June 14, 2017
Caraval (2017) Written by: Stephanie Garber Genre: Teen/Fantasy Pages: 407 (Hardcover) Publisher: Flatiron Books Why I Chose It: Caraval first enticed me with its cover, then more with the magical ticket on the back cover, and then finally with the description within the jacket. I like carnivals and games and magic, and I have two sisters. While the premise itself sounds…
June 1, 2017
People can come into bookstores with some pretty odd notions. Most of the time they’re confusing the bookstore for a library. Other times they just think they know better than the booksellers. But the truth is that the customer is far from right (and whoever coined that phrase clearly never worked in a bookstore — or in any sort of…
May 30, 2017
Ever since Amnesia: The Dark Descent, survival horror has been in vogue. With the inability of the playable character to fight back and the discovery of the plot through found items, all you can do is run, scream, and hopefully get to the end with your sanity intact. Then Red Barrels developed Outlast, a game that put you inside of…
May 4, 2017
When it comes to books and bookstores, it’s a bit like a revolving door. Books come in, they sit on the shelf, books go out. Oftentimes they get purchased, but sometimes they go out the back door. The shipping door. The door that customers never see. So why do they go out the way they came in? What reason is…
April 6, 2017
No, we’re not getting on a giant boat with a lot of animals — that’s an ark. ARC stands for Advance Reading Copy. Or Advance Review Copy. Or Advanced Reader’s Copy. Or you might see ARE for Advance Reader’s Edition. The point is that a book that is labeled as such is an early copy that hasn’t yet hit the…
March 2, 2017
Mass market paperbacks are interesting creatures, as are some trade paperbacks. 99.99% of all mass markets, if they are slated for return, aren’t actually returned. Not whole, anyway. One of the most horrifying things a bookseller will ever learn to do is strip a book. Stripping a book means that the front cover — and the back too if the…
February 22, 2017
A lot of people get confused when faced with a book that has two covers. Is the inside different? Is this the same book? The confusion only deepens on those rare occasions when the title changes. However, gentle readers and moviegoers, this is simply a cover change up.
February 2, 2017
Customers can be…odd. That’s the polite way to put it. For every fantastic or wholly normal customer a bookseller meets, there’s always that one person who has to mess up the day for everyone. Some infractions are minor whereas others can get downright frustrating.
January 5, 2017
Booksellers get a lot of questions on a daily basis. Where can I find this book? Who wrote this book? When was this book published? Is this in paperback? When will this author’s next book be available? Most of these questions are pretty typical (and normal), but there are still plenty of things that a bookseller won’t know and, unfortunately,…
December 1, 2016
We live in the era of the unabashed geek, and it’s wonderful. But what if you’re not into Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, World of Warcraft, or comic books and you have friends or family that are? What do you buy them for the holidays? Don’t fret — there’s still hope.