February 2010
2 posts
Iranian government fears books, blocks social... →
3 tags
WatchBarnes & Noble: Homeless Bathrooms.
(via Harper Studio)
January 2010
8 posts
2 tags
“Start where most of us did: with the iconic covers. Catcher in the Rye,...”
– Our obituary of J.D. Salinger, from the store blog.
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“The Pages were readers, and Larry fondly remembers vacations to Oregon when...”
– From Ken Auletta’s Googled: The End of the World As We Know It, describing the childhood of Google founder Larry Page. One hopes Page will remember that childhood love of Powell’s when considering terms and strategies for his Google Editions ebook program.
3 tags
“No, I never get laid on tour. But I get songs, and I think that’s better. (I...”
– Jami Attenberg, on the pleasures (and sorrows) of touring as a female author. An excellent piece.
Watchthingsiatethatilove:
New Cooking the Books with Jami Attenberg. We had so much fun, AND we did not get food poisoning. The recipes we used to make cheeseburgers are here and here. Buy Jami’s book here or at your local independent bookstore.
I’ve been waiting for someone to do a cool internet book show. I like that this one also involves food. (Plus, I like Jami Attenberg and Emily...
3 tags
What Book Were You Born to Read? →
For me, it’s David Lodge’s Changing Places. What can I say, I’m a junkie for campus literature.
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Novels and Unicycles: Writing for Attention →
“The blog has caused me none of the internal discord my novel has: photos of me aren’t me. Of course, a story is just a story, not me and of course all me, but ultimately it’s an entity so separate that I cannot count anyone’s embrace or rejection of it as anything personal. My novel had become my raison d’être—it was all I was worth and it terrified me to let it into the world. But in the...
“With the help of Mark Haskell Smith, L.A. Times contributor and author of the...”
– 10 choice weed books | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times
4 tags
December 2009
2 posts
2 tags
The Great Vroman's Holiday Video Collaboration... →
Help us make the most badass holiday gift video ever, and you could win a $100 gift card.
4 tags
WatchThe David Lynch Foundation sponsored this adaptation of a short story by Tom Drury, one of my five favorite writers. If you haven’t read The End of Vandalism, I envy you. It’s so good, and you get to read it for the first time.
November 2009
9 posts
2 tags
We're co-publishing Rick Moody's new story on...
Vroman’s is one of several feeds publishing the story from now until Wednesday morning. I’m not sure it’s an entirely successful project, but it is interesting. It seems that if you don’t follow a lot of bookish feeds on Twitter, it works. If you follow a whole bunch, not so much.
Anyway, you can follow along with the story on our main feed. If you’re following...
3 tags
Food Drive this Weekend.
This weekend, we’re teaming with the LA Regional Food Bank for a holiday food drive to benefit the hungry of Los Angeles. This Saturday and Sunday, November 21 and 22, stop by any Vroman’s location to drop off food. We will have stations set up at each store to accept donations. We will be accepting dry and canned goods, as well as personal care and cleaning products such as...
3 tags
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“The Lipsyte passage, I gather, isn’t for everyone. The book, brilliant though...”
– Some thoughts on challenging fiction and what might happen to it in the new digital marketplace.
1 tag
“Book tours are debilitating. My body clock is so screwed up that, on consecutive...”
– Bill Simmons book tour and NFL picks Week 9 - ESPN
The Sports Guy blames his book tour for ruining his NFL picks. Psh. Michael Connelly is always on tour, and that dude can pick an NFL game, let me tell you.
3 tags
WatchPart 3 in our Eating Animals series, where we get into the arbitrary nature of most carnivores. Among the issues explored: will I eat my dog, why don’t we eat horses, why do we eat pigs, and so much more.
All of these videos have been part of a week-long examination of our eating habits as part of our preparation for Jonathan Safran Foer’s appearance at our store on Sunday, November...
5 tags
WatchPart 2 of our Eating Animals series: Backyard Chickens.
I personally think this video is better than the last one. For one thing, there are animals in it. For another, watching Sherri and I race around after the chickens is pretty funny, too.
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WatchThe first in a series of videos we’re making about eating meat (or not eating it) in anticipation of our Sunday night event with Jonathan Safran Foer.
October 2009
2 posts
2 tags
“Realism: Take this test. When you read “These dishes have been sitting in the...”
– Essay - What to Write Next - Picking a Genre for Your Next Novel - NYTimes.com
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Vroman's Own Allison Hill on Losing Her Literary... →
You can imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a paperback of John Irving’s bestseller The Hotel New Hampshire in the living room bookcase. My Southern Baptist parents who had dutifully protected my innocence by prohibiting me from watching “The Bad News Bears”, “Grease”, and “Three’s Company”, had never thought to lock up their bookcase the way...
September 2009
2 posts
2 tags
WatchMeet the Bookseller! This time with less gum chewing.
WatchMeet the Bookseller, with yours truly as host (gum chewing and excessive nodding included).
August 2009
1 post
5 tags
July 2009
7 posts
4 tags
Amazon's Troubling Reach, by David Ulin →
Ebooks, Reading and Privacy →
Other than when we are very young or very old, we read our own books, alone, in isolation. And then we take that solitary experience and carry it out into the world. It occurs to me that having read a book and never discussed it is like having only half experiencing it. It’s not real until I’ve hashed over it with others (usually my wife, the best reader I know). I doubt I’m alone in this...
Social Reading: The Future? →
“Don’t get me wrong: I love the solitude of reading. As a culture, we’re not getting anywhere near enough solitude or time for contemplation. And I’m not arguing that the form of the book change all that much. I think authors need an endpoint, a place where the book is done. I see everything happening after that as being at the impetus of the reader. I suppose I see this kind of...
Avid Bookshop survey: please take 2 minutes to... →
(via jannygirljr)
Help out Janet as she opens a new independent bookstore in Athens, GA.
Is Social Reading the Future? →
The first few chapters of Sarah Dunant’s new novel Sacred Hearts are available on Book Glutton, where readers can not only read those chapters but also read Dunant’s comments on the text. Readers may also leave their own comments or responses to other’s comments.
Every time I hear about ads in ebooks or Amazon’s latest digital landgrab, I get a little bit nervous about...
Amazon Plans to Put Ads in Ebooks →
Yeah, I know, another anti-Amazon post. Though this one is really more anti-ads in books. Amazon just happens to be standing in the way.
The Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of... →
New Josh Ferris! New Margaret Atwood! New Lorrie Moore! New! New! New!
June 2009
34 posts
What Can a Seven-year-old Documentary About a Rock... →
“Which brings us to another point: if a content company (in this case a record label, but you could easily sub in a publisher) isn’t going to provide risk capital, what are they going to do for an artist?”
Steve Hely on the Future of Publishing →
“2) Readership. The media landscape is getting a lot more crowded, and there’ll be a lot more competition for eyeballs. Remember when every single person on a plane was reading Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead? When the subway floors were strewn with used copies of Ha Jin’s War Trash, and on Saturday night at bars it seemed like everybody was arguing over which was their favorite Alice Munro...
“Granby College had, at great expense and with enormous fanfare, hired away from...”
– From Steve Hely’s very funny novel How I Became a Famous Novelist
I figure this is sort of apropos of my earlier post on the Oscars and the NBA.
(Okay, back to the neverending Michael Jackson posts.)
Why the National Book Awards should follow Oscar's... →
“I wonder how much of this shift is a response to the way we now view criticism. With the decline in influence of newspaper movie critics and the rise of aggregating sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, perhaps the Academy was responding to the notion that the public has a great say in what a “good movie” is. I’m not sure I agree with this idea, but it’s interesting...
For Reference
raptoravatar:
If you give Transformers 2 money this weekend, you are part of the problem.
Don’t.
See The Hurt Locker, if that’s an option.
Feed a homeless or hungry person.
Spend the money on beer and reconnect with an old friend.
Buy cigarettes for a child.
Hell, try crack with the money. You probably haven’t tried crack.
Just don’t encourage them to make a third Transformers.
Or just...
“Megan Fox is a magical Disney cartoon, a Jessica Rabbit run wild, and she...”
– Flicked Off: ‘Transformers 2: The Revenge of Megan Fox’s Rack’ | The Awl
What if this is It?
I wrote a quick link dump of a blog post yesterday, pointing people toward Kunkel’s n+1 piece “Lingering” as well as Emily Gould’s excellent “Why I Write for Free.” Someone left a comment to the post wondering aloud wether the internet helped or hindered his creativity. (Click here to read the comments.) He seemed to come down, more or less, on the side of the...
Kate Christensen's Trouble →
“Reading Christensen’s prose is an almost painfully intense and exhilarating experience. This is normal and caused by the fact that she is smarter and funnier and more painfully honest than most other writers: she’ll say things most people won’t dare to. And she knows just how to say them.”
She’s going to be at our store in a week. Just sayin.
Some Kindle books have secret caps on the number... →
I know I bang the Amazon drum quite a lot around here, but it’s only because the rest of the internet is busy making come-hither eyes at Jeff Bezos. Wake up, people.
Amazon wants to own how you read →
“No question, Amazon is the most forward-thinking company in the book business. If there’s a Steve Jobs of books, it’s Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos. His vision is defining the way books will be bought and sold and written and read in the digital world — which is to say, the world. The question is whether there will be room in it for anyone besides Amazon.”
As is the...