Barrett Browning’s bleak beachcation: lonely letter lamenting isolation lifted to fame
While books have depicted themes of isolation, pandemics, and loneliness for centuries, I think we can all agree that this is the first time we 21st century folk can relate… Read more »
Two Chicago bookstores symbolize what’s at stake this holiday shopping season
Last week we wrote about the American Bookseller Association’s #BoxedOut campaign in which select indie storefronts were covered in the familiar drab of Amazon boxes carrying slogans like “Anyone else feel weird… Read more »
One partnership sending books to prisons
One thing many people have learned during the various stages of coronavirus lockdown is that books make for excellent escapes. For incarcerated people this has long been a truth, but… Read more »
Indie bookstores are nervous about the holiday season
This year has been a garbage fire for everyone, but in the publishing industry, indie booksellers have had a particularly rough go of it. For many indies their business model… Read more »
Booker Prize moves online; digital tomes abound
The famed Booker Prize, like everything else, has moved online this year. The prestigious award, which has a long history of skulduggery, controversy, and fractiousness, has been a relatively sedate… Read more »
Bookstores out west re-open . . . and re-close
It’s been terrifying to study the hockey stick-shaped graphs of Covid-19 spikes in places like Arizona and Texas, states that had closed-down insufficiently and have now re-opened too early. Unfortunately, this has… Read more »
Ex-Librarian and bookseller sentenced in decades-long theft scheme
Librarians, they’re just like us! Well, if you are someone who would steal $8 million of rare books and artifacts from the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, that is. Michael Levenson… Read more »
Bookstores are opening back up, kind of
June is here and states are creaking open. Some are flinging the doors wide, caution thrown to the wind, while others are moving more gingerly. Bookstores mostly find themselves among… Read more »
Phoenix’s Mission-driven Bookstore Stays Open with Community Support
Almost exactly a year ago, we wrote about how Palabras–Phoenix, AZ’s first bilingual bookstore–needed our help. At that point, Palabras was a few-year-old bookstore and community space with all kinds… Read more »
Coronavirus is now coming for unfinished novels
A few months ago when governments started issuing stay-at-home orders, many thought this would just be a momentary blip, a month of staying home and then we could move on… Read more »