CategoryBOOKSTORES AND LIBRARIES

May 31, 2023, 8:19am You know when two people you like turn out to know each other, and you think, oh COOL but also WEIRD? That’s how I feel about a photo I saw of Channing Tatum dropping into Emma Straub’s Books Are Magic store in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, on Tuesday to promote his third children’s book, Sparkella and the Big Lie. I’m a tough study of children’s books, and especially of celebrity...

May 23, 2023, 11:18am We all know that things are bad when it comes to widespread, targeted book-banning in America. Its a free speech crisis unlike any weve seen in a generation, and follows in this countrys grand tradition of moral panic-as-national pastime. But did you know that just 11 people are responsible for more than 60 percent of book challenges in the 2021-22 school year? I strongly...

May 22, 2023, 11:55am Today in good news, the American Booksellers Association announced that membership is at its highest level in 20 years. Per reporting by Hillel Italie at the Associated Press: The ABA added 173 members last year, and now has 2,185 bookstore businesses and 2,599 locations. Three years after the pandemic shut down most of the physical bookstores in the U.S. and the independent...

May 19, 2023, 11:56am Its no wonder that book theft is on the rise in Florida, seeing as how Governor Ron DeSantis seems hellbent on making reading as hard as possible. So is anyone surprised a Florida couple (composed of a Florida Man and a Florida Woman) recently made off with some rare books, valuable comics, AND a few endangered tortoises? According to Tampas News Channel 8 Joshua McCarty...

May 18, 2023, 10:18am Citing the danger of unhealthy ideas Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee is defending the clandestine removal of library books about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, which saw upwards of a thousand deaths (estimates vary). All of this as the 35th anniversary of the historic revolt/massacre approaches on June 4. According to Al-Jazeera: The...

At Genes Music City, albums covered in sagging plastic wrap lined three walls. Behind the counter 45s hung on a massive peg board and hundreds more LPs seemed to be waiting on the shelves, readying to be flipped through. Gene was a near-twin to Wolfman Jack, the well-known thick-haired, bearded disc jockey of the 70s, but Gene was quieter, more contemplative. Hed play a tune if you asked for a...

May 8, 2023, 11:04am A 57-year-old self-styled poet (arent they all?) has spent $116,000 of his own money to build a bookstore in a mountaintop village. Oh, and its shaped like the number 7 and contains 7,000 books. No, this is not a parable. As Jiang Libo told the South China Morning Post: Before my bookshop was built, the closest bookshop or library to this village was in a town about 30km away...

May 8, 2023, 11:00am Forty years ago, my not-yet-gentrified neighborhood in Brooklyn had one bookstore, Mostly Books. When the owner retired, it became a video store (RIP Cousins). Then it was derelict, then it was councilman’s office, and now its (obviously) a real estate office. But in all those years, a neighborhood of a dozen square blocks and around seventy-five thousand people was without a...

When my friends and I left the homeland, my second departure from Kuwait, there were five of us and ten suitcases. I knew exactly what was in each bag, just as I knew the pain and angst of the five travelers heading toward the unknown. The suitcases were packed with clothes, kitchenware, Indian spices, and various items we didn’t think we’d be able to find abroad. I could only bring four books...

May 4, 2023, 11:21am Respect and support to Wasilla, Alaskas Black Birch Books, whore getting a lot of online flack for announcing a drag story time in June. But despite a slew of negative, and sometimes threatening, comments and reviews, Black Birch owner Taylor Jordan is going on with the show. As she told Alaska News Source: Its really important to me that I allow commenting on all of my posts...