Heads up on Destinations' big books of Winter
Ann and I want to wish all of you the best as we wend our way back toward Spring and we hope you'll have many opportunities to wend your way back to Spring Street.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you a few books that you'll be hearing a lot about here at the store. Just before we opened the store, we had the opportunity to spend some time with two of the authors over a weekend in Atlanta and I can't tell you how excited we are to be able to sell these two books.
The first is Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh. Jennifer's first book was the dazzling Mrs. Kimble, which Ann and I both had the chance to read during 2004. As you may know, during our courtship I drove to New Albany every other weekend from Daytona Beach (863 miles one way) to fan the flames of our relationship and to scout out locations for the store. That made books on tape my preferred reading media, so Mrs. Kimble came to me during those long night drives through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
Ann is reading Baker Towers right now and she can't put it down. It just became available for January release. I have it inbound right now and I'm certain many of you will want to read it. The setting is a Pennsylvania coal town in the 50s, but I immediately saw parallels between her fictional town and our own little burg. This is a novel about societal change and the stresses that come from an entire community trying to adjust to a new economic reality. The title refers to two massive coal waste piles (towers) that mark the entrance to the town.
In a large crowd, Jennifer comes across as very literary and a bit aloof. I made it a point to seek her out after her major address and later, when I introduced her to Ann, we found her to be a sparkling woman and a bit of a word freak. In fact, a bit of a geek. We booksellers hold a spelling bee each year and Jennifer was stricken when her schedule wouldn't allow her to join our team. (We won, by the way, although the story of how we did so is best left to another time.)
For you non-fiction buffs, I can't recommend strongly enough that you explore Malcolm Gladwell's new title, Blink. Malcolm is an independent bookseller favorite after the breakout success of his last book, The Tipping Point. This new one, on order now, is going to be phenomenal. This 41-year-old New Yorker writer has made it his business to examine why people act the way they do. This time, he turns his eye to the quick decision-making process.
I had the chance to engage Malcolm in a public colloquy during his appearance at the Southeast Booksellers Association. It turns out that I had been using the "thin-slicing" method he describes in my decision-making for the last year. For 47 years, my modus operandi was to research and gather every nugget of data and information before making decisions. Coincident with meeting Ann and with a nearly fatal illness my father suffered, my processes changed. But I wasn't comfortable with it. Suddenly, every decision I made was turning out right, but I did not trust the process.
Malcolm's research gave me reason to be confident in this new (for me) way to make choices. His is not a mystical process and he's not really an advocate, but rather, a journalist. Fast Company magazine has crowned him as the hot new business guru and I'm pleased to be able to bring his findings to New Albany. Would that our public officials take some of these lessons to heart.
I do think many of you will want to check this book out...even keep it handy as a reference and a tool for building confidence in your own decision-making. His thesis is that instinct is nearly always correct, but we let our "big brains" (with apologies to Mr. Vonnegut) get in the way of doing what we "know" is right.
- Let me also recommend 1776 by David McCullough, coming in May. The Truman chronicler takes on the momentous events of our nation's founding.
- One of my perennial favorites is Please Understand Me II, the David Kiersey implementation of the incredibly useful Myers-Briggs test that applies Jungian thought to our daily interactions. I have NEVER found anyone who didn't learn something about themselves, their co-workers, their children, or their mates from this book. Over the years I have given away dozens of these copies, used it in my own businesses, and improved my understanding of myself and others.
- Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend reminds us that Ponzi was, in fact, a real person whose mischief created a new word and whose figurative descendants still prey on the eager and gullible. Mitchell Zuckoff tells the story in a March release.
- I'm eager to read Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, in which a retired Sherlock Holmes is compelled to don his deerstalker hat again.
- Alexander McCall Smith takes on academia in three novellas with January's Portuguese Irregular Verbs. It includes The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, as well as the title piece. McCall Smith is the increasingly popular author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels and The Sunday Philosphy Club.
- Frank Delaney's Ireland brings the history of the Emerald Isle to epic life in February.
Look for a major announcement about the upcoming Torpedo Juice by Tim Dorsey. This is Tim's seventh Serge Storms comic masterpiece and I am determined to turn all of you on to this incredible talent. Dorsey's entire backlist is in stock here and we're going to make it impossible for his publisher to bypass us when Tim brings out his eighth book in 2006. I've sent a case of his latest to his home in Florida and he has agreed to affix his autograph to each and every one.
During the new year, our first in-house reading group will be the Serge Storms Historic Research and Debating Society. These autographed copies will be reserved for its members, who will convene only at those venues in the area that qualify for the appellation of "Quasi-Weird."
Dorsey's (and Serge's) obsession with the preservation of authentic history and nature should fit right in with the zeitgeist among our patrons. The SSHR&DS is going to be much more than a book club. I envision it as the release valve and forum for growing body of like-minded people we've met here in the first two months. There are so many of you who should meet each other and this is one of the ways we will be helping to create the Third Space for building community. It's not quite the salon Ann so earnestly desires, but the Shredders are going to be a force in this community...mark my words.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you a few books that you'll be hearing a lot about here at the store. Just before we opened the store, we had the opportunity to spend some time with two of the authors over a weekend in Atlanta and I can't tell you how excited we are to be able to sell these two books.
The first is Baker Towers by Jennifer Haigh. Jennifer's first book was the dazzling Mrs. Kimble, which Ann and I both had the chance to read during 2004. As you may know, during our courtship I drove to New Albany every other weekend from Daytona Beach (863 miles one way) to fan the flames of our relationship and to scout out locations for the store. That made books on tape my preferred reading media, so Mrs. Kimble came to me during those long night drives through Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky.
Ann is reading Baker Towers right now and she can't put it down. It just became available for January release. I have it inbound right now and I'm certain many of you will want to read it. The setting is a Pennsylvania coal town in the 50s, but I immediately saw parallels between her fictional town and our own little burg. This is a novel about societal change and the stresses that come from an entire community trying to adjust to a new economic reality. The title refers to two massive coal waste piles (towers) that mark the entrance to the town.
In a large crowd, Jennifer comes across as very literary and a bit aloof. I made it a point to seek her out after her major address and later, when I introduced her to Ann, we found her to be a sparkling woman and a bit of a word freak. In fact, a bit of a geek. We booksellers hold a spelling bee each year and Jennifer was stricken when her schedule wouldn't allow her to join our team. (We won, by the way, although the story of how we did so is best left to another time.)
For you non-fiction buffs, I can't recommend strongly enough that you explore Malcolm Gladwell's new title, Blink. Malcolm is an independent bookseller favorite after the breakout success of his last book, The Tipping Point. This new one, on order now, is going to be phenomenal. This 41-year-old New Yorker writer has made it his business to examine why people act the way they do. This time, he turns his eye to the quick decision-making process.
I had the chance to engage Malcolm in a public colloquy during his appearance at the Southeast Booksellers Association. It turns out that I had been using the "thin-slicing" method he describes in my decision-making for the last year. For 47 years, my modus operandi was to research and gather every nugget of data and information before making decisions. Coincident with meeting Ann and with a nearly fatal illness my father suffered, my processes changed. But I wasn't comfortable with it. Suddenly, every decision I made was turning out right, but I did not trust the process.
Malcolm's research gave me reason to be confident in this new (for me) way to make choices. His is not a mystical process and he's not really an advocate, but rather, a journalist. Fast Company magazine has crowned him as the hot new business guru and I'm pleased to be able to bring his findings to New Albany. Would that our public officials take some of these lessons to heart.
I do think many of you will want to check this book out...even keep it handy as a reference and a tool for building confidence in your own decision-making. His thesis is that instinct is nearly always correct, but we let our "big brains" (with apologies to Mr. Vonnegut) get in the way of doing what we "know" is right.
- Let me also recommend 1776 by David McCullough, coming in May. The Truman chronicler takes on the momentous events of our nation's founding.
- One of my perennial favorites is Please Understand Me II, the David Kiersey implementation of the incredibly useful Myers-Briggs test that applies Jungian thought to our daily interactions. I have NEVER found anyone who didn't learn something about themselves, their co-workers, their children, or their mates from this book. Over the years I have given away dozens of these copies, used it in my own businesses, and improved my understanding of myself and others.
- Ponzi's Scheme: The True Story of a Financial Legend reminds us that Ponzi was, in fact, a real person whose mischief created a new word and whose figurative descendants still prey on the eager and gullible. Mitchell Zuckoff tells the story in a March release.
- I'm eager to read Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, in which a retired Sherlock Holmes is compelled to don his deerstalker hat again.
- Alexander McCall Smith takes on academia in three novellas with January's Portuguese Irregular Verbs. It includes The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, as well as the title piece. McCall Smith is the increasingly popular author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novels and The Sunday Philosphy Club.
- Frank Delaney's Ireland brings the history of the Emerald Isle to epic life in February.
Look for a major announcement about the upcoming Torpedo Juice by Tim Dorsey. This is Tim's seventh Serge Storms comic masterpiece and I am determined to turn all of you on to this incredible talent. Dorsey's entire backlist is in stock here and we're going to make it impossible for his publisher to bypass us when Tim brings out his eighth book in 2006. I've sent a case of his latest to his home in Florida and he has agreed to affix his autograph to each and every one.
During the new year, our first in-house reading group will be the Serge Storms Historic Research and Debating Society. These autographed copies will be reserved for its members, who will convene only at those venues in the area that qualify for the appellation of "Quasi-Weird."
Dorsey's (and Serge's) obsession with the preservation of authentic history and nature should fit right in with the zeitgeist among our patrons. The SSHR&DS is going to be much more than a book club. I envision it as the release valve and forum for growing body of like-minded people we've met here in the first two months. There are so many of you who should meet each other and this is one of the ways we will be helping to create the Third Space for building community. It's not quite the salon Ann so earnestly desires, but the Shredders are going to be a force in this community...mark my words.
posted by All4Word at 2:29 PM
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