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(click on Champ/Contender links for more book details)

Have you already seen this one?
I meant to post it earlier.

Holiday Message from Roy Blount Jr.:
Buy Books From Your Local Bookstore, Now


December 11, 2008. I've been talking to booksellers lately who report that times are hard. And local booksellers aren't known for vast reserves of capital, so a serious dip in sales can be devastating. Booksellers don't lose enough money, however, to receive congressional attention. A government bailout isn't in the cards.

We don't want bookstores to die. Authors need them, and so do neighborhoods. So let's mount a book-buying splurge. Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party. Buy the rest of your Christmas presents, but that's just for starters. Clear out the mysteries, wrap up the histories, beam up the science fiction! Round up the westerns, go crazy for self-help, say yes to the university press books! Get a load of those coffee-table books, fatten up on slim volumes of verse, and take a chance on romance!

There will be birthdays in the next twelve months; books keep well; they're easy to wrap: buy those books now. Buy replacements for any books looking raggedy on your shelves. Stockpile children's books as gifts for friends who look like they may eventually give birth. Hold off on the flat-screen TV and the GPS (they'll be cheaper after Christmas) and buy many, many books. Then tell the grateful booksellers, who by this time will be hanging onto your legs begging you to stay and live with their cat in the stockroom: "Got to move on, folks. Got some books to write now. You see...we're the Authors Guild."

Enjoy the holidays.

Roy Blount Jr.
President, Authors Guild

Addendum: Forward and Post!

December 11, 2008. The Guild's staff informs me that many of you are writing to ask whether you can forward and post my holiday message encouraging orgiastic book-buying. Yes! Forward! Yes! Post! Sound the clarion call to every corner of the Internet: Hang in there, bookstores! We're coming! And we're coming to buy! To buy what? To buy books! Gimme a B!B! Gimme an O! O! Gimme another O! Another O! Gimme a K! K! Gimme an S! F! No, not an F, an S. We're spelling BOOKS!

Yours,

Roy

(Roy's newest book is Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips
Hardcover $25.00
Farrar Straus Giroux, 2008
0374103690)

White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Paper, $14.00
Free Press, 2008
1416562605

I just finished reading this winner of the Man Booker Prize. And I have to say I was riveted by the writing and the story. Told over a seven day period, the narrator (Balram Halwai) pulls the reader into the dark and disturbing world of present-day India. From the poorest of the poor to the middle class wealthy, we are taken on a ride that is never voyeuristic but always engaging and upsetting. The raw and vivid portrayal of this country is guaranteed to shake you up your paradigm. I'm left with questions about morality and freedom. Adiga presents a compelling case for his character's desire to be truly free.

(I remind you that I'm eliminating cover art for blog entries, except for the cover judging. But I am making the titles active links that will take you to that page with full book description and cover art. Enjoy.)

Keep reading.

Vote over there.... on the right.

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It's the MOST wonderful time of the year!

(No, really, there's no sarcasm hidden in the above statement!)
(But maybe in the second statement?)
Actually, I like this time of the year. But for retailers it does present a bit of a challenge to one's serenity. Well, if not a threat to serenity, then a threat to keeping all the balls juggling in the air at one time! Like a blog (or two).

I'm on the verge of switching the content of this blog over to a new blog that will represent the staff's ongoing dialogue about books and bookselling. So, keep an eye out for that blog to be "rolled out."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we managed to make it through the Victorian Stroll. There was a constant flow of folks through the store. Gift wrapping was staffed by the able folks from the Literacy Volunteers of Rensselaer County. This year we are accepting donations for gift wrapping that will benefit the Literacy Volunteers. You can't imagine what a boon it is to have volunteer wrappers for the holidays. We do gift wrapping all year long, but you can bet the wrapping needs are greater at this time.

The window readers are back for the month of December. The announcement of this practice has been low key at best. But readers are showing up, with book in hand to spend an hour reading. You may not think it possible, but sitting in our window, in the middle of a busy season is really quite the respite from the insanity of the
season. Give it a try. There are still plenty of opportunities to sit a spell and read. (And this year we've added a small space heater for extra reader comfort.)

And this year, we are asking our window readers (if you are able) to get a sponsor for your sitting time as another way to raise money and awareness for the Literacy Volunteers.

Thanks for reading.

Vote over there.... on the right.

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Champ	-	Contender

(click on Champ/Contender links for more book details)

Remembering the death of Merton

Forty years later.

On the 10th day of December, in 1968 Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Trappist, Kentucky) died in Bangkok, Thailand where he was speaking to a gathering of religious women and men.

"...I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains, but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise." (written on 12/6/68 when visiting the giant Buddhas at Polonnaruwa, in Sri Lanka)

The Asian Journals of Thomas Merton
Paperback, $16.95
0811205703
New Directions (W.W. Norton)

The local chapter of the Thomas Merton Society will be honoring the memory of Merton's death on Wednesday the 10th at 7:00 PM at the St. Francis Chapel on Wolf Road in Colonie, NY. All are welcome. Evening prayer and a presentation on Merton will be part of the celebration of the life and death of Thomas Merton.

And while we're on the topic of Merton, there's a new book that tells the life of Thomas Merton through his correspondence. Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters: The Essential Collection By Merton, Thomas (compiled by William Shannon).
Hardcover, $25.95
0061348325
HarperOne