Category Archives: year end

December 14, 2016   sharon   fun, holidays, Sharon, suggestions, year end  
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Book Lovers’ Holiday Survival Guide

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Time to bake and cook and shop and wrap and ship and pack and travel…all things that take precious time away from READING. It’s the most hectic (and wonderful) time of the year!

Well, here are my holiday tips to make the season bright while still finding plenty of time to get lost in a good book or three.

  • With bunch of sparkly gift bags and colorful tissue, you can wrap gifts in a snap and get back to reading.
  • Pick up refrigerator cookie dough so the baking can be done in a jiffy and you can get back to reading.
  • Grab the kids and head to your favorite local bookstore for their holiday storytime. While they listen to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, you can finish your shopping because books are the perfect classy gift for any name on your list. If you’re unsure about the bookworm on your list, a bookstore giftcard means they can get the next book in their favorite series, no guessing needed!
  • If you’re shipping gifts, go to the post office at a very busy time. Plenty of time in line to read! (You’ve got the Kindle app on your phone, right? All set!)
  • Holiday guests coming to stay with you? Splurge on an hour or two of maid service to get the house ready while you sit back with your feet up and read.
  • Holiday guests coming to stay for way too long? Dig up your Starbucks gift card from last year’s Secret Santa exchange and sneak out to read in peace for a couple hours.

What are your tips and tricks for getting through the holiday season and your To Read stack at the same time? Any favorite ways you incorporate books into the merry time of year?

And wishing you all very happy holidays!

December 07, 2016   Stacey   booksellers, classics, culture, great books, hand-selling, independent bookstores, magic, Stacey, year end  
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A special holiday gift in Brooklyn

It was with great sadness that I and many others learned this week of the end-of-year closing of the classic neighborhood Brooklyn bookstore, BookCourt, which has been a neighborhood staple for 35 years. Even The New Yorker payed homage.

I lived in Brooklyn not too far from the store for many years before I moved out of the city, and it was always such a warm, wonderful place to visit, shop, or attend a book event, reading or party. Last year, I went to see my client, Aimee Wimbush-Bourque, author of BROWN EGGS AND JAM JARS and the upcoming THE SIMPLE BITES KITCHEN, there during a winter snowstorm and it was the most cozy, intimate experience being inside that place surrounded by books while she read from the book and her kids ran around enjoying themselves too while outside it was a big, fat slushy mess.

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So it was such a happy story to learn that the author and Brooklynite Emma Straub and her husband are going to be opening up a bookstore in Brooklyn called Books Are Magic (how cute is that?).  And also that they’ve received a ton of support for it from the community and others. Losing a neighborhood bookstore like BookCourt is like losing a member of your extended family. The neighborhood just won’t be the same without it.

I don’t live in Brooklyn anymore, but I look forward to visiting Books Are Magic before too long. What’s your favorite local bookstore?

December 05, 2016   Jane   Jane, year end  
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2016, what a year…and not in a good way

It’s the holiday season, right?  And so, we are all supposed to be filled with the joy of this time of year – beautiful decorations,

CC courtesy of PBS NewsHour (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode)

(CC courtesy of PBS NewsHour)

Christmas carols, food and drink and lots of parties.  Why then do I find myself so discouraged and even depressed?  The truth of the matter is that the horrible events of 2016 have simply worn me out.  I just want to bury myself in a good book so I don’t have to look at the headlines any more.

Here are just some of the terrible things that happened this year, a far from comprehensive list:

The deaths of David Bowie, Prince, Leonard Cohen, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Alan Rickman, Jose Fernandez, Christina Grimmie, Gwen Ifill, and Florence Henderson.

New Ebola cases in Africa and the Zika virus outbreak

The Istanbul Airport attack, the Bastille Day terrorist attack in Nice, France, plus the bombing in Brussels, and the ISIS attack in Jakarta.

The killings of unarmed black citizens.

The nightclub shooting in Orlando and  the Dallas police shooting,

Harambe’s killing at the Cincinnati Zoo and the Disney gator attack

California wildfires and Gatlinburg, North Carolina, wild fires, plus the most recent wild fires in Tennessee.

Brexit.

The plane in Brazil running out of fuel and crashing with the young championship soccer team aboard.

The escalating refugee crisis and the horrors in Syria.

And,  don’t get me started on the U.S. elections.

I am certainly hoping that 2017 is far, far better.  Curious, though, do you all agree that 2016 was a miserable year?  And, what are you reading to take your mind off the news?