In honor of the first full week of classes at Brooklyn College, we will open at 8:00am, this Monday through Friday. We will also be open on Sundays until September 19th. After that, it's back to normal hours. We have a store of charming new employees, too. Plus, the charming old ones.
We have all your textbooks at the best prices, plus stationery and totebags. Also, rental. And haiku!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Will Eisner: A Dreamer's Life in Comics, Michael Schumacher
It is officially rush. As the fall semester approaches and our book-army works at shuttling books back and forth all over the store, I find myself thinking about Will Eisner's work ethic. The man was seriously disciplined. Just reading about his life leaves me exhausted.
In addition to everything Eisner, this biography also generally charts comics from its Golden Age through the appearance of the CCA, underground comix and the invention of the graphic novel. Aside from early chapters about his childhood, the second half of A Dreamer's Life was most interesting for detailing Eisner the active, engaged old master. From the business acumen that protected his legacy to PS to his classes at SVA and many, many autobiographical masterpieces, Eisner had plans that begat plans. Also, the enthusiasm and backbone to work them all into fruition. Ultimately, the best part about him as a creator is how much of a fan he is. He never stopped learning about and loving comics.
So, pretty much the greatest. Will Eisner: A Dreamer's Life in Comics will be in stores November 9, 2010.
In addition to everything Eisner, this biography also generally charts comics from its Golden Age through the appearance of the CCA, underground comix and the invention of the graphic novel. Aside from early chapters about his childhood, the second half of A Dreamer's Life was most interesting for detailing Eisner the active, engaged old master. From the business acumen that protected his legacy to PS to his classes at SVA and many, many autobiographical masterpieces, Eisner had plans that begat plans. Also, the enthusiasm and backbone to work them all into fruition. Ultimately, the best part about him as a creator is how much of a fan he is. He never stopped learning about and loving comics.
So, pretty much the greatest. Will Eisner: A Dreamer's Life in Comics will be in stores November 9, 2010.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Gettin' em while they're young

(Via Quill and Quire's post: Creepy Book Pimps Out Ralph Lauren Clothes to Tots.)
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Read a book, defend equality

*20 classic works of gay literature
[Image from the Flickr feed of BlackHawkTraffic, generously licensed under Creative Commons.]
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Shakespeare & Co. DOES have a great sex books table

[Image from the Flickr of Rachel Kramer Bussel, generously licensed under Creative Commons.]
Kill your idols

Another fave quote: "The MFA writing system, with its mechanisms of circulating popularity and fashionableness, leans heavily on the easily imitable."
Check it. The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers.
[Image from the Flickr feed of Steve Rhodes, generously licensed under Creative Commons]
Monday, August 9, 2010
OH MY GOD RUN

There's many, many more macabre examples here at Pink Tentacle. As you glance through all these, remember these are all from children's literature. For extremely terrified children.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Kraken, by China Miéville

Did I mention he's got awesome tats and piercings? I'm pretty sure no piece has ever been published on Miéville that doesn't mention either that or the fact that he's apparently totally ripped. It's a requirement for these sorts of things.
So: Genre fiction superstar.
Kraken is, on the head of things, a book you've read before. "Urban Fantasy" conjures up a certain subset of the genre with its own rules and conventions. Boy or girl with wrenchingly normal life discovers that the world (or the city; or, more often, London) is, in fact, teeming with magical creatures and sorcerers and oddities of all sorts. Or just vampires, primarily, but that counts, too. At first I wasn't terribly impressed; what makes Kraken is how refreshingly light it is. I'll explain: Not "easy reading" light, and since this is a book with Miéville's name on the cover, it's got a sprawling, byzantine plot with an equally sprawling cast of characters. No, after the weighty downers of Perdido Street Station and The City & The City, Kraken unravels like a black comedy. It's Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels with wizards. Kraken approaches the well-trod genre with a sense of humor, even though the tension -- and the novel is, essentially, a very long chase scene -- remains fairly taut throughout.
The maturity that Miéville displayed in The City & The City is in full effect here; his prose gets leaner and less purple with each outing. Compare to Perdido Street Station and you'll see what I mean. The pacing is well-handled, which is no feat juggling between three or four plots. Characterization could bear to be a little less lean, which is disappointing after the really excellent portrayal of the lead character in The City & The City, but one supposes that the author has an awful lot on his plate with so many characters running around magical London.
Not all is quite right: A few gags fall short; while the Tattoo's eerie weirdness is off-set, successfully, by the oddball goonishness of him and his henchmen (like I said, think "British gangster flick" and you've just about got it), the magically functioning Star Trek phaser probably would have been better off showing up for a scene and going away instead of popping up again, and again, and again. The three sub-plots that form the bulk of the narrative advance unevenly and don't quite meet up in any satisfactory way.
Still, Kraken solid all the way through, and is maybe most impressive for the dramatic shift in tone from what I, at least, was used to seeing from Miéville.
Did I mention he's like a Communist rock star with awesome tattoos? They won't let me publish this if I don't.
The iPad's Secret Bestsellers
Come on, Apple! Why so prudish? Erotica is a perfectly legitimate literary genre. Stop selling books to people and then making them feel creepy for buying them.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Here's a cute little widget

*Book Depository real-time sales map
Friday, August 6, 2010
Care to make a wager on that?

*William Hill: 2010 Man Booker Prize odds
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Books for people who like weird dares

Wired: "One Man's Journey into Stunt Books", by Matthew Honan
[Image from Wikimedia Commons, by User: Rumata. I also really kinda wanted to use this ridiculous one, but it was too blurry.]
Big-box bookstore chain for sale, slightly used

In other book news: the superlative Christopher Hitchens talks about his cancer diagnosis, and Justin Bieber tells his publisher to stop telling people his new book is a memoir.
[Image of the Apocalypse taken from Wikimedia Commons.]
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Inquire within

If you're a Brooklyn College student or are just interested in working with us here in Brooklyn, you can contact me directly at davidm@shakespeare-nyc.com. Or if your life is oriented more Manhattan-wards you can e-mail our general employment address at emp@shakespeare-nyc.com. If you've got any questions, you can e-mail me, or even post them here as comments.
(I really wanted to use this image for our help-wanted advertisement.)
[Image taken from the Flickr feed of Michael Carian, generously licensed under Creative Commons.]
Diamonds for Penguins

What was the world like when Penguin started publishing? Answer: pretty crappy. In 1935 the world was suffering a pretty severe recession and in North America in particular the Dust Bowl had ruined the livelihoods of many across the continent. And in Europe, some dude named Hitler had just made an announcement that Germany was going to start re-arming itself. Penguin founder Sir Allen Lane had the brainwave to make great literature accessible to the average reader on the street by offering well-made but inexpensive editions through unusual outlets like train stations and magazine stands. He wanted to make books as easy to purchase as cigarettes (although these days a pack of cigarettes will probably run you more than many paperbacks). Traditional publishers at that point all thought he was a crazy person, but his almost immediate success proved them all wrong.
Also, 75th anniversary? What is that, Plutonium? Unobtainium? Turns out it's diamonds.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Word of mouth
Hey! First it was New York magazine, and now it's the New York Observer giving Shakespeare & Co. a shout-out for the good prices we pay on used books. The Observer became my favorite New York paper a while back when the legendary Andrew Sarris was reviewing movies for them (which I guess he doesn't do any more?) So, pretty cool for us, right?
Toy Story 3, by Cormac McCarthy

Monday, August 2, 2010
Winner and still champion

Also, what the heck is Book Thug Nation?
Girls To The Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, Sara Marcus
"Riot Grrrl, by encouraging young girls to turn their anger outward, taught a crucial lesson: Always ask, Is there something wrong not with me but with the world at large? It also forced us to confront a second question: Once we've found our rage, where do we go from there?
While absolutely a history of Riot Grrrl and seminal bands deeply involved with and responsible for the subculture, Girls To The Front is also about every girl ever. It is a credit to this book how uncomfortable I was reading it. Marcus writes, "I reconnected with my own rage while writing this book." And oh God, me too. The galley I read has circulated among five other people in the month's time it's taken to process my impressions and here's why: Marcus never loses sight of what made its message of empowerment and self-expression important to so many. This is a thoughtful, careful exploration of that cultural moment. And it's a taut, visceral read.
It's not just the good times, either. Along with media appropriation (even respectful coverage was reshaped as a knife in the back by editors in the time it took to go to press), Marcus meets headlong the class/cultural/group politics that accumulate to divide participants. It would be easy to refer to that splintering as the end of everything except it's less rise and fall, more creation and commodification. In one form or another, someone is always discovering this message, for the first time, and being empowered by it. And that's a serious legacy which has long deserved a book like this. Coming to bookstores September 28th.
Additional resources:
GIRLS TO THE FRONT FACEBOOK PAGE
Slate Interview with Sara Marcus & Marisa Meltzer
Kathleen Hanna's Blog
Tobi Vail's Blog
While absolutely a history of Riot Grrrl and seminal bands deeply involved with and responsible for the subculture, Girls To The Front is also about every girl ever. It is a credit to this book how uncomfortable I was reading it. Marcus writes, "I reconnected with my own rage while writing this book." And oh God, me too. The galley I read has circulated among five other people in the month's time it's taken to process my impressions and here's why: Marcus never loses sight of what made its message of empowerment and self-expression important to so many. This is a thoughtful, careful exploration of that cultural moment. And it's a taut, visceral read.
It's not just the good times, either. Along with media appropriation (even respectful coverage was reshaped as a knife in the back by editors in the time it took to go to press), Marcus meets headlong the class/cultural/group politics that accumulate to divide participants. It would be easy to refer to that splintering as the end of everything except it's less rise and fall, more creation and commodification. In one form or another, someone is always discovering this message, for the first time, and being empowered by it. And that's a serious legacy which has long deserved a book like this. Coming to bookstores September 28th.
Additional resources:
GIRLS TO THE FRONT FACEBOOK PAGE
Slate Interview with Sara Marcus & Marisa Meltzer
Kathleen Hanna's Blog
Tobi Vail's Blog
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