Black Bear Blog

Maurice Sendak, RIP

We were sad to hear about the death of Maurice Sendak. But he will live forever on our shelves! 

Interesting reading:

Death of Illustrator Maurice Sendak Felt in the Opera World, Too

Remembering Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak has died. How Sad Should I Be?

Sharon Raines

Sharon Raines will be in the store tomorrow from 1:00 pm until 4:00 pm signing her book Letters to Mom. 

Sharon has been writing since the 6th grade when she won her first story contest. Since then she has been published in several magazines and has written three books. 

When not writing, Sharon can be found living 'happily ever after' with her husband Frank.

Insurgent!

The second book in Veronica Roth's Divergent is now on our shelves. It is called Insurgent and it has been selling very well, so I guess a lot of you have been waiting for it.

I hear great things about Divergent, so these are on my reading list. I'm amazed by the quality of the writing in "Young Adult" books right now, and I've been selling lots of them to adults who must feel the same way. There are several very good series that we are currently recommending. They are all on the "cake stand" as you come in our door. If you can't find something you like there, we have one of best staff's in the store's history right now, so I am sure they can match you up with something you'll love.

We were happy to see a lot of new faces in the store this week. I guess the "summer people" are arriving. We are looking forward to a fun summer and hope you'll consider us one of your regular Boone haunts!

Finally, it's Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you!

New Spring Books and Hunger Games Withdrawal

One of the best things about spring is the spring book list. You can always count on the fact that at least one of your favorite authors will have a new book on the spring list.

Here's the current top ten from the NYT best seller list:

The Innocent by David Balducci: A hitman who has become a target of the government rescues a teenage girl whose parents have been murdered and who may be at the center of a dangerous conspiracy.

The Witness by Nora Roberts: A programmer hides from the Russian mob in the Ozarks.

Calico Joe by John Grisham: A pitcher beans a promising rookie, ending both their careers; years later, the pitcher’s son brings them together.

Unnatural Acts by Stuart Woods: The New York lawyer Stone Barrington becomes involved in the family problems of a billionaire hedge fund manager.

Guilty Wives by James Patterson: Four friends in Monte Carlo for a luxurious girls’ vacation find themselves in prison, accused of a crime.

The Lost Years by Mary Higgins Clark: A biblical scholar who made an amazing discovery is murdered.

What Doesn't Kill You by Iris Johansen: A Hong Kong woman who works for the C.I.A. searches for a deadly formula while she fights to save her son.

Come Home by Lisa Scottoline: A woman joins with her estranged former stepdaughter to investigate the possible murder of her ex-husband.

SACRe Bleu by Christopher Moore: (Gorgeous book!) Vincent van Gogh's friends in the 19th century Parisian art world investigate his suicide.

The Shoemaker's Wife by Adriana Trigiani: Childhood sweethearts in turn-of-the-20th-century Italy meet again in America.

And, of course, Stephen King is on every new book list. This time there's The Wind Through the Keyhole, the latest Dark Tower book.

If you're in the mood for something more local, Peggy Poe Stern has a new book, Mountain Gorilla, the third book of the Laine's Beech Mountain Story. We are in the process of booking a signing with Peggy. Stay tuned for more information. Also, Ron Rash's new novel The Cove has been getting rave reviews. That is on the list of books that I hope will help me with with Hunger Games withdrawal.

Speaking of which, I have one more suggestion to add to the "If you liked The Hunger Games..." list. The Veronia Roth series has been suggested to me by a member of our crack bookselling team (not that they are ON crack, just that you have to be REALLY good to work at Black Bear) as the best way to cope with "I'm done with the Hunger Games" grief. The first book is Divergent. Distopian Chicago. (I don't know. That sounds redundant to me.) The bad news? It's a triology and there are only two of them. I can't imagine how the people who read the Hunger Games triology as the books came out managed to survive.

If nothing in this list appeals to you? First of all, you are hard to please! But come on in and we'll match you up with something.

In other news: We are thinking about having a Hunger Games book club that would meet once a week over the summer. We would get together to eat, drink and talk about the layers upon layers of wonderful writing. If that sounds like your idea of a good time, please write a note with your email address in the combox. Also, I would like to teach a writing course to high school and young adult people with writing ambitions. It would be free because you would be my guinea pigs. It would also meet once a week. If you are interested in that, leave your email in the combox.

That's all for now.

Holly Bellebuono at the Store Today

Holly Bellebuono will be at the store today from 11:30 until 12:30 to sign her book "The Essential Herbal for Natural Health." Holly is an award-winning herbalist of seventeen years. She's taught, mentored, lectured, and published articles for Appalachian Voices, Carolina Mountain Living, United Plant Savers Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation, and Martha's Vineyard Magazine. She studied Therapeutic Herbalism with Welsh herbalist David Hoffmann and with natives of Appalachia, learning nearly forgotten folk healing methods. Holly's Martha's Vineyard business, Vineyard Herbs, provides women's herbal therapy for a global clientele.

The book is lovely and we are very lucky to have Holly in the area! Please stop by and welcome her, and pick up a signed copy of the book. If you already have one, it would make a very nice gift.

After The Hunger Games

As our Hunger Games readers know, some of the best writing out there right now can be found in the Young Adult section. We really like the Matched triology, so if you loved Hunger Games, you should check that out. There are quite a number of YA dystopian novels. (A couple of years ago we used to say, "The Vampire Section, formerly known as Young Adults. Now, it's the Dystopian Section.) Also the Veronica Roth series ("Divergent" and "Insurgent") is good, as is Michael Grant's Gone.

I haven't read it yet, but I'm very drawn to Michael Norththrop's Trapped. That's going to be next on my list. (Maybe because I need a break from dystopia.) Here's a synopsis from Northrop's website:

“Some snow days dump so much snow that only Stephen King could enjoy them. Trapped is narrated by a 15-year-old basketball player who’s trapped with six classmates — four other boys and two girls — in their rural New England high school while it snows for an entire week. The snow knocks out power, heat and, perhaps worst of all, cellphones. The compelling plot of this young-adult novel is more The Breakfast Club than Lord of the Flies. Author Michael Northrop deftly describes teens who are tested by the endless snow: ‘It wasn’t a storm; it was whatever comes after that.’ “

I've been a sucker for a good YA disaster novel since I first read The Wave by Pearl S. Buck.

That's just a small list. Come over to the store and check out our YA displays. And if you've read a good one that we haven't yet discovered, let us know!

Thanks to All the Hunger Games Particpants!

Hunger Games Night was a great success! Thanks to everyone who showed up and congratulations to costume contest winners Destiny Jenkins and Sarah Phillips. Check out our Facebook page for pictures.

If you missed it, we're planning to do it again. Make sure you're on our email list so you won't miss out.

If you have finished The Hunger Games triology and don't know what to read next, just come in and ask us. We have a large assortment of books that we ordered just for that purpose and we'd be happy to match you up  with one. There are a lot of great YA novels out right now and adults are enjoying them, too. We've come a long way from Nancy Drew and her coupe.

Hope to see you soon!

The Hungry Games

I don't know about the rest of you, but The Hunger Games made me ... hungry! I wanted to taste everything from Prim's goat cheese to the Capitol's lamb stew with plums. If you felt the same way, then you need to come to Hunger Games Night this Friday from 6-9 pm. For the next couple of days, I am going to be cooking recipes from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. It remains to be seen whether or not I will be brave enough to attempt the lamb stew, but there will be goat cheese! So come on out and sample the food. (And, of course, we do sell the cookbook!)

What Our Bookstore "Wants" to Be

 It's not easy being a book store in the year 2012.

This morning I've read two separate online reviews of our store (probably written by the same person) that scolded us because we "don't know what they want to be." The reviewer said, "They don't know whether they want to be a new book store, a used book store or a yarn store." So in case any of you are thinking the same thing, let me address that issue. The fact is, we know exactly what we want to be. We want to be in business.

When my husband and I bought Black Bear Books in November of 2009, the former owner told us, "You're going to have to be a book store and something else. Book stores are not making it." We took his advice. We tried several "something else's" but couldn't find anything that worked. We were a book store and a coffee shop, but we were going under with that combo, no matter how much everyone loved it. We ended up with yarn because we had rented a corner of our store to a local yarn shop, and when the owner decided to retire, we bought her out. Between the books, the coffee and the yarn, we were able to survive.

I must say, we have never suffered from a lack of love. Everyone loves our book store. (Well, except for the guy who wrote the review(s). People love to browse in book stores. I think it's one of the great pleasures of life. But if you want to continue to have that pleasure, you can't just love to browse. You have to occasionally buy some books.

I don't say this because I want to add a room to my house. (Owning a book store is a good way to go broke, but not a good way to get rich.) I say it because I don't want to live in a town without a book store. I have some experience at this, since I live in Los Angeles part of the year. With the exception of a few scattered Barnes & Nobles (and a couple of great indies, long may they live!) Los Angeles is now a city without book stores. It used to have the greatest book stores in the world, like Dutton's, and the malls always had at least one really nice book store. Now the malls have really pretty empty stores where the book stores used to be. And that's what we at Black Bear do NOT want to be.

We have a yarn corner because people are knitting these days, it seems, more than they're reading. And knitting can't be downloaded into an e-book. (My manager tells me that we have lost at least 20% of our business since e-books became popular.) We sell used books because people like them and buy them. Our store is what it is today because it was the only way we could survive. (You'll note that we are the last book store standing, so apparently we were right.) 

Don't get me wrong. What I want the store to be is the world's greatest book store, like the one in You've Got Mail. (You know, the one that went out of business.) I'd love to have three copies of any book you could ask for. I'd like the used books to be in an annex two stores down, right next to the yarn shop. I'd like to have every top author come to sign at our store. (But try to get that when you're two hours away from an airport!) I'd like to still have a coffee shop. (Long story, we'll talk.) The list of what I'd like us to have would wrap around the mall. However, it's 2012 and people don't buy books like they used to. It's 2012 and there was no winter, which was devastating to all the local businesses and all the people in town who depend on skiers to get through the winter. It's 2012 and though the economy is improving, we haven't seen much of that around here. I can't fault my customers for not buying as many books as they used to, but I have to deal with the reality of where that leaves us.

We are so grateful to our loyal customers. We simply would not be here any more without you. And we are going to do our best to be the best book store we can be. But we also have to do whatever it takes to stay open, so you won't have to walk through the mall and look at the empty store where we used to be.

Countdown to Hunger Games Night!

Four more days! We are already hearing from people who are planning their costumes and I'm putting together the grocery list for the District 12 refreshments. No, we will not be serving lamb stew. But we will be serving several recipes from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook. I think the "Blueberry and White Chocolate Chip Muffintops" sound pretty good. Not quite so sure about the "Dandelion Greens with Currants and Pine Nuts," but at least we'll find out whether or not we can eat our front yards, which would come in handy if grocery prices keep going up!

In other news: just like the daffodils, the spring books are starting to come out! We'll be ordering in the next couple of weeks and if there's anything you'd like us to put on the list, just tell someone at the counter.

In yarn news: we are about to place a large order with Cascade Yarn. We saw their representative about a month ago and we were very impressed by their selection. We'll let you know here when it comes in.