some ideas for spring - please share your feedback!

I have a few ideas (and some official plans) for spring 2010.  Now that it's snowed twice (!) in Athens in 2010, I'm definitely ready for warmer temperatures to hit!

1. Thursday, March 18th at 6PM at The Globe:  Buy Local Book Club
I've written extensively about this already, but if you've missed details, check out our Facebook invitation and this blog post on We Are Athens (the Buy Local Athens initiative).

2. Saturday, April 17th all over the US (and in ATHENS, if you join me!):  "E-Free Day"

I'll be at a wedding most of the day, so I am unable to organize any in-person, formal event on this day.  But we have a Facebook event where you can pledge to be e-free on 4/17, no matter where you live.   I hope the weather is beautiful so that it makes it easier for us technology addicts to take a complete break from everything electronic.  That's right:  no TV, no computer, no cell phones, no e-readers!  Read more here.

3. A Saturday or Sunday, sometime in April or early May:  SCRABBLE TOURNAMENT!
This event, another in the series of community-focused fundraisers for Avid, will be held at a locally-owned venue large enough to accommodate however many people sign up! To make the tournament more fun, we'll (perhaps) be looking for food and/or drink donations and a place that will host us out of the goodness of their hearts (fingers crossed).  We also need folks to lend us their Scrabble game sets (complete with a board and all the tiles!) for the day.  As I'm a word nerd, you probably won't be surprised to learn that there are 3 Scrabble sets in my house as we speak.  Please contact me if you have venue ideas, a Scrabble game to lend, some swag to throw into the prize packages, or any other thoughts on the matter.

Most likely the tournament sign-up fee would be between $5 & $15.  Top 3 or 5 winners would receive some good prizes!

4.  Another book sale, date & place TBD.  Several of you made it out to our holiday book sale in December 2009.  I sold a lot that day, but as more and more folks have dropped off boxes of wonderful books, my shelves are filling up again and I've got to sell these before my house collapses under their weight!  :)  If you have any ideas regarding a book sale date, venue, etc., please email me.

Thanks, and let me hear from you!

-Janet G.

it's oh so quiet... (or, a behind-the-scenes glimpse)

Things have been quiet on the blog for the last week or so, I know--here's hoping you've not checked this page and worried about my slacking! Rest assured, my friends: I've been working like crazy on some cool developments.

Here are some things I've been up to:

1. I bought a CueCat. Now I'm able to scan the ISBNs off the used books I have for sale. As we speak, Biblio.com is deciding whether or not I'm worthy of an online "storefront." As soon as they give me the go ahead, I'll be able to send you a link to my 200 or so used books for sale. (I'm trying to generate some capital so I can get a website that will allow me to sell new books to you--books will go directly from the wholesaler's warehouse to your door!)

2. I've been meeting with folks who are interested in learning more about Avid Bookshop, including some who might eventually be formally involved with the store. Good news there!

3. My amazing designer friend Brandi created some logos for Avid! I've sent them out to a few folks and am getting wonderfully constructive feedback on them (and all the feedback is positive--Brandi's gifted, I tell you). Soon I'll get back to Brandi and she will create the final version of our sure-to-be-hip logo. (I promise you'll like it.)

4. Research, research, research.... I've been learning about other successful bookstores' inventive ideas; I've been working on version 542 of my business plan; I've been researching legal structures.

5. I've scheduled appointments to meet with business and accounting experts who will help me make some final decisions about Avid's business structure. I'll be filing for my formal business license with the Secretary of State as soon as next week! (Very exciting.)

6. Avid was mentioned in the Flagpole again (link forthcoming--as of this evening they haven't posted this week's news articles).

7. And of course there are tons of menial tasks I've been up to--adding to the soon-to-exist newsletter mailing list, trying to catch up on email, working with other booksellers, setting up an internship at another indie bookstore, and more, more, more.

8. Last but not least, I spent two days last weekend assuming different personalities.


So that's what's been going on behind the scenes here at Avid headquarters. Of course I've set aside time to read. Right now I'm reading the 1950s classic Betsy and the Great World & Betsy's Wedding by Maud Hart Lovelace--delightful! Before that I finished Michael Greenberg's Hurry Down Sunshine, a memoir about his teenaged daughter's mental breakdown.

more behind the scenes info: getting finances organized with help from a new book

It goes without saying I don't have enough cash in my account to open and fund Avid--I'll be applying for several loans, grants, and investments to add on to the savings I've already accumulated.  But before I could even think about acquiring a loan, I needed to get a better handle on my personal budget.

That's where this book comes in:  I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. I don't know that I should be recommending the book just yet, as I'm only done with a couple of chapters and have many pages to go.  But hey--I can at least wholeheartedly recommend the first two chapters, right? 

Let's get this out on the table right away:  I am not someone who's fixated on money or even particularly amazing at managing finances.  Yes, I pay off my credit card every month.  Yes, I have a job with a salary.  Yes, I am good at math. But no, I don't ever look more deeply to find out what my exact credit situation is and how this could affect my personal and professional projects. 

Until today.

I read this book and immediately felt called to action.  This is pretty special for me, as most books I read that are billed as self-help don't make me get up and move.  (I especially like reading about yoga, exercise, and meditation while lying in bed doing none of those three things.)  Something about Sethi's tone (which can be obnoxious but is, in general, encouraging and genuine) drives me to work.  He said I'd feel empowered if I started working on my finances one little bit at a time instead of having the big bulk of them looming over my head forever in one scary thunderhead.  So today I found out my credit score (good), composed a letter to the credit reporting agency asking that some erroneous information be fixed (which will help improve my score), paid off this month's credit card bill, set up some autopay bills (which helps keep your accounts active, something that's very important), and applied for another part-time job.  KAPOW!

My true inspiration for all this movement is my goal of opening Avid Bookshop as soon as possible, first as an online store, then as a book fair operation, and finally as a brick and mortar storefront. 

What have you done in recent months to jump-start your professional or personal life?

(Thanks to someone at Workman Publishing who was kind enough to send me a complimentary copy of this book the moment I mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to read it! Now THAT's service.)

a great podcast for lovers of literature & storytelling...

I wrote this for my personal blog six months ago but thought it'd be of particular interest to readers of the Avid blog.

Are there any English majors out there? Anyone who wanted to take more English classes but decided to pursue some other interests instead? You might want to keep reading to find out what podcast I'm going to recommend and why. I promise it's good--you should stay tuned.

As someone with an undergraduate degree in English and American literature, I can recall many, many hours of discussion-based literature classes during which pompous classmates dismissed others' theories and claimed their interpretations were the "right" ones. Luckily, far more prevalent are the memories of having one "aha!" moment after another during class discussions, grateful for others' insights that led me to understanding the story, poem, or essay more deeply. Despite my initial discomfort with revealing to others what I saw in the patterns and prose of fiction, I eventually opened up with the knowledge that almost any self-proclaimed theory about literature can be argued as long as you have some evidence and well-picked quotes to support it. Work may be created by the author with one particular goal in mind, but his readers will walk away from the piece with a variety of insights the author may not have intended--and each reader may have a completely unique interpretation.

Other than a few informal meetings of our local fledgling book club, I haven't much talked about literature in a critical sense since I graduated from NYU in 2002. I read voraciously and definitely reflect on my reading, but I don't go out of my way to push myself to understand a novel more deeply or try to see someone else's point of view. I read and reflect alone, then put the book back on the shelf. I hadn't realized I missed the push and pull of roundtable literature discussions, hadn't known that I'd missed the part of myself that could pull all-nighters writing twenty-page papers about my particular take on a poem.

Until now. On a whim, I downloaded a few episodes of The New Yorker's Fiction Podcast. I bundled up for a walk a couple weeks back and pressed play on my iPod and was whisked into a wonderful, beautiful story. I can't remember what episode I listened to that day, but I can remember smiling as I walked down the streets of Athens. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow! I feel as if I'm in one of my English classes with a really good teacher and no obnoxious, holier-than-thou classmates!" You see, the show not only features the stories themselves--it comes complete with a brief discussion before and after the story is read. One famous author picks any story he wants that has been published in The New Yorker. The guest author reads this story he admires and then discusses the ins and outs of the work with the magazine's fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, who has a really pleasant voice (unlike the voices I've stumbled across on several less-established podcasts). I did a quick Google search for her so I could link to her name and came across a really great article from The New York Times--click on her name and read it, if you'd like. Sounds like a cool woman in the NYT article.

And she sounds like a cool woman in her recorded life on this podcast. She isn't abrasive, judgmental, or dismissive when it comes to guest authors' interpretations of the work they choose to read. She retains the wide-eyed wonder (overused phrase--sorry--but it seems to ring true here) of a girl who's still in love with reading, who's still amazed at all the tricks of language and tone. Deborah and the guest author talk about whatever has moved them in the story, about the author's language and motivation, about his/her diction and use of imagery. I've listened to about ten of the episodes so far, and no one has annoyed me. The stories are always great, and the intimate conversation that follows really does shine light on the story.

Have you never ventured into literary criticism but wanted to know what intellectual bibliophiles had to say about so-called "good" fiction? Did you take one (or twenty) literature classes in college and then go cold turkey, not having another literary discussion after age 22? Are you an avid reader who thinks she immediately knows all there is to know about a piece of writing? Are you curious to know why I love this show so much? If you answered yes to any of those questions, I have an answer: this is the podcast for you.

Let me know what you think of it.

What do YOU love most about bookstores?

What are some of your favorite things about bookstores? What do independents have that chains don't have? What do non-indie chains have that indies lack? (Don't be afraid to talk about the glorious wide aisles at Barnes & Noble--though I may not shop there nowadays, I certainly have spent my weight in gold there!)

Do you have a very favorite bookshop? Any treasured bookstore, past or present, that felt like home? Please share your stories here and let us over here at Avid find out what you value most in a bookstore shopping experience. We'll be using your feedback to help create our store--it is, after all, for the neighborhood and community, and finding out what you want will help us make Avid Bookshop a success.