News & Opinions – Page 6 – The Bookshop Blog

Are the Origins of Steampunk Rooted in Racist Literature?

February 18, 2013 by Carrie Bailey

by Carrie Bailey While writing my thesis earlier this year, I was so eager to leave grad school behind me, like it was a candy wrapper and I was late to catch a train, that I hardly had time to process the controversial nature of the material I was studying. I wasn’t reading steampunk. Maybe … Read more

The Anonymity of eBooks

February 15, 2013 by Matthew Singleton

One of the things I remember from my time in school learning to be a librarian was something the professor in the Reference Services class I took during my first semester said: never apologize for what you read. This is just one of those quotes that is so simple and yet so true. Why should you … Read more

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

February 11, 2013 by Carrie Bailey

by Carrie Bailey You might have heard about the movie coming out next month from Disney titled Oz: The Great and Powerful. It’s another film based on Frank L. Baum’s series about that little girl from Kansas with the dog and a propensity toward meeting creatures that are missing at least one vital body organ. … Read more

Fig Leaves and Cappuccino

February 8, 2013February 8, 2013 by Jas Faulkner

by Jas Faulkner

“How are things?” I asked Sam as I flipped through pictures of Dore engravings.

“Things are great,” said Sam, “Could not be better. Have I told you my wife is a marketing genius?”

“Do tell. I take it there’s a good story about to happen.”

Of course there was. And as many of them begin, this one starts with a visit from Taylor Slow. For whatever reason, she wandered from her usual shelves of choice to the “literature” section, where she found copies of Lolita, The Canterbury Tales, and For Colored Girls… “right out there in the open where any impressionable young person could get hold of ’em!”

“I’m expressing my concern to you directly because I want to give you the chance to address this yourselves.”

“Really?” Sam, who is one half of the ownership group of the tiny independent book store that not only could but did defy the odds and stay open in their small Mississippi home town glanced up. She nodded sympathetically and then got back to work because that was what one does when Miss Taylor Slow gets a bee in her bonnet about something.

Hi, Fidelity!

February 3, 2013 by Jas Faulkner

by Jas Faulkner

Mah mah mah mah my Sharona! — Mah mah mah mah mah mah my Sharona!

Ed Cho* and I are visiting one of the stores that uses his designs. The sound system goes quiet for a second and then a familiar piano intro plays. A woman who has been browsing pauses and then upon hearing Aretha Franklin’s first lines:

Though you don’t call any more
I sit and wait in vain

The shopper’s face lights up and a measure or two later, she is singing along with emotion and probably more audibly than she realises. As she sings, she begins to walk around the racks, picking up articles of clothing and holding them against herself as she decides which pieces she will try on and eventually purchase. By the time the Queen of Soul finished, her duet partner was carrying three items. Before the song, she had nothing in her hands and was walking around in way that suggested nothing she saw was particularly appealing.

Ed and I went outside.

“That is what successful audio design looks and sounds like.”

What The Hell is The Matter With Some Publishers?

January 31, 2013 by Diane Plumley

I am the first to admit, I don’t understand the publishing industry. I don’t get the way they will publish a title, it does quite well, so they publish the next, and then stop. And not only do they stop, they refuse to publish either of the first two in paperback, which means the audience is minute. Hardcover books are expensive for most people to buy, they depend on a new title being available in 12 months in paperback. That’s why so many are behind one book in a series–they’ve paperback pocketbooks.

So, one particular publisher has a habit of doing this, from my personal experience, and it inflames my soap box soul. For anonymity sake, let’s call it, um, St. Paul’s Publishing House. They buy mediocre, to superb mystery novels, pay the authors a pittance, publish the least amount of copies possible and still make a profit, and in many cases, drop the author as fast as they signed him or her.

The Role of Tracy Flick Will Be Played By Lance Armstrong

February 2, 2013January 24, 2013 by Jas Faulkner

by Jas Faulkner

The remaining members of the media who are not getting the vapors over Manti Te’o’s pretend girlfriend are finding true gold in the race to the stygian levels of athletic malfeasance still being run by Lance Armstrong.

Watching Armstrong try to be likeable on Oprah was like watching two komodo dragons reenact every meet cute scene ever written by Nora Ephron. You just don’t put someone who has been characterized as a bully and a liar and a cheat with an interviewer who was once visibly miffed because a schizophrenic child was less than impressed with the prospect of sitting down for a chat. The princess force was too strong on that soundstage for either party to come out looking particularly good.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Rants: Handlers and Liaisons Speak Out

January 18, 2013January 18, 2013 by Jas Faulkner

by Jas Faulkner

entourage11 — How would these guys handle Miz Eudora’s requests? (HBO Pictures)

I got the email from Sam and Tab shortly before the first of the month:

Can you come to Memphis? It’s a coven meeting and you’re invited!

Why yes, that is coded speech. Sam usually sends her invitations to coven gatherings via owl or white mice in a pumpkin. But seriously, the girls are secretive about their professional gatherings and for good reason. In the early days of the event, they were sometimes overrun by wannabe writers looking for that magic something that would get them published and readers seeking galleys before their favourite authors’ latest hit the shelves. The attendees are all booksellers except for the occasional guest from the book trade or an author or a book jacket artist or somesuch person who shares their insight and experience and usually brings some very sweet swag. In return they get a smallish honorarium and a long weekend at the B and B.