The Daily Rumpus
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From Stephen Elliott
It’s always exhilarating to stumble on a bookstore in your own city that you never knew existed. Especially a bookstore that is curated specifically around the built environment, ecological sustainability and the intellectual cutting edge.
A bookstore that basically only carries remarkable titles.
...moreNow that it’s summertime, one in three people who shop at my bookstore are looking for travel guides, phrase books, travelogues or history books about some enticing destination.
Yesterday a woman bought a Russian phrase book. I told her that I heard a Starbucks cappuccino costs fifteen U.S.
...moreThe winter is cold and dark and your fingers turn blue.
Money is scarce. Mornings are the worst of all. Some of us get lonely. We reach for the bottle or the remote control. We long for free camaraderie in a place that is conducive to reverie and bookishness and easy conversation.
...moreAt HTMLGIANT, brilliant craft advice from a cartoon! “If you’re not popular, and you write a good poem, nobody gives a shit.”
The Guardian goes off on Martin Amis, complaining of “the continued endurance of a surprising tolerance for misogyny from vaunted men of letters who came of age as writers in an era when the loathing of women for being women – rather than for being crap writers, or unkind people, or whatever – was still legitimate.” Phew.
...moreEvery Tuesday the new books arrive at my store. I get to slice open the boxes, pull out the books, price them and arrange them in the most appealing and eye-catching way possible.
Because I don’t personally order them, it’s often a surprise what it’s inside.
...moreOne of the great things about the bookstore business is you get to be the first to see what’s new. And when you work for a small, used bookstore, the buyers are pretty picky about what they want to carry, so usually the new books are pretty damn good.
...moreAt the bookstore I work at, we recently got in a HUGE shipment of remaindered books. Books by Michael Ondaatje, Virginia Woolf, Alain de Botton, all of them brand-new and at bargan-bin prices. Which begs the question, do all books, no matter how timeless, relevant or HOT, eventually become remainders?
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