The Regulator Bookshop

World Book Night

2012-01-26T20:18:00.003-05:00

World Book Night is a campaign to find light or non-readers in the community and hand them each a book. Person-to-person. To get more people reading.

World Book Night is a celebration of reading and books which sees tens of thousands of passionate volunteers give away books in their communities to share their love of reading. Successfully launched in the U.K. in 2011, World Book Night will also be celebrated in the U.S. and Germany in 2012, with more countries to come in future years.

How does World Book Night work?

In the U.S., 30 titles have been specially chosen and will be printed in their thousands in special World Book Night paperback editions. Givers apply to give away a particular book (you get a first, second and third choice) which they must commit to give away to those who don't regularly read to share and spread their love of reading. Each Giver receives 20 copies which they pick up from their local bookshops and libraries - the very heart of our reading communities - in the week before April 23. (The Regulator will be a World Book Night pick up location).

The greatest reading journeys start when you put a book in to someone's hand and say 'this one's amazing, you have to read it' and by applying to be a Giver you can help World Book Night give that experience to a million new readers on April 23. World Book Night, through social media and traditional publicity, will also promote the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries to everyone year-round.

Why April 23?

April 23 is a symbolic date for world literature. It is the date of the birth and death of Shakespeare, as well as the day Cervantes, the great Spanish novelist, died. It is in their honor that UNESCO appointed it the International Day of the Book and that it has been chosen to celebrate World Book Night.

Be a part of World Book Night! Go to http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/ to sign up to be a Giver, and to learn all about this fabulous program. All you need to become a giver is a little time, a love of books, and the desire to give something to your community. Think about where you'd like to give away the books before you go online to apply. You pick the place: hospital or diner, school or ... well, lots of possibilities. Be creative. And thank you! We love this idea and we will be your community center for World Book Night support.

The deadline to sign up is February 6th! And yes, you can give your books away during the day of April 23rd as well as in the evening.

Read Digital and Shop Local!

2012-01-08T09:58:00.003-05:00

If you're doing some of your reading on a digital device, we have some exciting news for you. Now its easier than ever to read digitally and shop locally. And most of the time you'll be paying the same price buying from us as you do when you throw your money at the big boys.

In December, The American Bookseller's Association debuted the IndieBound Reader, which works seamlessly with all Android (and now with all IOS--Apple--devices). All you have to do is download the Reader, which you can do here and then buy your ebooks through the Regulator's web site.

With the IndieBound Reader, you get:
* Adjustable font, font size, line spacing, margins, and more to customize your reading experience
* Note-taking and bookmarking functions
* Brightness controls and "Night Mode"
* Support for eBook standards, such as Adobe Digital Editions, ePub, and PDF
* Google account integration and easy, behind-the-scenes activation
* Integration with the Regulator's IndieCommerce website for eBook browsing & buying (this is not available for IOS)

What more could you want? Competitive pricing? Yes, we have that too.

Surely you've seen the headlines announcing "Amazon loses price advantage on digital books?"

Yeah, well me missed them too. This has to be one of the best-kept digital secrets ever. The fact is that the six biggest U.S. publishers have adopted the "Agency Model" for their eBook pricing. Which means that no matter where you buy their eBooks, the price is the same. And these six publishers account for 75 to 80% of all the books we sell at The Regulator. What all of this means is that it is high time to

Retire Your Kindle!

The kindle is designed to make you order eBooks from Amazon. And let's face it. Amazon is Non-Local Number One. None of the money you spend at Amazon stays in our local community. And not only is Amazon non-local, for the past few years they have been vigorously anti-local as well, fighting tooth and nail to remain exempt from collecting sales tax, even in states where the have warehouses or other facilities. Their philosophy has been clear. Let other suckers pay the taxes that keep the roads maintained for the trucks that deliver Amazon's packages. Amazon has been insisting on literally getting a free ride, and by and large they have succeeded.

For those of you out there who are supporters of things like the local food movement--if you are doing your reading on a Kindle, perhaps you need to think again. Because now you can read digitally and shop locally! We thank you.

Local author makes the front page of the NYT Sunday Book Review

2012-01-02T10:52:00.002-05:00

A great review from Adam Hochscild of Laurent Dubois' new book Haiti, the Aftershocks of History. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/books/review/haiti-the-aftershocks-of-history-by-laurent-dubois-book-review.html?src=me&ref=books

Laurent, who was spotted leaving a local restaurant New Years Eve wearing a sticker that said "Local Author," will discuss his new book Thursday evening, January 12th, 7:00 at The Regulator. It's hard for me to imagine a more engaging author.

--Tom Campbell

To entertain or enlighten?

2011-10-02T19:28:00.003-04:00

"to entertain . . . is one of the two possible reasons to write, or for that matter read. To enlighten and to entertain: what else is there? And while good books — even so-so books — serve both functions, if you ever have to choose one over the other, keep in mind that a book that entertains without enlightening can still be a guilty pleasure, but a book that enlightens without entertaining is algebra."

From Pete Dexter's marvelous review of Jim Harrison's new novel, The Great Leader, in today's New York Times Book Review.

The Bird is the Word?

2011-09-16T16:21:00.006-04:00

These just in! Audubon Birds with real bird calls!

(The product of a collaboration between the National Audubon Society and the Ornithology Lab at Cornell University).

Charming, wonderful, cute. These birds are a hoot! (Or some of them are anyway). And at $7.50 each, they cost just chicken feed.

Twenty different birds are currently nesting in a tree in the middle of the store. Come see. Binoculars not required...

The Regulator's Top Ten Bestsellers September 1-15

2011-09-15T15:41:00.002-04:00

1. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention will Transform the way We Live, Work, and Learn by Cathy Davidson.

2. Dark Tangos by Lewis Shiner.

3. Durham in Changing Light by John Zager.

4. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.

5. Arguably by Christopher Hitchens.

6. Night Train by Clyde Edgerton

7. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

8. A Feast for Crows by George R.R. Martin.

9. That Used to Be Us by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

10. Just Kids by Patti Smith.

Rude and Douchey

2011-09-09T15:58:00.002-04:00

We solidify our reputation as an intellectual bastion with two new arrivals:

-Rude Hand Gestures of the World, and

-The Rogers and Littleton Guide to America's Douchiest Colleges.

The Dukies are going to want to give some of the gestures from the first book to the authors of the second...

"20 Celebrities with Stunning Home Libraries"

2011-08-25T14:33:00.002-04:00

http://www.accreditedonlinecolleges.com/blog/2011/20-celebrities-with-stunning-home-libraries

Including Rod Stewart? Really?

Bookstore Quotes

2011-08-24T16:27:00.004-04:00

"What I say is a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
---Neil Gaiman

"I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, 'Where's the self-help section.' She said if she told me it would defeat the purpose."
--George Carlin

"A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking."
--Jerry Seinfeld

"A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out."
--Doug Coupland

From Book Love: A Celebration of Writers, Readers, and the Printed and Bound Book. Edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson and published by Bill Henderson's Pushcart Press.

And Bill Henderson, by the way, has another marvelous new book out, All My Dogs: A Life. A a memoir told through the lens of the dogs he has had over the years. Highly recommended!

Tom Campbell

28 Views of Durham?

2011-08-19T15:28:00.005-04:00

27 Views of Chapel Hill has just arrived, and it looks like a great collection. http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/book/9780982077191

It's a fine companion to 27 Views of Hillsborough, which came out last year. http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/book/9780982077122 Lots of excellent writers in both of these books.

Now somebody needs to do one of these for Durham. But in all modesty, I think it will have to be called "28 Views of Durham." Durham being, of course, bigger and better..!

Howls of outrage from Hillsborough and Chapel Hill folks to: tom@regbook.com. Appreciations from Durham to the same.

"Awesome People Reading"

2011-06-24T15:12:00.001-04:00

Photos: http://awesomepeoplereading.tumblr.com/page/3

Calling All Punsters!

2011-06-22T20:26:00.004-04:00

Contestants Needed for the Great Durham Pun Championship!
Saturday, July 9th at 7:00 p.m.

If you feel that every morning is the dawn of a new error; if, for you, a day without puns is like a day without sunshine--there’s always gloom for improvement--this event is for you! Pairs of punsters will be given a subject and the first punster will have 10 seconds to come up with a relevant pun. Then punster number two gets 10 seconds. If they succeed it’s back to punster number one. On it goes! We’ll start the evening with about 20 contestants, and a couple of hours later the last pun person standing will be crowned The Pun Master of Durham!

Think you can stand up to the punishment? Sign up at the bookshop, call, or email to be a contestant! Or just come on by to enjoy an evening of fabulous word play and beer featured from Fullsteam brewery. (Rules will be based on The O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships, held each year in Austin, Texas. See www.punpunpun.com for details).

The 100 Greatest Non-Fiction Books?

2011-06-20T13:37:00.000-04:00

According to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/14/100-greatest-non-fiction-books

Winter weather tonight!

2011-06-09T12:58:00.002-04:00

A bit of the freezing cold wild Wyoming winter blows into the bookshop tonight! Come get some chill! http://www.regulatorbookshop.com/event/craig-johnson

Super Sad True Book Video

2011-05-23T17:22:00.003-04:00

Thanks to the book-trade daily email Shelf Awareness (www.shelf-awareness.com) for this heads-up:

Hilarious book trailer of the day: Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Random House). The trailer for the hardcover edition starred James Franco; this one, for the paperback, stars Paul Giamatti as Shteyngart's roommate, who goes with the author to a book club meeting in Shteyngart's honor. The meeting is a super sad love story.

Regulator’s Top Ten Bestsellers Week May 15-21

2011-05-22T12:55:00.003-04:00

1. The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure
This is McClure’s deeply heartfelt, frequently hilarious tale of her quest to recreate the world of Laura Ingalls Wilder once and for all.

2. Neverisms by Mardy Grothe
A book of quotations of things you should never do, or never never do. A delight for quotation lovers and language aficionados.

3. F in Exams by Richard Benson
A short excerpt from this graduation gift of poorly answered exam questions:

Biology Exam Question: What is a fibula?
Answer: A little lie.
Math Exam Question: To change centimeters to meters you_____.
Answer: Take out the centi

4. The Dry Grass of August by Anna Jean Mayhew
North Carolina author writes a story set in 1950s South.

5. Butterfly’s Child by Angela Davis-Gardner
Local author's latest novel. "The kind of book you sink into, becoming so transfixed by the story that you cannot help devouring it in just a few sittings. Davis-Gardner has created a masterful novel and an engaging read."—Charlotte Observer

6. What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
Chapel Hill native and YA rockstar's latest book!

7. Bossypants by Tina Fey
Super funny star of 30 Rock. Who can resist those man arms?

8. Cooking in the Moment by Andrea Reusing
Owner of the Lantern Restaurant here in Chapel Hill, who just won the James Beard award!

9. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
A funny book about the financial crisis from this bestselling author.

10. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Who was the woman behind the immortal Hela cells now studied by scientists the world over?

We get Wilder than ever!

2011-05-16T16:54:00.003-04:00

Wednesday night the Wilder Life wagon train rolls into town, as Wendy McClure discusses her new book The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie.

What is it about these books that people are still fascinated by them 75 years after they were first written? (I've secretly wanted to go on a vacation to the Dakotas ever since I read these books to my own daughter almost 20 years ago). And who was Laura Ingalls Wilder anyway?

Wendy McClure became obsessed with Laura and the whole Little House thing, and luckily for the rest of us "lesser obsessives" she did something about her obsession.

The Chicagoist web site says "In The Wilder Life McClure brings her readers on a journey in which she discovers the lost world of Little House on the Prairie as untarnished and delightful as it ever was, despite the pieces that have rusted, disappeared or been replaced with time."

Whether you prefer the Prairie or the Big Woods...Wendy McClure, Wednesday night at 7:00 here at The Regulator.
Tom Campbell

Mardy Grothe's Neverisms

2011-05-12T14:36:00.000-04:00

"Never underestimate the powers of a reader." - Wallace Bacon.

Just one of many "Neverisms" Mardy Grothe has collected in his latest book, Neverisms: A Quotation Lover's Guide to Things You Should Never Do, Never Say, or Never Forget. Mardy will be here next Thursday at the Regulator! Craig Wilson in USA Today reviews the book, saying: "Never is a great word. It's so final. There are no gray areas with never. It's the exact opposite of spineless maybe."

Also, check out Mardy's post with Neverisms and pictures of the neverists he quotes at the Huffington Post.

Patricia Wells on Tuesday, Gary Shteyngart on Wednesday

2011-05-02T22:18:00.002-04:00

From Paris and Provence to Ninth Street! The award-winning cookbook author Patricia Wells will be at the bookshop Tuesday night with her newest book, Salad as a Meal: Healthy Main Dish Salads for Every Season.

And Wednesday night (for something completely different) we host one of my absolutely favorite current novelists, Gary Shteyngart, celebrating the paperback release of his recent novel, Super Sad True Love Story. Super Sad... (it's not, really) is set in a dystopian near future where the U.S. is bankrupt, everyone walks around wearing i-phones on steroids that broadcast all their intimate details to everyone around them (and to the government as well), and no-one reads anything longer than an email. Wandering through this not so brave new world is one Lenny Abramov, a fan of "printed bound artifacts" (books), who has fallen in love (how retro...) with a Korean-American woman named Eunice Park.

It's Woody Allen meets George Orwell, with an extra dash of Russian fabulism. Super Sad True Love Story was named a "Best Book" on more than forty 2010 year-end lists-and that doesn't count mine. David Mitchell calls the book "An intoxicating brew of keen-edged satire, social prophecy, linguistic exuberance, and emotional wallop."

Come meet a great writer--and a real live wire--Gary Shteyngart, at The Regulator Wednesday night.

Discount Members Sale This Weekend!

2011-04-26T17:10:00.002-04:00

Our special “Royal Wedding” Discount Club Sale starts Wednesday and runs through Sunday. In honor of the goings-on in Jolly Old England this Friday morning, all of our books in English will be on sale!

Wednesday April 27th through Sunday May 1st, discount club members will get:
20% off on all new books
30% off on all sale books and used books

If you can’t make it to the store—if you’re in London for the wedding this weekend?—you can order by phone (919-286-2700) or through our web site (www.regulatorbookshop.com). The 20% new book discount will apply to most special orders placed during the sale as well.

The (Hilarious) Future of Books

2011-04-21T18:48:00.004-04:00

Leave it to McSweeney's.

Some highlights from James Warner's article:

2020: All Books Will Be
Cross-Platform and Interactive.
Future "books" will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, and streaming video. They'll be enhanced with social bookmarking, online dating, and alerts from geo-networking apps whenever someone in your locality purchases the same book as you— anything so you don't have to actually read the thing.

2030: All Books Will Be
Crowdsourced and Cloud-Based.

2040: Authors Will
Become Like Tamagotchi.

2050: Analog Reading Will Be
Digitally Simulated.

2070: We Will All Become Cyborgs.

2080: A Golden Age of
Informational Fluidity.
For the benefit of those people at future-of-publishing panels—there's always one, for some reason—who insist it's really not about the text but the smell of the book, books will by this time be available exclusively as lines of fragrances. Subsequently, humans will modify themselves into a species with a powerful olfactory sense, able to read underwater by decoding strings of pheronomes. Aroma-bibliography will triumph, as vast epics are composed for newly developed scent receptors, transforming the rising seas into a giant bath of community-assisted transmedia content. Also around this time, the oral literature of dolphins will be deciphered and will turn out, inexplicably, to be all about vampires.

Read the whole glorious piece at: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2011/3/24warner.html

Alexandra Styron here tomorrow night!

2011-04-19T14:43:00.003-04:00

Great reviews of Reading My Father from

--USA Today: http://tinyurl.com/3gpl4rz

--Entertainment Weekly: http://tinyurl.com/42o7kaf

--The folks at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: http://tinyurl.com/62mdy9t

And then there's this from the bookstore's email:

By any standard, William Styron was one of the major literary voices of the last 50 years. The author of The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice, he also penned an extraordinary book about serious depression as viewed from the inside: Darkness Visible.

Now his youngest child, Alexandra Styron, has written a remarkable memoir about her father: a man who, though a gifted, successful writer, was haunted by the "noonday demon" of depression throughout his life. Although the book is told through the lens of "a childhood in an intellectually glittering, artistically engaged, and emotionally precarious household" (Geraldine Brooks), Reading My Father is not primarily concerned with wallowing in family tragedies. Rather it is a clear-eyed, compassionate look at the toll that Styron's illness took on his own life, on his writing, and on his family. And it is one of the best books about a writer that I have ever read.

Alexandra Styron has clearly inherited her father's skills as a writer and storyteller. And in the final analysis, she has not written a dark book--there are too many wonderful characters and incredible stories here for that. It is a beautifully written, deeply humane look at a great writer and a troubled human being.

The Regulator is honored to host Alexandra Styron's inaugural event for Reading My Father this Wednesday evening (April 20th) at 7:00. We look forward to seeing you there.

Paris USED to be the Food Capitol of the World...

2011-04-07T14:32:00.001-04:00

But that's so over:

SARA FOSTER
Thursday, April 7, 2011, 7:00 p.m.
Local cookbook author and owner of Foster’s Market, Sara Foster, will launch her new book, Sara Foster’s Southern Kitchen: Soulful, Traditional, Seasonal, with a reading, signing and tasting. Bill Smith, local chef and author, writes, “In her Southern Kitchen, Sara uses her simple yet sophisticated style of cooking to introduce us to the foods she grew up with in Tennessee. Some of the recipes are traditional, others have been adapted to modern times. All will tempt people who love to cook.”

SHERI CASTLE
Thursday, April 21, 2011, 7:00 p.m.
Food writer and cooking instructor Sheri Castle will discuss and sign copies of her new book, The New Southern Garden Cookbook. Samples will be served! “Castle has written an Asparagus-to-Zucchini compendium of delectable recipes with deep southern soul,” write Matt and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern. “Interwoven throughout is Castle’s own narrative—of a North Carolina gal who found her way home through cooking and gardening—told in an engaging, encouraging voice that home cooks will enjoy having close to the stove.”

ANDREA REUSING
Friday, April 22, 2011, 7:00 p.m.
James Beard nominee and chef/owner of Lantern Restaurant Andrea Reusing will discuss and sign copies of her new book, Cooking in the Moment: A Year of Seasonal Recipes. Samples will be served! With an emphasis on local ingredients, this collection is a “mix of childhood favorites, standbys that can be prepared quickly, simple restaurant dishes, and celebration dishes to feed a crowd.” This is a book to sit-down-and-read, as well as open-and-use.

PATRICIA WELLS
Tuesday, May 3, 2011, 7:00 p.m.
Cookbook author Patricia Wells will discuss and sign copies of her new book, Salad as a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season. The author of ten previous books, Wells also runs a well-known cooking school in Paris and Provence. She was also the restaurant critic for the International Herald Tribune from 1980 to 2007.

Less music, more books might boost mental health in teens?

2011-04-06T15:37:00.001-04:00

Interesting article from across the pond... http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/less-music-more-books-might-boost-mental-health-in-teens-2263888.html

Ditch the computer, keep your books

2011-03-25T17:43:00.003-04:00

From an article titled "Gadgets You Should Get Rid of (or not)" in the New York Times, March 23rd.

Writer Sam Grobart recommends getting rid of your desktop computer, point and shoot camera, camcorder, digital music player, and more.

But he says this about books:

"BOOKS Keep them (with one exception). Yes, e-readers are amazing, and yes, they will probably become a more dominant reading platform over time, but consider this about a book: It has a terrific, high-resolution display. It is pretty durable; you could get it a little wet and all would not be lost. It has tremendous battery life. It is often inexpensive enough that, if you misplaced it, you would not be too upset. You can even borrow them free at sites called libraries.

But there is one area where printed matter is going to give way to digital content: cookbooks. Martha Stewart Makes Cookies a $5 app for the iPad, is the wave of the future. Every recipe has a photo of the dish (something far too expensive for many printed cookbooks).

Complicated procedures can be explained by an embedded video. When something needs to be timed, there’s a digital timer built right into the recipe. You can e-mail yourself the ingredients list to take to the grocery store. The app does what cookbooks cannot, providing a better version of everything that came before it.

Now all Martha has to do is make a decorative splashguard for a tablet and you will be all set."

You can read the entire article here:

Read Everything: Harvey Weinstein

2011-03-15T15:12:00.002-04:00

"People say to me all the time: How can I get in the movie business or how do I get there, how can I have your job? And I just say, you know, I had an unfortunate accident. When I was a 10-year-old kid, I played cowboys and Indians. I was on the losing side of a guy who had like, kind of a musket, like a Davey Crockett musket, and he poked my eye out.

For six months I stayed home because both my parents worked. But there was a librarian next door; her name was Frances Goldstein. I knocked on her door one day and said, Im bored out of my brain, you know, can I read something? And thus began my education into the world of reading.

So for those people who like to do what I do, the answer is read. Read everything. I read the Americans; I read the Russians. And I still to this day read a book or two every week, and read every magazine article I can get my hands on."

--Harvey Weinstein, the producer of The King's Speech, on Scott Simon's Weekend Edition, March 5, 2011

Andrei Codrescu on the Kindle..."sugar-coated cyanide"

2011-03-14T22:08:00.002-04:00

I wish somebody told me, don't take candy from strangers when I made my first tax-free Internet purchase. I wish that I had remembered the first one's free, which is how dealers make new junkies. I wish that every cliche humanity acquired to protect itself from its history of bamboozlement and trickery was sewn on every shirt pocket by a smart mom.

I won't enumerate each new snare in the house of virtuality, enclosing what remains of our human bodies as the net tightens and we, the fish, thrash about. But here's a new one. I'm reading a new book I downloaded on my Kindle and I noticed an underlined passage. It is surely a mistake, I think. This is a new book. I don't know about you, but I always hated underlined passages in used books. They derail my private enjoyment.

When somebody offers perception of what's important, something moronic, usually, which is why I always prefer buying books new so I could make my own moronic marks. But moronic or not, it was all between me and my new book.

And this thing on my Kindle is supposed to be new. And then I discovered that the horror doesn't stop with the unwelcomed presence of another reader who's defaced my new book. But it deepens with something called view popular highlights, which will tell you how many morons have underlined before so that not only you do not own the new book you paid for, the entire experience of reading is shattered by the presence of a mob that agitates inside your text like strangers in a train station.

So now you can add to the ease of downloading an e-book the end of the illusion that it is your book. The end of the privileged relation between yourself and your book. And a certainty that you've been had. Not only is the e-book not yours to be with alone, it is shared at Amazon which shares with you what it knows about you reading and the readings of others. And lets you know that you are what you underline, which is only a number in a mass of popular views.

Conformism does come of age in the most private of peaceful activities -reading a book, one of the last solitary pleasures in a world full of prompts to behave. My Kindle, sugar-coated cyanide.

--From NPR news, March 7, 2011

Three Views of the Borders Bankruptcy

2011-02-21T15:46:00.004-05:00

From the American Bookseller's Association:

Though Borders is not a member of the American Booksellers Association, we are always saddened when any bookstore closes. The industry – whether independent bookstores, publishers, or readers – does not benefit from the diminishment of places to browse, discover, and buy books.

However, despite the doom and gloom expressed by some about the future of full-service bricks-and-mortar bookstores – and, while we don’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead – ABA believes that the indie bookstore model is well positioned for the future.

ABA membership numbers have stabilized; the vast majority of ABA members are coming off the best holiday season they have had in years; and, we’ve partnered with Google to allow our members to offer e-books through their websites.

As book buyers and readers are facing a skyrocketing number of books vying for their attention – with more and more demands on their time – our members’ customers are telling us that, now more than ever, they appreciate the care independent stores take in choosing the titles to stock, and that the curated selection in our stores can’t be found elsewhere.

In addition, more and more consumers appreciate the fact that our members are locally owned and have long-standing and close ties to their communities. They understand that by shopping in an independent store they are making sure that far more of their spending dollars recirculate back into the community. Shopping locally supports the small businesses that are creating jobs, directly fuels local growth, and helps preserve the special things that make each American community unique.

Looking ahead, we know that indie stores will have to continue to work hard and stay nimble and innovative. No matter what may appear in the headlines today, and understanding that the circumstances leading to the current situation facing Borders is very different than those of independents, we believe that our members will continue to offer their customers a unique shopping experience they can’t find anywhere else.

From Paul Kozlowski, a long-time, serious book person, currently working for Other Press:

10 reasons Borders should croak
1. To remind publishers that their industry consists of making books first, spreadsheets second.

2. To allow a host of talented book people to get back to work in adapting to new technologies and financial terms, instead of nursing a sick and contagious retailer.

3. To serve as an object lesson in the consequences of bad management.

4. To reduce the amount of linear shelf space devoted to books in dozens of overbuilt markets across the country.

5. To vindicate all of the fine book people who originally built Borders and worked for the company during the first three decades of its existence. They are the ones who watched in horror as a succession of greedy fools and outside operators -- men and women with no feeling for the culture of books -- presided over the company's decline, with no thought except for their own compensation.

6. To give independent booksellers a chance to reestablish beachheads in communities that were overrun by chains.

7. To prove, yet again, that repeating the retail sloganeering of the day -- "category management," "just-in-time inventory," "synergistic merchandising" -- accomplishes nothing unless you actually do what you say you're going to do.

8. To show exactly how worthless a highfalutin mission statement really is. (One sure sign that a corporation is sick at the core -- the bullshit mission statement. An honest mission statement would read: "Our mission is to make a profit, pure and simple." Unfortunately, Borders couldn't even carry out that mission.)

9. To illustrate the pernicious effects of untrammeled growth, the same "growth is good" ideology that led to the mortgage meltdown and financial crisis of the last four years.

10. Finally, to end the silly speculation, the enervating news stories, and the distracting pronouncements of impending doom. We don't need to be reminded these are tough times -- we're living through them. But it's bracing and ultimately inspiring to see the wheat properly separated from the chaff.

Borders plight redux, from Paul Kozlowski a day later:

The other day I gave ten reasons why Borders should go under, all of which remain valid. Even so, there is always another side to a story. Here are some reasons why Borders’ demise is bad news:

★ Loss of jobs. It is shocking and depressing to contemplate the human cost of having so many people thrown out of work, especially those hourly employees who kept faith and took pride in their individual stores even while management was selling them out. They deserve sympathy and aid, especially given the high number of unemployed already out on the street. Then there are those poor souls who have been selling and servicing the account for publishers. What will become of them?

★ Loss of common space for readers to gather. Borders' superstores had become community social centers, where people from all walks of life, united by their love for books, could sit together, drink coffee, read, write, converse, and enjoy each other’s company. Despite the rhapsodizing of the techno-savants over the creation of an “online commons,” it is nothing compared to the real thing -- a shared physical space and a shared physical experience. Shuttering these spaces will impoverish the communities who depended on them.

★ Lost sales at healthy retailers due to the dumping of inventory in a liquidation sale.

★ Loss of diversity in the retailing eco-system. As poorly managed as Borders was, it did provide an alternative for those who didn’t like Barnes & Noble’s cookie-cutter merchandising or live near an independent bookstore. Borders did bring physical books into the otherwise barren wasteland of American big box retailing.

★ Loss of tax revenues for local jurisdictions.

★ More power accruing to Amazon. Amazon already owns the largest slice of the retail book business pie by far, a condition it exploits to extract favorable terms from publishers and bully states into backing down on sales tax collection initiatives. Amazon is a big, efficient virtual selling platform but a lousy marketer (except for their own products, i.e. the Kindle) and it couldn’t care less about the content it hawks, only the profits it generates. It adds nothing to the browsing experience and relies on algorithms to make customer suggestions. It has the personality of an ATM. Who wants Amazon to control half of the trade book market?

★ An increase in vacant storefronts, those filthy eyesores strung along America’s highways.

★ An increase in the odds that Books-A-Million and Hastings will survive and limp along doing what they’ve always done. That these two backward-looking and unappealing retail chains are still in business is a sure sign that inertia is the most powerful force acting on the marketplace.

★ Loss of display space for the fine handiwork of all the talented cover artists and designers who make books look good. Jacket art is still one of the most compelling factors in getting consumers to pick up a book. A thumbnail online doesn’t come close to the real thing.

★ A substantial ratcheting up of the fear about the future of books and a new wave of mournful, or celebratory, articles, blog posts, and ‘think pieces’ stating that physical books and bookstores are dead. Ugh.

Talkin Books with Barack

2011-01-28T15:15:00.002-05:00

The first surprise was that Barack Obama opened the door to the Oval Office himself, smiling, inviting us in, shaking hands, asking for names and hometowns.

No, let’s back up a bit. The first surprise was certainly that I was at the White House at all. How I got there starts way back on Herbert Hoover’s first night at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. March 4, 1929. The story is that Hoover’s books had yet to arrive, and as Calvin Coolidge had left no books at all on the White House shelves Hoover had to borrow a book from a night watchman for his bedtime reading. Picking up on this story in the newspaper the next day, the enterprising head of the American Booksellers Association quickly arranged delivery of a selection of current titles, intended as the beginning of a permanent White House library.

Pretty much every year since then, the ABA has made a delivery of books to the White House. During George W. Bush’s eight year term an ABA representative generally just dropped the books off, though on a couple of occasions there were brief meetings with Laura Bush, a former librarian.

So here it was January 2011, and as a member of the board of directors of the American Booksellers Association I was in D.C. for 7 days of meetings. Board meetings, meetings with folks from other kinds of independent business alliances, meetings with other booksellers, publishers, authors. Going in I had no idea I’d also be meeting with the President. But on Tuesday word came down that we’d be doing the annual donation of books on Thursday morning. The whole board would be going, and we each needed to pick a book. We’d be meeting with Obama himself.

Thus it was that about 11:15 in the morning on Thursday January 20th I found myself in the Oval Office with 7 other board members (great booksellers all!), and with Barbara Meade, the co-owner of Politics and Prose bookstore just outside of D.C., and Oren Teicher, the ABA’s CEO. Books in hand, we were standing around with Barack in front of the big Presidential desk. We had been told the appointment would last for only ten minutes, so I expected we would just hand him our books, they’d take some pictures, and we’d be out of there. I know Obama is a reader, but he had just finished hosting the Chinese Premier the night before. He is a very busy man and there was no political capital to be gained by hanging out with the likes of us.

But it was time for me to be surprised again. Obama asked questions about almost every book we gave him. He was especially interested in the books that the two children’s booksellers among us had brought for his daughters. He lamented the fact that he could no longer just walk into a bookstore and browse. Talking about books for his daughters, he said that the best books were ones that really engage them, but that they have to “stretch” for. He related reading aloud “Life of Pi” to his 8 year old. She kept insisting that they continue, even though the book “deals at some points with some pretty serious ideas and theology.” He was immediately drawn to Abraham Verghese’s marvelous novel, “Cutting for Stone,” and a number of us talked about the book’s richness and depth. Obama was clearly enjoying being with us, talking about books and reading.

I was the last person to hand him my book. “I figured somebody had to bring a political book” I said as I handed him a copy of Matt Taibbi’s “Griftopia,” a jaundiced, startling view of the financial meltdown. “Oh I know who Matt Taibbi is,” Obama said. “He sometimes doesn’t have a very high opinion of me.” As if to prove his point, he opened the book to an early page and read aloud the chapter heading, “The Biggest A**hole in the Universe,” a portrait of Alan Greenspan. “He’s not talking about you there,” I joked, giving him a pat on the shoulder.

After a group picture, Obama said that since we had each given him a book, it was only fair that he give each of us a book in return, and he handed out signed copies of “The Audacity of Hope.”

Now it was time to go. We filed out into the hall, and I started to walk toward the door where we had come in. But I stopped when I heard Obama’s voice again. He was standing in the doorway, talking about how hard it was to find good books for his daughters. Maybe we could help him, send him some recommendations? Oh yeah, we could do that, we all agreed.

Then we walked once more past the Marine sentry, who for the second time that morning did not move a muscle and failed to reply when I thanked him for opening the door for us. The better part of 20 minutes had gone by. But who was counting?

My 20 minute take on Barack Obama? For what it’s worth::

He’s young, smart, and handsome. He clearly has a sense of himself, and he has to have a fair amount of ambition or he wouldn’t be where he is today. Yet he also seems to understand that there is always more to learn. In my experience people that think they already know everything aren’t readers—witness our last president. Obama was engaged in talking with us, engaged in talking about books, and he is clearly engaged in the work of being a father. Many politicians become just “operators” who have long forgotten how to relate to people on a basic human level. That’s not Barack Obama.

I’ve certainly had my disappointments with him during his first two years in office. He has seemed surprisingly slow to lead, slow to frame the issues facing the country, and he has let many of the same folks who created the financial mess advise him on how to respond to it. But against this I left his office feeling he was indeed young, smart, open to learning, and still connected to the basics of our shared enterprise of being human together. All of this bodes well.

Maybe folks trying to influence him might try talking to him in a different way? Like:
--Hey Barack, when those girls of yours grow up, are you gonna want them dating people like those sleazy guys from Goldman Sachs?

I’ll bet this would get his attention. And then those sleazy guys at Goldman Sachs would probably get some more critical attention from President Obama as well...
Tom Campbell

A Good Story From the General

2011-01-19T14:06:00.002-05:00

Retired General (and North Carolina native) Hugh Shelton told a great story during his appearance at The Regulator back in October. I've been repeating his little vignette ever since, so I thought I'd write it down here.

Shelton was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of Bush's term. His position gave him a seat on the National Security Council, and these events transpired at one of the first meetings of the Security Council that he attended, during the Clinton administration.

The meetings were held around a long table, and Shelton was sitting at one end of the table, next to an (unnamed) cabinet member. During a period when a lot of side conversations were going on, the cabinet member leaned over to Shelton and asked if it were true that U-2 reconnaissance planes were flying over Iraq on a regular basis, and that these planes flew too high for the Iraqis to be able to shoot them down.

Yes, that was true, Shelton replied.

The cabinet member than asked if could be arranged for one of these flights to fly lower, so the Iraqis could shoot it down, giving the U.S. an excuse to "do something about Saddam."

Shelton thought for a moment, and then said that yes, he thought it could probably be arranged.

Really? The cabinet member asked.

Yes, said Shelton. "Just as soon as we teach your sorry a** how to fly one of those planes."

You can read the full version of this story in Shelton's memoir, Without Hesitation; The Odyssey of An American Warrior.

Tom Campbell

What a poem says..

2011-01-10T14:41:00.002-05:00

"What a poem says is not what the words of the poem say."

"The very first thing a poem says is that it is a poem."

"The meaning (of a poem) is in the lilt of the words, in the meter, in the rhyme."

--From translator and poet David Slavitt at his marvelous reading last Friday night.

And there was this as well:

"The point of (reading) literature is not to improve yourself. All reading should be pleasurable, engaging, delightful."

The Regulator's"'Twas the Week Before Christmas"

2010-12-16T16:32:00.005-05:00

'Twas the week before Christmas, and all through the shop
Keith Richards is rockin’, his book sales won’t stop.

Cleopatra’s in pearls and Bill Bryson’s at home,
While Mark Twain dishes dirt in a weighty old tome.

Bestsellers are placed on the bookshelves with care,
In hopes that our customers soon will be there;

Squirrels meet Chipmunks all snug in their beds
while Crafts for Poor People dance in their heads

There’s Griftopia Grinches and Jon Stewart’s Earth
Franzen’s Freedom, – just see what they’re worth!

With Southern Pies and La Cuisine for the belly,
Keys to Good Cooking with a bowlful of jelly.

A pair of Sedarises can be bought by the half,
we’re settling in for a long winter's laugh.

Then out on 9th Street, there arose such a clatter.
We sprang from the store to see what was the matter.

When what to our wondering eyes should appear,
A Sustain-a-Bull bull and eight tiny reindeer!

And we heard the bull roar, as the team rose ascendant
Happy Christmas to all, and Shop Independent!

We have met the future and it's lost the ability to read and concentrate

2010-09-12T15:11:00.003-04:00

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of MIT's famous Media Lab, quoted in the New York Times a few weeks back:

I love the iPad,” admits Mr. Negroponte, “but my ability to read any long-form narrative has more or less disappeared, as I am constantly tempted to check e-mail, look up words or click through.”

A few weeks before this, Negroponte was quoted as saying the physical book will be dead withing 5 years, when all reading will be digital.

Or is it deep reading itself--and the concentration that makes it possible--that's going to be dead, as it obviously is already for Mr Negroponte?

But what the heck. The ability to concentrate is SO overrated. With constant access to the net, you can learn to be a doctor, an engineer, a scientist, a computer programmer even, all without ever having to seriously concentrate.

"I never really learned how to read texts," says a character in Gary Shteyngart's prophetic new novel, Super Sad True Love Story, "just to scan them for data."

Of course we can't expect Nicholas Negroponte to have read this. It's 277 pages into a long-form narrative..

Five Things Jeff Bezos Doesn't Want You to Know About the Kindle

2010-08-10T11:31:00.006-04:00

1) You read slower on a Kindle. A recent study by digital design guru Jakob Nielsen showed that people reading a short story read more than 10% slower on the Kindle, compared to reading on paper. And that was just for a short story. How much slower might it be reading a whole book? See http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/08/print-ipad-kindle-books

2) You almost certainly read stupider on a Kindle. There is a large body of peer-reviewed research which shows that people reading from screens don’t understand as much and don’t remember as much, compared to reading from paper. The differences have been significant. The Kindle’s display is somewhat different from the screens these studies tested, but it is still a screen…(Amazingly, no one has yet to submit the Kindle to these kind of tests. Maybe we should ask Jeff Bezos to fund the research?!). See http://www.ebookskeptic.net

3) The Kindle flunked out of Princeton. Last year, Princeton gave free Kindles to students in three undergraduate courses, pre-loaded with the required reading. The response of the students was pretty much universally negative. “Many students and faculty in the three courses said they found the Kindles disappointing and difficult to use,” reported the Daily Princetonian. At the end of the semester 2/3 of the students said that if their Kindles broke they wouldn’t replace them. Slower and stupider doesn’t make the grade at Princeton. See http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2009/09/28/23918/ and http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2010/02/22/25262/

4) Amazon can play Big Brother with your books. You may think you own the books you buy for your Kindle, but Jeff Bezos has shown that he can-and will-do anything he wants with the text that you’ve loaded on your device. Amazon has already remotely deleted digital editions of George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 from the Kindles of readers who had bought them. George Orwell would not be amused—and he would not be a fan of this technology.

5) Governments can play Big Brother with your books. If you’re doing your reading on a Kindle, you’re making it really easy for governments to play Big Brother as well. You can tell a whole lot about a person from what they read. Read on a Kindle, and everything you’ve read is listed in one place on one computer system. As Orwell would tell us, authoritarian governments everywhere are going to love this technology. (Of course government snooping like this would never happen here…)

New R-Book will "leave current e-book technologies in the dust"

2010-06-23T10:52:00.007-04:00

The e-book and publishing industries were thrown into turmoil yesterday by a little noticed announcement from an upstart technology company.

Reeve Hobbs, CEO of tiny Kumquat Technologies, unveiled his company’s surprising new “R-Book,” which seems likely to leave current e-book technologies in the dust.

“Unlike the competition,” Hobbs said, “The R-Book is designed to do just one thing--to serve as the best possible platform for reading books. And it quite simply kicks butt at what it does.”

Current e-book technologies, Hobbs pointed out, are forced to make compromises because they are trying to do many things at once--be a reader not only for books, but also for newspapers and magazines; be able to surf the web, send and receive tweets, check blogs, email, facebook, etc., etc. “These devices bring the distraction factor of the internet into what should be the focused activity of reading a book. Who wants to be interrupted by their girlfriend’s tweet about this hot guy she just met, when they are totally absorbed with their own affair with the smokin Mr. Darcy?”

But the ultimate compromise of e-books, according to Hobbs, is in their use of a screen as their reading delivery system. “When it comes to reading, there’s been research available for years that shows that screens are totally lame. You don’t remember as much and you don’t understand as much when you read on a screen. Who wants to invest hours reading a book--and then not remember what they’ve read a few days later?

“It’s pathetic, really. Smart guys like Bezos and Jobs set out to re-invent the book, and all they can come up with is another stupid screen? It looks like that’s all they know anymore. They’ve lost the ability to think outside the screen.

“From day one in designing the R-Book we knew we had to come up with something better than the screen. And we have. The R-Book uses the best display for reading that’s ever been invented. Period. If you’re reading from any other display, you’re reading the dummies version.”

Then, picking up a small, rectangular gift wrapped package, Hobbs announced: “Here it is folks. The R-Book. The best reading device on the planet. Accept no second-rate substitutes.” Unwrapping the package, he placed the R-Book on a small, spot-lit table.

The audience drew in their breath as they got their first look at the future of reading. The R-Book. Printed pages handsomely bound together, creating a small, light object. A Real Book.

Real Books. If it’s worth reading...THINK OUTSIDE THE SCREEN.

--For more on the digital distraction factor see The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr. Published by W.W. Norton, 2010.

--For more on research into the deficiencies of reading from screens see www.ebookskeptic.net. The pages can be printed for better understanding.

--For help in finding an R-Book that’s right for you, see your local bookseller.

6 of 20 under 40 equals The Regulator!

2010-06-10T16:22:00.004-04:00

Quoting from The New York Times:

"The New Yorker has chosen its “20 Under 40” list of fiction writers worth watching, a group assembled by the magazine’s editors in a lengthy, secretive process that has provoked considerable anxiety among young literary types. The list was published in the double fiction issue of The New Yorker that arrived on newsstands Monday. All of the writers were told three weeks ago that they had made the cut.

They are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32; Chris Adrian, 39; Daniel Alarcón, 33; David Bezmozgis, 37; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38; Joshua Ferris, 35; Jonathan Safran Foer, 33; Nell Freudenberger, 35; Rivka Galchen, 34; Nicole Krauss, 35; Yiyun Li, 37; Dinaw Mengestu, 31; Philipp Meyer, 36; C. E. Morgan, 33; Téa Obreht, 24; Z Z Packer, 37; Karen Russell, 28; Salvatore Scibona, 35; Gary Shteyngart, 37; and Wells Tower, 37.

Beyond their age, the writers on the list have nothing in common, said David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker."

Now we have great respect for David Remnick, but there are some things he clearly doesn't know about these young writers. Six of them share a little-known, common history. The six--Chris Adrian, Joshua Ferris, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, Gary Shteyngart, and Wells Tower--have all done readings at a little bookshop in Durham. At 720 Ninth Street in Durham, to be precise. A place called The Regulator Bookshop...

What's a Bonobo Handshake?

2010-05-25T17:32:00.003-04:00

A new book I'm really excited about is coming out this week--and its author is coming to The Regulator Thursday night for her inaugural event. The book is Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo, written by a young Aussie/citizen of the world/current resident of Durham named Vanessa Woods.

Bonobo Handshake? I thought you'd never ask... Bonobos are an endangered primate, similar in many ways to chimpanzees. But where as chimpanzees can often be aggressive and even war-like, bonobos are founding members of the "make love, not war" approach to life. Bonobos are into cooperation and the uninhibited enjoyment of the physical pleasures of life. A bonobo handshake turns out to be a common bonobo greeting. When two bonobos meet they... Well we won't get into the details of this here, let's just say that a bonobo handshake is wonderfully x-rated and if I described it fully it wouldn't make it past some of your spam filters.

The story is that a few years back Vanessa Woods fell in love with and married a primate scientist named Brian Hare. In short order she found herself living in the only bonobo sanctuary in the world--in the jungle, just outside of Kinshasa, in the Congo. It was the best of places (because of the amazing people running the sanctuary, and because of the amazing bonobos themselves) and the worst of places (because it was in the Congo, for God sakes).

Bonobo Handshake is Eat Pray Love meets The Poisonwood Bible. Add some incredible bonobos. Stir with a voice that is fresh, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking. I read an advance copy and I loved it. I think this book has the potential to be a Really Big Deal. See more at www.bonobohandshake.com And come meet Vanessa Woods and hear her talk about her book next Thursday night at 7:00. With an author and a book like these, this is sure to be quite an evening! Refreshments will be served.
--Tom Campbell

The best novel I've read in years

2010-05-18T21:32:00.002-04:00

I had to fly to the west coast back in January, and as I left for the airport I faced a crucial decision. What book should I take to read on the flight?

I had just started an advance copy of a novel that seemed highly promising, but it was big (597 pages) and heavy to carry. (Two copies of this would weigh almost as much as an i-Pad, but I digress...). I finally decided to go with it, though, and opened the book back up once I settled into my seat on the plane.

More than six hours later, I found myself annoyed that my flights that day had run on time. I hadn't had such a long block of time just to read since I don't remember when, but I still wasn't quite finished with the incredible novel I'd been reading. The book had everything you look for in fiction-great stories, deep, finely drawn characters, romance and love, families, history, struggle, suspense, exotic settings. And writing that draws you into the depths of the world it is creating without ever getting in the way.

The novel, just published, is called The Invisible Bridge. Its author is a young Brooklyn-based writer named Julie Orringer. The main protagonist of The Invisible Bridge is a Hungarian-Jewish student named Andras Levi, who, as the book opens in 1937, travels from Budapest to Paris to study architecture. I found The Invisible Bridge to be completely engrossing and captivating; transforming in the way that only the very best fiction can be.

And, most unusually, I fully agree with the blurbs the publisher has reprinted on the back of the book:

"The sheer joy of storytelling fills each moment of Orringer's novel...It transports us completely into its world-that of young Andras, his friends, family, and loves-and a landscape of war and redemption. Thrilling, tender, and terrifying; a glorious reminder of how books can change lives. It is the novel of the year."
Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Story of a Marriage

"To bring an entire lost world-its sights, its smells, its heartaches, raptures, and terrors-to vivid life between the covers of a novel is an accomplishment; to invest that world, and everyone who inhabits it, with a soul, as Julie Orringer does in The Invisible Bridge, takes something more like genius."
Michael Chabon, author of Manhood for Amateurs
--Tom Campbell

One More Theory About Happiness

2010-05-11T13:11:00.002-04:00

Paul Guest is a prize-winning poet who lives in Atlanta. He grew up as a gifted, smart, but “normal” kid—until his 6th grade graduation party. That day, a ride on a bicycle with failing brakes left him with a broken neck, a bruised spinal cord, and paralysis from his neck down.

In One More Theory About Happiness, Paul Guest tells his story, from the day of his accident to the present. I started reading this book two days ago, and couldn’t put it down. I was even reading it here at the store yesterday, and I never read while I’m at work. This is not a feel good book, but it’s certainly not a feel bad book either. In spare and beautiful prose Paul Guest just tells his tale straight on, leaving us with a deeper understanding of what it means to be alive.

Paul Guest will read from his book here at The Regulator Thursday night at 7:00 p.m. Come to hear a remarkable story, told by a remarkable story-teller.

Bret Lott on “One More Theory About Happiness”

“I read this book in one sitting, staying up well past midnight to see how Paul Guest learned—and continues to learn—to navigate the life he has been given to live. Ostensibly a memoir of one man’s growing up inside the inescapable solitude wrought by a devastating accident, this exquisitely crafted story turns out to be a tale of love, of life, and of language’s ability to eclipse the crushing presence of the physical world. Heartbreakingly funny, pitilessly honest, One More Theory About Happiness is above all a quiet and bold and loving work of art that renders beautifully what it means to live. You must read this book!”

Dave Isay and StoryCorps

2010-05-02T19:15:00.005-04:00

A really fine evening at the bookshop Friday night with StoryCorps founder Dave Isay. StoryCorps does such an amazing job of getting people to talk about the things that are truly important in their lives--which turn out to be the things that are truly important in all of our lives.

The new StoryCorps book, their second, is Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps. I can't imagine a more meaningful Mother's Day present for anyone.

Go to www.storycorps.org to learn more and to listen to folks tell their stories. Hearing some of the stories in the book in the original voices can be especially powerful.

Send us your "Reunion Story"!!!

2010-04-27T13:19:00.002-04:00

We're sponsoring a contest in conjunction with Elizabeth Berg's reading at the Regulator on May 20th. Her new novel, The Last Time I Saw You, centers around a high school reunion; so we're looking for brief (one page or less) high school or college reunion stories. Funny, sad, startling, warmhearted, whatever.

We'll pick the winning story and Elizabeth Berg will read it aloud at the start of her own reading. The winner will also get a bottle of champagne and a $25.00 gift certificate!

Email your story to: mail@regbook.com

2010-03-05T12:04:00.002-05:00

Only on Ninth Street:
The trash can in front of the Regulator, Friday morning, March 5th:

In the hopes of
Reaching for the Moon
Men fail to
see the
flowers
that blossom
at their feet

Albert Schweitzer

Amazed thanks to Mandy D. and the NCSSM Mini Term 2010!

Arm Yourself with Book Wishlists for the Holidays!

2009-11-17T13:47:00.003-05:00

The Indie Bound website (which advocates buying local for bookstores) has a cool Wish List feature (just like Amazon, only better - because you can help support local business). Once you set up an account, you can add any number of books to your list and email the list to anyone you choose. And there's a short, helpful video to get you started.

The site provides links from your chosen books directly to the Regulator's website (if you add us to your favorite bookstores) in case you want your relatives or book group members to buy from us online and support independents (not Amazon). Keep track of all your holiday gifts.

NPR Book Selections Online!

2009-11-17T13:34:00.003-05:00

Thanks to National Public radio, many book pages on IndieBound.org book now feature unique audio content, gathered from NPR's extensive book coverage: reviews, interviews and more. Check out Zadie Smith's new collection Changing My Mind or Carl Jung's legendary Red Book for examples.

Now also available on Indiebound.org are longer book descriptions, author bios, editorial reviews, and conversation starters from ReadingGroupChoices.com.

eBook vs. Paper?

2009-11-17T13:25:00.004-05:00

You may not be able to enjoy the smell of a new eBook or enjoy the feel of flipping of through its pages, but now on your iPhone you can search for and purchase eBooks from independent booksellers across the United States.

IndieBound.org has gotten in on the act as well. The main book search on the site now includes eBooks along with regular results, and a special list of Indie Next List Favorites in eBooks has been added.

If you go to the Regulator website, and use our "Search for Books" feature, you can choose to search through regular books or eBooks, too.

Call Congress' Bluff on Health Care Reform--Reform Their Health Care First!

2009-09-29T11:52:00.002-04:00

As an owner of a small business, I’ve about had it with the ways small businesses are being used to argue against health care reform. It’s clear to me that the folks making these arguments have no real experience with running a small businesses. And they certainly don't know how hard it is for a small business to navigate through our current health “system.”

Yet the folks in Congress who make the most noise about how important small businesses and entrepreneurs are for our economy--and they are right about that--are the same ones who are using the small business banner to try to beat back health reform. Talk about the importance of small and start-up businesses is cheap. As an owner of a small business myself, I know that walking the walk is something else.

So with the prospects for health care reform uncertain and the economy still in the tank, I figure this is the perfect time for Congress to demonstrate how much it really appreciates small business--with what I’m calling The Congressional Small and Start Up Businesses Health Care Bill (C-STUB).

The idea of C-STUB is to reform Congress’ own health care before they reform ours. C-STUB would simply replace Congress’s current government health insurance policies with the policies currently available to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

First, to assign health insurance coverage, congressional delegations from each state would participate in a lottery. Half of the delegations would be assigned to form small groups, just like small businesses, and then they would go out on the market and find health insurance policies for their small group. Members of the other delegations would act like entrepreneurs, and they would go to the market to find individual health insurance policies.

I’ll guarantee that within weeks of C-STUB’s passage, there will be overwhelming bipartisan support for health care reform. The delegations in small groups will find they have no leverage with health insurance providers, and they’ll end up paying a small fortune for inadequate coverage. Most of those assigned to get individual policies--the entrepreneurs--will find themselves unable to get health insurance at all. These poor souls will end up crowding into the ER waiting rooms of DC area hospitals.

It’s time to call Congress’ bluff on health care. Reform Congress’ health care first! Write your congressman or congresswoman (email addresses available at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html).

Tom Campbell

Katy Munger, LIVE @ The Regulator!

2009-09-12T13:20:00.004-04:00

On Wednesday night, 9 September, The Regulator hosted local favorite Katy Munger reading from her two new mystery novels. First she read from 'Desolate Angel', written under the pen name 'Chaz McGee' and published by Berkley Prime Crime. Next she read from 'Bad Moon on the Rise', a new Casey Jones mystery, published by Thalia Press. In this first video from the evening you'll hear Katy give a little backstory on her life as a writer. Stay tuned for parts 2 and 3 which entail the readings from the new novels. Thanks to all those who came out for the reading, and for any who couldn't be there we hope you enjoy the videos, and check in at our website for lots of upcoming author appearances. Cheers.

September Rave Reviews!

2009-09-10T11:01:00.002-04:00

Our September Rave Reviews our now up on our website. Check out new books newspaper book reviewers are loving.

Here's a Small Taste of our Pajama Party

2009-09-02T19:13:00.003-04:00

Here's a small taste of our pajama party with Peter Holsapple (musician from REM and Hootie and the Blowfish). The sound quality is better in person, so join us this Friday for stories and music for kids, their parents, and all who are young at heart! We'll be having more pajama parties two Fridays a month!

Our First Pajama Party!

2009-09-02T18:46:00.010-04:00

Telling Tales!

Singing Songs!

Stop by for our next Pajama Party with Peter Holsapple this Friday, September 4th!

Just Around the Corner

2009-08-25T13:28:00.003-04:00

Click below to watch our funny, fabulous "Shop Local & Save the Planet" video: "Just Around the Corner!"

Blast from the Past

2009-08-24T11:33:00.002-04:00

"Endangered Durham," a cool little website that documents the changes in land and architecture in Durham has a post about 9th street - more specifically 720 ninth street, the address of the bookshop. Check out what it once was here.

Brad Pitt raises chickens! You should, too.

2009-08-11T13:24:00.004-04:00

In celebration of our collective ability to raise chickens...Top Selling Chicken Books in Durham:

1) Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
Once you decide to raise chickens, you'll need all the information and advice you can get. And lucky for you, this book is as far as you'll have to look. A Guide to Raising Chickens contains everything you need to know, from starting your own backyard flock to putting eggs on the table. With easy-to-understand illustrations and text, this book shows you all about:
-- Choosing the right breed
-- Caring for chicks
--Feeding the growing flock
-- Building feeders and shelters
-- Collecting and storing eggs
-- Preventing health problems
-- Raising broilers for meat
-- Showing your chickens

2) Keep Chickens!
Chickens are hot! Kilarski, a woman with a passion for poultry, offers a handbook that is as practical and encouraging as it is witty and entertaining. This book provides the detailed information every aspiring chicken keeper needs to know. 16-page color insert.

3) Choosing and Keeping Chickens
Do you raise chickens as part of the family or as a livelihood? Are you looking for helpful information to provide the best care for your chickens? Or are you just curious to learn more about this popular animal? Choosing and Keeping Chickens provides detailed information about the most common types of chickens.

4) Chickens in your Backyard
"CHICKENS IN YOUR BACKYARD"
"A BEGINNER'S GUIDE"
Rick and Gail Luttmann
Your backyard can be the source of the best eggs and meat you've ever tasted. The answer is chickens-- endearing birds that require but a modest outlay of time, space and food.

5) Chicken Coops
Bring your chickens home to roost in comfort and style! Whether you're keeping one hen in a small backyard or 1,000 hens in a large free-range pasture, you will find the perfect housing plan in this comprehensive handbook.

6) The Joy of Keeping Chickens
Farmer and animal expert Megyesi discusses all the basic details of raising chickens--biology, health, food, and choosing breeds--and identifies what terms like organic and free-range really mean for poultry farmers and consumers. 100 color photographs.

7) Living with Chickens
Chickens-why not? Tens of thousands of people in all areas of the country enjoy raising these birds, whether for food or companionship. You can, too, with this indispensable guide. Then again, you may want to read Living With Chickens just for the sheer joy of it.

8) Hen and the Art of Chicken Maintenance
Watch out, poultry best-seller list: This hilarious account of a rookie poultry-owner's experience raising birds in his backyard is the first "chicken memoir" of its kind. Owning chickens is fast becoming the latest in metropolitan chic-and if you can't own them, you'll still want to read about them. Move over, Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt (both rumored to raise chickens), Martin Gurdon is the new celebrity chicken owner.

9)Extraordinary Chickens
Many people are not aware of the exotic nature of "fancy breed" chickens, so this unique volume, with 165 amazing color photographs of all kinds of international breeds, will be a revelation.

10) Chickens: Tending a Small-scale Flock for Pleasure and Profit
Helps hobby farmers to become more knowledgeable about their poultry and to better appreciate the bountiful gifts they bestow.

Eat, Sleep, Read

2009-08-05T16:40:00.005-04:00

Hey, a lot of customers have asked about our "Eat Sleep Read" poster (soon to be followed by our "Snack Nap Read" poster in the kid's section. In addition to the Wish List page posted below, you can also find this and other cool posters (and T-shirts) at the Indie Bound site.

Regulator Wish Lists!

2009-08-05T16:12:00.004-04:00

Are there any book lovers out there with a birthday coming up? Is anybody in a book group? The Indie Bound website (which advocates buying local for bookstores) has a cool Wish List feature (just like Amazon, only better - because you can help support local business). Once you set up an account, you can add any number of books to your list and email the list to anyone you choose. And there's a short, helpful video to get you started.

It'll be great for Christmas lists and for book groups. The site also provides links from your chosen books directly to our website (if you add us to your favorite bookstores) in case you want your relatives or book group members to buy from us online and support independents (not Amazon). Keep track of your “must-read” list, reading lists for school, or just all the books you love. Make lists and lists and lists!

Our August Rave Reviews!

2009-08-01T18:17:00.003-04:00

Our August Rave Reviews section just went up on our website. (Of course, some reviews are a bit more nuanced than others.) It also looks like the Fall line up of books coming out are already getting some "Rave Reviews" over in British newspapers. Check back then for more! - Jaimee

Our video, the Swindle, and sea monsters..

2009-07-19T17:54:00.006-04:00

An eventful week, just ended.

1) We posted our "Shop Local, Save the Planet" retro video on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vPT5dhR0AA
and we're currently at 3,500 views and counting.
Good notices in Bookselling this Week:
http://news.bookweb.org/
and Shelf Awareness:
http://news.shelf-awareness.com/nview.jsp?appid=411&j=722647
as well as a really nice press release on July 17 from the Durham Visitors and Convention Bureau:
http://www.durham-nc.com/about/newsletter.php
Bookstores across the country tell us they will be pointing their customers to the video in their stores' upcoming email newsletters.

2) Amazon gave us all another peek into the future when they reached out to all those folks who own Kindles (rhymes with swindle..) and deleted George Orwell's 1984 from the devices--even when people had already paid for the book. A problem with the digital rights to the book, amazon said.

Being astute business folk, amazon is probably already hard at work marketing the Kindle to places like China and Iran. Authoritarian regimes everywhere are going to love the ability to edit, delete, and snoop on what people are reading. Of course that kind of thing will never happen here...

George Orwell would not be a fan of this device.

3) Saving the biggest news for last. Quirk Books, publisher of the bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, has announced its next mashup, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. And I was just sure their next book was going to be Wuthering Heights with Werewolves..

Buying Local has a Big Impact

2009-01-31T16:34:00.002-05:00

By Tom Campbell, from the Durham Herald-Sun, 27 Jan 2009

Bob Ashley, in his recent column, "Buy local? Sure, but not always," said that "while I applaud and respect many of the motivations of the "buy-local" movement, I worry that, like many good ideas, it can be carried to the extreme."

While I understand the point that Ashley was making, I have to say that from the perspective of an owner of one of the dwindling number of locally owned, independent businesses in the area, it's hard to see, in practical terms, how "buying local" could actually be carried too far.

Gone are the days when folks around here had lots of locally owned choices for things like hardware stores, food stores, shoe stores, clothing stores, print shops, business supply stores, pharmacies, etc. Trying to survive in the Durham area today by just buying local would be a very tough go indeed.

But the motto of the shop local movement isn't "Shop Local Only."

It's "Shop Local First." And what it really means is "Think Local First" -- take a moment before you buy something and ask yourself if there's a local source of whatever it is you are looking for.

Thinking local first also means giving some thought to the benefits that flow from shopping local. Independent businesses make for a more vibrant and varied local culture. A greater sense of community. And they help keep a lot more of our money at work here in our hometown.

Why? Because a lot more of the money you spend at a locally owned business stays (and re-circulates) in our local community. Take my business for example. All of our employees live here. Our back office is in the back of the store, not in New York or Shanghai. We buy almost all of our supplies locally. Most of the taxes we pay stay in Durham and North Carolina. We bank locally. And we don't send dividend checks or inflated CEO salaries off to another state, or another country.

A recent study in Grand Rapids, Mich., found that a modest change in consumer behavior -- a mere 10 percent shift in market share to independent businesses from chain stores -- would result in 1,600 new jobs, $53 million in wages, and a $137 million economic impact to that area. If this 10 percent shift were to happen in Durham, (a smaller city than Grand Rapids), the impact would be something like 800 jobs, $20 million in annual wages, and $60 million a year in increased economic activity.

There's no escaping the fact that we live in a global economy. And for a lot of reasons the global end of things has been running rampant lately, driving local business to the brink. Some of this has to do with efficiencies, but a lot of it also has to do with access to capital, exchange rates, and things like the financial backing needed to sign a lease at most shopping malls.

But we also live in a very specific (and I think very remarkable) place. And supporting a little local balance to the global giants can only be a good thing for this place we call home -- and, really, for the global economy as well.

Got Wisdom?

2009-01-21T15:24:00.002-05:00

From the final pages of Henry Alford's new book, How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People...

Five traits that Alford concludes are associated with wisdom are reciprocity (do unto others..), doubt (not being overly sure of yourself), nonattachment (from Buddhism), discretion (knowing when to say nothing), and acting for the social good.

Bargain Hunting for Books, and Being Confused About It

2009-01-05T21:35:00.007-05:00

The New York Times over the holidays published a marvelously muddled piece about the book business titled “Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It.”

The point of the article was that the sale of used books over the web was the death knell for bookstores and for book publishers. As proof of this idea, the author, David Streitfeld, recounted his experience buying a used copy of a book called “Room for Doubt” through the web site ViaLibri.net. There he purchased the book for twenty five cents (the book sells new in paperback for $13.95) from a woman in California.

Streitfeld makes much of the availability of used books on the web for next to nothing. He even recounts finding copies of “Room for Doubt” being offered for as little as one cent! Books for a penny! Books for a quarter! It sounds almost too good to be true.

And of course it is. And maybe Streitfeld knew this was the case when he told us the title of the book he ordered.

The rub here is that Streitfeld gives exact figures for the new price of the book and the two astonishingly low used prices he finds on the web. But he glosses over how much he actually paid for the book, saying he “bought a copy for 25 cents from someone who called herself Heather Blue plus a few bucks for shipping.”

“Plus a few bucks for shipping” indeed. If Streitfeld really paid so little to get this book, why doesn’t he tell us what the bill really came to? Probably because if he did, he would be feeling sheepish about his whole article.

The standard internet charge for shipping a book these days is $3.99. This is for postal service book rate shipping; arrival in 5 to 14 business days. Some places charge $4.50 or $5.00 for this standard shipping. So Streitfeld almost certainly paid a minimum of $4.24 for his book, and he had to wait 5 to 14 business days for his purchase to arrive.

Paying $4.24 for this book is a decent bargain, but it certainly doesn’t rise to the level of the industry-changing phenomenon that Mr. Streitfeld claims. And talk about twisted economies--Streitfeld likely paid 16 times more in shipping charges than the supposed value of the item he purchased. To put this in perspective, let’s apply this ratio to the purchase of something that you might actually need to have delivered to your home. I’ve got a great deal for Streitfeld on a new refrigerator--$500, plus a few bucks—say $8,000--for delivery!

The seller’s side of this transaction is stranger yet. When contacted by Streitfeld, Heather Blue said she sold the book “because she had too many books and wanted to raise money to buy more.” But how can selling a book for 25 cents, when it will cost her at least $4.00 to get a similar book, be a smart move? Of course, she probably made an actual profit of about $1.25, since the post office charges $2.23, book rate, to ship most books. (And she would also have paid something for packing and shipping materials).

But going through all the work of posting a book on the web, accepting an offer, packing and shipping this book for a net of $1.25? It’s hard to see how this is a good use of anyone’s time or energy.

Why didn’t she gather this book together with others she wanted to sell and bring them to a local bookstore? At The Regulator she could have received $2.00 in store credit for her copy of “Room for Doubt,” and more (than selling on the web) for her other books as well. In just one short trip, she could have gotten a bunch of credit that she could spend in our store on used books, new books, remainders, cards, gift items, magazines, etc. Compare this to the effort of selling, packing and shipping her books one book at a time to folks like Mr. Streitfeld, with each transaction netting a smaller profit on each item.

What’s going on here? My guess is that both the buyer and seller in this transaction have fallen prey to the thrall of the internet. Many folks these days operate under the assumption—usually unspoken and almost always unexamined—that if you can do it on the net, most especially if you can do it peer to peer on the net, that’s the best way to do everything and anything. As this case shows, this is not always so, particularly when there’s a reasonably close-by local alternative.

There’s one more thing David Streitfeld should really feel sheepish about. That’s the carbon footprint/global warming impact of his method of buying books. Even without a carbon tax—which we should all hope gets put in place soon—the huge imbalance between the price of his book and the cost of shipping should have tipped him off that something wasn’t quite right with this way of buying things. Shipping a single book, with all its packaging, hundreds or thousands of miles is a global warming nightmare. Buying (and selling) locally is a greener way to go.

When we finally do get a carbon tax, some ways of doing business may no longer be viable. Selling small items one at a time over the net could well be one of these. Sell your amazon stock now?

Read Streitfeld’s original article at this link

Lied about any good books lately?

2008-12-14T21:51:00.003-05:00

Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners, a British survey suggests.

Men were most likely to do this to appear intellectual or romantic.

About four in 10 of the 1,500 people surveyed said they had lied about what they had read to impress friends or potential partners - 46% of men and 33% of women.

Among teenagers, the figure rose to 74%.

74%! The old saying was "never trust anyone over thirty." But when it comes to reading, "never trust anyone under 20" is closer to the mark.

All this lying must mean, in England at least, people still think that reading is important. After all, you don't lie about something you don't care about.

Well, its back to the final volume of "Remembrance of Things Past" for me. Only 20 pages to go before I'm finished. What an amazing novel! (As I'm sure you'll agree..).
Tom

A quote whose time has come (back)?

2008-11-18T16:34:00.002-05:00

"Wear the old coat and buy the new book."
--Austin Phelps, 1820-1890, a Congregational minister and educator from New England.

Subtitle this story the Subtitles You Regret.

2008-11-17T16:04:00.001-05:00

Using the example of A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win by Shelby Steele, which was published by the Free Press late last year, the New York Times notes that "many an author has come to incorrect conclusions, but only a few have had the courage to make a prediction in a title that could be directly contradicted."

Steele told the Times, "My feeling is that I stand by every word of the analysis--what is between the covers of the book." He chose the subtitle, he said, when Obama was trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls.

The subtitle will change when the book appears in paperback.

The Regulator gets crafty (and foodie!) with our LOCAL CRAFTS AND FOODS WEEKENDS

2008-11-12T15:03:00.002-05:00

Every weekend from November 22 until Christmas local craftspeople and artisan food makers will be exhibiting and selling their wares in our old cafe space downstairs. We're hoping we can support our local craft and food makers, while making it all the easier for our customers to Shop Local First! this holiday season. Of course we won't object if people want to buy a book along with their chocolate, cheese, pottery, or jewelry...

Here's the schedule of the folks that will be in the bookshop during these special weekends.

SATURDAYS & SUNDAYS
NOVEMBER 22-DECEMBER 21
NOON - 5:00 P.M.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22
-Dolly Mama Handmade Chocolates
-Jewelry by Hendey Designs
-Molloy Rogers, Bull City Fiber Loft (with spinning demonstration)
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23
-Dolly Mama Handmade Chocolates
-Jewelry by Hendey Designs
-Kat Benz(basketry)

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29
-Chapel Hill Creamery (cheese)
-Jewelry by Kate Loughlin
-Molloy Rogers, Bull City Fiber Loft (with spinning demonstration)
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30
-George Danser (fused glass art sculptures, bowls, jewelry)
-Molloy Rogers, Bull City Fiber Loft (with spinning demonstration)
-Jewelry by Kate Loughlin

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 6
-Chapel Hill Creamery
-Julie Olson, White Oak Pottery
-Karen Casey Fused Glass Designs
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 7
-George Danser (fused glass art sculptures, bowls, jewelry)
-Julie Olson, White Oak Pottery
-Karen Casey Fused Glass Designs

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13
-Chapel Hill Creamery
-Locopops
-Ninth St. Bakery
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 14
-Artisan Cupcakes
-Dolly Mama Handmade Chocolates
-George Danser (fused glass sculpture, bowls, jewelry)
-Ninth St. Bakery

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 20
-Dolly Mama Handmade Chocolates
-Julie Olson, White Oak Pottery
-Cecilia Henaine de Davis, Beadazzled (beaded jewelry)
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 21
-Dolly Mama Handmade Chocolates
-Julie Olson, White Oak Pottery
-Cecilia Henaine de Davis, Beadazzled (beaded jewelry)

The Ten Percent Solution

2008-10-13T16:53:00.007-04:00

We've sent this out in an email, and we started handing it out in the store on Saturday. After mulling it over for a couple of days, the stock market responded today with its biggest one day rise ever. Who know we had so much power?

Now is the time for all good men, women, children, dogs and cats to come to the aid of their local economy!

These are the times that try men's (women's, children's etc) souls. And pocketbooks.

But we say it is a time for change! Change--that will create 800 new jobs in Durham! Change--that will add more than $20 million a year in wages and contribute more than $60 million a year in total, positive economic impact for Durham County! Change--that will improve our whole community!

No, we're not mixing up business and fantasy, like those folks up on Wall Street have been doing. We're talking about a simple plan for a better local economy. We call it:

The Ten Percent Solution
If there was just a 10% shift from shopping at chain and on-line stores to shopping at locally owned, independent businesses, Durham would get those 800 new jobs and tens of millions of dollars in increased economic activity.*

Why?

Because a lot more of the money you spend at a locally owned business stays (and re-circulates) in the local community. Take The Regulator for example. All of our employees live here. Our back office is in the back of the store, not in New York or New Delhi. We buy almost all of our supplies locally. Most of the taxes we pay stay in Durham and North Carolina. We bank locally. And we don't send dividend checks or inflated CEO salaries off to another state, where they're likely to end up invested in risky "new financial instruments" (a.k.a. play money).

Now, more than ever, where you shop makes a difference. Strike a blow for independence! Support locally owned, independent businesses! You'll be supporting our local economy as well as our local culture and our whole sense of community.

Remember the Ten Percent Solution:
Keep Your Dough in Durham!
a not so modest proposal from The Regulator Bookshop

*(The figures quoted here come from a study done earlier this year for the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan by an economic consultant called Civic Economics. The results of that study have been adjusted to reflect Durham's lower population and average income. See http://news.bookweb.org/news/6306.html for more).

Supporting Local Business: Give a Listen!

2008-09-09T15:21:00.002-04:00

Last spring I was interviewed by a smart young teenager named Martin Krzywy about the joys, thrills, trials and tribulations of running an independent bookstore. Martin aired the interview on the Youth Noise Network (broadcast on WXDU, 88.7). The interview is now available on the web at http://youthnoisenetwork.blogspot.com/. You can find it by scrolling down a little way on the site to “Supporting Local Business by Martin Krzywy.”
It doesn’t last long....

Tom Campbell

Beyond the usual suspects

2008-08-03T21:22:00.002-04:00

It was about 8:30 on a recent Wednesday night. The woman in the store was on the young end of middle age. She said she used to live in Durham, had moved to D.C. But she still made a point of coming into The Regulator every time she was in town. She especially loved getting book recommendations from us. We always directed her to such good reading.

So Dave Felton, Elliot and I were on the spot. We picked up Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Lee Smith's On Agate Hill, and Haven Kimmel's The Used World. The woman listened to our spiels with interest, but then, one at a time, she put each of the books back on the shelves. These all sound quite good, she said, but I would probably come across them at a number of other bookstores. I'm looking for some books that I'm only going to find out about at The Regulator.

Well. All right. A reader with a sense of adventure! She walked out of the store with Zeroville by Steve Erickson, The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall, and The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Cotterill. Thinking later about other "well below the radar" titles I could have recommended, I came up with Jon McGregor's If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and John Crowley's underground masterpiece, Little, Big.

Looking for adventure? Pick up any of these titles, or ask a Regulator for a recommendation. This kind of thing is fun!

Tom

Destroying Books?

2008-08-01T20:46:00.005-04:00

If you like reading books, you might also enjoy recycled book art. Check out these cool cutouts by Jennifer Khoshbin.

"Great bookshops are..."

2008-06-30T16:11:00.002-04:00

"Great bookshops are the heart of every literary culture, the chambers where life-giving material is exchanged and where writers and readers deposit and find their secrets. . . . The greatest bookshops set up a trade in books and passions, in the interplay of inquiring minds and the search for values. And so, the best bookshops in the world become centres of a way of life . . . because there is so little else around now that is like them. Independence is their creed but also their character: they seek to know what they are selling and to sell it with feeling."--Andrew O'Hagan describing "the perfect bookshop" in Britain's Guardian newspaper.

(This was emailed to us by a customer, who was kind enough to say that she "immediately thought of Durham's own great bookshop when I read it and wanted to pass it on.").

Is J.K. Rowling better than Milton, Shakespeare, William Gibson...?

2008-06-27T15:01:00.003-04:00

Has J.K. Rowling lost her perspective on her Harry Potter creation? In a lawsuit heard in April (but yet to be decided at this writing) J.K. sued the author of a "Harry Potter Lexicon" for copyright infringement. The lexicon was to be a guide to the words peculiar to the Harry Potter books--words like Quidditch and Hogwarts. Lots of people took a dim view of Ms Rowling's lawsuit, including this most literary criticism from the Times of London, in an editorial entitled "J.K. Rowling may own Harry's world, but we own her words now."

"A generation has now grown up besotted (©Milton) with Quidditch and Hogwarts. However, it is not astonishing that J.K. Rowling is using a court case to remind the writers of a zany (©Shakespeare) Harry Potter lexicon, now making the jump from cyberspace (©William Gibson) to print, that it is not common property and she did invent it all. She may succeed in persuading the court that her copyright is violated by some parts of the proposed encyclopedia. Indeed, she may have a respectable commercial case, but not much of a cultural one. However, unless she employs a mole (©le Carré) to oversee our every conversation and written exchange, she should not try to suppress a collection of her invented words. For Voldemort, Muggles, Horcruxes and all Rowling's other serendipitous (©Walpole) coinages are ours now; it would be pig-headed (©Jonson) not to let us use them as we wish.

"English is so full of the neologisms of authors that if we had to credit each one, we would assassinate (©Shakespeare) our prose, and make readers chortle (©Carroll) mightily. Without being didactic (©Milton), Rowling can be assured that she is in good company in contributing words, gratis, to the language. The best she should hope for is that her words become as widely adopted as those of other authors. Perhaps the highest honour has been bestowed on the quark (©Joyce), used as the name for a sub-atomic particle. As there are quarks across the Universe, Joyce may be our most disseminated author. Rowling should be proud if Doxies, Thestrals or Butterbeer make it as far as a lexicon."

Playing defense for the First Amendment

2008-06-10T15:27:00.006-04:00

These are not good times for those of us who support the first amendment. In the world of literature, a new low may have been reached in November 2006, the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alan Ginsberg's Howl. Howl, of course, was the subject of a famous 1950's court case that sought--and failed--to bar its distribution on the grounds of indecency. But fifty years later, WBAI, the long-time progressive New York public radio station, had to call off their plans to air an anniversary reading of Ginsberg's amazing poem. WBAI was afraid of incurring a financially devastating fine from the FCC for putting indecent material on the air. It's back to the future--in all the wrong ways.

And the puritans remain on the attack. The American Booksellers Foundation for Freedom of Expression (ABFFE) has alerted us to a couple of especially disturbing new laws. In Oregon, a new statute makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail to allow a minor under 13 to view or purchase a “sexually explicit” work. The law does not include a requirement that a book or magazine be judged as a whole in determining whether it is illegal; such a test may exempt works that contain only a few sexually explicit images or passages. In addition, there is no exemption for material that has serious literary artistic, political or scientific value for minors.

And a new Indiana law requires any store that sells even a single "sexually explicit" book, magazine, video or recording to register with the state and pay a $250 license fee. "Sexually explicit" is defined so broadly that the law could apply to bookstores that sell mainstream novels and other artistic works with sexual content as well as educational books about sexuality and sexual health.

ABFEE has joined groups including publishers, individual bookstores in each state, and the ACLU in filing suits opposing these laws.

The Regulator is proud to be a "dues paying, card-carrying" member of ABFEE (the back of the card says "In case of First Amendment Emergency call" and gives two phone numbers), and money you spend here helps to fund our ABFEE contribution. For more information see www.abffe.com.

Not Our First Time...

2008-02-13T18:27:00.000-05:00

You never know what you'll find when you google yourself. In order to see if this new blog of ours here at blogger would pop up on a google search I dutifully googled Regulator Bookshop. Strangely enough (probably not strange to those in the know re. how search engines work, but seemingly strange to one such as I who is way in the dark re. such complexities of modern life) this blog did not come up on the first two or three pages of hits. (Does anybody ever go beyond the 2nd or 3rd page of a search engine search?) But what did come up was an old blog of ours, which you can view here. I haven't had the chance to ask around amongst the staff to see who did that blog, but hopefully whoever did those posts back in September 2003 will be willing to write some over here at the new blog. We're still getting this going and so far I'm the only staff member blogging, but as time passes I know others will take turns putting their two cents in.
Looking at the old blog made me realize that I hadn't personally identified myself as the composer of our two previous posts. I'm most familiar with blogs that have one author, but here we will have multiple authors so we should each identify ourselves as we post. So, enough with the anonymity thing, my name is David Felton. I've been working at the shop since 1998. This year is my tenth here at The Regulator; how time flies when you're having fun. This week has been relatively quiet around here. We had Sarah Murray, author of MOVEABLE FEASTS, here last night, so if any of you missed her appearance and want to pick up a signed copy of her book just stop by and ask for one.
One of my favorite authors who calls Durham home, Haven Kimmel, stopped by the store last week and gave me an advance reader edition (AR for short in book biz lingo) of her forthcoming novel IODINE. Due out in August of this year IODINE is from the Simon & Schuster imprint Free Press. For a preview of the book check out what the Simon & Schuster website has to say here. Also new from Haven, and on shelves now, is her second book aimed at younger audiences (but well worth the time of all ages), KALINE KLATTERMASTER'S TREE HOUSE. For more on this title, also from Simon & Schuster, see here.
I'll wrap up this post now with a word of encouragement to any who read this to feel free to leave comments regarding what sorts of things you might want us to post about in the future, or anything else you have on your mind. Now is your chance to pick the brains of your friendly local booksellers. Thanks for stopping by, y'all come again.

Opened the doors in 1976. Beginning to blog in 2008.

2008-02-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

Welcome to our brand new web log. We here at The Regulator Bookshop are starting this blog to give folks some more insight into the goings on here at the store.