Friday, July 18, 2003
Slow week going at the bookstore so far. We'll see if the weekend gets busier. Last weekend was the big 40% off all Used books sale. The shelves are a little empty, but plenty of stock in the back that we're moving out onto them. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas Foster is starting to move a little more briskly. I really hope this book catches with more book clubs. It's a perfect read for groups, or a graduation present for high school students going to liberal arts/humanities programs.
Last week I read two good books on historical bookstores in New York. The first was Sunwise Turn by Madge Jellison about that eponymous bookstore. It operated during the early part of the 20th century and is a good example of a store run by book people more for the love of literature and getting books into a community. The book is hard to find, I had to check it out of the local university library. Paul Collins talked this one up in his new book Sixpence House about his time living in the booktown of Hay-on-Wye in Wales.
The other book was Wise Men Fish Here about the Gotham Book Mart and its owner, Frances Steloff (also hard to find). This one had a lot of anecdotes about James Joyce, Henry Miller, William Carlos Williams, and Christopher Morley. The store's heyday was from the late 1920's to the early 1960's. Steloff was responsible for a lot of early promotion of Joyce and other Modernists. She's a great example of the bookseller as tastemaker, even though her taste derived more from her customers influencing her.
While researching these books, I stumbled into the library's collection of Publisher's Weekly back issues. It was interesting to read about the Satanic Verses censorship controversy as it was happening. Len Riggio defended B&N's decision to pull the book, and later to restock it. He explained that parents of BN employees contacted him about safety, then later the employees overwhelmingly voted to restock it.
There was also a great write-up on Iowa City's Prairie Lights bookstore. The store makes my list of bookstores as cultural landmarks for their community and the larger literary landscape since Prairie Lights caters to the famous Iowa Writer's Workshop at the university there.
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Last week I read two good books on historical bookstores in New York. The first was Sunwise Turn by Madge Jellison about that eponymous bookstore. It operated during the early part of the 20th century and is a good example of a store run by book people more for the love of literature and getting books into a community. The book is hard to find, I had to check it out of the local university library. Paul Collins talked this one up in his new book Sixpence House about his time living in the booktown of Hay-on-Wye in Wales.
The other book was Wise Men Fish Here about the Gotham Book Mart and its owner, Frances Steloff (also hard to find). This one had a lot of anecdotes about James Joyce, Henry Miller, William Carlos Williams, and Christopher Morley. The store's heyday was from the late 1920's to the early 1960's. Steloff was responsible for a lot of early promotion of Joyce and other Modernists. She's a great example of the bookseller as tastemaker, even though her taste derived more from her customers influencing her.
While researching these books, I stumbled into the library's collection of Publisher's Weekly back issues. It was interesting to read about the Satanic Verses censorship controversy as it was happening. Len Riggio defended B&N's decision to pull the book, and later to restock it. He explained that parents of BN employees contacted him about safety, then later the employees overwhelmingly voted to restock it.
There was also a great write-up on Iowa City's Prairie Lights bookstore. The store makes my list of bookstores as cultural landmarks for their community and the larger literary landscape since Prairie Lights caters to the famous Iowa Writer's Workshop at the university there.
