Friday, January 18, 2019

Reading about the reading life: January 18, 2019 edition

Welcome to another edition of "Reading about the reading life" here at The Itinerant Librarian. This is where I collect stories about reading and the reading life. Basically, these are items related to reading, maybe writing and literacy, that I find interesting and think my four readers might find interesting as well with a little commentary. As with other features I do on this blog, I do it when I have time or feel like it. Comments are always welcome (within reason).  





I've been finding a few interesting things recently, so let's have a look.

  • Via The Register-Guard, indie bookstores persevere despite Amazon.
  • Resilience suggests that a local bookstore can enrich your community.The author argues that "if we want our places to be strong, third places like independent bookstores are exactly the kind of investment that our towns should be making. And we should be making them way more often." To that I say it can depend. A good bookstore will probably do well in enriching a community. A not so good one, such as a certain independent used store in a town I used to live that was nothing more than a dumping ground of old Harlequins and such, will probably be detrimental. 
  • The Portland Mercury reports that a Japanese bookstore chain is opening up a branch in downtown Portland. According to the article, "The 5,140-square-foot space "will carry carefully selected books, unique merchandise and Japanese stationery, with a focus on art and comics from Japan which have been strengths in our existing stores," says Kinokuniya's press release. "We will also collaborate with a beloved local Japanese cafe to provide a space for both Portland locals and tourists to relax and drink authentic Japanese tea." It does sound neat.
  • Meanwhile, via Hornet, in what some consider the end of an era, the adult bookstore Circus of Books in West Hollywood, CA is closing down.
  • Sounds the trumpets! A bookstore finally sold a book that sat on its shelves for over 27 years. Story via My Modern Met.
  • A Scottish bookseller chronicles a year of his life as a bookseller. The Chicago Tribune's Biblioracle reviews The Diary of a Bookseller. Sounds like a book for me to add to my ever growing TBR list. On a side note, the Biblioracle (John Warner) does a form of reader's advisory where he gives you a list  of what to read based on the last five books you have read. I have not tried it, but if you have, feel free to let me know how that works out. 
  • Apparently there is a "Blurbing Industrial Complex," and this article from The Millions argues that it needs to be destroyed. How bad is it? "Further, a nuclear arms race in blurbing is building." Maybe a blurb worked for someone like Walt Whitman, as suggested in the article, but I have to ask just how many people today pick up a new book today and make their decision to read it or not based on a blurb? I do not recall in recent memory having a blurb spur a decision to read and/or acquire a book. If any out there care to comment, let me know, do blurbs in books encourage you or not to read and/or buy a book? Do you even care?
  • This is not the first place I've seen this story but it has been picking traction recently: the idea that romance novels can save straight sex, as if they are somehow a panacea that people have failed to notice. By the way, I will note that yes, I have read romance novels, including the one I had to read in one of my reader's advisory courses in library school. I also read and review some erotica (which I prefer way better than romance fiction, but I will not digress here). Via Electric Lit
  • Via the BBC, a history of the library of forbidden books. "From 1976 until his death in 2013, Georg P Salzmann collected about 12,000 books that had been banned – and burnt – by the Nazis for being ‘un-German’." This collection is now recently made open to the public. A video story is included. 
  • Puerto Rican newspaper Claridad does a profile of local independent book publisher Editorial Aguadulce (Spanish language story) and looks at book publishing in the island.

Finally for this week, a bookish edition of

Great Debates of Our Time



This week: is it better to read a book in print or listen to it as an audiobook. Question posed at Boing Boing. Feel free to comment.



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