News & Opinions

Our writers have been around books for a long time and are never shy to share their opinions…

Closing the Book on Bookstore Closure

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It’s Not All Bad News or Closing the Book on Bookstore Closure

Early last week I found out that The Toronto Women’s Bookstore is closing and that the owner would have to head over to Fusion People for new employment. It’s been open for 39 years and this isn’t the first time it’s been threatened with closure, but it looks like this time it’s going to stick. Much like previous times I have written about bookstores closing, the reasons seem to be the same.  As the owner posted on the website, some of the reasons the store is closing include Ebooks taking up market share and the difficulty in competing with online booksellers.  It’s a tragedy that this store is closing, so I decided to bring some good news along with this sadness, and I scoured the internet to find examples of bookstores that have faced closure and were saved.

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Tate So Called Publishing

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Are there many apple groves in the Caribbean?

So my mother is reading aloud from the local newspaper. Nothing new here. I get a rundown of obituaries and political letters daily. And sometimes, rarely, she reads something that actually may be of interest to me. This time it was about a local author signing a book somewhere at some time. A kid’s book; my mother thought it was fascinating because it’s about a trip to Cape May, NJ, long a favorite vacation spot for those living around here, and on the way they stop at Storybook Land, a nostalgic Mother Goose park that I love. Surprisingly, she was correct–I am interested. but not for the reason she thinks. I’m interested because it has become the practice of things called newspapers to print whenever a local ‘author’ is signing regardless if the writer is legitimately published or not. Self published authors are treated as equals to legit writers. Which irks the hell out of me. If all it takes is to write something, anything, print it out and contact the local library or B&N and they agree to an in-store signing, then, hell, let’s all do it. I’ve got two semi-written bad mysteries, and an even worse memoirist thing–if I pay someone to slap the stuff between two covers and bring a wheeled bag full of my literary gems, maybe I could be considered equal to Ernest Hemingway or the latest Booker Prize winner, whomever that may be.

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Live Nude Texts!

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by Jas Faulkner 

When I was in college, there was a girl on my floor whose mother managed a Waldenbooks in her hometown.  Whenever the mom visited, bearing a cache of food and supplies for her daughter, she would also bring  two or three boxes of paperbacks that had been stripped of their front covers for everyone to dig through.

Being a thoughtful sort of person who understood what it was like to love books and have every bit of one’s disposable income go towards ugly, overproduced and underedited required texts; she made it as easy as possible for people to find books they would love.  Every box was packed one layer thick with the spines facing up so there were no surprises.  Sometimes the spines of the books were reinforced with clear packing tape.  I figure it was busy work for slow times in an already neat as a pin store.

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Life With Books: Abbreviated

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by Jas Faulkner 

This is probably a bad thing to admit, but I participate in a forum that follows a reality show about the Duggar Family and yet I rarely if ever watch the actual show.  When I do, I see that about eighty percent of the commentary is pretty accurate, but there are moments when I watch and what I see doesn’t seem as bad as it has been made out to be .

On a recent episode, one of the Duggars, a son who is now grown and married and has his own household, showed the documentary crew his eldest child’s library.  It was a shelf that contained seven or eight books.  I have seen criticism about the paltry space and selection in this little girl’s collection.  There were two things I kept in mind as I watched this:  1. The child in question is two or three years old. 2. Neither of these young parents grew up in homes where there was an emphasis on education beyond learning the basics required to take care of a family.  Sad to say, that might be the case with the next generation of Duggars, but I hope it isn’t.  

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Banned Books Week’s Timeline Titles

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I never remember when Banned Books Week is scheduled. I stumbled about online, and luckily realized it was happening, now, this minute, until October 2. 2012. My fascination with the convoluted and off kilter reasons for parents, townspeople, and school boards’ objections to certain titles never wanes. How could it? Every year a new title that may have been published centuries ago, is being challenged by someone somewhere. The American Library Association in honor of 30 years devoted to pointing out threatened and banned titles, created a timeline of banned books–from the year Banned Books Week began, 1982, until this year. Some not yet read titles are familiar to me because of being challenged constantly by the ignorant. Other titles I’v’e never heard of. A great deal of them are juvenile or grade school level.

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Wal-Mart vs. Amazon

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It’s hard to decide which of these two monopolies to dislike more. One wants to take over the retail universe, and the other strives to take over the retail universe. One is brick and mortar and treats employees less than admirably, the other is an online store and treats employees like a third world country. One sells various and sundries, the other sells various and sundries, and oh, yeah, books. One used to sell the Kindle pad, the other still sells the Kindle pad.

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Twisting Arms and Having Fun at the Flea Market

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not the author but a similar experience via crossroadsmag.net

With the weather turning a little cooler it is a nice time to take the time to go out to flea markets. I go to outdoor flea markets nearly every week during the summer, winter and spring. In the dead of winter I sometimes get cabin fever and brave the cold to get my flea market fix. Lately I go mostly looking for books as I have gone for years and have a collection of many other things that I just “had to have” Flea markets can often be great places to visit when looking for books to sell and to look for interesting books to collect.

Larger flea markets are often inhabited by sellers who make it a full time occupation and who spend the rest of the week going to estate auctions and yard sales looking for things to sell, like the  iPhone 5, at the flea market. You will come across the occasional book dealer but mostly you will come across people who will buy anything that they can sell and make a profit.

If they have been doing it for a while they will develop a certain familiarity with what they are selling and price their items according to their experience, but often you will find people who are just looking to make a modest profit.

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The Words–The Movie

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A bunch of us ‘girls’ went to see this film the other night. Naturally, I was interested not only because a cute man was the lead, but because of the literary aspect of the film. I wasn’t exactly sure what that aspect was, but from the promo I got the impression the cute lead stole someone’s manuscript and passed it off as his own. Well, not exactly, but close. Bradley Cooper plays–a character in a book. A character who finds a manuscript in an old leather briefcase while honeymooning in Paris. He’s a struggling writer, trying to write that perfect literary work.  He’s been told he’s talented, but not commercial. He’s had rejection slips run like the faucet through his mail slot. His lovely wife believes in him, his father, not so much. Dennis Quaid is the man who is writing this fictional account of a man who cannot get published. He’s doing a huge book reading–supposedly two sections of the book are being read aloud. Quaid meets up with a lit student, stalker–well, that’s what I would call Olivia Wilde’s character–she pursues Quaid with a fervor. And she questions him about the novel, his writing, etc etc.

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