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Feb
20
The Sunday Salon 2.20.11
2011 at 10am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
What a week! This was going to be the one where I got ahead on the War and Peace readalong and wrote several backlogged reviews, but the Borders bankruptcy news and a lot of IRL action through that plan off course. But that’s okay! It was an interesting week to be in the book world, and it is always good to stop, take stock, and think about why we’re all here and where we’re going, even when the catalyst is something as sad and scary as a major bookseller going belly-up.
I started the week with a preview of March releases I can’t wait to read (and no, I’m not ready to talk about the fact that March is now just eight days away), and I celebrated reaching the first milestone in the readalong with a new installment of The War and Peace Diaries about what happens when a book’s reputation precedes it. I also pondered a provocative quote from Hervé Le Tellier’s Enough About Love.
The Borders announcement left me thinking about the fact that where we buy our books matters, and I wrapped up the week with a list of five more ways to support your bookstore. Read more
Five More Ways to Support Your Bookstore
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Yesterday’s post about Borders’ bankruptcy and the reminder it brought that where we buy our books matters triggered wonderful discussions here and on Twitter (and in my poor email inbox, which is still quivering in the corner) about what we as readers—as consumers—can do to support bookstores and help them thrive. The first and most obvious action is the one I mentioned yesterday: do your book buying in actual bookstores. Or, as my pal Ron Hogan said so succinctly, leave the house!
But getting your butt off the couch and into the bookstore isn’t the only thing you can do.
Attend events. A bookstore’s ability to secure authors for readings and signings often hinges on its ability to demonstrate that it can attract an audience and that the audience will—wait for it—buy books! If you are fortunate enough to live near a store that currently offers author events, go check a few of them out. Take a friend. If, after hearing the author speak, it turns out that you’re not all that interested in his or her book, pick out something else to purchase instead. Try not to view author events as free entertainment; the store may not be charging admission, but they have to see profit from events in order to continue making them available to the community. Read more
Get Thee to a Bookery! [or Borders Went Belly-Up. Now What?]
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
Borders announced that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday (after 2010 losses topping $168 million) and will close 200 stores within the next few weeks (with potentially another 75 to follow), and of course, the interweb is aflurry with opinions and obituaries and cries of “it’s the end of publishing!” This comes as no surprise to those of us who live our lives in the online book community and follow industry news, but for normal readers nationwide, I imagine it is quite a shock.
In fact, I know it is because I’ve been hearing from folks who had no idea that Borders—or the industry as a whole, for that matter—was in any kind of trouble. And that indicates that it might be high time for publishers and booksellers (and bloggers, hi!) to make a more concerted effort to educate their consumers and communities. Read more
Is this why we read?
2011 at 5am Posted by Rebecca Schinsky
So, I settled in on my couch yesterday afternoon to spend some time with Hervé Le Tellier’s Enough About Love, which was just published by Other Press, and I was all ready for a quiet afternoon with a nice French novel. I snuggled into the ugly made-by-grandma afghan (it’s a truth of life that ugly afghans are comfier than stylish ones), peeled back the cover, and fell promptly in love with Le Tellier’s beguiling story about two couples whose relationships become unexpectedly complicated.
We were moving right along, Le Tellier and I, and it looked like I was, at long last, going to realize my goal of spending a few uninterrupted hours with a book that isn’t War and Peace. And then I came to this.
An attentive man will always learn more, and more quickly, from good authors than from life.
*squealing brakes*
I was looking for a quiet afternoon of relaxed reading, and now I have to grapple with this thought-provoking nugget that Le Tellier just nonchalantly drops into his character’s thoughts like it’s a widely accepted fact?
IS it a widely accepted fact?
I certainly read to learn and to better see my own life by seeing others, and I might be willing to concede the “more quickly” part of this…I know I’ve learned things from books that would have otherwise required prolonged (and painful!) experiences, but I’m hung up on that “always.”
I love books. I love experiencing the world through them and having them change and deepen the way I think about life, relationships, the world. You know the drill, and I’m sure you don’t want to read another love letter to literature (or a rehashing of the flash in the pan that was #whyiread), but there it is. And in all fairness to Le Tellier, this is but a sentence in a 225-page book that is not intended to be meta-literature, and the book really is quite delightful. BUT—you knew there was going to be one—I can’t just let a declaration like this one pass by undiscussed. So I ask you, dear readers, is this why we read? Do good authors teach us more, and more quickly, than life?
What do you think?
