I KNEW IVAN DOIG AS A WRITER before I knew him as a friend, and even though by the end I knew the friend as well as I have known anyone, the writer never ceased to loom over me. It was as if Twain or Cather had strolled off the page and shown up for …
“There is more time than there is expanse of the world and so any voyage at last will end.” –Ivan Doig, This House of Sky Ivan Doig, beloved author, passed away April 9, 2015. His loss is felt deeply throughout the literary community and beyond. We collect some memories here. Our thoughts and condolences go …
Everybody does it. I look at the books around me every day in the bookstore and I imagine the books I don’t see; the books I’m unlikely to ever see published, or even written. It isn’t a symptom of dissatisfaction with the books there are. Every day I get to work in the bookstore I …
There is doubtless a right way to do this sort of thing. People do it all the time. Professionals, even. No doubt careful planning, experience, good taste, connections, all of that is required to successfully launch a new book. I’m sure that’s right. Good times. On the other hand… When one has produced just a …
On Tuesday, February 25 at 7 pm, University Book Store in Seattle hosts our columnist, their bookseller, everyone’s author and favorite doodler, Brad Craft for an event for his latest book, The Serial Doodler. If you’ve never enjoyed the hilarious cartoons on his internationally notorious website Usedbuyer2.0 then you’re in for a spectacular opportunity. University Book Store’s …
The Holidays can make the strangest of bedfellows, no? And here I don’t mean that awkward combination of cousins in Grandma’s guest room, but rather gifts, givers, and books. One of the deep mysteries of working the retail Season, as it were, has always been the unlikely and unpredictable popularity of this or that title …
Tonight at 7:00 at University Bookstore, one of our favorite Christmas traditions takes place: the annual reading by Brad Craft of “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote. Craft (above, reading some Ogden Nash holiday poetry), a bookseller, poetry-lover, author, artist, and modern Renaissance man, will warm your heart. The free cookie and cider will help …
Ah, well. So long as there are bookstores, there will be these little difficulties, won’t there? Nothing to be done about it. Even were our problems “as many as my hairs”, I would still count myself lucky to have a job in books, even when that job requires the little patience needed to answer the …
“He was my boss at the University Book Store. He was also of course a husband and a father, the CEO of the company, a force in both the business of independent and college bookstores, a devoted graduate and supporter of the University of Washington. I’ll let others speak to all that. Bryan’s was a …
I’m in a rather Biblical state of mind. Not usual for me—but then having grown up in the fly-over, I suppose it was inescapable that now and again my point of reference should be Old Testament. Signs and wonders and all that, signs and wonders. The difficulty is avoiding the prophetic voice. In the first …
