If social media is right, and it always is (at least in some fashion), people are now discovering that their apartment has a kitchen. I'm seeing daily "what I cooked" posts from celebrities, I'm seeing influencers making bread for the first time in their lives and being amazed by dough. But it's not just celebrities and influencers!
The championship game of the NCAA tournament would have been played on April 6th. Alas. So Kalani put his blank March Madness bracket to use and created the Third Place Books Basketball Book Championship instead! It was a competitive group of 16 basketball books that he recently read (mostly). Here’s a recap of how the imaginary tournament all went down.
The doctor is in!
We all have that book we turn to when we need a break from the stressors of the real world. The real world is offering an abundance of stressors lately, so I thought I'd compile a list of books that offer some respite from the uncertainty, fear, and boredom we're all dealing with right now. Most likely you've read a lot of the books on this list; these are old favorites, books that radiate warmth and comfort to help us get through this pandemic together -- from a safe distance.
I have an awkward confession to make. As a bookseller, it's generally expected that I'll be on top of the new releases—that I'll know all about the new campus novel and the new World War II novel, and the new nonfiction release about how Donald Trump is either the worst president ever or the best president ever.
But new books just don't really do it for me anymore. Instead, I've been working my way through a series of out-of-print public-domain ebooks of the kind that you'd be lucky to find used. I don't know what initially drew me to this. Maybe it's my natural contrarian streak, maybe it's the thrill of making rare discoveries (a thrill that's almost entirely imaginary at this point, when almost anything can be found and acquired for free online without getting out of bed). Probably it's because I like to get stuff for free.
There are many things to love about being a bookseller, but my favorite double edged sword is that we get to read so many amazing books before they are officially released in stores. Double edged only because we read books we love and then we have to WAIT, sometimes MONTHS before we get to shove them breathlessly into your hands.
There’s been a lot of buzz around the bookstore lately because of all the wonderful advance reading copies we’re getting through, and because the suspense is killing us, this is what we can’t wait to recommend in the coming months:
Look, Valentine’s Day doesn’t have to mean anything. You get to decide whether it’s a holiday celebrating love, or a capitalist trap designed to sell cards and chocolate. Maybe it’s both, or neither. Maybe it’s just another random Friday in February.
We had an author event scheduled on February 1 at our Ravenna store with Jeanine Cummins for her new book, American Dirt. I planned on attending, not as an employee of Third Place Books but as someone interested in what the author had to say. I also had a question.
Here is what I would have asked Jeanine Cummins at the event:
The data is in, folks! You've seen our individual list of favorites -- part one, part two, and part three -- but if you looked at that and were overwhelmed with the sheer number of books we loved last year, this is the list for you.