Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A New Bookstore With Only Good Books


While recently in NYC I had the chance to visit 192 Books in Chelsea, a new bookstore that can't be any larger than Main Street's front room. What impressed me most about my visit was that every single book in the store seemed to have been chosen by someone with taste. There were no NASCAR cookbooks, no soap opera biographies, no books about UFO abductees or terrible Da Vinci Code knockoffs in sight. The history shelf only consisted of 100 titles or so, but every book on it looked interesting and worth reading.

Buoyed by my visit to this bonsai bookstore -- like Powell's, only smaller! -- the staff and I have decided to devote just as much of our attention to new books as to used ones. Our new book selection has doubled in the last two months, and, over the next four to six months, we'll expand it again, until we have most major new releases in house, plus a selected backlist of books we're always asked for, but seldom see second hand. All new books will still 20% off Canadian list price, as will special orders. We can now order any book currently in print in North America, and hope to add one or two UK-based distributors in the near future, for hard-to-find British mysteries and science fiction.

As always, if you have comments or queries, please get in touch; we are always happy to hear from you.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Wild Thing, I Think You Move Me


Special fur-covered edition of Dave Eggers' The Wild Things, loosely based on the Spike Jonze screenplay loosely based on Maurice Sendak's fondly-remembered-from-childhood picture book. Not available from PFB -- as with most of their limited edition releases, McSweeney's is selling this one themselves, but we'll have the regular trade edition by the middle of next week.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Stephen King's "The Cannibals"


70 page PDF of lost 1980s King typescript available for free download, courtesy SK.com. New SK doorstop -- 100 characters! 1000+ pages! -- on the way in early November.

Saturday, October 3, 2009

New Dispatches From The Land of Molecular Gastronomy


2008's best cookbook, now available in a relatively affordable ($50 CDN, after our standard 20% discount) trade hardcover edition.

Heston Blumenthal's magnum opus, a blend of autobiography, full-color food porn, recipes for oak tree essence, Bacon and Scrambled Egg Ice Cream, "jelly of orange and beetroot," snail porridge, etc., and 100+ pages of kitchen science (detailed instructions for working with vacuum sealers, liquid nitrogen, agar, dehydrators, centrifuges, etc. etc. etc.). Plus illustrations by Dave McKean.

Blumenthal, whose Fat Duck earned three Michelin stars in 2004, never went to cooking school; he's positive proof that genuine fascination counts for more than education.