Our Holiday Catalog!

You can browse titles and cover art here! And it's all 10% off through the holidays!


Our Open House Party will be Sunday, December 2nd, 3 pm till the cows come home.

Louis & Paul

Why I buy the salad dressings and salsa!

Reading for Pleasure…or Not

The New York Times reported today on a new study released by the National Endowment for the Arts that found, among other things, “…fewer than half of Americans over 18 read novels, short stories, plays or poetry…” The usual suspects are trotted out: books compete with the visual diversions, movies, tv, video games and the like. Poverty is probably an issue as well. The study also points to the flatness or decline in reading scores among students, and income level for adults. The more one reads the better the scores (including tests in Math and Science); the more one reads the more income one makes. Except in my case.
Of course, this study is of some concern to me inasmuch as I depend on a literate public to make my living. I’m fortunate that my customers are literate and I can conduct good conversations with them. I’d like to continue to do so.
I can’t be sure and I have no proof, but I think that there is a current group of young people who are growing up illiterate. Somehow the get by in school with the rudiments of reading ability and street smarts. But because they have been failed on some way early on, and not taught properly how to read, never discover the pleasures of the printed narrative. Or feel the tactile satisfaction of holding a book in one’s hands.
There is an elderly man who brings me the weekly local neighborhood paper. He told me some time ago, with great pride, that he was taking reading classes at the Goodwill. It’s never too late.

This Land is Your Land

Via Howie Klein at Crooks and Liars, Mojo Nixon's stirring cover of Woody.

We're #1 !!!1!

at the googles. Really! You fine people have clicked on the Tibetan Turtles so many times, we are at the top of the search for um, real, tibetan turtles. Go click it again! You know you wanta!

Other people have come here for other reasons. Liberty Lake, WA came looking for "spokane woman seeking male sex slave" We're on page 5 there. That same entry was the result of the search for "pen pal contact email of man in glober"

Another seeking googler, looked for used playboys. Yup, there we are on page 1 there also, luckily at the bottom.

The Writer’s Strike and the Book Business

This is from the on-line daily version of Publishers Weekly: Authors Lose Air Time as Writers Strike
And then there’s this from the New York Times: TV Writers’ Strike Leaves Jilted Authors Looking for a Bully Pulpit

The gist of the articles is that with the strike and shows like The Daily Show, Colbert, Leno, Letterman and O’Brian, running repeats, authors don’t have a place to pimp their books. I wonder how driven book sales are from these interviews. I’d guess somewhat. I know I get more NPR driven sales as customers will come in and tell me, “I heard about this book on All Things Considered”. I don’t get, however, people asking me if I can remember who Jon Stewart interviewed last night. Not that our customers don’t watch Stewart or Colbert. But I’ll bet that clerks at the chain stores get those questions all the time.

The Queen of promoting authors is Oprah. If she can make Cormac McCarthy a best-selling author, well, you know she has to be huge.

But for the authors, this loss of a place on the tube can be devastating. The real shelf life of most books is two or three weeks. After that most books sit on the bookstore shelves. No one talks about them anymore. And if there is still a market, many customers are happy to wait for the paperback release a year hence.

Working Class Hero

Our friend Adam Felber has posted this at his website on the writer's strike going on in HollyIslamostanwood. Adam has been writing this season for Real Time with Bill Maher and if you have been watching, most of the big laughs are all lines written by Adam. Well, maybe not all, but he is a damn funny guy. Honk if you support the strike, and honk often.

Elsewhere, Comrade Dave von E. (The E stands for Esq.) checks in with his socialist views.

Elsewhere, There are Naked Authors! who bare their viewpoints!

My inner Frenchman wants to tell you that this is important. Since Reagan crushed the Air Traffic Controllers strike in the early '80's, the Labor movement has struggled. Partly because the movment didn't recognize workers who didn't work with their hands, partly due to corruption, but now, as we move toward a service economy, the inabilty of many working class people to recognize that they are, in fact, working class. They don't own it. But they make it. Tip of the hat to my ol' friend, Karl.