The Written Nerd

On Monday, I was part of an amazing panel discussion as part of NYU's Summer Publishing Institute. It was inspiring and thought provoking, and I plan to write up some notes and thoughts that came out of that soon. But not today. Today I would like to point out two things that made me laugh out loud in my bathrobe, and caused the ALP to shake his head at the wonder and ridiculousness of it all. They involve two of the things I love the most: books and Brooklyn. First, Shelf Awareness linked to the Green Apple Core , the blog of the amazing Green Apple Books in San Francisco. It seems Green Apple has a fantastic program wherein they recommend one book a month, guaranteed good or your money back. And every month, they shoot a two-minute video promo for the book -- every one of which is freaking hilarious. This month's book is Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless , but my favorite video (I watched them all) is for Little Bee . This cracks me up. What's most awesom...

It's been brought to my attention recently that I've been remiss in updating the ol' blogroll with some of the blogs I actually regularly read, and some of the bookstore blogs that I'm just discovering. So I have gotten at last off my tush and added some of my favorites-- read 'em (at right) and weep. Book Soup has the best (obscene but true) tagline. Word has the best Brooklyn stuff, natch. Bookavore is a fellow Emerging Leaders type, a true book nerd -- her description of how she became a bookseller made me want to be her new best friend. Wordsmiths has the best ongoing narrative (home town store makes good, moves into the bank building, graphic novels go in the vault!) -- and awesome event photos; they're my newest model for how I want to run my bookstore blog. there is no gap is the thoughtful stuff you'd expect from Shaman Drum's Karl Pohrt. Archimedes Forgets is the off-hours (but still awfully booky) project of the ABA's lovely Sarah R...

Greetings, fellow book nerds! I'm back from sabbatical, more or less, but I've realized the new schedule with BookStream et al. means that my blogging habits may need to change. Lucky for me this morning's Shelf Awareness led me to Booktrix , a book consulting company with a mandate as wide-ranging and hazy as mine at times, and to this post on the Booktrix blog , with the valuable advice: "Blog often, blog short, blog with pictures." I spent half of the "Digital Tools" panel at NAIBA telling booksellers that not every blog has to be the same format, length, or frequency, and that this doesn't have to take up all of your time. So I'm taking my own advice. I'll be posting (hopefully) a bit more, but in smaller bites. I've got a couple of Brooklyn Lit Life interviews in the pipeline, and a folder full of links and ideas to post. Today I'll pick just one. I was thrilled to get an email from Lauretta Nagel of Constellation Books i...