2009 Best of the Twin Cities

We're happy to have been named Best New Bookstore(there is a Used category as well) by City Pages for 2009.

Micawber's Book Chat and a poem

Join us this Thursday, the 16th, at 7 p.m. as the four booksellers of Micawber's discuss some of our recent favorite reads. New stuff and old. Young adult, essays and new fiction. We read across the board. Stop in for some ideas to get your spring reading kick-started.

From "An Aquarium" by Jeffrey Yang

Crab

Slantwise the crab advances. Poets,
philosophers, the body
politic share different aspects
of this problem.

"What's My Name, Fool?"*

It's always exciting for a bookseller when books arrive in the store that we've already read in advance and enjoyed. This week I had that excitement tripled. Two novels and a one book of nonfiction that I've been waiting a long time for. The novels really could not be more different from one another in tone, focus and style. But what joins them, in my mind, is a very solid sense of place. "All The Living" is a first novel that follows a young woman, Aloma, to her husband's family farm in rural Kentucky. His parents have recently died in an auto accident and the book traces the couple as they try to come to terms with a dying way of life(tobacco farming), a dying town and a family in disrepair. But it isn't all woe--Morgan's writing is assured and measured and filled with beauty. The second book, Chris Cleave's "Little Bee" is a book that indy booksellers have been chattering about for months now. Due to the nature of the story I can't really talk about it too much without giving away important details and storylines. I can promise it is one of those books you want to read without the bother of phone calls or going to work or washing the dishes. It truly is a tour de force.

The last book is one I was pretty hesitant to even look at. Dave Cullen's "Columbine" takes a look at the Colorado school shooting from 1999. I thought it would be voyeuristic and too much like a cheesy newspaper or magazine article. I was wrong on all fronts. Cullen spent 10 years researching this event--looking at the how's and why's and what could have been's. He's done an amazing job weaving together the stories of families affected by the deaths or serious injuries to their children along with some serious looks into the lives of the two killers. America's obsession with firearms and our bizarre 24/7 media culture also get some examination. In the end the reader is still left with a lot of questions. Yet some answers are given and it is an example of journalism at its finest--well-researched rather than the quick point. Emotional without being sappy. Pointing towards some issues that we, as a country, need to deal with. Or else continue to face events as heartbreaking and scary as Columbine all over again.

Also, I'm just sending out our April e-mail newsletter with a focus on poetry as it is National Poetry month. Too many people are scared of this fine form. I'm going to make it a point to post some fun and accesible poems during the month. Let a little poetry into your life this month.




*That is what Muhammad Ali once yelled at Floyd Patterson during a fight when Patterson had kept calling him Cassius Clay. Happy April Fool's.

One more little thing

We're in the process of completing a Facebook page for the store. You can already become a fan of the store and in the next week or so we'll have all of our events and some smashing new pictures posted.

It's a move towards making the store both a comfy physical space and an accesible and interactive virtual one.

Onward, virtually, ho!

All those pretty little things

Merchandising is sort of an icky word as far as I'm concerned. We like to think that books can speak for themselves and don't need a lot of over-the-top pushing from our end. The reality, of course, is that we run a business and like all businesses we need to do some promoting of our "product."

One fun aspect of this is getting to put together some little displays for various books. Our front tables are generally a showcase of the new and notable. But we do have one small table near the front register that doesn't have a specific cause. At times we use it to display books for an upcoming event. Other times it has some kind of focus or theme. Come April, we'll have lots of poetry books out for National Poetry Month. Right now I've chosen to turn into a little curator's table.

What I mean by that is that it doesn't have one particular focus other than the books displayed are ones we find to be beautiful, eye-catching or otherwise visually notable. Make sure the next time you stop in to take a peek at the little table and see what it has to offer. Little treasures await.

Finally, as the Schwartz group of bookstores(in Milwaukee) get ready to close their doors as March comes to a close I wanted to post a quote from their founder that I found especially compelling: "Bookselling was and is for me a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for community values which can act as an underpinning of a better world. The true profit in bookselling is the social profit; the bottom line, the measure of the impact of the bookshop on the community." A. David Schwartz

That quote really reflects what we hope to do day in and day out here at Micawber's.

Bookselling was and is for me a cultural and political expression, an expression of progressive change, of challenge to oppressive authority, of a search for a community of values which can act as an underpinning of a better world. The true profit in bookselling is the social profit; the bottom line, the measure of the impact of the bookshop on the community.

-A. David Schwartz (July 15, 1938 - June 7, 2004

Kids stuff

Hope some of you can join us tomorrow at 2 p.m. as the Okee Dokee Brothers join us for some singing. Check out their website at www.okeedokee.org to get more of an idea of what these two amazing young men are up to.

Also, two long-awaited books have come back into our store.

First, around Christmas, Daniel Pinkwater talked about James Thurber's "13 Clocks" which has come out in a very nice little hardcover package. It was gone forever but is now back. Come see it.


Second, we're happy to report that SAP's very own Susan Marie Swanson and her Caldecott-winning book "The House in the Night" has come back into stock. Copies are flying so top in to pick one up.

The post in which I stump for Hans(just not me).

Earlier today I sent out our monthly e-mail newsletter(let us know at micawbers@popp.net if you want to start getting it) and I touched briefly on the fact that so very many people these days are asking us, "So, how are things going?" It can be asked with trepidation or commiseration or with compassion. The economy, in short and as we all well know, is not so great. Regardless of small or large business or what type of industry people are in it's tough sledding right now. No different here. Yet I'm choosing to take an optimistic viewpoint and think of this as a time to re-focus on what's important(the customers and the books) and choose our stock carefully and handsell those books we believe in even more wholeheartedly.

I also know that people are mostly exhausted by the constant chatter regarding "the economy." So I try to avoid it mostly. We're trying to get even more remainders in on regular basis to give customers various price options and always on the look-out for more great paperback options.

But who and what I really want to talk about today is Hans. Not to worry: I haven't gotten all third person on y'all. Hans Fallada is a writer that wonderful Melville House publishing is trying to bring back to the reading world's minds. His novels written during the Nazi regime--often written in code in small notebooks--have been suppressed and banishedat various times. Fallada's personal story is as wild and sad and unbelievable as any fictional story could ever be and I'll leave his biography those who read his books and those who wikipedia. But the novels--they deserve some talking about.


"The Drinker" and "Little Man, What Now?" have both been published in paperback for $16.95. These are re-prints and both had fans like Thomas Mann, Graham Greene and Herman Hesse to name a few serious heavyweights. It's exciting to see them published anew and available to new audiences. The real prize, in my mind, is the never before translated "Every Man Dies Alone". When we got an advance reader copy a few months back I handed it off to my mom who is a book-devouring machine. She read it and told me how fantastic she thought it was. Now that I'm fifty pages from the finish I have to agree. The book was written in 24 days(no typo) and is based on real-life events. A gorgeous jacket with cool inlaid maps accompany this book. Melville House has done American readers a great service by bringing these books to us. I hope they find enthusiastic readers both near and far. Go here http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/books/review/Schillinger-t.html?_r=2&ref=books to read a recent review. I do hope that, like "Suite Francaise", a book can find a deserving chance at life.