Ann’s Blog
Notes from Ann: The Smart Staff Grows Up
(Photo by Heidi Ross – EveryOneNightStand.Tumblr.Com )
Read any of the countless (and oh, I do mean countless) interviews I’ve given about the bookstore and there you will find me talking about how smart our staff is, what great readers they are, and how much they love books. The smart staff, real live human beings as opposed to computer algorithms favored by some of the online booksellers, are what make the experience of independent bookstores so deeply satisfying.
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Notes From Ann: Home
Since last I wrote I have seen America, one bookstore at a time. Book tour is hard to explain. People want to believe it’s glamorous. They ask me what my favorite city was, or what the most surprising question was, but the cities and the questions all blur together, along with the airports and the hotel rooms. There isn’t enough time to tell Portland from St. Louis. Book tour makes me feel like I’m Dorothy up inside the tornado – everyone I love spinning past me, waving and then shooting off again. Read the rest of this entry »
Notes From Ann: On a Low Limb — Heading Out on a Book Tour
Okay, friends, I’ll admit it, I’m on a low limb. (“On a low limb,” a fabulous colloquialism cribbed from my Mississippi mother-in-law, Jo VanDevender). Today is pub day for my new book This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, and while you might think that publishing a new book would be cause for joyous celebration, the whole business makes me queasy. Read the rest of this entry »
Notes From Ann: Here Come the Big Fall Books
After my last book report in which I recommended a ridiculous number of books, I had a great idea – I would post a book report in which I only recommended one book. Wouldn’t that have been genius? Read the rest of this entry »
Notes From Ann: Cheating
I often say that the one thing I’m most likely to do on any given day is answer five questions for a newspaper in Australia, by which I mean I spend a lot of my time filling out forms. None of them are hard, many of them are from other countries, and for the most part they’re all pretty much the same. A very clever writer friend keeps a computer file of answers and just pastes them into different questionnaires. I keep meaning to be that organized. Read the rest of this entry »
Notes From Ann: Re-reading
Every now and then a book comes along that is held in such universally high regard — great reviews, staggering sales, ebullient word of mouth — that I don’t feel the need to read it. Somehow I missed it when it first came out, and then time went by and, for reasons I can’t explain, the moment passed. Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, was just such a book. Read the rest of this entry »
Notes From Ann: Less Is More
I recently read Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. This is a perfect book for Parnassus. After all, we are a business founded by two introverts (Karen Hayes and myself), staffed with introverts (probably everyone in the store except Niki and Lauren who run events and therefore really can’t be introverts). We feature a product mostly created at home by introverts (books), which we then sell primarily to introverts (readers). In short, it’s our kind of book. Read the rest of this entry »
