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Let’s make this an Independent Bookstore Day challenge …
And don’t worry. Amazon will do just fine Today is Independent Bookstore Day, which, sadly, we need. Really, it’s independent bookstores that we need. And local Mom and Pops. And downtowns. And you get all this already. And you know why they’re endangered. And, no, it’s not because we don’t want them. We do. But we don’t recognize our own long-term interests. (In case you don’t, let me direct you to this eye-opening story: “Kansas Bookshop’s Fight with Amazon is About More Than the Price of Books.”) So here’s the cure: Buy at least one book today from a local independent bookstore. It’s a start. Let’s make it a challenge.…
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4 Thoughts as Fitzgerald’s “Paradise” Turns 100
A first novel still perplexing and astonishing— and even prescient 1st month of F. Scott Fitzgerald reading challenge, 1st novel, This Side of Paradise (1920) “Amory Blaine inherited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that made him worth while,” begins This Side of Paradise, and we are off and running. Paradise turns 100 this year and, not surprisingly, this calls for a new “Collector’s Edition” of F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s first and indeed all his five novels (well, 4½) by his old publisher Scribner, now part of Simon & Schuster. The 100th anniversary of a great author’s first work is certainly cause for celebration, though it seems…