Two days after the November 2004 election, the bookstore I work at (Elliott Bay) presented esteemed farmer poet/novelist/essayist Wendell Berry at a large church.

I remember seeing people come that night almost hunched-over in body posture, stunned, downcast. There seemed to be solace gained as they started to see others, to be gathered with others. It felt as though people were crawling out from under some big rock. (What do I mean, they? I felt like I was ...) 

The person they were there to hear - who has a vast readership in these parts and doesn't come by that often - was about as perfect a person as one could have hoped to gather for on such a night. Wendell Berry knew - and knows - about language, its good and healing properties, and about perspective, among many other things. Healing language and perspective were needed tha...Read More

A few months ago, there was writing here of a mid-summer Midwestern trip which had me traipsing about in head-high cornfields almost before doing or seeing anything or anyone else. Relatives and bookstores would ultimately figure in the chronicle. But there had first been that beckoning moment. Corn does not grow that way in Seattle.

It's a few months later, and again, the Midwest calls. This time it's farther north on the plains - the Twin Cities. I would eventually get to some cornfields - a few days, and some dropping of temperature after arriving. This trip had more urbane, book-driven purpose underlying. First things first.

It had been twenty years since my first visit there. I've been back a few times since, never as much as it feels I should. Lots of people known and worked with are there, or have been there. A lot of Minnesotans - a lo...Read More

An item in book trade news a few weeks ago was word that Atlas & Co., the independent imprint James Atlas and others have undertaken, is delaying publication of its planned spring 2009 list until the fall. In statements made, the current, difficult climate was cited, but there also were words to the effect that all should be well, that the books intended will be published in due time.

This reader does hope that it is only delay. There are a number of fairly new presses out doing good and vital work these, days, often more ably and nimbly than some of the larger houses. Atlas & Co., with eight books launched before this fall, is very much among the most interesting and intriguing. Growing out of the kinds of books and series Atlas had done at Norton ('Great Discoveries' and 'Enterprise') and HrperCollins ('Eminent Lives'), the sixteen books published or catalogued...Read More

From a Man Booker Prize shortlist group that included at least a few other books that we had readerly affection for, congratulations are due to Mumbai-residing debut novelist Aravind Adiga and his spirited novel, The White Tiger. Among the pleasures in seeing the Booker go to this book, with the attendant boost in sales sure to happen, is the payoff for Martha Levin and her colleagues at Free Press.

At a time when publishing literary fiction, much less debut fiction by an author who isn't going to be making the touring rounds, is increasingly looked at askance by players up and down the line in the bookworld, it was heartening to see how Martha and her colleagues worked, starting a year ago this fall, to get this book going ahead of publication.

For some of us who've watched and admired Martha's work over the years - particularly her ...Read More

Perhaps calls came in the night: one can imagine the bustle publishing friends in Willimantic, Boston, Chicago, and Lincoln are going through this morning as word gets out that the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

Quick perusing turns up at least five titles that have been translated into English - from a body of work considerably larger. The three that have been out in paper, probably most widely in circulation to date, have been Wandering Star (Curbstone/Consortium), Onitsha, and The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts (both from Bison/University of Nebraska). Those, one would guess, will be the first we'll be able to get into stock - whenever that day may be.

Two others have been around, in cloth: The Prospector (Verba Mundi/David R. Godine) and ...Read More

Two of our most venerable and vital independent bookstores reached fateful turning points this week, with very different results.

After 36 years of business - and several months of publicly-acknowledged financial troubles - Olsson's Books and Records closed its five stores for good on September 30. The store's website (www.olssons.com) has a brief, direct statement and acknowledgement of gratitude for the good years there were. More revealing is the link to the blog for testimonials, which exceeded 300 by yesterday afternoon.

Reasons for the closure are parried in the comments - the drop-off in cd business, being spread thin through the various locations (and their rising rents), along with the other competitions (big box, online, reading v. other doings). Underlying most though is a sense of loss...Read More

Each day's news seems, by volume and noise, to render a previous day's news as old, much less a previous week's. Somewhere in the din and haze, there are recollections last week of one of the presidential candidates announcing he was embarking on a 'suspension' of his campaign (which turned out not to be so), in order to single-mindedly pursue helping 'solve' the crisis with the economic system he helped devise. Up until its scheduled day, this put the planned presidential debate's fate up in the air. The other presidential candidate deftly put in the rejoinder that presidents have to be able to address more than one issue at a time - crises and key functions of governing don't tidily present themselves  in order that they can all be addressed with sequential, single-focus.

In Seattle last week, with the authors who came through. it felt as thoug...Read More

A year ago right now, the big author speaking occasion on our calendar - the one that had us fielding inquiries from activist groups and independendent media people, that had people asking if there'd be space at the big off-site venue - was Naomi Klein coming to town for her then newly-published book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

It was a great evening, quietly powerful in how Ms. Klein read and spoke with an understated eloquence and passion - understated  in a  way that there was room in what she said for you to think as you listened, for her words to genuinely sink in - not skip along on the surface, however agreeable the views were. The standing ovation she received at the end felt also as if it came from a deeper place than many audience responses, the already-converted choir doing a rah-rah, go-team thi...Read More

You could almost see why John McCain could one day be saying the economy was fundamentally sound, and the next that it was in crisis. Almost. 

One end of the week had Boris Kachka's New York magazine piece, 'The End' (http://nymag.com/news/media/50279/), meaning the end of New York publishing, meaning, presumably the end of all sorts of things book-related. The other end of the week had a New York Times blog piece, 'Can Independent Bookstores Make It Here?' (http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008.09.19/can-independent-bookstores-still-make-it-here/), which told stories of how some and are. Someone in New York emailed about that piece, taking into account the other, and the 'other' news being ...Read More

Since the sad news of David Foster Wallace's death this past Friday, tributes and appreciations for him and his work have started to pour forth. Well they should. Many, if not most, will be by people who knew him, his writing, his work as a teacher, better than I.

Rather than saying much about the writing - except to say I would read whatever he wrote, even in subjects (infinity) I might not otherwise tread - a little here about what happened the few times he visited our store (Elliott Bay) to read. Some of the most moving pieces written about him since last week have been about him as a teacher. On one of the nights here, people got a feeling for that, an extraordinary feeling.

David Foster Wallace made two appearances (by my count) here, for Infinite Jest, and then the essay collection, A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again. Perhaps ...Read More

It was an informal, early evening gathering - a few people who work, mostly for non-profit organizations and/or foundations were getting together on someone's backyard deck to enjoy the beauty of late summer and talk about the kind of work they did in common.

They were/are all people who work in ways that bring people together - in programs, series, community centers, and networking opportunities. There seemed no great formality involved. I was a bit of a tagalong - invited by someone who had been to an earlier meeting of what they were self-describing as Seattle community 'conveners.'

Though I have my non-profit credentials (boards, advisory boards and committees), I was the only one there whose day job was in the (perhaps nominal) for-profit sector. There was some laughter in explaining how bookstores function in the scheme of things - which some organizat...Read More

With a nod to Sara Nelson's piece last week of what was read in a week off, we out this way are having to 'work back' a ways for something resembling a summer break. August in a Seattle bookstore does not lend itself easily to time taken off: you are seeing everyone else taking time off, are both helping put stacks of good reading in their hands and, at the same time, acting as city concierge.

There was the memory of the Fourth of July weekend, however. I got tangled up in a quartet of books that I took turns with. Though quite different, they felt bound together, if not bonded.

One, already written of here, is the bilingual edition, and U.S. debut, of noted French poet and novelist Marie Etienne. Farrar is publishing Marilyn Hacker's National Poetry Series Translation Award-winning volume of King of a Hundred Horsemen.

Two other books read ...Read More