As a retail worker, I have some things to ask of all of you as we go into what should be the tail end of this year’s Holiday shopping season, but is likely just the beginning. 1. SHOP LOCAL. A****n and Target and WalMart are going to be fine, but the local small businesses that …
On August 18, the Hugo Awards were handed out. This is a big deal mostly in the Science Fiction and Fantasy community, but, this year it should be a big deal to everyone who values inclusive writing, especially the voices of women and more particularly women of color. For years, Science Fiction and Fantasy were …
I think it’s fairly safe to say that we all have several reading personalities, depending on mood and circumstance. Sometimes, you might be in the mood for the literary equivalent of a summer blockbuster, with explosions and car chases and clearly defined bad guys. Other times you might want a stately costume drama or something …
I am going to start a publishing company and it is going to be called “Simultaneous,” and it is going to publish every book in a hardcover edition for libraries and collectors and another edition in paperback or board book or whatever its most natural fit is. So, all those nine bajillion-volume mystery series? A …
This wasn’t what I intended to write. I had planned a whole thing about the books I love which appeal to my inner 10- to 14-year-old boy. But, then I started noticing something on my social media feeds: Authors, some of whom had close ties to the independent bookselling community, were almost exclusively linking to …
It all started with Sara Crewe. Not even book (A Little Princess) Sara Crewe, but Shirley Temple-movie Sara Crewe in “The Little Princess” (1939). That was when I first fell in love with the idea of boarding school, even if I may not have thought of it in that way at the time. That’s not …
I met him once, briefly. It was back when I was working at the airport. I was up on a ladder, shelving in the Mystery section, and a gentleman came up to browse. We got to talking about authors we liked and we had a lot of them in common. I did as any good …
Dear Authors: I love you. I do. I hadn’t planned on writing this and was, in fact, in the middle of writing something else when I realized I needed to get this off my chest. I had been reading a book I was enjoying and realized that I was probably judging it more kindly because …
Audiobooks. More specifically, audiobook narrators and the ability of said narrators to make or break an audiobook experience. I was going to try to do this without naming names, but I’ve never before shied away from being upfront about what I don’t like, so why would I now? I think it stemmed from some …
It happens at least once a week. A well-meaning adult will come to the store looking for a gift for a kid– sometimes with the kid in tow, sometimes not. The adult will be wandering lost, clueless, picking up and dismissing book after book after book. If they’ve come in with a kid, the kid …
