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The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris
Note to readers, if there still are any about: I've taken a long hiatus from regular posts on this blog, for the simple reason that I've realized the dream I wrote about in my very first post and...
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Traitor's Purse by Margery Allingham (Felony and Mayhem Part 1)
Traitor's Purseby Margery Allingham(Felony & Mayhem, October 2009)Shop Indie BookstoresI will take a stand and say that the classic mysteries brought back into print by Felony & Mayhem Press...
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Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly (Felony and Mayhem Part 2)
Arrow Pointing Nowhere by Elizabeth Daly (Felony & Mayhem, May 2009)Shop Indie BookstoresAs I mentioned in the previous post, a large part of the charm of the "Vintage" mysteries published by...
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The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoetby David Mitchell(Random House, June 2010)Shop Indie BookstoresAnyone who has ever read my blog, or ever met me, stands a good chance of having heard me talk about...
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The Passage by Justin Cronin
The Passageby Justin Cronin(Ballantine, June 2010)Shop Indie BookstoresReading Justin Cronin's The Passage was a wonderfully weird experience in so many ways. For one thing, there had been...
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Old Mr. Flood by Joseph Mitchell
Old Mr. Floodby Joseph MitchellForeword by Charles McGrath(MacAdam Cage hardcover edition, April 2005)Shop Indie BookstoresA wise bookseller once taught me that right after reading something really,...
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The Sheriff of Yrnameer by Michael Rubens
The Sheriff of Yrnameerby Michael Rubens(Pantheon, August 2009)Shop Indie BookstoresIn a bit of a cheat today (come on, I've got to get outside in the sun!), I'm pasting this review in its entirety...
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April Comics Post
Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day, when fine comic shops nationwide will be giving out samples of the good stuff to all comers. In its honor, today's post is a flying tour of the comics/graphic novels...
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The Singer's Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
The Singer's Gunby Emily St. John Mandel(Unbridled Books, May 2010)Full disclosure: Emily St. John Mandel lives in Brooklyn and I often run into her at literary events; she is an extremely likeable...
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A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
A Visit from the Goon Squadby Jennifer Egan(Knopf, June 9, 2010)Shop Indie BookstoresReading this book was a little like starting a conversation out of general politeness, and discovering that you're...
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June YA Roundup
If I wrote these things more often I wouldn't have to cram multiples into one post, but my blogging is falling so far behind my reading I need to diminish the stack a bit. And I realize I've had a...
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July comics roundup
There is a disturbingly large and teetering pile of books on a chair in my kitchen. They are books that I have read in the last couple of months, that I hope to one day get around to writing up for...
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A Pitch to Booksellers: The Fall Conference
We interrupt our sporadically scheduled book reviews to bring you this highly personal pitch, from me (Jessica/Book Nerd) to the booksellers of New York City and the mid-Atlantic region.I have to...
View ArticleHey, Joe.
Joe Drabyak died on Friday. Long live Joe Drabyak.I'm having a hard time getting my head around this. I sat next to Joe at a dinner in April. We compared notes on the appetizer. Everyone said he looked...
View ArticleBBC Top 100
Aw, thanks, Russel. Now obviously the ALP and I had to test our mettle against this list. Next, I hope to post a list of this year's books.Instructions: Copy this into your NOTES. Bold those books...
View ArticleAll the Rest of the Books I Read This Year
Okay, so perhaps I was slightly overambitious, or just unorganized, thinking I would write about every book I read this year in order. Even though I felt like I didn't read nearly as much as I wanted...
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2010 Year-End Roundup, and a Call for Ideas
Here are all the books I read (that I know of) in 2010, in crude alphabetical order. This doesn't include children's picture books, cookbooks, single-issue comics, magazines, or uh, the Internet. My...
View ArticleMoving On, Moving Over
Dear readers of The Written Nerd, if there are any of you still out there,As you may have noticed, I haven't posted anything here in almost six months. This blog served a great purpose for me for five...
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Seed.
I wrote the last entry in this blog over ten years ago -- I was honestly surprised to find it's still here (thanks for saving everything, Google!). In May of 2011 the Greenlight Bookstore venture was...
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Shuffle.
Like every other bookstore I've spoken to or heard about, Greenlight has spent the past year and a half of pandemic-era retail in a state of near-constant reinvention. I could talk about the...
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Wild.
I had the pleasure of speaking with the lovely Damian Barr on Instagram Live this morning, as Greenlight was featured as Bookshop of the Month on his Literary Salon. I feel like I used to be one of...
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Ensemble.
Last week I went to a literary gala and I may be still processing it. The lovely folks at Other Press extended an invitation to their table for the PEN Gala, the annual fundraiser for PEN America's...
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Small Things.
Happy end of 2021! In years past I've often done a roundup of books read; the last one was 11 years or 6 blog posts ago. It's such a fun project to look back on the year's reading; I've been...
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Heaven.
Last week, we hosted the first event in the bookstore in almost exactly two years.I had to look up our most recent event for reference and it was eerie to read the summary notes from March 2020 -- the...
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House.
One of the best things about being a bookseller, wherever you are, is the possibility of developing relationships with authors that have the potential to go beyond fandom. Because of the serendipity...
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