Close to Hilda's Bakery in that Both Names Contain an "L"

I wasn't totally off.  My last post also made it clear that the business was a bakery.  So, yeah, this place:

Making Delicious Happen.

Becky and I purchased one chocolate cupcake and one red velvet cupcake, ate them on site, and then left.  Realizing we might never encounter another cupcake so delicious, we turned around after half a block.  This delighted the staff, who sold us two more red velvet cupcakes while we tried to sell them on the idea of a Donna Bell's Miami.

We got about ten feet before we returned, this time for a single red velvet.  We want a Donna Bell's in Miami because there is no cupcake in this entire city which can hold a candle to them.

"Wait, what about Misha's Cupcakes?" I hear you Miamians saying.  Blah, blah, blah.  Yes, they're great.  But you know what?  Homemade cake is great, like the one about sex and pizza.

Male propaganda.

I'm not saying Misha's are bad, at all, but one bite from Donna Bell's and I knew I wouldn't be able to eat another Misha's for at least a year.  It's like reading James Salter's Light Years or John Irving's Cider House Rules; you know other fiction will pale for a time.

"Some Chick from CSI" is actually actress, singer, and philanthropist (and if IMDB and Wikipedia are to be believed, director / photographer / producer / poet / spoken-word artist / writer) Pauley Perrette:

Acting as Abby Sciuto in NCIS.

Singing as Pauly P. with Lo-Ball

Philanthropisting as herself with Project Angel Food. 

I IMDB'd her.  I've seen her in Frasier, Almost Famous, and The Ring, and I've heard of NCIS, but I didn't know who she was.  NCIS is a number one TV show.  This year's Harris Poll ranked it America's Favorite Television Show of All Time.  Perrette's Q Score (yes, that's a thing) ties Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman as the number one Performer.  She's also 5'10", black-haired, and badass.  You'd think I'd have celeb-crushed on her like I do on Eva Mendes or Angelina Jolie, or at least that I'd recognize her.

You see what not having TV does to me?  This is why thousands of people descend on Books & Books to meet Tim Tebow while I need Wikipedia to tell me who he is and why I should care.

But really, does it matter how big of a star she is?  I'm sure NCIS is a fine program, but I'd have to guess Perrette's voluminous fundraising efforts, monetary donations, and charitable contributions - be they time or using her celebrity status to raise awareness - are of much more importance to the world.  

Well, all that and sharing her mother's baking recipes.

This is a clarification post but if you want a love-letter to Donna Bell's a good example can be found here, with pictures of the offerings AND the girl who rang Becky and I up.  If you're in New York City around the Theatre District and Hell's Kitchen, do your day right and stop by Donna Bell's Bake Shop.

Here's hoping it will be there every time I'm in town.

Books & Books: A For Profit Business

Customers really don't understand the book business at all (given the upheavals it has gone through in just a few years, and continues to go through, some of us working here don't get it either).  As a customer, I don't really need to know the behind-the-scenes machinations which bring me an espresso to enjoy a caffeine jolt.  Still, I know every time Aaron buys espresso at Starbucks, and Dick buys latte at Seattle's Best, and Harry buys  whole bean at Dunkin' Donuts, there's not a big mountain of coffee somewhere with an office on top of it, gathering the funds and redistributing them to the coffee business as a whole. 

Because I understand these businesses are in competition, I'd never go to a tasting at Pasion del Cielo with a pound of Starbucks, or sit down to read at Cafe Demitrio with a mug of Anniversary Blend.  Who would?  People who believe there is a Book Fairy orbiting the globe, gathering book money wherever it's spent and sprinkling it over booksellers everywhere, that's who.

Before I tell this galling story, I'd like to acknowledge that I've used the words "business" and "competition."  I'm saving posts about the skewed playing field the A-word enjoys for a later date, so let's set all that aside to talk about the Book Fairy.

There isn't one.

One thing Books & Books has always wanted, and has been asked to start a time or two, is a reading group for young adults.  With YA the one part of the bookselling world which is still exploding, this wish / request seems more important than ever.  So when we were approached to host a YA book club, we said yowza.  

After a month of preparation, including a lot of back-and-forth with the Igirl running the club (and the Igirl mom) during our hectic book fair season, we were ready.  The turn out was excellent.  The decorate-your-own cupcakes portion of the proceedings was a huge success.  They chose one of the three recommended titles to discuss for next month's meeting.  You could cut the book excitement with a knife.     

Then our children's manager watched in horror as Igirl told the group they could check the book out at the library, or buy it on Amazon.

Are you kidding me?  Have you been calling or emailing Amazon four times a week for the last month about this event?  Did Amazon suggest the titles you were choosing from?  Did Amazon spend an hour-and-a-half making the bookmarks you snatched up?  Did Amazon get up at eight in the morning (on a Sunday) to bake the cupcakes you wolfed down?  Did Amazon clean up the mess you left?  You know what, Igrrrlz, if you love Amazon so much, have Amazon a clear one of their rooms and set up chairs for your next meeting.  Oh, that's right - YOU CAN'T.

Guess what?  The money you spend on Amazon doesn't go to the Book Fairy and then back to Books & Books, it goes to Seattle.  Meanwhile,  your community in general and Books & Books in particular both languish.  You've used us to play host, cost us time and money, and used our store to advertise on online retailer which really doesn't need the extra exposure.

Don't be surprised to find us less hospitable in the future.    

Algonquin Night II: Be There or Die Regretful

Abe Froman works for Edward Mckay in Greensboro, North Carolina.  The other day he told me he was disappointed he wouldn’t be in town for Algonquin Night because, “If it’s Algonquin, you pretty much know it’s going to be good.”

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill is a small press based in North Carolina which sets the tone for a lot of marketing at larger publishing houses.  Email newsletters are commonplace, but Algonquin’s is one you look forward to seeing in your inbox.  As booksellers across the country buzz about the conversational tone, humor, and solid recommendations of the Algonquin Annotations (or Workman Off the Shelf, or Workman Unbound, or whatever they want to call themselves), a the big publishing houses are attempting to mimic the format.

Booksellers may not be the brightest lot – we are rearranging the deckchairs of our favorite titles on the sinking Titanic of an outdated retail model, after all – but we can still smell bullshit.
The Big Six throw hundreds of titles at the wall and see what sticks.  They ride huge mega-sellers until they’re dead, push them for a while, then drag them another few yards.  The Algonquin philosophy is no less aggressive, but a little less frantic; they publish a few fiction titles a month, and they believe there is no backlist.

In other words, they push just as hard for Roland Merullo's 2007 Breakfast with Buddha as they do for Jay Varner’s Nothing Left to Burn which comes out in six weeks.

Algonquin is like that favorite friend or bookseller who you go to time and again because their recommendations are so great.  That and the “no backlist” rule are important parts of Algonquin’s mystique, but I think what really sets them apart is how their titles turn readers into evangelists.  Ask Darby C. about Robert Goolrick’s A Reliable Wife.  Ask Debra L. about Heidi Durrow’s The Girl Who Fell from the Sky.  Ask anyone who has read Sara Gruen's Water for Elephants. You’ll see a look come over her face, a shine in her eyes that says, this book took me somewhere special, and part of me never left.


Me?  I’ll rave about all three of those greats, plus Jack O’Connell's haunting, imaginative The Resurrectionist, Hillary Jordan’s mighty, stark, dazzling Mudbound, and Brock Clarke’s* microscopically precise character portrait An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England.

The book industry gets criticized for gripping practices which have been in place for seventy years, for refusing to adapt to how the buying public wants to read.  Like the rest of the industry, Algonquin will need to get serious about digital formatting, but in the meantime they represent all that was right with the book business in the 1940’s.  Writers got small advances, not so much that they threatened the financial stability of the entire publishing house, but enough so the author wouldn’t starve.  The books were much more likely to make these modest advances back.  Success, even as defined by not losing money, allowed the author to publish another, to grow and develop his or her craft.

That’s why Algonquin sets the tone for publishing today.  People say, “I love John Irving” or “I loved The Historian,” they don’t say, “I love Random House” or “I love Little, Brown.”
Well, I love Algonquin.  And the more people who love them with me, the better the future of storytelling will be.

* If Brock Clarke sounds familiar, it might be because of this post, which I wrote before I knew he was coming.  Stop by Books & Books of Coral Gables Thursday at 7pm to see him present Exley, which goes on sale for the rest of the country in October.  But for you?  Thursday.  If you like a good buzz with your book, you can also catch co-authors Robin Goldstein and Alexis Herschkowitsch as they present The Wine Trials and The Beer Trials.

I'm a Terrible Christian

I went to see Lumo at the Riveria theater on Thursday. It’s a documentary film about rape as a weapon of terrorism in the Congo, focused mostly on a single girl who needs several operations to repair the damage to her vagina. All proceeds went to HEAL Africa. The founders of HEAL Africa, Dr. Kasereka (“Jo”) Lusi, MD, and Lyn Lusi, sat for a Q & A afterwards.

My friend Steve Sorkin invited me. His daughter Naomi had some peripheral involvement with the filming, or maybe she’d just invited him to a screening, I’m fuzzy on the specifics. But Steve saw the film and the turnout and decided he could do better in Miami. According to Dr. Lusi, Steve did. We were the largest turnout they’d had in America.

What these women go through is sadistic and torturous. The Congolese government’s complicity is criminal. People’s lack of awareness of how our buying habits directly contribute to chaos in the region (they are rich with two minerals vital to cell phone production) is tragic.

But let’s talk about me.

I was worried when I finished moving, I'd fall back a few steps in my emotional recovery. When the Treehouse was no longer a project, that just left me in my new home. I expected a difficult emotional period, but I hoped it wouldn’t happen. My hope was not met. It’s been days of miserable loneliness, not productive solitude. The harrowing documentary took me outside myself long enough for me to remember there’s a larger world outside my misery.

I am selfish. Solipsistic. Using Lumo to cheer myself up.

In my defense, it’s not like I left with a bounce in my step and a song in my heart, just without self-pity. For the first time in days, I slipped off to sleep the second my head hit the pillow.

My ten dollar donation buys a mosquito net. I hope there were other folks there with deeper pockets.