Bookseller at Annie Bloom’s… author… male model? Jeff Shaffer (also the author of the Shelf Talker column for this blog) and his new book, Who Am I Today?, are featured in an article by Anna Marum for The Oregonian. Congratulations, Jeff! We know you won’t forget the little people– or all the readers.
“This Portland-based author has conjured in his first novel a society so close to home that you may never want to go online again. Okay, that may be overstating it. But this smart, funny and ultimately disturbing novel asks who will control the information scooped from our oh-so-handy devices and how will it be used. …
From behind the sales counter I have a direct line of sight to the shelves holding new releases and two titles always catch my eye these days. Actually it’s not the titles I notice but the distinctive front covers. Hard Choices by Hillary Clinton and Duty by Robert Gates each feature prominent photos of the …
Book of Ages opens wide the eighteenth century through a narrow subject. Jane Franklin, sister to the famous Benjamin, comes to life through Lepore’s compassionate and humorous prose. This is the biography of a common and fascinating woman, but one whose life was not considered worthy of a historical biography in her own time. In Book of …
One fact of life for a neighborhood bookseller is that we can’t satisfy all the needs of every single customer every day. Statistically it’s impossible, and most of the shoppers at Annie Bloom’s understand and accept this reality. I’ve only been insulted once by an unsatisfied shopper. The person came up to me and asked, “Do you …
I’ve never been one to read much non-fiction, but lately I find myself drawn to a wide variety of subjects. My latest find was a book about cats and dogs. These animals have become more than pets. They are family. The author traces the origins of these animals from ancient times to the present and …
Exciting news from Annie Bloom’s Books in Portland: We’re thrilled to announce that we are being awarded a generous grant by author James Patterson. As you may have noticed, we’ve been using the same outdated DOS-based computers since last millennium. Thanks to the grant, we’ll soon be upgrading to a brand new inventory and point-of-sales …
The American Booksellers Association focused on bookstores in the West this week in an article by David Shapiro, founder and president of Craigmore Creations. Below is an excerpt. The full article can be found here. David Shapiro, the founder and president of Craigmore Creations, traveled from the Willamette Valley to the Grand Canyon to take …
This anecdotal history of baseball is a gem. Musings—both personal and historical—are intertwined with snippets of Americana, dashes of history, and cultural observations by an urban anthropologist. Flip through the book and randomly read about pissing in the Wrigley Field troughs, Allan Dulles’ CIA coups, bubble gum and tobacco rituals, the politics of facial hair, …
Two women recently came into Annie Bloom’s and approached me with a request that you don’t hear very often these days. “Do you have a phonebook?” one of them asked. In fact, we DO have phonebooks available behind the counter, both white and yellow pages, although until that moment I’d never had a reason to …
