Notes: Insurance Woes; BPRNE Honors Porter Square Books
Providing health insurance for employees is a challenge small businesses face nationwide. The San Jose Mercury News examined the problem in Santa Cruz, Calif., noting: "With health insurance premiums going up 28%, the owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz is wondering how long she will be able to offer health benefits to employees. . . . Health insurance has helped with employee retention--some workers have been with Bookstore Santa Cruz for 30 years--but the costs are always on the rise."
"Every year we see double-digit increases," said owner Casey Coonerty Protti. "It's a tradeoff between health care or expanding jobs."
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Congratulations to Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass., which has won the Independent Spirit Award, sponsored by the Book Publishers Representatives of New England and given to the bookstore that "through creative marketing and high energy devotion to books, best represents the independent spirit of New England bookselling." BPRNE cited owners Jane Dawson, Jane Jacobs and Dale Szczeblowski and "a dedicated staff of great booksellers."
The award will be presented at the NEIBA Awards Luncheon in Hartford, Conn., on Thursday, October 1, during the association's trade show. Three days later, on October 4, Porter Square Books turns five.
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"Meet the Bookseller" is a new video series featured on the blog at Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., to "introduce some of our charismatic and talented staff to the world of the Internet." Up first is "Vroman's institution Mr. Steve Ross."
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"What the heck is IndieBound?" asked a man recently at the Next Chapter Bookshop, Mequon, Wis. Next Chapter's blog eloquently answered the question for other customers who might also be wondering: "The main thing to remember when you see the IndieBound logo in our store or any other bookstore's window is that it means shopping there supports local businesses--and chances are there are some really cool, knowledgeable booksellers inside who are happy to help you find your next favorite read."
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As a new school year begins, the University of Arizona Daily Wildcat paid tribute to three bookstores--Antigone Books, the Book Stop and Revolutionary Grounds--that "have been providing Tucson with specialized books and gifts for a combined total of nearly ninety years. Each with its own bent and niche audience, the Fourth Avenue booksellers have something for every reader, from the most reluctant to the most rabid and from the most mainstream to the most revolutionary."
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In other back-to-school news, the Daily Orange reported that Syracuse University Bookstore is experimenting with the concept of "traveling vendors."
A new Bed Bath & Beyond stall in bookshop "is the pilot in a series of 'pop-up' stores that will set up shop over the course of the fall semester," according to the Daily Orange. "The idea of the pop-up shops is to have several different vendors move through the bookstore quickly. Bed Bath & Beyond will be in the store until Sept. 11. The duration of a store's stay will vary. Some vendors will stay for several weeks while others will be available for as few as two days."
Betsy English, director of the SU Bookstore, explained that the goal is to "show students they don't need to leave campus to find the products they need."
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Calling it a "David versus Goliath" matchup, English style, the New York Times reported on a contentious public debate between Marc Harrison--who ran Ellwood Books, Salisbury, England, until it closed last year due to mortgage problems--and "Oxfam bookstore, which opened not quite two years ago on a main shopping street nearby and is one of 130 Oxfam secondhand bookstores now operating around the country."
A Salisbury Journal article about Harrison, headlined "Oxfam killed my bookshop," has become a British news media sensation. Oxfam, which spends more than $600 million a year on charitable causes, is now "the largest secondhand book dealer in Europe, which isn’t saying a lot, if you consider how few secondhand booksellers have more than a single shop, much less 130," the Times noted. Nevertheless, it grosses "$130 million from its 700 retail stores, $32 million of that from its bookshops."
"Oxfam is not shutting down secondhand booksellers," countered David McCullough, director of trading for Oxfam. "Independent candle makers don’t have the business they once had either. And if someone’s business model is so marginal that an Oxfam shop opening nearby decimates it, then we are not the problem."
McCullough also observed: "There is this English underdog thing going on here--the beleaguered bookseller in his little shop devoured by Oxfam from the high street. But I also think it’s a very English story because of what new technologies have done to the traditional English way of life, to the ideal of the English town with the secondhand bookshop everybody loves but most people never actually go into."
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Good news in the book business is always welcome. The Guardian reported that the recently held Edinburgh International Book Festival "sold nearly 80% of all its tickets for more than 750 events this year . . . The book festival, held chiefly in a village of tents in the New Town, was also larger than last year when it sold 75% of its tickets, with 10,000 more tickets on sale."
Bookshops "on site also saw a 'significant upturn,' the festival said, despite the difficult economic climate and often poor weather this summer. Andrew Coulton, the event's administrative director, said the event had had an 'excellent year,'" the Guardian wrote.
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The New York Times visited E. L. Doctorow's home in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and seemed releieved to report that, unlike the squalid living quarters of the protagonists in his latest novel, Homer & Langley, "a visit to the plain two-story home here that he shares with his wife, Helen, on a quiet street overlooking a cove, dispels that idea. The rooms are as serene as the setting; the sitting room coffee table holds only a few books stacked just so."
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Whenever dictionaries add new words, some out-of-fashion terms must ride off into the lexicographical sunset. But the New Yorker's Book Bench blog advised that "there are some perfect words, words in need of a voice box" and pointed readers to Save the Words, a website that offers visitors a chance to adopt endangered terms.
Peer at a seahorse, briefly hold one up to the light, and you will see a most unlikely creature, something that you would hardly believe was real were it not lying there in the palm of your hand, squirming for water. Should we presume these odd-looking creatures were designed by a mischievous god who had some time on her hands? Rummaging through a box labeled "spare parts" she finds a horse's head and, feeling a desire for experimentation, places it on top of the pouched torso of a kangaroo. This playful god adds a pair of swiveling chameleon eyes and the prehensile tail of a tree-dwelling monkey for embellishment--then stands back to admire her work. Not bad, but how about a suit of magical color-changing armor, a perfect fit, and a crown borrowed from a fairy princess, shaped as intricately and uniquely as a human fingerprint? Shrink it all down to the size of a chess piece and the new creature is complete.
At one point in this delightful book, Tod Davies says, "Paying attention to what's right in front of you is what life is about. No other way." Cooking with what you've got is part of that worldview, and her aim is to help you figure out how to do that and have fun. She doesn't present recipes as much as food possibilities. There are instructions, yes, but they're open to interpretation and imagination. When she decides to cook a perfect lamb chop, she follows Nigel Slater's directions, then adds some steamed kale, alongside diced tomatoes marinated in balsamic vinegar, a bit of marjoram and salt. "The tomato juice sloshed deliciously into the kale, but not quite into the lamb . . . quarter of lemon on the side to squeeze over the whole at will. Glass of Spanish Tempranillo. Ripe figs for dessert. One of the most utterly delicious solitary dinners I've ever had. Thank you, Nigel Slater." Or this, when talking about a salad of chopped parsley, celery leaf, tarragon, tomatoes and avocado, which she served with bucatini with sage and garlic: "That kind of salad is really good arranged in a crescent on a plate covered otherwise by some kind of simple pasta dish. . . . The vinaigrette kind of sloshes under the noodles and adds another dimension which can be very satisfying, especially if you have a glass if wine, too." Obviously, sloshing foods (and a glass of wine) figure heavily into her meals, and why not? Isn't that the way most of us experience food, at least by the third bite?