"I have gone to this [bookshop] for years, always finding the one book I wanted -- and then three more I hadn't known I wanted . . ."BRAVO Presents: THE REAL BOOKSELLERS OF INGHAM COUNTY
--Mary Ann Shaffer
(Camera pans Double D's library and settles on Stoner Bill and Double D sitting in comfortable chairs.)
Stoner Bill: (squinting) Hey Dudes and Dudettes! Welcome to Bravo Channel's latest addition to their faux reality show juggernaut, The Real Booksellers of Ingham County. Apparently, The Bravo Channel already has every surgically enhanced, bottle blond in a low cut cocktail dress under contract, so they've purchased Book Talkers and our eternal souls to launch us as their newest reality TV show. In future episodes, we will intersperse our book reviews and author interviews with contrived situations that we will present as real life problems . . .
Double D: (snoring) Dude, you're boring all two of our fans to death. Give it a rest. These are readers. They're smart. They know this stuff is made up. Sheesh. Our first segment on tonight's show is about what's hot in the wide world of books. Lean In (9780385349949) 24.95 by Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook is the #1 title in our universe and, heck, probably in a few parallel universes too. Second on our bestseller list, Pat Summitt, the winningest coach in women's college basketball history, shares the story of her fight against early-onset Alzheimer's disease in Sum It Up (9780385346870) 28.00. Rounding out the top three in non-fiction at Partners, we have The FastDiet (9781476734941) 24.00 by Michael Mosley, which is better than the slow diet . . . or something.
Stoner Bill: Wasn't Mosley the Washington Redskins' placekicker for like forever? (Double D shakes his head 'no'). Oh well, last night I'm watching this thing about the nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan that nearly blew up a couple of years ago on Frontline. It reminded me of Ruth Ozeki's new one, A Tale for the Time Being (9780670026630) 28.95 'cuz the main character finds a Hello Kitty lunchbox washed ashore that she thinks is debris from the tsunami that took out the power station. She's a pretty awesome writer and she deserves a bigger audience.
Double D: I'm sorry Bill. We were looking for: Mark Mosley. Mark. Mosley. By the way, I'm reading an outstanding new post-apocalyptic novel called Wool (9781476733951) 15.00 by Hugh Howey right now. The author is a former bookseller who wrote it on his lunch breaks, self-published it as a serial e-book, and it was so successful that Simon & Schuster has reprinted it in one volume . . .
Henry: (running and out of breath) Oh, no! Bill, come quick. There's a woman news anchor from Fox News trapped in a well. She said if you save her, she will be your butler for life and she will be a welcome addition to our show.
Odds & Sods
Awooga! Awooga! Attention All Old Sea Captains! The new edition of Roger Lelievre's Know Your Ships 2013 (9781891849169) 18.95 is here! If you are anywhere remotely close to the Great Lakes, and you have customers who are old men, who walk hunched over, wear pea jackets, and sport blue brimmed hats with an anchor logo on the front, you should have this title on-hand . . .
Jill wanted me to clarify that it's the UK Women's Prize for Fiction and not as I stated in last week's Partner's Page, the UK Prize for Women's Fiction. I think Mark Twain once said something witty about the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. This would fall in that category . . .
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