Anyone who’s ever worked in a bookstore has stories to tell of the bizarre stuff they find in books. Sometimes you’ll find funny pictures of people in outdated clothing (usually stuck inside of yesterday’s bestseller thriller), receipts for the purchase of the book (boring), dollar
Make no mistake, in the world of books, there is no idyllic indian summer. No lazy dog days’ afternoons. No sweet corn harvest. No last minute dash to the coast. For this is the beginning of the Library Sale Wars. This is the time that
Many of us older than compact discs (they turned 26 yesterday, hooray) remember George Carlin’s classic comedy routine, Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV. The routine was controversial, memorable, and (at least to me) quite hilarious. Carlin’s routine has recently come to mind
Yes, they’re all connected in this breaking news story from the Asheville Citizen-Times. Haywood County Sheriff’s chief detectives continue investigating a series of burglaries Tuesday night (August 19) near the intersection of N.C. 209 and Old Clyde Road in Waynesville, NC. They believe the five
When you spend a lot of time looking at books like commodities, as I do in our business, sometimes you sort of forget that the books have things in them. Things like information, sometimes true and sometimes false, heartrending, well-told stories and trite, really badly
I was driving home from the office the other day and heard a compelling story on NPR about Wordsmiths Books, an independent bookstore in Decatur, Georgia, that is currently asking for financial contributions to help offset their start-up debts. Start-up debts, you ask? What do
I’ve collected books my entire life. I treasured my Hardy Boys collection above all things (yes, more than the dog), back when I was four feet tall (my treasured books today are considerably older, better written, and more significant, but I digress). And I’m also
I know I’m putting myself perilously close to being burned as a heretic, but I have to say that I think the Kindle is pretty good. There. I said it. But, before you cast me into the lake to see if I float, at least
As a teenager, I suffered from pretty severe iconoclasticitis. Most everyone else called it by its common name: rebelliousness. But, when I wasn’t staging some inane sit-in or walk out over a meaningless point of bureaucratic trivia, or heckling my calculus teacher (who liked to