Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A Wishlist and Support Your Local Bookstore

I completely agree, and I hope people will shop their local indie bookstore for Christmas presents this holiday season:

"There are lots of reasons to support local businesses, whether it's
mom-and-pop hardware stores or neighborhood farmers' markets. But when
you buy from an independent bookseller, you're doing something more.
You're helping to keep alive an important force in making our national
literary culture more diverse, interesting and delightful. Your shelves
are full of books that wouldn't be there if not for indie booksellers
you've never met, struggling to get by in shops you've never heard of.
That's why it's so important to support the one next door."

--Laura Miller, introducing Salon's new project "Declaration of
Independents
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz12137219,"
created to "draw more attention to these fantastic local shops by
featuring your favorites."


I don't think this list is definitive, but it still contains some great shops that I would love to visit:

The Huffington Post featured the "World's Great Bookshops"
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz12146659
as chosen by Black Tomato
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz12146660,
which said, "We love a good book, and we're definitely advocates for
keeping traditional books alive and the bookshops in which they live. To
inspire you to feel the same we've handpicked our favorite bookshops
from around the globe. There are some truly magical bookstores out
there, if you just know where to look."

Below is a partial wishlist of books I'd like to gather to add to my already towering TBR!

Wishlist
Touch of Power, Maria V Snyder
Don't Sing at the Table, Adriana Trigiani
Darker Still, Lanna Renee Hieber
Bloodhound, Terrier, Mastiff, Tamora Pierce
Curiosity, Joan Thomas
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
The Good Girls Guide to Getting Lost, Rachel Friedman
Stone Maiden, Ann Aguirre
The Reading Promise, Alice Ozana
The Name of the Star, Maureen Johnson
Blue Eyed Boy, Joanne Harris
Dragon Ship, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Aftertaste, Meredith Mileti
Dark Descendant, Jenna Black
The Story and Its Writer, Ann Charters
A Tea Reader: Living Life One Cup at a Time, Katrina Ávila Munichiello, editor
The Winter Sea, Susanna Kearsley
Mr G: A Novel About the Creation, Alan Lightman
Ghost Light, Joseph O'Connor
Second Read, James Marcus
The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Fry
The Art of Fielding, Chad Harbach

On the same note, I've just finished "Wizard's First Rule" by Terry Goodkind, and though I loved the TV series, "Legend of the Seeker" that was based on it, I have to say that reading the book was a much richer experience. So now I've got to make a pilgrimage to Baker Street Books in Black Diamond to get myself copies of the others in the series, so that I can find out what happens next to Kahlin and Richard.

This is a brilliant blog post that describes how I feel when I read something great and engrossing:

"Maybe we build the stories we love into ourselves. Maybe we digest stories. When we eat a pork chop, we break up its cellular constituents, its proteins, its fats, and we absorb as much of the meat as we can into our bodies. We become part pig. Eat an artichoke, become part artichoke. Maybe the same thing is true for what we read. Our eyes walk tightropes of sentences, our minds assemble images and sensations, our hearts find connections with other hearts. A good book becomes part of who we are, perhaps as significant a part of us as our memories. A good book flashes around inside, endlessly reflecting. Its shapes, its people, its places become our shapes, our people, our places.
We take in a story. We metabolize it. We incorporate it."
Read the rest of this wonderful blog here: http://thelitpub.com/a-universe-thats-three-inches-tall-and-weighs-three-pounds/

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