Seventy-Seven Books

I have seventy-seven books on or near my desk right now, mostly publisher galleys.  Seventeen are for upcoming events, two are dictionaries, three are YA novels, four are graphic novels, one is highly recommended by another bookseller, and I've been highly recommending at least eight of the titles to other booksellers. I've read at least fifteen of them, I'm very earnestly planning to read twenty-three of them, I'm tepid about six, and I should probably take about fifteen of them home already. I can tell you why I chose each one, whether it be because of the blurb, the description, the author, an upcoming author event, or because I liked the cover.

I might be on the extreme end of book hoarding, but I swear I need them to do my job. I'm not alone--it seems like every bookseller has loads of books spirited away and a towering pile of galleys that could easily be used to make a book fort while protectively guarding an advance reader's copy they can't talk about yet because the release date is far away (in my case, Paul Harding's Enon, 27 days til pub date, it is amazing and I really want to talk about it).  I work at Brookline Booksmith.  This is what I do.

Do us Brookline Booksmith book hoarders a favor. Come on in, ask us about our favorite books, let us talk about the latest book that we marveled over and can't stop gushing about. Get a recommendation for a book you might not have normally stumbled upon yourself, fall in love with it and tell us about it so we can continue to rationalize the piles, shelves, and heaps of books we consume on a regular basis so we can give quality book advice.