Post Holiday Buzz

Hope everyone had a lovely Holiday (if you celebrate) filled with great food, great company and great books.

It was a fantastic season here, thanks entirely to this ridiculously supportive and loyal community. Our shelves are looking a little skinny, but we are working feverishly to bulk them back up. We like our inventory curvy...dare I say pin-up-y?

Kerri, our stellar buyer for the card and gift room, did an amazing job providing 99% of the gifts I brought home with me to Providence. The remaining 1% was a handmade coupon with promises of babysitting on it. Am I too old to pull that off?

Anyway- the book club choice is Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood...and Katie and I couldn't be more excited than if you slapped us silly and called us Martha. After all the Holiday rushing, what's better than taking some time for yourself and reading one of the greatest southern gothic novelists to walk this great land? (me? biased?) So ya' know...get to it.

Hi! I'm Kate too. (2)

Just a quick introduction, I'm Kate Robinson the Assistant Manager here at ye olde 'Smith...I will be posting a bit on industry stuff, ebook fun, and Shop Local & Indie Bound news. I'm really interested the manner in which the ebook is changing the way we look at the book as a commodity. I'm also looking at the scary yet exciting opportunities this provides independent bookstores with; eliciting something outside the virtual...and inside the actual.

Hi everyone,
This is Paul, ancient Booksmithie and newsletter writer, and Katie is just being silly. As of the last few moments, there are now officially two posts, and Genie and Katie are standing near me talking about how more of us are going to get into the act, asap.

Let me put some actual "content" in here:
I LOVE WILLIAM VOLLMANN. And I con't care a bit about his famously questionable personal habits. I'm reading "The Rifles" at the moment, and within one hallucinegenic page I was as enthralled as I've been by any book since I was in grade school and opened "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" for the first time.

Anyway, this wasn't so hard, and I'll be back on here soon.

Blogs are great and all, but come into the store this holiday season, we miss you.

Peace,
Paul

Hello!

Hello, this is Katie, bookseller, events wrangler, flyer-maker, veg cookbook fanatic.

Soon we will get this thing back up and running for real, but probably not 'til after the holidays.

For now, please visit us on Twitter and Facebook. They are some of the best ways to stay up-to-date with the event series and other store happenings as they are happening. Like, when I was startled at the Boston Book Fest by a life-sized Clifford, or when gossips broke celebrity event news (ahem AMY), or the moment a child declared us "the Las Vegas of Brookline."

And join our weekly email list, B-Mail. Do it.

Thank You for Reading!

Hello dear readers, and a fond farewell. I am stepping down from my duties as Brookline Booksmith Blogsmith, but be on the lookout for some new voices in the near future.

Thank you so much for your choice to click that link and give me a read every now and again! I am very grateful.

Staff Picks--Alie

In the past Alie has recommended some really great mysteries: In the Woods by Tana French, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (which is a total suck-you-in and spit-you-out thrill ride that you want to immediately line up for again), Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris (we just got this in paperback today! I can also vouch for this as a really great read.) and Field of Blood by Denise Mina.**

Her new recommendation is for K. O. Dahl's The Fourth Man: "Yet another engrossing and captivating Norwegian mystery. There are so many available in English now--but this one stands out. A wonderful mystery and interesting characters."

**You can read all her recommendations here!

A Time To Every Purpose...Including a holiday!

I'm leaving for Detroit tomorrow to spend Passover with my family, but before I go I thought it a good time to mention one of my staff picks for this month--A Time to Every Purpose: Letters to a Young Jew by Jonathan Sarna, a professor of Jewish Studies at Brandeis.

I first read this last autumn, when I was home for Rosh Ha'Shanah. It was in one sitting, on the train between Detroit and Chicago, and now that I think about it I'm surprised by how many of the chapters (each based around a major Jewish holiday or event) I can still clearly remember. Professor Sarna writes in what I would call a wise-but-not-overbearing style (it's a very tricky thing!) and I felt like he was really speaking to me and the exact questions and struggles I've had about what I want to believe and how I want to live and behave as a young Jew in the 21st century--for example, questions about identity, the environment, social justice, and Israel. Stuff like this--meaty and without being didactic--is rare and welcome!