The About New York column in Saturday's New York Times told
the story of bookseller Kurt Thometz, who bought a brownstone in Harlem
from a rare book dealer--a man who liked him so much he gave him a
second mortgage--and now lives there with his wife and son and runs Jumel Terrace Books.
The store specializes in local history and African and African-American
literature and is "open by invitation, appointment, or serendipity," as
the sign in the window elegantly says.
Thometz came to New York from Minnesota in 1972. Instead of going to
college, "I went to Book Row," he said, arguably getting a better
education than he might have otherwise. He worked at the Strand, University Place Bookstore and
the Madison Avenue Bookshop, then was the private librarian to
Brooke Astor, Diana Vreeland, Leonard Lauder, Felix Rohatyn and some
members of the Newhouse family, among others.
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In an unusual event, the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate--the
decorative arts museum on the du Pont estate in Wilmington, Del.--is
celebrating children's author Jane Yolen's body of work in an
exhibition that opens September 15 and runs until mid-July 2008.
More than 50 of Yolen's nearly 300 books will be highlighted, including
Owl Moon, which won the Caldecott Medal 20 years ago, and each
month the museum will recommend and highlight one of Yolen's
titles. Events in conjunction with the exhibition, called K Is for
Kids, will have literacy as a theme and include oral storytelling,
theater presentations and performances, workshops for teachers and
librarians and information about the history of children's books and
reading. Yolen will serve as honorary ambassador for the exhibition.
The museum will host Yolen for a weekend of events April 18-20, 2008.
The exhibit is the first of its kind put on by the Winterthur Museum and will include materials from the museum's collection.
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The remainder book show held in Atlanta, Ga., over the weekend has a name: the Great American Bargain Book Show, or GABBS, Bargain Book News
reported. Larry May, who owns the show with his wife, Valerie, and also
puts on the Spring Book Show, in Atlanta, too, said that the show's slogan
will be "GABBS: talk it up!"
The winner of the show-naming contest was Shayne Hix of Bluegrass Books
in Bowling Green, Ky. He won an all-expenses-paid trip for two to
Atlanta.
GABBS is the former Onboard Show, which the Mays bought and moved to Atlanta from Nashville, Tenn.
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In
a continuing effort to diversify, bargain book company Daedalus Books
& Music, Columbia, Md., recently added DVDs to its playlist, and
now offers books, CDs and DVDs wholesale and retail, online, via
catalogues and in two retail sites, the Baltimore Examiner
reported.
"On its mailing list, the store maintains 600,000 subscribers while
shipping out about 9 million catalogs a year," the Examiner
wrote. "Conversely, about 30
percent of Daedalus’ total business is conducted on the wholesale side,
a number that [v-p and co-founder Helaine] Harris expects to grow. Annually, the
company sells about
5 million books, 7 million CDs and an increasing number of DVDs."
Daedalus also has two retail outlets, one at its headquarters in
Columbia and the other at Belvedere Square in Baltimore, both with
about 10,000 square feet of space.
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Here's one way to get your books into bookstores.
Operating
on the theory that surreptitiously planting 300 copies of a free book
on the shelves of London bookshops is "almost the opposite of
shoplifting," Steve Lowe, director of publisher Aquarium, told the Times that copies of The Idiocy of Idears
by an unnamed author now rest "in the fiction, poetry, art, philosophy
and travel sections of Waterstones, Borders, Foyles and Blackwells in
Central London."
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The Barnes & Noble at Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pa., is considering expanding as part of Drexel's master plan, the
Triangle
reported. The master plan aims, among other things, to add retail
and food operations on campus, so that students will "finally be able
to buy everything from groceries to art supplies, without having to
take a hike to 40th Street or Center City."
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Valerie Block is the author of three novels, Was It Something I Said?
(SoHo Press, 1998), None of Your Business (Ballantine, 2003) and, released last month, Don't
Make a Scene (Ballantine, $24.95, 9780345461858/0345461851), a fresh comedy of manners for movie lovers
mystified by real life. She lives in Montclair, N.J., with her husband,
the writer Alexis Romay. She can be reached at