Cheryl Strayed Is Official Spokesperson for Indies First
Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild, Tiny Beautiful Things, Torch and the forthcoming Brave Enough, is this year's official spokesperson for Indies First, the American Booksellers Association announced. On Small Business Saturday (November 28), independent booksellers will host authors as honorary booksellers throughout the day to help handsell favorite titles, sign books, give readings and more.
In a letter to authors and illustrators, Strayed wrote: "There are so many ways that a rich and vibrant network of independent booksellers contribute to the betterment of book culture in America, but perhaps the most important one is the support they give to authors and illustrators by handselling their books. I love that term, 'handselling.' It reminds us that humans are involved, humans with a passion for language and stories and pictures. Handselling is the bookseller at the Vermont Book Shop in Middlebury, Vermont who recently wandered the store with my nine-year-old daughter until they were both satisfied they'd found a small stack of appropriately terrifying page-turners. It's the artful window displays at Powell's Books in my hometown of Portland, Oregon that always compel me to learn more about the featured books. It's the people who put out the folding chairs for my--and your--book events at stores across the land so we can connect with readers face to face. It's the store employees who place our books prominently on the 'staff recommended' shelves that lead us to readers we might have never otherwise found....
"I'll be spending this Indies First the way I spent the first one--at Broadway Books, the beloved independent bookstore I'm fortunate enough to have in my neighborhood. Several of my local author friends and I have made it a tradition to spend a few hours in the store together, sharing book recommendations and signing our books for customers while chatting with the store owners and their staff about the art of selling books. It always feels like a party that's made even more festive by the knowledge that our colleagues across the nation are doing the same. I hope you'll be among us this year."
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Architectural firm Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands' design for Foyles' revamped flagship store on 
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The GBO said: "Andreas lives his whole life in the Austrian Alps, where he arrives as a young boy taken in by a farming family. He is a man of very few words and so, when he falls in love with Marie, he doesn't ask for her hand in marriage, but instead has some of his friends light her name at dusk across the mountain. When Marie dies in an avalanche, pregnant with their first child, Andreas' heart is broken. He leaves his valley just once more, to fight in World War II--where he is taken prisoner in the Caucasus--and returns to find that modernity has reached his remote haven."
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"What independent booksellers do isn't easy. They face frequently overwhelming odds and strains, long days and recurring doubts. It isn't an easy life. And yet, every day, they find time to read. The booksellers I know read incessantly; the backrooms and sales floors of every independent bookstore I've ever been to are a hum of 'Have you read this?' and 'What did you think of that?' No matter the financial pressures and the ongoing stresses, booksellers find time to immerse themselves in books new and old, to read deeply and passionately.
When Just Kids--Patti Smith's memoir of her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in 1960s and '70s New York City--surprised the literary world and won the 2010 National Book Award for Nonfiction, it changed the way many perceived her artistry. She was not just a poet rocker from the grassroots punk club scene and former lover of Sam Shepard. Instead, she proved to be a deliberate, observant, refreshing writer; M Train, her new memoir of musings and reminiscences about her life and travels, confirms it. No longer just a kid inhaling the artistic energy of New York, Smith is now in her late 60s and mostly alone. She lost Mapplethorpe; her much-loved husband, MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith; and her supportive brother, Todd--all in their 40s when they died. Her son and daughter are grown and straddling 30. "How did we get so damn old, I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair," she reflects in her Greenwich Village apartment. "I [miss] that particular version of me, the one who was feverish, impious. She has flown." Writing is her solace. Coffee is her fuel. Her apartment is a mess of manuscript drafts and unfinished canvases, but it is a temple to "the centrality of work in a life.... Here is joy and neglect. A little mescal. A little jacking off, but mostly just work."