Alternate subtitle: A Bear Sits in My Woods! For those that don’t know, I’m a pretty big fan of Elizabeth Bear’s writing. So, too, apparently, my cat, who has spent a goodly portion of the time I’ve spent writing this post sniffing all the books. If my cat approves, then the books must be good, right! Needless to say, I bought a bunch of her books (in some cases, again). So here’s the list:
Recently, Camestros Felapton shared some beer/book pairings as part of the Blog Challenge Project. I’ve wanted to do something similar in the past for beer or tea, but given that we’re still in a pandemic of uncertain conclusion, my beer and tea access is relatively limited. Small town and all. And so I turn to another alcoholic beverage I rather enjoy and almost never talk about: port! What books go with port? Well, that depends on the port, I suppose! Today’s port is Dow’s 2011 Late Bottled Vintage Porto, which, like all ports, sounds fancier than it probably is. (I will preface all of this with the fact that I am not a fancy pants alcohol consumer or reviewer. I know maybe 3 or 4 fancy terms, but mostly I just care if something tastes good.) Here goes:
There are an absolutely bonkers amount of books in my house, and I’m making that even more bonkers by getting more books. The Rule of Five continues this week with a nerdy, literary, and certainly fantastic collection of additions that I’m sure will make my day…when I am able to read them! What nifty books do I have to share this time? Here they are:
Time for more books! This evening, I’m going to highlight some books from a lovely Canadian small press: At Bay Press.[efn_note]Disclaimer: I have worked for this press before.[/efn_note] A lot of the work ABP releases crossing genre boundaries, as you’ll see from the books below, which wander through poetry, weird fiction, short fiction, graphic novels, and more. Also: these books are gorgeous and have a delightful feel to them (I like touching them). So what did I get?
More books have arrived in my pandemic apartment of doom! Honestly, this is going to be endless because I buy books faster than I can organize them. After all, I am a book dork. Today’s lot features a few new novels and two academic works that might be of interest to some of you. Not that we’ll get to read everything given how utterly wonky the world is right now. But I’m certainly going to try! Here’s what I got:
Bookstores bookstores bookstores! All book dorks love them, and yet not enough of us have easy access to them. Up here in Bemidji, the closest thing we have to a bookstore is the used games and DVD store, which has a fairly meh book collection and a business name that doesn’t really fit what it is, and the comic book store, which, as you’d guess, mostly carries comics and has a fairly small but reasonably OK book collection (the comics collection is awesome, though). Beyond that, the next best thing is a trip to Park Rapids for Beagle & Wolf or to Brainerd for Emily’s or CatTale’s, all decent small bookstores. Otherwise, you gotta go to Duluth or Minneapolis for a really big bookstore experience! Since I’m stuck up here in Bemidji during a pandemic, I’ve started reminiscing about some of my favorite bookstores in Minnesota — of which they are many. When it comes right down to it, though, there is one bookstore that stands above them all: Uncle Hugo’s!
