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Or, It Just So Happened: Why I Love Being A Bookseller In New York
(to the tune of "Lullaby of Birdland")

On Monday night at McNally Jackson, we hosted one of our ongoing Author/Editor events, and I found out rather late in the game that I would need to moderate. So I did a bit of cramming on the novel over the weekend -- with events 4 or 5 or 6 nights a week, it's rare that I read many of the featured books.


It just so happened that I love this book, Water Dogs by Lewis Robinson. I love the somewhat hapless narrator, the calmly skeptical girlfriend, the ridiculous male posturing, the snow, the sense of somewhat muted menace. I love that Mainers struggle with some of the same issues of authenticity that Brooklynites do -- are you a real [fill in the blank], are you one of us or an interloper? We had a great conversation with Lewis and his editor Laura Ford that night, and I'm still reading and loving the book.

It also just so happened that among Lewis' friends in attendance were Nathanael Bellows, who had been at the store for an event with his poetry collection Why Speak the year before; and Aaron Hamburger, who not only has his own excellent short story collection out, but is also one of the winner of our First Annual Children's Story-Writing Contest. So I got to chat with him about his story "The Dessert-Breathing Dragon," which he'll be reading on Saturday.


Last night several bookseller friends had arranged to meet up in a bar in Williamsburg to welcome to our borough Stephanie Anderson, who just started as a manager at Word in Greenpoint. Somehow in the 10 years I've lived in the city, I had never before been to a bar in Williamsburg, despite living there for one summer in college -- I was probably a little scared of the hipsters, and a little proud of living my youthful Brooklyn life without recourse to the standard stomping ground. But I trekked out on the L train after work, and it just so happened that on the way to the bar I passed Desert Island, a newish comic book shop I'd been dying to visit. I popped in and introduced myself to the owner, Gabriel, and chatted for a minute before hurrying on to meet the folks. When I arrived at the bar Stephanie was the only one there, and it just so happened she too had been meaning to visit Desert Island. So we went right back down Metropolitan Avenue and spent another 20 minutes talking with Gabriel about his year-old store (he made the shelves himself! He'd never worked in a bookstore before! He hangs a projector screen from hooks in the ceiling! He carries unique foreign and self-published comics that attract the afficianados, even if they end up buying Adrian Tomine!), our own stores' work with graphic novels, consignments, and other wonky book biz stuff. Far from being a scary hipster, it just so happened that Gabriel is a totally decent human being, and Stephanie and I made another friend in the book biz.

We returned to the bar, where our fellow book folks were waiting, and proceeded to have an uproariously enjoyable evening. It just so happened that two of the attendees were born quite near each other in upstate New York. It just so happened that three of us were separately scheming about BEA parties, and are now scheming together. It just so happened that my Random House rep gave me a galley that I'm as eager to read as she is to have me read it. It just so happened that some other folks joined us halfway through the night with their own connections to the book world. It just so happened that Kelly Amabile and I both had to take the L train home, and wove our way back to the subway together.

It's been a good week in New York. We spent part of the evening last night discussing our "hazing" experiences when we first moved here, and how the city can make you work for it. But in weeks like this, it's pretty obvious why we do it.

This definitely comes under the listing of tooting my own horn, but I'm hoping some of you will get a kick out of it. Thanks to the graphic design help of my brilliant sister Sarah...

You can now purchase your own Book Nerd T-shirt!

Just imagine -- bookish types walking around, all over the country, with their hair-band/L.A. gangster/motorcycle-mob typeface t-shirts, proclaiming their unrepentant book nerdism. It's a beautiful thing.


The Cafe Press thing is something I've been thinking about for a while, for a couple of reasons:

1) Several people have asked where they could get their own Book Nerd shirt like the one in my profile photo. Since that was something the ALP had custom-made for me, I didn't have anywhere to send them. Now I do.

1) I'll make a couple of bucks on the sale of each t-shirt, which will go straight into the Future Bookstore Fund. It's not likely to be a major source of funding, but the overhead price is right (i.e. nothing), and I figure it can't hurt to put it out there.

I know the prices are a little steep for t-shirts. The base price for Cafe Press apparel is high, but they do provide all of the infrastructure and product, and they've got a good reputation.

And hey -- you can get a shirt for just about the price of a hardcover book.

You've got your classic white-on-black option, and an organic white shirt with black lettering. Either one looks pretty darn cool.

Do let me know what you think, and especially if you've got ideas for other designs or products I should be offering. Hope you enjoy, my fellow book nerds!

Johnny Hart, creator of the comic strip B.C., passed away on Saturday.

Click here to see the story from Johnny Hart's local newspaper in Binghamton, NY.

In a 1980 interview with Jud Hurd in Cartoonist PROfiles, Johnny said:
"...'cartoony' and 'simplicity' became very important words to me, and I extended them into every phase of what I do..."

And the result was some of the most beautiful linework ever to hit the comics pages. Johnny's work was simply amazing. His linework was sparce, but very expressive.
Simplicity has the illusion of looking easy. It's not. Try drawing a B.C. character with the expressiveness Johnny Hart could achieve with such few lines. It's not easy.

In the above story, Johnny's wife said he died at his drawing board.
There is something bittersweet about that.