As an avid reader and lover of all things books, I get really excited by small scrappy upstart presses that publish really bold, beautiful books that are a little bit grainier, hard-edged, strange or literally foreign for the big guys to pay much attention to. Small presses print translations you can't find anywhere else, raw, gutsy memoirs, poetry that burns bright with cleverness and an experimental air. They're small enough to take risks on books they believe in and while I LOVE me some books that the big guys print, I think a book club dedicated to small presses would A) give some recognition to books without big promotional budgets that might get overlooked, and B) encourage all you smarty Booksmith shoppers to go to a book club where it isn't necessarily a novel we read, but maybe a collection of poetry, or a book of literary non-fiction. I'm not a poet but sometimes Wave Books prints a book of poetry so beautiful I have to read it and when I do I want to talk about it because I DON'T UNDERSTAND POETRY BUT I THINK I LIKE IT A LOT ANYWAY. What does this meeeean? Let's talk about it together!
If the prospect of the Small Press Book Club appeals to you, drop me an e-mail and I'll contact you before September when we'll (hopefully) start to meet. Meetings would be once a month for about an hour, and there would be SNACKS. E-mail me if you're interested! The more people I know are interested the more likely this will work out. And that means MORE snacks to you, the consumer. E-mail me at natasha -at- brooklinebooksmith -dot- com.
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