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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In Case You Missed It: Ann on NPR Fresh Air
Yesterday, Ann’s interview with Terry Gross aired on NPR. Click over to read excerpts or listen to audio of the entire conversation. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s Your Superpower? Our Booksellers Reveal Theirs
What does it mean to have a specialty? That you know a lot about something? Sure. In our case, that’s books; when it comes to the printed page, our booksellers know their stuff. But true specialists have more than just knowledge. They have particular abilities specific to their field of expertise — skills so finely tuned, you might even call them superpowers. Read the rest of this entry »
Will Greg Heffley Ever Grow Up? “Wimpy Kid” Author Jeff Kinney Considers His Most Famous Character’s Future
Last week, crowds gathered at Ensworth School to help Parnassus Books welcome Jeff Kinney, bestselling author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, who spoke about his work, his characters, and his latest book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck. We learned that readers young and old love to recount the story of Kinney’s early career, when — after his dream of becoming a newspaper cartoonist fizzled — he turned his fate around, taking the drawings critics had called “too childlike” and putting them into a new (and perfect) context: the diary of a fictional middle schooler. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
“OK, You, Just Talk” — How Sue Monk Kidd Brings Characters To Life
Bestselling author Sue Monk Kidd’s new novel, The Invention of Wings, begins in Charleston, South Carolina, with a gift. For Sarah Grimké’s 11th birthday in 1803, she receives a slave, and her story first intersects with that of Hetty (known as “Handful” to her mother, a slave in the same household). Read the rest of this entry »
Starting Anew: What We’re Reading Now
New year, new additions to the must-read stack. Here are the books that have captured our booksellers’ attention at the beginning of 2014. (Note that many of them have been around quite some time. But if you’ve never read it, it might as well be new, right?)
