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My thrice-weekly email from the fabulous folks at Brooklyn Based was both exciting and chagrining this morning: a new bookstore in Brooklyn! With comic books and art installations by great local comics! That I'd NEVER HEARD OF before!

Desert Island (dude, also a great name), according to BB,

"is one of those places that shines in the consumer retail rough. Proprietor Gabriel Fowler opened the Williamsburg store in February of this year, with nothing more than a bank loan, a small community of artist friends, and a desire to share some of his favorite comics, zines and books. Fowler grew up around indie record and comic shops in Florida, which “were the only exciting places to hang out in a cultural wasteland.” Powered by his professed “obliviousness” of the weak bookselling market, Fowler built and decorated the store entirely by hand, with a few key installations from his friends: Marie Lorenz, who made a delicate and intricate paper chandelier, and Chris Patch, who made the store’s very first window display, an ice cave scene made out of cardboard and masking tape (a new installation by Williamsburg cartoonist Lauren Weinstein has just taken its place). Independent comics and graphic novels make up the bulk of the store’s inventory. The biggies, like Adrian Tomine and R. Crumb, share space with cult favorites Julie Doucet and Michael Kupperman, as well as occasional mainstream hits, like Watchmen. Local New York comics are also featured, including self-published work like “Paping,” whose creator John Mejias is organizing the Brooklyn Heights Soapbox Derby on August 23."

Damn, I'm jealous. And I MUST go there ASAP. The store is at 540 Metropolitan Avenue, in Williamsburg -- which is probably why I haven't run across it, as my inner nerd is still a little terrified of the hipster headquarters that is Williamsburg. I think I can brave it for the installations alone, though...




In news closer to home -- is there anyone I haven't talked to yet about the fact that McNally Robinson is changing its name to McNally Jackson? This may seem sudden and confusing -- but in fact, it's been a long time coming, and it should actually ELIMINATE confusion. See, Sarah McNally named her (independent, locally owned) bookstore after the McNally Robinson stores that her parents, Paul and Holly, own in Canada. She didn't mind the association -- the New York store is certainly modeled on those stores, and Sarah's definitely a Canadian. The problem was that folks kept ending up on the Canadian website when they were looking for us (if they forgot the "nyc" at the end of "mcnallyrobinson") and trying to order Canadian books from us (which we don't have and can't easily get), and kept asking us whether we were a Canadian chain. (NO, WE'RE NOT.) So Sarah was in the market for a new name to make our independent, local status clear, and make it less confusing for people to find us online.

At the same time, Sarah and her husband Chris Jackson (who's an editor at Random House imprint Spiegel & Grau) were expecting their first child. His last name, of course, will take from both his mother and father: McNally Jackson. And inspiration struck. Sarah could change just 5 letters of the name, and make it clear that this is her store, New York's store, and have a snappy name as well. So plans were made to change the name.

In addition to changing the store awnings, event posters, bookmarks, bags, website, etc., etc. -- we're marking the change by throwing a party on Thursday, August 7. It's also a great occasion to celebrate that McNally has been thriving and growing for nearly 4 years (since December 2004), succeeding beyond anyone's expectations and becoming part of NYC's literary fabric. (And we're celebrating the birth of the littlest McNally Jackson, who was born on Sunday!)

We've got a bunch of our favorite authors featured at the event -- and in the spirit of changing identities, they will be acting as bookstore staff for the night! Kate Christensen is working the cash register, Peter Sis is helping out in the kids section, Colson Whitehead is pouring champagne, Daniel Pinchbeck is recommending books in the culture section, and lots more. All of our customers and supporters are welcome -- you just have to RSVP via email before the party.


So all in all, it's a good time to be a lover of bookstores in New York City. (And just wait until you see what the Independent Booksellers of New York City have been working on!...)

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One of the best parts about my job as an events coordinator is that I get to go to at least three cultural events a week, and get paid for it.

One of the worst parts is that I can't go to all of the other events that are happening at the same time.

Bookstores in New York have a different issue when it comes to author events than stores in most other places. For us, it's not so hard getting good authors to appear; the hard part is competing with the million other great things that are going on at the same time in the same city.

Tonight (Wednesday), I'm thrilled to meet Meg Wolitzer as she reads from her new book The Ten-Year Nap -- she's one of our sharpest observers of women's lives and Western culture, and totally funny, too.

But if I wasn't at my store, I'd be at Rocketship in Brooklyn for a book party with Jonathan Lethem and Farel Dalrymple for their collaboration on the new Omega The Unknown comics. Two of my favorite creators in one place! -- not fair!

And tomorrow night (Thursday), we've got not only a party for an amazing Russian poetry anthology, with authors actually flown in from Russia and local translators and food and wine... we've ALSO got the brilliant and charming Simon Van Booy, one of our store's favorite authors, doing an intimate reading and conversation about his brand-new cult classic genius short story collection The Secret Lives of People In Love. (We recently did some renovation at the bookstore that allow us to have one event going on upstairs and another one downstairs -- more authors! more choices! Luckily I get to go to both of these, at least for a little bit at a time...)

But, at the same time, my buddy and fellow entrepreneur David Del Vecchio is inaugerating his BRAND NEW INDIE BOOKSTORE, Idlewild Books, with a reading, discussion and reception for Murat Kurnaz's book, Five Years Of My Life, about his internment in Guantanamo. I can't wait to see David's dream come true, and the book sounds amazing.

But lucky you -- YOU get to choose which of these events to attend. Good luck, and welcome to the trials of book nerd life in New York City!

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By Anatoly Liberman

The Devil is uppermost in people’s thoughts, and his names are many. One of them is Old Nick. Its origin is obscure. The word nicker “water sprite,” explained as an old participle “(a) washed one,” is unrelated to it. Then there is nickel. The term was easy to coin, but copper could not be obtained from the nickel ore, and Axel F. von Cronstedt, a Swedish mineralogist despite von before Cronstedt, called the copper-colored metal copper nickel (German Kupfernickel), later shortened to nickel, after the name of a perfidious mountain demon (wolfram and especially cobalt have a similar history). (more…)

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