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Thank you for voting us "Best Bookstore" - again!
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Need to talk to a live person? Call us @ 617-566-6660.
To go directly to our online store, click here.
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| this week in booksmith |
In the window I could see the sign calendars on sale, calendars 30% off my breath on the glass clouding they were gathering the next Monday night Flannery O'Connor in the room on my way to work on the bus I read a book, my collar turned down while it is cold tell me Booksmith was in Sports Illustrated she said, first we get into Playboy last year, and now Sports Illustrated, we really get around the sun is bright, and I sit down at the desk underground, black painted wood worn years of forearms resting writing. Two left us this week, it's impossible to know which one had more to do with how I see the world.
Been reading a lot of Faulkner, hope you don't mind.
This week we bid farewell to two giants of letters; the reclusive J.D. Salinger, who quit the stage long ago at the very peak of his power, allowing the mystique of his work to grow ever more potent while he remained in the shadows, writing for himself alone. And Howard Zinn, anything but a recluse, the voice of historical revolution for our times, pushing America towards progress as fervently as he rewrote her history books.
On to the news of the store. If you
didn't catch my drift in the opening paragraph, CALENDARS ARE 30% OFF!! And we still have a bunch, so come get them now! And don't forget to join our Booksmith Book Club next Monday, Feb. 8th at 7:30pm, where you'll have the chance to discuss Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood.
And the week in the Writers and Readers series kicks off tonight at 7pm with Brookline favorite Lisa See treating us to her novel Shanghai Girls. Following her is Dani Shapiro on Wednesday and a special visit Thursday night from the partners at the architectural firm Albert, Righter & Tittmann with their look at the New Classic American Houses.
We got a really nice mention from columnist Peter King from Sports Illustrated.
Booksmith doesn't usually pop up at the end of a column about the awfulness of the Pro Bowl and the craziness of the whole Tim Tebow thing, but we certainly are gratified to have made an impression.
Our sincerest thanks, Mr. King, for putting in an entirely off-the-topic plug for us, and for all independent bookstores. |
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>>click here to see upcoming events in the Writers and Readers Series.
>>click here to see upcoming events at the Wellesley Booksmith. |
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| books of the week |
The Melting Season
Jami Attenberg |
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Ordinary Thunderstorms
William Boyd |
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Point Omega
Don DeLillo |
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Wild Child
T.C. Boyle |
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One Amazing Thing
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni |
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The Manual of Detection
Jedediah Berry |
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Shadow Tag
Louise Erdrich
Harper
Hardcover, $25.99 |
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Dani Shapiro is forced to embark on a search for meaning after her father's death and her young son's increasingly penetrating questioning. Her own experience of life to this point is thoroughly modern: a lack of faith in anything greater than self. Only now does she see the toeholds that have eluded her; this book is the evidence of a new journey beginning.
Louise Erdrich's new novel sounds like the perfect revenge at the start. A wife's private diary becomes a tool of manipulation for her prying husband's eyes, while her new, real diary is locked away in a safe deposit box. Alternating between these two records and a third person narrator, this novel has a haunted quality in Erdrich's masterful hands.
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| books of the week for kids |
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Strawberry Hill
Mary Ann Hoberman
Little, Brown & C.
Hardcover, $15.99
Ages 8-12 |
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Kids' bookseller Emily recommends a couple books books this week, starting with an intermediate title, Strawberry Hill. Ten-year old Allie learns that her family will be moving from their two-family home to their very own house in the country, and she's understandably fretful until she finds out the name of their new street. Who wouldn't want to live on Strawberry Hill? Nevertheless, finding her place in a new neighborhood is a struggle for a child, and any kid who's had to make, or is about to make this transition will identify with Allie's journey.
Caldecott Award-winner Don Wood illustrates this classic story of a little mouse who just wants to keep his strawberry from a big hungry Bear. The reader moves his quest along, and is rewarded with a nice, juicy surprise at the end. I LOVE this book, too, Emily.
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| >>remain(der)s of the day |
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The Bible: Genesis, Exodus, The Song of Solomon
Illustrations by Marc Chagall
Chronicle Books, Hardcover
Orig. $19.95, Sale $6.99
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City Walks Boston
Chronicle Books
Orig. $14.95, Sale $4.99 |
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This beautiful volume pairs the finest works from Chagall's Bible series with three stories from the Old Testament that inspired them. His vibrant, dreamlike illustrations reflect his heritage and his personal view of the complexities of faith and relationship with God.
City Walks Boston is a deck of 50 cards, perfect for slipping into a pocket or purse for a day out exploring this most walkable of cities. Keep this box of adventures on foot handy for visitors with some time to kill. Or find out about some new territory that you've never explored before! |
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| Remainders are clearance books which we sell for bargain prices. We have several tables of remainders at the front of the store, on which we offer some of your favorite authors at up to 75% off the cover price. Quantities are limited, so if something strikes your fancy don't delay! |
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| >>down in the ubc |
For an intensive UBC experience please click here.
Carl's musings and recommendations are now on the Used Cellar Blog. |
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Phyllis Diller's Marriage Manual
Phyllis Diller
Fawcett, 1967
Used Paperback, $3.50
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A Secret Location On The Lower East Side: Adventures In Writing 1960-1980
Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips
Granary Books, 1998
Orig. Hardcover, $44.95, Used, $20 |
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Here you go. If you want to know how to make a happy home with Fang, old Phyllis has got some words of wisdom. "When the bridal consultant says that you should have traditional wedding music,
it does not necessarily mean what has played at your four previous weddings."
""Perhaps the greatest lesson I have learned is that self-pity is better than none."
This beautiful book, published in collaboration with and based on a 1998 exhibition at The New York Public Library, is an exhaustive look at the various essential schools and movements in poetry in the middle part of the twentieth century, from Beat to Black Mountain, San Francisco to New York. It examines the poets and the multitude of presses and small publishers that got the words out, with photos and excerpts from the underground journals and mags. This book would be an amazing present for the poet in your life, and it's in good enough condition to be wrapped right up. |
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These and other treasures can be found in the Used Book Cellar in the basement of booksmith. We buy back your used paperback fiction and non-fiction Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10-4. [ubc@brooklinebooksmith.com]
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...and among those books |
the UBC find of the week |
They've got to be set design sketches for Our Town, right?
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| To see everything else we've found in the UBC, visit the find archive. |
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| >>the card & gift room presents |
The Card & Gift Room just put on display the cheerful batch of new designs from Blue Q! Check out the table filled with their flippant coin purses and flashy totes: "Recyclable plastic bottles and used grain sacks are collected, cleaned, ground and melted into rolls of recycled plastic, printed with our super-fantastic graphics, cut and sewn into bags of all shapes and sizes, and off to work they go!"
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>>>around town
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The Brookline Library Winter Gala is coming up on February 28th! Dine, dance and toast Brookline's treasured library. Mingle with local authors, and take home something fabulous from the auction. Great items include vacation getaways, private MFA tours, BSO tickets, and much more! RSVP by February 22nd, and click here for ticket information.
Also at the Main Library there is a really fun day that you should NOT dress up for, as MIke the Bubble Man visits to teach kids 3 and up all about science, colors, chemistry and soapy sudsy fun! That's Tuesday, February 16th at 3:30pm.
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| ...and therefore |
To me, Catcher In The Rye was as holy a book as I had ever encountered. I carried my little orange hardcover with me to and from school all through high school, it was the only time in my life when I kept a journal, scratched onto slips of paper that lived between its pages. I've had discussions with people in the past days who perhaps read the book too late, who approached it from the wrong side of twenty, who would say, "I guess I can understand how it could affect teenagers, but it just didn't...I don't know."
I know I'm not alone in remembering the experience, a taste of which I can still get today when I sit there on cold benches with Holden, absolutely savoring the middle of the night, the places they don't think I should be, the leaving behind of one's duties, leaving that junk to the phonies, turning those pages I travel back in time to the best and worst of adolescence, the marvelous, dizzy heights of infallibility and fatigue, up all night because the day might never come, then chasing the sun into the sky to look down on all creation, because I'm the only one who understands it.
And the blackness then of not understanding anything at all, or anyone in the whole world.
There is no book like it, and its strange universality will live forever.
Thank you Mr. Salinger.
"Sleep tight, ya morons!"
Thanks for reading,
Paul
Write to paul@brooklinebooksmith.com, if you'd like to make this a conversation.
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currently reading The Sound And The Fury.
currently listening to Rosenshontz.. For the kids. |
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questions, comments, gastric distress, suggestions - email me |
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