>What are you favorite chapters?

Mine. Doesn't have to be yours. Thanks!

Is this about Glen Ridge? I work at a library currently and my director has told us to be very calm and polite when dealing with someone who wants to challenge a book in our collection but in her experience she has usually been able to diffuse the situation with a rational conversation with the patron. I can’t imagine these people will go away any time soon but I hope I never have to deal with them personally

This speaks to me. I used to manage a small bookstore and although our order forms were sometimes more limited than I would have like, I chose what we sold.

Every month I went through and hand picked what I thought would be appreciated by the community. I got to chose things I thought nobody but me would read and always found myself delighted by the kinship of other readers who saw in that obscure title what I did.

It's been a few years since I left (I'm sure the new manager has a new vision all her own) but I can still remember what shelves held the best reads. It was a privilege to be able to run a bookstore. I hope I'm able to return to the booksellers world in the future, the best vocation!

What a bottle rocket eh? I remember thinking about forty pages in that there was no way he could maintain that level of intensity for the whole book.

Unfortunately I was right. Still an astonishing work, and now I need to go read some more of his stuff.

Summon up a group of people who venomously oppose books that represent outdated family values and structures. Get them to obnoxiously request that books like that are labeled and kept separately. When people complain that this is ridiculous say "exactly".

Black Star books was mine. It doesn't exist anymore, sadly. It was in the city, but when you walked in there was the kind of hush that's only caused by packing every nook and cranny with layers and layers of closely bound paper.

A beautiful sentiment and a true one. I've never thought to put it into words but I have experienced this many times :)

The violence in that Murakami chapter caught me completely off-guard at that point in the novel.

Any reason not to just say OK, move the books, then put them back in a couple weeks once everyone moves to the next TikTok trend or Facebook outrage?

A friend told me the other day that Colleen Hoover has said she “wants to write rom coms but just cant figure out how” and I was like mmm I think Colleen needs to go to therapy so she can write those rom coms she wants to write.

It's the novelty and the price. At least for me. You can find really great books for really steal prices. Of course there's also the thrill of finding these books.

I miss the old Elliott Bay book store in Pioneer Square in Seattle. Best book store ever. First place I visited when I moved here in 1990. Ended up buying Tom Robbin's Still Life Wirh Woodpecker (which is set in Seattle) and hanging out in Waterfall Garden Park and reading for hours. Knew I'd moved to the right city as soon as I walked in the door of that store.

My library does Blind Date with a Book and it is so much fun matching them!

Ooof. I have not dealt with this personally, although I suspect that it's coming given what our state legislature is up to, but have you checked out the American Library Association's page about how to deal with censorship efforts? It may have some relevant advice even if you're not in the U.S.

I've never read it but now I think I'm gonna

Same. I miss these days.

Reach out to Children’s Cooperative Book Center (CCBC) at UW-Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m fairly certain they can offer guidance or at least point to you resources/support.

You can also utilize Amazon’s Best Books of the month, Indie Next List, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and Bookpage to see what publishers/librarians/booksellers/etc are anticipating to be good and/or popular.

Tell them to go somewhere else if they don't like it. That's what I did when I tried to give away a free book that I made to someone as a bonus for making a purchase at my store.

the used books

"Karens" implies middle aged women.

This is not that.

This is a coordinated attack by organized conservative groups in order to drum up publicity and engagement, likely for an election that's coming up in your area. There might be a bond issue for the library that will be on the ballot that they want voted down.

Whatever the issue, they are trying to rile up the conservative base with a red herring about what's available at the library.

Instead of blaming this on unseen women, put the blame where it belongs - on the wider, organized conservative political action groups that are so well funded that they have the time and money to focus on random public libraries throughout the country

I can feel your frustrations through the screen; so much so that you’ve conjured up all the bad memories I have of reading this book. I could not get into it.

Chapter 14 also sticks out as super anti-capitalist

I couldn’t finish it. Very disappointed.

Just finished it last month--a pretty enjoyable read, especially Part II. But, man, the wanton cruelty of the "humor" was a bit of a downer. (For a funny, unworshipful analysis of the book, I highly recommend Nabokov's "Lectures on Don Quixote".)