The Written Nerd

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one bookseller to dissolve the economic bonds which have connected her with a bookstore, and to assume among the community of booksellers, a separate and equal station at a new establishment, a decent respect to the opinions of blog readers requires that she should declare the causes which impel her to the separation. Yep, it's true -- your Book Nerd is changing her place of employment. To be precise, I'm leaving this store for this store . It's been an intense couple of weeks, but obviously I didn't want to post the news here before I'd made it public with my employer and coworkers, which just happened yesterday. So what are the impelling causes? Primarily, the pursuit of becoming a better bookseller. As you all have seen me declare repeatedly, I'm after a store of my own, and I'm interested in experiences that will prepare me for that eventuality. The store I'm going to is relatively you...

It's been a big weekend for T-shirts showing Book Nerd Pride. On Friday I discovered this irresistible item at Bank Street Books , the wonderful Upper West Side children's bookstore: I was crazy about author Mo Willem's pigeon character in his hilarious (and extremely good for contrary kids who love to shout "NO" on every page) book DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS. (The sequel, THE PIGEON FINDS A HOT DOG, was equally funny, if not as interactive.) Now here he is becoming a spokesbird for literacy! The book he's holding is called, of course, HOW TO DRIVE A BUS. Saturday the ALP and I braved the cold to walk to our local Neighborhoodies store. These guys started out as an Internet-only company based in Brooklyn, and has started opening bricks-and-mortar stores in the last couple of years, providing the same service of custom-made T-shirt designs (they now have bags, sweatshirts and undies too). Their cozy Atlantic Avenue shop is a great temptation to tho...

The People of Paper by Salvador Plasencia (McSweeney's, June 2005) The House of Paper by Carlos Maria Dominguez translated by Nick Caistor illustrations by Peter Sis So here we have two books, both with paper in the title, both by Latin Americans (or Latino-Americans), published in 2005. Both also happen to be about books. Plasencia's novel is the second McSweeney's publication I've read in less than a month; their bindings are always just so pretty, and I guess after a lot of recent non-fiction reading I was ready for some fiction that was a little more arch and challenging. This one is definitely experimental, both typographically and authorially. Stories are often told in several columns on a page spread, each narrated by or concerned with a different character; the type sometimes ends up running sideways on the page or blocked out by black squares; one word is actually cut out of the page each time it would appear, leaving a small rectangular whole; and at one p...

So the ALP and I didn't make it to the New York Comic-Con -- turns out tickets were sold out long before we ever made it to the Javits Center. Billions of Blue Blistering Barnacles, as my comic book hero Captain Haddock was wont to say when frustrated. We'll have to be content with our nearly weekly visits to Forbidden Planet and Jim Hanley's Universe, local comic book meccas where we get our fix of the newest and greatest. But it turned out to be just as well, as I got a call from my bookselling friend Chris, who presides at the venerable Corner Bookstore on 93rd and Madison, in the heart of NYC's tony Upper East Side. He was short a staffer and asked if I'd like to come in and work on Saturday. Being Comic-Con-less, short of cash (as always) and curious about the workings of Corner, I elatedly agreed. It was just Chris, me, and fellow bookseller Peter when we opened at 11 on Saturday -- though we had to wait for a fashion shoot from Teen Vogue, which was taki...

Apparently it's official: graphic novels are literature. Or at least literary. Or at least culturally important enough that official people will review them as books. Or at least book publishers are publishing them (and a lot more of them than before). The New York Times (the paper of record, and thus the last place to know what's going on -- since they have to wait until it's an official trend before writing about the trend) reviews graphic novels in its book pages, and in this article (archived, sorry) note that comics are the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry. The NYT Magazine now has a "funnies" section (I'm told). Time Magazine has a surprisingly insightful article on the development and current state of the format. And these are just the big guys and the most recent pieces. If you're a book person, you've probably read hundreds of pages of commentary, discussion, and argument about comics/graphic novels/sequential art. And the ...

Dude, is it just me or have the book reviews been taking over the blog lately? Time to talk about something else. It's still months away, but it's totally not to early to get excited about Book Expo America ! For the uninitiated, BEA is the biggest book industry event of the year. Sponsored by Reed Business Group (the company behind Publishers Weekly), it brings together publishers, authors, agents, booksellers, media types, and a few of the curious. Galleys and ARCs flow like water (big, chunky water that's so heavy you have to ship it home); authors from the obscure to the exciting are on hand to sign their new books; there are educational workshops, big mixers, and of course, parties! This year BEA will be held in Washington, D.C., from May 18 to 21. For complicated reasons, I haven't made my reservations yet (minor biting of nails...). But come hell or high water ("Lord willing and the creek don't rise," as my mother used to say, only slightly ironical...

Before presenting today's capsule reviews, I should perhaps recommend that you all take them with a grain of salt. It seems A.M. Homes' THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE, which I panned here (and waffled about in Publishers Weekly [this version heavily edited from what I wrote, mind you]), is not only getting lots of praise elsewhere, but has just been optioned for a movie . So shows what I know. MY LUCKY STAR by Joe Keenan (Little, Brown, January 2006) A prescient publicity chap sent me this one, name-dropping P.G. Wodehouse as a comparison; how did he know that I am a passionate adherent of the Wodehouse school of novel-as-musical-comedy? I've actually been watching the BBC Jeeves & Wooster miniseries lately, and have been reminded how much I love all that goofy wordplay and lighthearted peril, averted at the last minute. But mostly the wit. Joe Keenan is an author I've heard compared to Master Wodehouse before, if Wodehouse was a gay TV writer. Keenan writes for Fr...