An independent bookstore brings a lot to a city or a town: a showroom for the latest literary releases, an auditorium where authors share their work and meet their fans, a bookish environment in which to sip coffee and a fun place to browse in the 20 minutes before the movie starts. But what’s less immediately visible is your local bookseller’s expertise and influence when it comes to introducing great books to your community and, ultimately, to the world.

Name the last book you really loved — be it “The Help,” The Hunger Games,” “Like Water for Elephants” or “Game of Thrones.” The authors of all those popular titles and many, many more can testify that independent booksellers were crucial in moving their work from a sleepy shelf against the back wall to a stack prominently displayed on a front table. They’re  the people who helped Harry Potter take off. Local booksellers know their customers better than any computer program, and when they press a book into the right hands, insisting “You’ve got to read this,” their recommendation really counts.

Readers of this blog know that independent bookstores add so much to the community in which they exist, but Salon makes a good point that the promotion of a book by River Run, across the nation from me, can very well have a ripple effect on what I’ll be reading in the next few months.

Salon is asking readers to help promote independents by sharing their stories about great bookstores.  If you have one you’d like to give a shout out to, join their Declaration of Independents and help an independent bookstore stay strong.  Of course, we would love to post any reviews or stories you have about bookstores, so feel free to send them to us also.

Actually shop at them as much as possible, they are the engine that drives your local economy.  But, let’s give the little guys a leg up in the middle of Black Friday and Cyber Monday.  Drop by a local business, chat with a real person, and contribute to your neighborhood economy by purchasing a Christmas present, or ten.

St. Andrews Ceramics

As with the rest of the grounds, the bookstore is a soothing location with beautiful music, a quiet atmosphere, and inviting surroundings.  Abbey Books & Gifts shelves a wide variety of books on spirituality.  I expected to see only Catholic themed texts, but the store provides resources for several different faith traditions, specifically including Judaism and Buddhism.  This is a fairly intellectual store, the options aren’t for the lightweight reader.  The store is well-organized, shelves are clearly marked by saint, author, or type of spirituality.  The emphasis is on Catholic theology.  There are shelves of texts about each of the well-known saints and the writings of said saints.  (Actually, I’m making a bit of an assumption.  I don’t know many saints, but there were shelves for all that I did know and if I know them, they are, by definition, well known.)  Plus, deep collections of books by Catholic theologians, i.e. Nouwen (my favorite), Merton, and Bonhoeffer.  Various types of Catholic theology have entire sections:  Cistercian, Benedictine, Eastern, and modern.

The topics I’ve seen in other general Christian stores were offered here also.  Books on prayer, scripture studies, Bibles, and church history.  There was a special section for children and young adult readers.  Fiction is available, but it weighs toward the intellectual side.  Think Flannery O’Connor and Penguin classics.  The fantasy world is well represented with several shelves of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein.

While the store devotes most of its space to books, what it is most famous for is the ceramics made at the Abbey.  The original monks created ceramic ornaments and decorative wall plaques using a specific angel figure and it is a tradition that continues.  It’s not uncommon to see them represented on Southern California Christmas trees.  After visiting the store, I realized there is an ornament for just about every occasion, profession, hobby, or sports activity.

For a chance to delve in serious spirituality, drop by the store in this beautiful high desert location or give the monks a call, they’d be happy to help you.

Abbey Books & Gifts

31001 N Valyermo Road

Valyermo, CA 93563

T:  661.944.2178

Last week, Lionsgate announced the release date for Catching Fire, November 22, 2013 most assuredly monopolizing the Thanksgiving weekend movie sales.  For those of you that are counting, that’s 828 days away.

The Parent – Who Needs a Quiet Break More?

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt takes the well-crafted family saga to a new level.  Byatt’s writing is lyrical.  The main character is a children’s book author and the tone throughout draws the reader in like a fairy tale.  The literary, historical and art references interwoven into the story move the story forward in an enlightening and entertaining manner.  This is a 21st century Dickensian novel.

Young Adults – Plot Driven Books Designed to Engross the Reader

As an epistolary novel, My Most Excellent Year:  A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger moves fast, some portions are written in zippy emails or text messages.  This group of friends, one love baseball, another theater, another accepts he’s gay, find themselves, each other, and their way through high school. There is an element of romantic sparring, even for the parents.  Kruger creates an atmosphere of friendship and acceptance combined with a humor that casts a warm hue over the book without making it schmaltzy.

Middle Readers – Ready to Read on their Own

Before there was the Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins wrote the engaging Underland Chronicles.  In the first book, Gregor the Overlander, Gregor is stuck babysitting his sister, Boots, through a New York City summer.  Gregor worries about his father who disappeared three years earlier.  While doing laundry, he notices Boots disappears down a chute and follows her, thereby starting his own modern day Alice in Wonderland story.  Gregor discovers a kingdom of rats, cockroaches, bats, and other crawlers that needs saving and that their enemy holds his father prisoner.  Creating a world that holds the readers attention for numerous books, this series provides a wonderful summertime adventure.

Picture Books for the Pre-Literate Set

Deborah Diesen’s The Pout-Pout Fish in the Big-Big Dark tells the story of a brave fish on a journey to find Ms. Clam’s lost pearl.  He searches everywhere, expect down in the deep dark trench.  With friends and courage, he overcomes his fear of the dark.  The rhythm of the story is a delight to read aloud and the pictures are cute and lively.  With all the ocean imagery, it’s just the right choice for a day at the beach.

Whether or not a business is subject to a state’s sales tax depends upon its presence in the state.  Have a store in the state, clearly the business is present and subject to paying sales tax.  Having a warehouse in one state and only shipping items to buyer in another state doesn’t qualify as having a presence in the state and a sales tax isn’t charged.  Technically, the buyer is supposed to track how much she spent and the appropriate sales tax and pay the state.  I wonder how many people are doing that, I’m guessing I could count them on my fingers and toes.  But what about the Internet seller who has people with a presence in the state selling its items (affiliates), should the Internet seller pay a sales tax?  Arguably, these people are subject to income tax, but so are our small businesses.  Moreover, given the changing shopping patterns of more people buying online and one seller, Amazon, comprising a majority of that business, should the laws change to capture a sales tax?  The California legislature (along with other states, notably New York) said ‘yes’ and changed the law to capture sales tax from Amazon (although at a reduced 7.75% rate).  A law change that arguably keeps up with the times and captures hundreds of millions of dollars in tax.

For better or worse, California has a quirky legislative history.  In an effort to combat the power of the railroads over 150 years ago, our founders designed the initiative process.  If enough voters sign petitions requesting an initiative be on a ballot, it will be, no matter what big business wants to control the government.  It sounds good in theory, in practice it has been a bit of a nightmare.  The latest example, since Amazon lost its lobbying campaign in the California legislature (there are several states where Amazon won and it is not subject to sales tax), it’s now heading to the people and gathering the signatures needed to put this issue to a vote.  All several hundred million of us are going to vote on whether or not Amazon should pay sales tax.

I’ll be curious for all of five minutes about how Amazon will sell its right to avoid sales tax.  Walmart, Target, and small businesses will be arguing that everyone should be paying their fair share of tax.  What’s guaranteed is that we will be bombarded with commercials about who creates the most jobs and every voter will be grateful for his or her DVR.

So, before the avalanche, here’s my opinion, Amazon must be required to pay taxes like every other business, large and small.  Don’t be snowed by their campaign, stand behind the small businesses in your community, the people who send their kids to your schools, who hire your neighbors, and who support your local government by paying taxes.  If Amazon wants to do business in California, then it should pay taxes just like everyone else.

The “cult reader” bookshelf brought a smile to my face.  These are the old-fashioned “if you liked book x, then you’ll like book y” books, but clearly so popular at the Book Trader that they need to be chained to the shelf.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen books in a store, or anywhere, chained like a bike to telephone pole.  I perused a couple, they worked quite well even if you have to stand fairly close to the shelf to read them.

There are all types of books and the day I visited and towers of newly arrived used books that the staff was processing, so turn over looks lively.  Two more areas that I recommend you visit, first, the cookbooks in the cafe section.  There were several classics that if I wasn’t flying home, I would have been tempted to buy, especially the Alice Waters books.  Out front the ‘cheap rack’ contained several great beach reads, how many times can you say that about the cheap rack?

Stop by, check out the chained books, find a great beach/after finals read and, oh, and did I mention how great the chocolate chip cookies are?

Book Trader Cafe

1140  Chapel St.

New Haven, CT 06511

Tel:  203.787.6147

Support Your Favorite Independent Bookstore With Your eReader

Love independent bookstores?  Love your eReader?  Feel conflicted no longer, with Google eBooks you can have your cake and eat it too.  As of last December, independent bookstores can sell eBooks via Google.  What better way to give your independent bookstore an eReader spin than by trying out a book for 25 cents.  Indie publisher Unbridled Books is teaming up with indie bookstores to offer 25 eBooks at 25 cents apiece from June 9th at 9AM through June 11th at 9PM, just buy the book through an independent bookstore’s website.  [Click here for a list of independent bookstores offering Google eBooks.]

Here are the  25 books offered:

Conscience Point by Erica Abeel
The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego
Panopticon by David Bajo
Shimmer by Eric Barnes
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell
Green Age of Asher Witherow by M. Allen Cunningham
Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal
The Journal of Antonio Montoya by Rick Collignon
The Good Doctor Guillotine by Marc Estrin
Wolf Point by Edward Falco
Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lise Haines
The Distance between Us by Masha Hamilton
Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld
Vanishing by Candida Lawrence
Song of the Crow Layne Maheu
The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott
The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Captivity by Deborah Noyes
Hick by Andrea Portes
The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa
Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari
Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert
Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon
Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch

What a great way to find your next favorite book and support independent bookstores.

For more information about the books and the sale, visit the 25 for 25 Facebook page.

The wall brings us together. The wall keeps us apart,
A granite demarcation of our lives and of our hearts.
It rises from the depths of dust and to the dust returns
A focus of reflection for those who come to yearn.

At this wall of pained remembrance, we together stand alone
Reflecting on the names of those etched deep within the stone
Reflecting on what we’ve become from what we left behind,
Memories etched in flesh and stone, forever intertwined.

Names set deep in granite are forever meant to last
Reflections change and fade away in journeys to the past,
Fleeting life and ageless death join at this sombre pall.
And once more we are brothers as we gather at the wall.