Sunday Salon: Weekly Recap

It’s been an eventful book week here at WildmooBooks. First of all, I finally made the leap from Blogger to WordPress. It’s been fun to play around with all the themes, widgets, and other bells & whistles. Now to figure out the difference between categories and tags, and what to do with the mess of imported tags from Blogger.

Here are a few other things that happened this week:

Author Event at Book Club Bookstore

On Wednesday I attended the Book Club Bookstore‘s event with Brianna E. Dunlap, author of Connecticut Valley Tobacco (The History Press, 2017).

Brianna Dunlap served as the Museum Director of the Connecticut Valley Tobacco Museum and is now Communications and Development Associate for the Connecticut Farmland Trust.

Dunlap approaches the subject of Connecticut Valley Tobacco from a historical and cultural perspective. Did you know that as a teenager Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. worked in CT tobacco fields for two seasons to help pay for college? His experience in CT–being able to eat & sit wherever he wanted and attend church with white people–was an eye-opening experience for him and helped shape his vision.

New Bookstore in Middletown, CT

R.J. Julia Booksellers opened a second location in Middletown in partnership with Wellesley University. The store is located on Main Street and is just beautiful. The soft opening was on May 23 and the grand opening will be June 3. Like its sister store in Madison, CT, the Middletown location plans to host regular author events. I visited the store with my Book Cougar co-host, Emily, on Thursday and we met up with writer and review John Valeri. Here are some pictures.

Happy Bookworms on Main Street in Middletown, CT

Inside: classic bookstore ambiance with a modern flair. The first floor features new releases, fiction, and titles by faculty/alumni, as well as the children’s section. There’s also a cafe which wasn’t yet opened for business when we visited.

One of the beautiful welcome bouquets around the store.

The lower level has soft seating for hanging out, nonfiction, school supplies, and textbooks.

A view from the front tables looking toward check-out. Love the paperback cover of Martin Seay’s *The Mirror Thief*. Have you read it yet? Fascinating historical fiction set in three very different time periods. On the table just behind this one is Emilie Wapnick’s *How To Be Everything*, which I recently reviewed.

Reading This Week

Stephen King's The Music Room (WildmooBooks.com) — The Music Room by Stephen King

I’ve been reading around in Lawrence Block’s new anthology, In Sunlight Or In Shadow: Stories Inspired by the Paintings of Edward Hopper (Pegasus Books, 2017). I first heard about this anthology because Block won the Edgar Award for Best Short Story for “Autumn at the Automat,” which is included in this collection. It’s a wonderful short story –clean and clever–and I can see why it won.

Each story in the anthology is inspired by a different painting by Edward Hopper. It’s been fun to see each painting and then go along for a ride in the author’s imagination based upon it.

New Book In The House

Buddy doesn’t look too thrilled about this book.

I can’t believe this evil book is in my house. Thirty years ago I quit reading IT because it freaked me out so badly. Clowns in the sewer? Way too fucking creepy for me! But it has crossed my mind over the years. And there’s a new movie adaptation coming out. And my friend John bought a copy when we were out together and the bookstore just happened to have another copy. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I’m going to read IT sometime before the movie comes out in September.

Bookish News This Week:

The United States Postal Service issued a new stamp celebrating the life and legacy of Henry David Thoreau. Read my post here.

A forgotten/lost play by Edith Wharton has been rediscovered. Read The New Yorker article here.

You may have heard about tiny books and there’s a meme about liking big books, but have you heard about the Klencke Atlas? Published in 1660 it is almost six feet tall and spans over seven feet wide when opened. Read about the British Library digitizing this colossal book here.

How was your bookish week? Inquiring minds want to know! If you’ve read a great book or gone on a biblio-adventure, please share it in the comments.

2 comments

Bryan G. Robinson says:

May 28, 2017 at 9:34 am

Welcome back to The Sunday Salon. Good to see you here again. I do catch you and Emily (sometimes, not as often as I’d like) on the Book Cougars podcast, but it’s still good to see you here too. That anthology looks like it would be a good one. I’ll have to look for it. Reading here? Blood on Snow by Jo Nesbo, but I’m hoping it sticks. I have abandoned a lot of books in recent months. We’ll see.

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- Chris Wolak says:
  
  May 28, 2017 at 10:28 am
  
  Thanks, Bryan! And thanks for listening to the Book Cougars. We’re having so much fun doing it. I’ve abandoned a few books lately, myself. Hope Snow sticks. *wink wink* You just reminded me that Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman is on my TBR.
  
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