Flavorwire presents a list of its ten favorite bookstores in the United States and requests that you “buy something fer crissakes.”
Flavorwire’s Top 10 Bookstores in the United States
Shadowplay
Did his Nobel Prize win a couple years ago pique your interest in Patrick Modiano? Here’s another essay to sate it. In The Paris Review, Alice Kaplan examines his literary project.
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Laughing at Lawyers
“Yes, it’s easy to laugh at the lawyers. But what if the lawyers were right? For the question that still needs to be answered, I think, is whether the arguments over the novel’s obscenity and obscurity were just temporary historical effects or whether they point to the essence of Joyce’s originality.” A longform look at why we should still find Ulysses scandalous.
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Good Luck
Your inner monologue is whip-smart. You can’t imagine life outside Manhattan. You’ve had multiple husbands, all of whom left you for other women. Is it possible you’re in a Grace Paley story?
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Russian Literary News
Russian literary news and awards — i.e. winners and runners-up of Russia’s Big Book Award — at Lizok’s Bookshelf.
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The So-Called Elite
n+1 provides a fascinating study of today’s divisive concept of cultural elitism: “Today, though, it’s the bearers of culture rather than the wielders of power who are taxed with elitism. If the term is applied to powerful people, this is strictly for cultural reasons, as the different reputations of the identically powerful Obama and Bush attest. No one would think to call a foul-mouthed four-star general an elitist, even though he commands an army, any more than the term would cover a private equity titan who hires Rod Stewart to serenade his 60th birthday party.”
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Pointing this out one more time: Why are we applauding a piece that starts out with a baseless assertion that “Bookstores are dying”?
Can we stop saying this? Please? As though it’s a fact, or really, at all relevant to what any of us are trying to do? Can we please remember that all my go-to indies — McNally, Word, Greenlight, Idlewild, Powerhouse, Desert Island — have OPENED, not closed, in the last 6 years, and no one seems to want to stop tossing around depressing, unfounded conventional wisdom?
Oh, just presenting someone’s utterly subjective top-ten list, not applauding it per se. It gave me a whole new list of stores of that I absolutely have to visit someday; I’ve only been to two out of the ten.
WORD, Greenlight and McNally Jackson are my go-to bookstores too! I know most of the booksellers in those three stores by name; they’re wonderful places, and it’s great that they’re there. At the same time, I feel like every second or third issue of Shelf Awareness brings news of yet another independent bookstore closing, so I can’t necessarily fault the writer of this piece for sounding the alarm.