote was, of course, one of the famous “Rocket Limericks” from Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, the longest, most bizarre Marx Brothers novel ever written. A hint was the diagram of a rocket that I tried to put in the background. My wife told me that this in fact looked like a sunny side up [...]
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As several of you correctly surmised, yesterday’s quote was from White Noise, by Don DeLillo. The few of you who answered “The Metaphysics of Death,” I’m hip to you. That was the first reference that came up on Google. Gotcha! E once again got first place. He is now well ahead, but I believe there [...]
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Yesterday’s was tough. We had a lot of very smart guesses, including one of the Ripley books, and The Savage Detectives, but the correct answer was No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. E took first place and is now in the lead overall with 7 points. Keith grabbed second place and is currently [...]
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