The Written Nerd

Dear readers, the end of this week is the deadline for the Brooklyn Business Library's business plan competition , and I still have some elements to pull together. So blogging will be light, if it happens at all. But just in time, Shelf Awareness linked to three articles about independent bookstores making good. Explore Booksellers and Town Center Booksellers are among the only local shops lauded for good customer service in an article about the trade-offs of shopping local in the Aspen Times. (Note to self: customer service is a key component of a successful indie.) The Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas is getting new owners after twenty years, according to this article in LJWorld . Click on the video link to hear Kelly Barth, a long-time employee who is one of the three new owners, talking about plans for the future, including focusing on the store's strengths and providing space for local writers. (Note to self: the neighborhood is the strength of a successful indie.)...

Apparently no more than five minutes before I arrived at the bookstore for my shift yesterday, George Saunders ( The Braindead Megaphone ) was sitting in my office chair, talking on my phone, doing the pre-interview for his gig on Letterman. You can see a video clip of the show here (thanks to Ed for the link.) He was gone before I got there. But the day wasn't a total loss. A couple of hours later Junot Diaz stopped by to sign stock of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao before his big reading uptown that night (thanks to Richard Grayson for the write-up), and he kissed me on the cheek not once, but twice. And in the evening Edward P. Jones was in the store, fresh from an interview on Leonard Lopate (thanks to Maud for the link) to introduce writers from the anthology he just edited, New Stories from the South 2007 . Just one of those days, I guess.

Richard Grayson is the real thing: born and raised in Brooklyn, he's equally at home in the old neighborhood and the hipster revival. His name may be new to you, but he's been writing fiction and nonfiction since the 1970s, and he often writes about current literary events in New York on his MySpace blog . I'm grateful that he followed up on our earlier email correspondence by writing about his memories of the bookstores of Brooklyn; his knowledge of the borough, and his love for it, is deep and wide. Brooklyn Lit Life Interview Richard Grayson Describe your particular literary project, and your role in it. I’ve been writing stories since the early 1970s. They’ve been collected, rather haphazardly, into various books, but I never intended to write any books. My first three books, published in the late 1970s and early 1980s, were all the result of publishers contacting me, taking all the stories I sent them, and working them into collections. Later books were published ...

Link Madness (late edition) I guess I was overcome by Labor Day laziness and forgot to blog on Monday, so here are some late and rather eclectic links. * Author Alex Kuczynski has a somewhat smirky article in the NY Times about the contemporary book party , describing the "colossal blowouts" for books by Tina Brown, Holly Peterson, and Patricia Marx, as opposed to the warm-wine-and-skimpy-brie affairs of yesteryear. Her contention is that today's parties are hosted not by publishers, but by wealthy authors and friends of authors; hence the extravagance in hopes of garnering publicity. (Thanks to Ron at Galleycat for the link, and I'll second his notion that if it's media mentions you want, invite a blogger or two along with the glitterati!) I'm not sure I agree with Kuczynski; we've hosted some pretty swanky publisher-sponsored digs at the bookstore, and sold books offsite at several more, though there are still plenty of author-sponsored cheap wine ...

I reviewed Kate Christensen's most recent novel The Great Man very briefly back in June, though not nearly enough to get across my enthusiasm for her witty, compassionate, sly, suspenseful story, with some jabs at the art world and the patriarchy to boot. I've also loved all her previous novels -- In the Drink, Jeremy Thrane , and The Epicure's Lament -- and I was thrilled to host her at a book party at McNally Robinson in mid-August. She graciously agreed to be a part of the Brooklyn Lit Life series, and her answers seem much like one of The Great Man's heroines, Teddy St. Cloud: basking in the uniquely vibrant isolation that's on offer in the borough of Brooklyn. Brooklyn Lit Life Kate Christensen Why Brooklyn? What made you decide to live/work here, in both practical and emotional terms? Brooklyn is the best place to live in the world, at least in terms of the places I’ve seen and visited and lived. I’ve lived in Greenpoint for almost 5 years, and before t...

Ya know, despite Monday's assertions, I'm not immune to the power of negative press. This blog got me so down and confused I considered taking a day off from writing my bookstore business plan. But on the other hand, there's this bookseller's blog , and all the stuff his Decatur bookstore has got going on. My favorite line: "the “futureTense” panel is meant to be a humorous, tongue-in-cheek takedown of “the sky is falling/no, we built the sky” give-and-take dichotomy between old and new media" Giggles trump blues once again. Ultimately, as we know, it ain't an internet-or-indies kind of world. Bread and roses, convenience and community, progress and tradition -- we're gonna have it all. In the meantime, I've got like months worth of book reviews to catch up on. Here's a start. Castle Waiting by Linda Medley (Fantagraphics, June 2006) I feel like this book and I have been giving each other the eye for over a year -- we had the feeling tha...

Okay, so if you work in books or read a lot you've probably heard about this: the recent AP/Ipsos poll on American reading habits (the whole thing is downloadable from their website - click on the August 21 survey, then the "Topline results" button), commonly reported in the following way: "One in four adults read no books last year." I met with a potential bookstore investor the other day, someone who loves reading but doesn't work in the industry, and even he had heard about it: "Didn't someone show that fewer people are reading now?" he asked. And that is how most people have interpreted these results. ( Why is the survey NOT described "Seventy-five percent of Americans read a book last year?" ) John Freeman of the National Book Critics Circle, blogging at the Guardian, used the poll as a taking-off point (or evidence) for an unhappy piece about reading in America , apparently inspired by a trip to Vegas (which I admit, depresse...