Dull tag?

Here's a little video Booker made. It's for some of his friends on University Way.

Dog of the Week

Here he is, Dog of the Week fans. It's Marlowe.

Marlowe is an awfully good boy, and he swears that he did not write any of Shakespeare's plays.

Who's a good boy and didn't write Shakespeare's work? Who? You didn't, Marlowe! You wrote your own plays, didn't you, boy? Yes you did!

Good boy, Marlowe.

HP7, Wizard Week

As alluded to earlier, we're going all out for the release of the final Harry Potter book. Not only will we be hosting a huge party in the U District, Mill Creek, and Bellevue stores so we can sell the book at midnight (the very second it is legal to do so), we've set up activities for fans of all ages for every day of the week leading up to the midnight release (and these Wizard Week events will also be happening at our Tacoma store).

What sorts of things will we be doing? Well, we'll have cram sessions where kids can bone up on the previous six books to prepare for #7, bookmark making (all week), Potter prediction journals, a songwriting workshop, and movie nights. We're even organizing a U District protest, where we'll get kids (and adults!) to make signs and declare their position as to the status of a certain old wizard. (Dumbledore lives!) Events vary from store to store, and day to day.

Get the latest info on all the goings-on, take a look at our special Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows page.

New ways of looking at books

Well, how the heck do I shelve these? I'm stumped.

(Link from the strange and wonderful BibliOdyssey blog.

Dog of the Week

Dog of the week lovers, meet Vanian. His humans work at University Book Store. They were house-sitting on the beach, and Vanian strolled into the place looking a little tired and a little beaten up. And then he looked up and informed them that he was, from that moment on, their dog.

Vanian is named for Dave Vanian, lead singer of the band The Damned. They both have widow's peaks.

Folks interested in a comprehensive history of the music played by bands like The Damned might want to check out Babylon's Burning by Clinton Heylin. It looks to be pretty exhaustive. You might compliment it with Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk by Legs McNeil (aka the guy who smokes in your bookstore). So after you've read one researched piece by a rock journalist, and one compilation of anecdotes and memories, you could finish off with a biography of one of the key players in the genre. How about Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer by Chris Salewicz?

But don't do it for me. Do it for Vanian.

Good boy, Vanian. That's a very good hand sell.

July Nick's Pick

Nick has announced his July pick.

"Imagine a remote, superstition-gripped village in the mountains of Albania clinging to such a steep slope that when drunks fall off the sidewalk, they land on someone’s roof.

That’s the setting of Ismail Kadare’s Chronicle In Stone, newly updated, revised, re-assembled and published complete for the first time in English by Arcade/Hachette. The wonder-filled little town is based on Kadare’s Balkan childhood home, Gjirokaster. It’s a world where witchcraft is a practical concern, eyeglasses are considered shocking, and the severed arm of an English pilot can become a sacred relic.

Now under Italian rule, now Greek rule, now German rule, the characters in this little village loom as mythic figures in the eyes of the near-sighted boy narrator, whose whimsical imagination struggles to understand a world of resistance fighting and Allied bombing, a world where a girl who kisses a boy in public can disappear forever..."

Read all about it—and lots more—on his blog, Novelworld.

Nick book club will be discussing Chronicle In Stoneon Monday, July 30, at 7pm in the conference room at University Book Store (U District).

A Potter Podcast!

Follow this link to listen to the first in a series of podcasts about the upcoming festivities surrounding the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

In this episode, you'll hear an interview with The Parselmouths, a Seattle WizRock band scheduled to play WizRockStock, a concert we'll be hosting here at our U District University Book Store on July 20.

Many, many more details to come.

Dog of the Week, The Trailer

Our resident filmmaker and mascot, Booker T. Owl, has made a trailer for our Dog of the Week feature. Enjoy!



Or, upon review, be weirded out by!

Dog of the Week

Friends and readers, meet Michelle. She's been a regular at University Book Store for five years. For ten years, her human used to bring around another toy poodle named Myshkin, but Myshkin has left us. So it goes.

I don't know whether or not Myshkin was named for the protagonist of Dostoevsky's book about a "positively good man". I will not speculate, because Myshkin was a lovely dog, and I have no interest in further connecting the little one to the title of that book.

I would like to use the opportunity to recommend to readers any of the wonderful Russian novels and stories translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. I have my favorite. You?

But, seriously—good girl, Michelle.

Shelving Fun

Follow this link.

Dog of the Week

That's Miss Poppy. Her human worked here. Not anymore, though. Oh, Miss Poppy! We'll miss you.

This week's Dog of the Week is dedicated to the prosecution of whomever is responsible for all of this.

I liked the bleak, violent novel The Dog Fighter by Marc Bojanowski. It's not for everyone, but the prose is tight, and the story hits like a truck. But I just can't get behind the real thing.

I'd rather be reading...

pia
Originally uploaded by ubs_blogger

But, instead, I am shelving.

If I was reading, I'd be sitting somewhere with Pia Ehrhardt's remarkable new book, Famous Fathers. This is Ehrhardt's first book, and it's as good a short story collection as I've read in a long time.

Ehrhardt allowed me to interview her here.

Mark Harris, 1922 - 2007

Mark Harris died last Wednesday. His book Bang the Drum Slowly is one of my favorite baseball novels. I recommend it.

Here is a photo of him with Groucho Marx.

Delivery

Ever wonder how we can afford to ship books for free in the US? We got a guy...

We Love Books

You love to read. We love to read. You are looking for a good book. We have 180,000 of them. It's like it was meant to be.

(That's right. It's the triumphant return of Booker T. Owl, University Book Store mascot.)

(Oh, and no Bookmob-Owl jokes, please.)

Dog of the Week

Sure, the kittens were cute. But this is Bridget, and she ain't no slouch. Half lab, half collie, Bridget is in training to be a service dog for Summit Assistance Dogs. Her trainer, Brittain, is sending her off to intensive training soon, and everyone at University Book Store wishes her the best of luck.

Good girl, Bridget!