The Nonfiction Section is All Around You

Today is my last day working at Brookline Booksmith! Starting next week I will be working in a building in midtown Manhattan, at a new job about as far away from my Idaho origins as I could have ever imagined.

Furthermore, I will be not working at Brookline Booksmith for the first time in just shy of 4 years. That is just about the longest I have ever worked at one place (I'm young!) and has comprised the bulk of my life in Boston. I have met the most amazing people here, read the best books, shared them with you all, met lots of celebrities and learned the city inside and out while I was here!

This place is the craziest mix of unique staff, and we're incredibly lucky to be in a neighborhood full of die-hard buy-local bookworms that keep us around. It's also a place I've learned a lot about working hard, communicating with people, and being surprised daily by people you think you know. It's been a fertile training ground for my next endeavor, a place I've been nurtured in the book industry and will carry with me as I set off for the Big City!

Thanks so much for everything, take care of each other, and shut off your computer (after this sentence) and pick up a book :D

With Love,
Natasha

P. S. Read Arto Paasilinna! 

Travel as a Rabbit

Here's the latest and greatest happenins in the travel section!

Come scope our Destination of the Month display before it turns to October: SEATTLE

I am studying the Finnish language and just learned the sweetest idiom: "Matkustaa jäniksenä," or "to travel as a rabbit," meaning travelling for free, as a stowaway (like a bunny sneaking on a boat!). I prefer the first image the phrase brought to mind, a bunny too short to reach the Charlie Card machine so he just snuck under the turnstile and didn't pay his fare.

Anyway, everyone knows the best way to travel as a rabbit is to pack like and move fast, so do I have a grip of petite pocket guides for you! These adorable, fun-size guide books are full of off-the-beaten path trivia, must-sees and gorgeous design:

First up are the WildSam guides. Currently available for Nashville, Austin, San Francisco and Detroit, they have awesome almanacs full of local trivia, interviews with local movers and shakers, places to check out that are more funky and local haunts than tourist spots, and even a grip of pretty graph paper in the back for notetaking and scrapbooking on the fly! $18 each.

Citi x 60 guides are brand new, and available for all kinds of big-city locales: New York, Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona, Berlin and more. The idea here is that 60 local artists, business owners, writers, creatives and other influential and design-oriented share their favorite haunts, so you get a bunch of ideas for discovering a city from the people who love it the most, and seek out the most unique and vibrant offerings! Super inexpensive and pretty as well at $9.95 each.

The Hunt guides, representing cities from Austin to Singapore are beautifully designed with must-sees and local faves as well, an emphasis on shopping and amazing food make these guides a must for the urban adventurer. $16 each.

Happy travels! 

Latest & Greatest Hardcovers, also Finland

It's autumn time, and that means all the big major massive magical fall books, the heavy hitters, the long-awaiteds, the thrills the chills the anyway here are the ones that are the best:

Murakami and McEwan, shoulder to shoulder, ready to rock your mind meats:

In the new Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, (which I just finished finally please come and talk to me about it),  the main character goes to Finland. While you should always care about Finland, this factoid will become relevant later. Here's my favorite quote from it:

The new Tana French, Secret Place, just in time to housesit on a deserted New England coastal island and curl up with this in the dark, alone, on Halloween.

The new David Mitchell, Bone Clocks! Peter approves! I'm told a character from Cloud Atlas makes an appearance!

And finally, last but not least, the new volume by xkcd creator Randall Munroe What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions complete with a helpful diagram OF FINLAND on the back cover.

Stay tuned next week when I talk about some new travel guides and maps we carry that I road tested for you in FINLAND. And also I will tell you about salmiakki ice cream.

Epic Night of Epic Proportions

Last week I went on a Fancy Date to the Philharmonic. I got dressed up and rode my fancy towncar the 66 to Harvard and got to see the Boston Philharmonic perform Jean Sibelius' piece "Lemminkainen and the Maidens of the Island," inspired by a chunk of the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.

I am a huge nerd. I am obsessed with the Kalevala. I don't know how to listen to music. So imagine, a nerd like me twitching in the cheap seats, not sure if I'm supposed to be looking bored with all the epic that surrounded me--a full philharmonic, Sanders Theater in Harvard, fancy people from Cambridge--or giddy with excitement. Which I was. The best part was that the conductor, Benjamin Zander explained a bit about the piece, and Sibelius, and then had the different parts of the orchestra play tiny elements of the music and explained their significance musically and for the atmosphere of the piece. It was SO AWESOME. And it really helped my understand and appreciate what was happening when the piece began for real.

So I was impressed by Zander, whose book, The Art of Possibility we have a used copy of at the moment. A book that gives practicable advice to boost creativity.

And I was impressed by Sibelius who could somehow translate all the awesome epic atmosphere and action of the Kalevala, and in particular the scene it illustrated, a small sliver of the story where the hero Lemminkainen visits some island maidens and woos them all. Sibelius captured the ocean and the sea birds, demonstrating sonically that we were on an island. He captured a festivity, and all the drama and backing and forthing of a dramatic love affair. All in like, 12 minutes of music. It was truly inspiring.

If you haven't read the Kalevala, you must. It's got it all: magic, wizards, love, hate, curses, travel, adventure. It's like a Scandinavian Odyssey with a way bigger cast of characters and a harder, darker core.

If you haven't read Zander's book, you must. I'm a convert.

And if you've already read the Kalevala, happenstance brought the UBC a copy of Return to Kalevala by Richard Worth just yesterday. It's a fantasy novel inspired by the Kalevala.

So come to the UBC and discover a piece of Finland. Or uncover your own creativity. Or come find a treasure that might inspire you to go on your own cultural adventure in the city (a book on the Renaissance that might inform a trip to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, perhaps?).