The Written Nerd

  One of the best things about being a bookseller, wherever you are, is the possibility of developing relationships with authors that have the potential to go beyond fandom. Because of the serendipity of where I live, I happen to be neighbors to some of the contemporary greats.  It's not without its pitfalls though.  I remember having a nice chat with a nice lady named Jennifer in the bookstore sometime in Year 1, finding out she had written a book, and picking it up -- and gradually becoming aghast that I had been treating this person as a normal human neighbor, when in fact they were a terrifying genius. The book was A Visit From The Goon Squad , which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize.  Luckily Jenny Egan seemingly forgave me for treating her like a regular neighbor (and for all my other faux pas, including vastly under-ordering for the Goon Squad launch party, which we've hopefully made up for by selling hundreds of copies every year since then and shipping sign...

  Last week, we hosted the first event in the bookstore in almost exactly two years. I had to look up our most recent event for reference and it was eerie to read the summary notes from March 2020 -- the regular routines punctuated with nervous laughter -- before bookstore author events and so many other things disappeared instantly and thoroughly for a long, long time. This event was not like that one, or the ten years of events we hosted before that. We've learned some things, and some things have changed. Attendance in the store was limited, with mandatory RSVPs -- not "free and open to the public" as it was in the past. Masks and proof of vaccination were required and checked at the door. And we had a camera hooked up to Zoom to livestream the event to the virtual audience we've built up over the last years.  I'm also not the Events & Marketing Director any more -- there's a team of talented folks handling all of that for the bookstore, so I can (in th...

  Happy end of 2021! In years past I've often done a roundup of books read; the last one was 11 years or 6 blog posts ago.  It's such a fun project to look back on the year's reading; I've been practicing with Greenlight's Holiday Handsells but this is my longlist.  It was a rollercoaster of a year in many ways, and my hard-won total of 42 listed below includes everything from religious instruction to middle grade graphic novels to epic fantasy and climate fiction (and a surprising number of rereads and out of print books), ending with the small classic above.  I included a bit about each and this ended up getting kind of long... if you make it through, I've made the covers into buy links in case you'd like to purchase a copy from your local indie bookstore.  What stood out in your year of reading?

  Last week I went to a literary gala and I may be still processing it.  The lovely folks at Other Press extended an invitation to their table for the PEN Gala, the annual fundraiser for PEN America 's vital work in freedom of speech for writers worldwide -- though I admit when I saw the invite I was thinking anxiously less about authorial freedom and more about the words "BLACK TIE".  Luckily I had a ten-year-old dress I love in the back of the closet (small designer, punkish fabric pieces, long train at the back) so I put myself together as best I could and went to the American Museum of Natural History on a Tuesday night.  Arriving, I found that Other Press had also extended an invitation to several fellow booksellers, including two of my own Greenlight colleagues, who were a delight to encounter in a sea of suited-and-gowned strangers. We talked a kind of shop, about the challenges of curation vs. the demands of free speech over cocktails around the giant skelet...

I had the pleasure of speaking with the lovely Damian Barr on Instagram Live this morning, as Greenlight was featured as Bookshop of the Month on his Literary Salon . I feel like I used to be one of those in any gathering of booksellers who was more comfortable with tech than my elders; I've now passed over into being a grownup who needs gentle coaching on how to update the app, etc.  But once the transcontinental connectivity issues were overcome, it was great to talk about the bookstore, about mutual friends and events and parties, about ideas and books.  Wow I've missed conversation about books -- I'm resolved to re-integrate it into my life, however long it takes. We talked about Greenlight's name and its origins in (among other things) the green light at the end of the dock in The Great Gatsby , and whether "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" is ultimately optimistic, an aspiration for a better future, or hope...

Like every other bookstore I've spoken to or heard about, Greenlight has spent the past year and a half of pandemic-era retail in a state of near-constant reinvention.  I could talk about the moment-by-moment agony and uncertainty of it, the second-guessing and the exhaustion of decision making, but in retrospect it looks like a rollercoaster that you managed to stay on.  We were lucky we already had an e-commerce website -- we just had to reallocate a ton of resources to expand it it. We were lucky our stores are in dense residential communities where folks weren't going in to the office -- sales in some categories actually grew (and we sold a lot of puzzles). We were lucky to have staff and customers pushing us forward as we examined our own institutional structures -- we're in a still-very-ongoing state of becoming a more transparent, more inclusive business.  It takes a kind of gallows humor to see it, but the hustle that has been required to keep our little bookstore...

I wrote the last entry in this blog over ten years ago -- I was honestly surprised to find it's still here (thanks for saving everything, Google!). In May of 2011 the Greenlight Bookstore venture was new, and my focus had shifted from writing and networking about books and bookstores to working all the time, every day on my own little seed of a venture. It was an exciting and transitional time, and it was only a little bittersweet to let it go. I wrote the first entry in this blog over sixteen years ago, in October of 2005. I was working in a bookstore and starting to conceive of the first seeds of my plan to open my own, but still feeling a little isolated and in need of community.  It was a great moment for literary blogs, many/most of which are now gathering their own cobwebs -- largely because their founders (me included) created a platform and developed connections which allowed them to create the next phase of their literary career.  This blog served its purpose well, a...

Dear readers of The Written Nerd, if there are any of you still out there, As you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything here in almost six months. This blog served a great purpose for me for five long years -- from October 2005, when I declared my geeky book and bookstore love and my quixotic intention to open a bookstore. As you know if you've been reading me, that dream has come true . Which means any blogging time and energy I had is now dedicated to the bookstore. And to a degree, it also means that I don't need this outlet for my thoughts about book culture anymore, since I have coworkers and customers and a whole industry with which to explore them. Not to mention that there's a whole new generation of book bloggers who have a lot more interesting things to say! So I'm officially signing off from The Written Nerd. This means two things: 1) If you are a publicist, please don't send books to The Written Nerd anymore. I get far more books than I c...

Here are all the books I read (that I know of) in 2010, in crude alphabetical order. This doesn't include children's picture books, cookbooks, single-issue comics, magazines, or uh, the Internet. My own personal Best of the Year are highlighted in bold. And thanks to the superquick book search on greenlightbookstore.com (where, ahem, you can purchase any and all of these titles), you get pictures! The call for ideas is at the end. A. D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Jo sh Neufeld ( reviewed ) Agents of Atlas by Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk ( reviewed ) Air, Volume 2: Flying Machine by G. Willow Wilson & M.K. Parker (reviewed) Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly (reviewed) Batwoman: Elegy by Greg Rucka, J. H. Williams, and Dave Stewart (reviewed) The Box of Delights by John Masefield: A Christmas book, quintessentially English in a Narnia kind of way, dreamy and eccentric and magical and stiff-upper-lip. Practically perfect. Co wboy Ninja Viking Volume 1...

Okay, so perhaps I was slightly overambitious, or just unorganized, thinking I would write about every book I read this year in order. Even though I felt like I didn't read nearly as much as I wanted to / ought to this year, the pile of read books grew much faster than my time to write about them (or inspiration to do so). So here's what I didn't get to write about before, but did read -- I can't remember any longer which order they went in, and the shortness that this last-minute approach will require does a disservice to some truly wonderful works, but there you go. To save time and space, instead of including pictures I've added links to the book detail page on greenlightbookstore.com whenever available, if you want to see a picture or read more about the book. Before the end of this month, I'll post the complete list of what I read this year, highlighting my own personal best-ofs, with links to where I wrote about them. Here goes the last round! A. D.: N...

Aw, thanks, Russel. Now obviously the ALP and I had to test our mettle against this list. Next, I hope to post a list of this year's books. Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt. Tag other book nerds. Tag me as well so I can see your responses... 1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen JSB, MJB 2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien JSB 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte/b> JSB, MJB 4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all) 5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee JSB, MJB 6 The Bible JSB (MJB) 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte MJB 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell JSB, MJB 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman JSB 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens JSB, MJB 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott JSB 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller MJB 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare JSB, MJB 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier J...

Joe Drabyak died on Friday . Long live Joe Drabyak. I'm having a hard time getting my head around this. I sat next to Joe at a dinner in April. We compared notes on the appetizer. Everyone said he looked a little skinny but he brushed it off. That was only four months ago. Forgive the maudlin bits for a moment. I can hear exactly how Joe said the phrase "Noir Bar." I can hear the way he would start a sentence hesitantly, as though it was just coming to him, and then deliver an idea so fluid and articulate it was clear he'd either just rehearsed the whole thing in his head, or he'd known exactly what he thought for a long time. He presided over the meetings of the NAIBA board in a manner that was truly presidential: that is, he listened to everybody else. He was the voice of reason when things got heated. He wasn't afraid of new ideas, but he was a great respecter of everyone's concerns. One of the ideas he supported was Emerging Leaders. He was a ...

We interrupt our sporadically scheduled book reviews to bring you this highly personal pitch, from me (Jessica/Book Nerd) to the booksellers of New York City and the mid-Atlantic region. I have to advocate for things I am passionate about -- if you're a bookseller you can probably sympathize. I wanted to make sure that you know all about the Fall Conference , this September 21 and 22, hosted by the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) . Like a mini-BEA or Winter Institute, the conference brings together booksellers and publishers from the mid-Atlantic region for professional education, networking, and book buzz to prepare us for the fall season in our stores. The cost is membership in NAIBA, which is $100 per store for a year, plus meals and hotel; discounted hotel rates are available (the conference is in Atlantic city, a cheap bus ride away). You can get all of the details about the conference here . I went to my first NAIBA conference when I ha...

There is a disturbingly large and teetering pile of books on a chair in my kitchen. They are books that I have read in the last couple of months, that I hope to one day get around to writing up for this blog. Many of them deserve lots of thought, ideally before I forget the reading experience. Also, maybe 50% of the pile is comics -- because I read them faster than straight prose, or because my reading is getting decadently image-dependent, or because it's summer and comics are my beach reading, I don't know. Anyway, despite the fact that several of these are serious books that could totally justify their own post, I'm throwing them together in a roundup, in the interest of getting them off the stack and saving the legs of my kitchen chair. Superman: For Tomorrow Volume 1 and Volume 2 By Brian Azzarello (writer), Jim Lee, and Scott Williams (artists) The ALP, a much more serious comics reader than I, is of the opinion that this one-shot Superman story is about how sca...