If you’re thinking of getting any of my books for the holidays, it couldn’t be easier. I’ve got you covered, even for autographed books!
I’ve been recommending this essay for years to every writer I know. And it’s free to read online…
I compiled a list of fun facts about this brilliant mathematician after reading two biographies. The oddest little things stayed with me, and here they are…
Steve and I checked out Botiwalla, a new-ish restaurant in West Asheville. I’d been watching the renovation from a distance for a while now, and when I saw it was finally open, we had to try it.
Basically this is a very casual eatery from Meherwan Irani, the chef who brought Chai Pani to Asheville back in the day. Chai Pani is all about Indian Street food. Botiwalla is a tribute to cafes created by Iranians who settled in India. Irani’s great grandfather ran such a place…
This town keeps coming up with food options. And since Covid, that thing of mine, and a new puppy, I just haven’t been seeking them out the way I used to.
But now I’m back!
…went to Regina’s Comfort Classics Friday morning and chowed down on some tasty stuff. That stretch of road on Patton Ave keeps changing. I had the chicken and waffle, something I’d been blabbing about having for a week since I looked up the menu. Steve had the breakfast sandwich—sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit. That came with seasoned fries…
View of the patio.
It's crazy but true: we bought new house in the same town. More space, a better office for both of us, and some really nice garden spaces to keep us sane in between. We haven't scheduled a moving-day per se, but are choosing to move piecemeal from our old place, so we can purge unneeded possessions along the way. I'm not quite up and running at the moment, but look forward to being productive in a cool new space. Yay.
This was a cool. One of my bookseller friends, Caroline (above) spotted my Fibonacci book on sale (in copious quantities) at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. The artist Dali referenced the Fibonacci Sequence in many of his works. I love when one of my books connects with a museum gift shop. Their priorities are vastly different from traditional bookstores, and they’ll keep a book in stock long after the other stores have returned them and moved on.
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Meanwhile, Caroline’s employer, Malaprops, is in the news this evening. This New York Times article announces that they are one of more than 50 indie bookstores that will receive a grant from mega-author James Patterson.
Zelda Fitzgerald gets a lot of play in Asheville, since she lived and died here. (A stone apparently marks the spot of the hospital fire, though I’ve never been able to find it.)
Our local indie bookstore Malaprops assembled a clever diorama of props—gin bottle and pearls—to celebrate this weekend’s talk by Therese Anne Fowler, author of Z. And their cafe magicians whipped up a special Zelda-inspired coffee.
If you haven’t seen my earlier post on what F. Scott was doing in Asheville while visiting Zelda, check it out here. Contact the bookstore for a signed copy of Fowler’s book. They should still have plenty.
The blog Moby Lives has a nice post today about indie bookstores in my town of Asheville, NC. They profile four such shops, but I recently counted as many as eight in the city, and up to a dozen in the outlying areas.
They are a huge mix: two B&Ns, several used bookstores, a dedicated children’s bookstore (Spellbound), a revered rare/antiquarian (The Captain’s Bookshelf), a bookstore/wine bar (Battery Park Book Exchange) and a couple of indies selling new books, the most famous of which is Malaprop’s. The stores have interesting personalities. Accent on Books was in the book news a few years ago because they had logged numerous orders for the luxury edition of Carl Jung’s $195 Red Book when it was released in 2010. (Must have something to do with the fact that the city has a Jung center.)
I can’t really offer an explanation for the profusion of book haunts, but we do have a university and we’re the state’s leftiest city.
That does not mean these stores are not endangered. And it’s not a given that they are patronized particularly well. There’s a weird split in attitude between downtown and outside-the-city shoppers who don’t like to come downtown and pay for parking. When I recently mentored a high schooler who was writing her own children’s book, she suggested we meet at the B&N at the mall.
"What about Malaprop’s?" I said.
"What’s that?"
Adults have told me the same thing.
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