Buy a rose or a book for a loved one, sample fine wine, party and meet people. Saint Jordi day is a  Spanish tradition that begins on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 from 8-10  pm
at Book Beat. Sponsored by Elie’s Wines in Royal Oak and Book Beat, 26010 Greenfield, Oak Park.

We will have a great selection of poetry and quality literature, gift books and many bargain priced remainders. There will be books, wine tasting, food and more. SPRING FIESTA!

Sanit Jordi Day will also be celebrated at the Ferndale Public Libary on Sunday, April 18th from 2PM-7 PM. This will be a wonderful pre-Saint Jordi celebration with Michigan authors, readings and more!

Our friends at ELIE WINES in Royal Oak brought the first St. Jordi day celebration to Book Beat in 2006. It was an enthusiastic success, with Catalan poetry being read and delicious wines sampled, roses and books were joyously given away. This “World Day of the Book” with its Spanish origins and its link to romance and love, is something we at Book Beat and Elie Wines have continued to celebrate as a yearly tradition here in the Detroit area.

In Barcelona; almost 5 million roses will exchange hands and much kissing will take place.  Very nice tradition.

April 23 is a symbolic day in world literature. Declared as International Day of the Book by UNESCO in 1995, this celebration of books and literature draws it’s inspiration from a Catalan tradition, the Festival of the Rose.

Legend has it that Saint George, Patron Saint of Catalonia and international knight-errant, slew a dragon about to devour a beautiful Catalan princess. From the dragon’s blood sprouted a rosebush, from which the hero plucked the prettiest rose for the princess. Hence the traditional Rose Festival celebrated in Barcelona since the Middle Ages to honor chivalry and love. In 1923, this lover’s “festa” became even more poetic when it merged with “el dia del llibre”, or The Day of the Book, to mark the nearly simultaneous deaths of Miguel de Cervantes and William Shakespeare, the two giants of literary history, on April 23, 1616.

On this day in Barcelona, bookstalls and street festivities run the length of the picturesque La Rambla, the old city’s main boulevard and, according to the Spanish author Garcia Lorca, “the only street in the world which I wish would never end”. Read more about this tradition at: DRAGON’S BLOOD & BOOKS- A SPRING FESTIVAL

“In 1995, UNESCO decided that the World Book and Copyright day would be celebrated on this date because of the Catalonian festival and because the date is also the anniversary of the birth and death of William Shakespeare, the death of Inca Garcilaso de la Vega and Josep Pla, the birth of Maurice Druon, Vladimir Nabokov, Manuel Vallejo and Halldor Laxness

Enjoy St. Jordi’s day! Links to INTERNATIONAL BOOK DAY:

• World Book and Copyright Day at UN
• World Book and Copyright Day at UNESCO
• Message of the Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of World Book and Copyright Day — 23 April 2005
• About World Book Day in the UK and Ireland

link source: Wikipedia.

Photo above: Casa Batllo, by Catalian architect Antonio Gaudi, completed in 1907, it is said to represent the triumph of Sant Jordi (St George) over the dragon, with roof tiles representing the dragon’s back. Gaudi is one of the worlds genius architects whose masterpieces adorn Barcelona as jewels of the city. Photo Credit: L. Loydi.com

“For decades, Cody’s Books was a Berkeley (Calif.) institution with an international reputation as a modern-day agora. From the start, the independent bookstore was about more than selling books—it was also about the ideas they represented and the people who came to read and discuss them… The story of Cody’s, says Michael Levy, a professor of retail and marketing at Babson College, “is sort of an epitaph [of the independent book industry] in a way.” Source: Business Week

It may seem a strange move that Amazon bought ABE, as they claim to see the future of the book only in digital terms:

“…over at Amazon they are inadvertently thinking of ways to make the world worse for children and for the grown-ups who love them to pieces. What Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder, wants more than anything is to do away with the book as we know it. “Jeff once said that he couldn’t imagine anything more important than reinventing the book,” said Steven Kessel, one of Bezos’s top guys. Kessel is in charge of digitizing everything in sight.” –The Washington Post

Buying ABE works into Amazon’s strategy of owning and destroying the book market. They did it before in 1999 when they bought Bibliofind. (Book Beat were also once members of Bibliofind, one of the best service providers for professional booksellers selling online). Amazon paid over $20 million for it and then quickly closed it down. Buy out your competition and shut it down. American economics 101.

“Amazon.com has suggested that electronic books–the kind viewed on its Kindle device–are the future. Meanwhile, selling popular paper books helps pay the company’s current bills. So isn’t Amazon’s latest acquisition a step toward the past?” -Wall Street Journal

The small bookseller feels in increasing sense of doom and encroachment not from a level playing field but from a system that forces you to pay your own competition in order to survive -a bit like loading ammunition into your killer’s weapon. The public’s love affair with Amazon has created a non-taxed behemoth here in the US that has helped to decimate local economies and culture in favor of convenience and low price. In France (and other European countries) where books are highly valued and ingrained in their culture, they have laws in place to avoid the practice of mass market discounting and preserve their cultural standards. Amazon continues to pay heavy fines and operates at a loss in order to remain in Europe. Amazon was ordered to pay the French government 1,500 Euros each day they remain in business and hand over 100,000 euro ($146,000) to the French Booksellers’ Union, which sued Amazon in 2004 over its shipping policy. “The union said it was pleased with the court’s ruling, which would help protect vulnerable small bookshops from predatory pricing practices.” -The New York Times  

Another important yet unreported consequence from Amazon buying ABE is that this will also give them 100% owner of Bookfinder.com, the internet’s most powerful booksearch engine. By owning Bookfinder, Amazon will control the most important portal to the access of out-of-print books. Bookfinder is considered the google of the book world. Would Amazon ever consider abusing their stewardship of Bookfinder? You better believe it.

Small publishers too have felt the lopsided and often unjust practices by Amazon a threat to their survival. See: Why I Stopped Selling to Amazon.com  . The joke is  one huge marketing image and claim that “The World’s largest bookstore” has deviously foisted on the public. Their supply of “virtual books” is about the same available to any bookseller (unless they are no longer in business).

Slate magazine: “In fact, Amazon’s “megawarehouse” in downtown Seattle contains just 200 or so titles. Any other book must be obtained from a wholesale distributor or the publisher. This is exactly what any traditional bookstore does when it doesn’t have a book in stock. The difference is that traditional bookstores start out with a lot more than 200 titles in stock. “Earth’s Biggest Bookstore”? More like “Earth’s Smallest.”  --Slate.com on the Amazon Con

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove recently published his memoir Books, a title that describes his long-term love for bookstores and bookselling. He has bought the inventory of no less then 30 bookstores for his own shop Booked Up in Archer City, Texas filled with over 400,000 quality “junk free” books. Many chapters are devoted to tales and obituaries of once loved bookstores with not one  mention of the the ongoing threat from Amazon. The bookselling profession is one fading fast, like the corner drugstore and most remnants of small town USA, it is a cultural footnote passing away.  “Civilization can probably adjust to the loss of the secondhand book trade, though I don’t think it’s really likely to have to. Can it, though survive the loss of reading? That’s a tougher question, but a very important one.” -Larry McMurtry, Books   

The introduction of the Kindle device by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was a recent front cover Time and Newsweek tech/gadget sensation both magazines were fast to fawn over.  “But if all goes well for Amazon, several years from now we’ll see revamped Kindles, equipped with color screens and other features, selling for much less. And physical bookstores, like the shuttered Tower Records of today, will be lonelier places, as digital reading thrusts us into an exciting—and jarring—post-Gutenberg era.” Steven Levy, “The Future of Reading” Newsweek

A recent interview with Bezos describes the various faults of reading old fashioned books like “hand fatigue” and the obnoxious “loud” sounds of turning pages. But what about the offensive odor of books, their bulky size and the ridiculous space they consume?  I’m sure there are many more shortcomings we could pin on the book. Maybe they are just too difficult to read in this day and age. Who needs ‘em?  — but before we put this “old mare” to sleep, lets read some more words of wisdom from Bezos the great early champion of the book, who recently said, “In some ways the Web is the most important book in the world”.

MR. BEZOS: “Over some time horizon, books will be read on electronic devices. Physical books won’t completely go away, just as horses haven’t completely gone away. But there is no sinecure for any technology. If you think about books, it’s astonishing. It’s very hard to find a technology that has remained in mostly the same form for 500 years. And anything that has stubbornly resisted improvement for 500 years is going to be hard to improve.

I’m sure people love their horses, too. But you’re not going to keep riding your horse to work just because you love your horse. It’s our job to build something that is better than a physical book. The reason we love physical books is because we have had so many great experiences with that object in our hands that we have nice associations with it.

That is what we’re trying to do with Kindle. We see this as an effort to improve upon the book, even though it’s resisted change for 500 years….

Sometimes big, heavy hardcover books do break you out of the flow because you get hand fatigue. Or turning pages can be loud if you have a spouse sleeping next to you. There are things about physical books that we’re accustomed to but that actually aren’t very good….

The big whopper is wireless delivery of books in less than 60 seconds. You don’t have the cognitive overhead of thinking about your monthly wireless bill. You don’t have to know who the wireless carrier is. We’re hiding all of that complexity.”  Jeff Bezos source: “The Way We Read,” The Wall Street Journal 

“One, a robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; Three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.” — Isaac Asimov, “Law of Robotics” from I, Robot

In a land where “books are like horses” perhaps people themselves have gone the way of the buggy whip. Perhaps every one of us might be better off replaced by technology. Please consider that the next time you “Buy now with 1- Click.”  — but how strange it is (at least for me) that after 500 years the physical book still commands a mystery, respect, love and attraction that cannot be compared to any electronic simulation. Kindle that.

One last consideration: The recent closing of Manhattan’s Mercantile Library raised an interesting article on the value of “literary spaces” and how they function in our lives. “By nature of its inherent privacy, literacy is one of the cultural practices most insulated from the vagaries of fashion. It takes years to write a book, and sometimes weeks to read one, and this acts as a check on the hype cycle. To put it another way, literature and real estate trade on different notions of “vitality.” Spaces where readers and writers can congregate help bridge the divide between the two, literalizing an otherwise imaginary community; the quality of that community will, perforce, inform the quality of the work written for it. And so literary spaces are worth protecting.” — Gart Risk Hallberg, “The Life and Death of Literary Spaces” The Millions Blog, June 10, 2008

“Introducing Goodman, Shanks said, “[She] reminds me why I’m a bookseller, and how important it is to put authors, books, and the community together. Amy doesn’t practice trickle-down journalism. She goes where the silence is and breaks the sound barrier.”

Amy Goodman autographed copies of Standing Up to the Madness for a number of booksellers who were moved by her address.

Goodman launched into her talk by declaring independent bookstores “sanctuaries of dissent … where people can go to get independent information.” Disseminating a wide spectrum of information is especially critical now, she said, with a presidential election in the offing and when thousands of young men and women are being killed in Iraq.

In outlining some of the stories of the ordinary people doing extraordinary things who are featured in Standing Up to the Madness, Goodman told the story of the four Connecticut librarians who successfully fought the U.S. government when they refused to relinquish patron records. She chronicled the experience of four students in Wilton, Connecticut, who when told by their principal they would not be performing their play based on the letters of U.S. soldiers who fought in Iraq, took their show to the New York stage. And she mentioned that, in 1955, Mamie Till Mobley stood up and demanded an open casket for her violently murdered son Emmett Till, so the public would know of, and see, the “brutality of racism.”

Goodman also went on tell the story of the White Rose, a pamphlet written during Nazi Germany by Christian students who protested against the Third Reich. Six of the core members, including brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl, were caught and beheaded. The motto of the White Rose was “We will not be silent.”

Speaking out and standing up, said Goodman, was the coin of the realm for booksellers and librarians. “They are the freedom fighters of our time,” she said, closing to a standing ovation. “We will not be silent. That motto should be the Hippocratic Oath of the media landscape. Democracy now!”  — from Bookselling This Week

Located on west 47th street in the heart of the diamond district, Gotham attracted many celebrated writers and artists (i.e., Arthur Miller, J.D. Salinger, W.H. Auden, John Updike, Man Ray). Artist Edward Gorey who had many titles published by Gotham, often slept in a small upstairs room when he came into the city making it his second home. One could always find a shelf or two of signed Gorey items on almost any visit. A hidden backroom walk-in closet was home to hundreds of rarities and signed limited editions. Owner Andreas Brown, a cranky bibliophile stood guard buried in books and cats at his chaotic  wooden desk tucked  in the back of the store. If Andreas was in an especially good mood, he’d proudly show off Gorey first edition treasures and original ink and watercolor drawings locked away in that secret “no one allowed” backroom chamber.

“Founded in 1920, it was one of the finest repositories of original and rare literature in the city, and, during the long tenure of former proprietor Frances Steloff, a major haunt for many notable American and foreign writers of the 20th century, and also a cultural pacesetter; the store sold censored and controversial works, even fielding a lawsuit by a ninny who was offended by its sale of Nobel Laureate André Gide’s If It Die. (Those were the days–now the ninnies don’t even deign to pick up works of imaginative literature any more and get worked up.) Allen Ginsberg and Amiri Baraka in their youth worked there as clerks, but poor Tennessee Williams didn’t “last a day. (for one thing, he didn’t know how to wrap packages.”

“The bookstore attracted celebrities from the entertainment world as well. From Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin, and Gloria Swanson to Woody Allen, Patti Smith, and David Bowie, familiar figures would often be seen browsing seemingly chaotic and disorderly shelves or loose stacks of books lining the few aisles.” — Source: One Poet’s Notes

The continual closings of cultural institutions like Gotham Book Mart (read: The Internet is Killing Independent Bookstores), or Cody’s Books in San Francisco, and many others, is making it clear that a world of mindful diversity, literary culture and independent thinking is fast decaying under the continuing dire spell of commercial branding and mass merchandising. Read a recent article about the closing of Dutton’s books in Los Angeles, from The Nation: Eulogy for an Independent Bookstore.

Area independent bookshops like Shaman’s Drum, Nicola’s and Crazy Wisdom in Ann Arbor or Book Beat and John Kings in Detroit are not immune to this crisis. These are each unique and meaningful, near spiritual places that have helped to define our community through good and bad times. Please Remember: Think Independent, Read Independent, and Buy Independent. We thank you.

“Where is the wisdom
We have lost in Knowledge?
Where is the knowledge
We have lost in information?” — T.S. Eliot

*Independent bookstore is a term used in to identify bookstores that are primarily owned and operated by local people. They tend to have strong ties to the community and are frequently involved in non-profit community events as well as in cultivating the work of young writers. Independent bookstore selection tends to be more esoteric and less mainstream than chain bookstores. – Wikipedia online

Bookstores, like the Arctic Polar Bear, are an endangered species. Many young students (and even a few aged boomers), no longer cherish reading and collecting books as in the past. The art of browsing through old book and record stores — hunting for that rare treasure, is a fond relic of antiquity. Here then is a small epitaph, a paean to the Los-Angeles independent bookstore from the Santa Monica Mirror editorial, “Goodbye Mr. Pickwick”:

“I don’t remember exactly the order of their closings. It doesn’t really matter; suffice to say they were once here, vibrant and a source of joy to many aficionados, and now most of them are gone. I refer to small neighborhood bookstores – many with wonderful used-book sections. In West Los Angeles there was Papa Bach on Santa Monica Boulevard and Campbell’s and College Book Co., Pettler and Lieberman, and Vagabond Books in Westwood; there was David Morrisey, Krown & Spellman, Moondance, Midnight Special, and Marlow’s in Santa Monica, and Dutton’s in North Hollywood; there was Heritage Books, Book City, Pickwick Books, John Partridge Books – all in Hollywood – and Zeitlin Ver Brugge and Dutton’s in Beverly Hills. And most recently the losses of Other Times Books on Pico in West Los Angeles and, just this month, Wilshire Books in Santa Monica. And probably many more I am forgetting….

A loss for all of us: these were wonderful stores to browse in, to find treasures on dusty shelves, behind boxes, or standing on ladders to reach the higher-up shelves. As many times as I visited each of the above, as many times as I scoured sections of my interests, I invariably found a book I had overlooked or a recent arrival or a book that reflected a new interest. Now comes the turn, the reversal, the counter-theme: the Internet, Amazon, et al. For as convenient as they are, they can in no way replace what we have lost and are losing. They are great sources for acquiring books or searching topics you already know you want to seek. But the courting of a book, the getting-to-know-you processes, are not possible via the Net. Books, like anything of value in life, need to be experienced in person, hands on. And while Borders or Barnes & Noble have huge in-print, current book sections, they do not offer the unique experience of funky, neighborhood used book stores.

So where is all this leading? I don’t know exactly. Partially, I suppose, I’m guilty of becoming the crusty, old curmudgeon who complains that things today just aren’t as good as they used to be. But beyond that, I think this is a plea to support the few used and neighborhood stores that remain. As they perish, one after the other, I believe we all lose something truly irreplaceable and we lose something of our connection to the past… Dutton’s, Sam Johnson Books (on Venice Boulevard), Village Books (Pacific Palisades), the Bodhi Tree (West Hollywood), and most recently, Kulturas Secondhand Books (on Ocean Park Boulevard in Santa Monica). These and the few others remaining in Los Angeles warrant our support – they in turn support our history as well as our future.” — Paul Cummins, Santa Monica Mirror

Thanks to Shelf Awareness for this source.

Shopping locally is one important way in which we can all support our local economy. Perhaps you’ve heard about the grassroots movement towards purchasing products and services from locally owned and operated businesses. Maybe you practice this yourself, or maybe you’re not sure why people are making a big deal out of the issue of shopping locally.

With the proliferation of big “box” stores and national/international chains, some people find it hard to understand why they should pass up the big savings and convenience offered by these large, corporate-owned businesses. In fact, data provided by over a dozen economic impact studies has shown that supporting independently owned business fosters a healthier local economy by keeping more of your dollar in the community where it is spent.

Support Michigan grown food markets, and find suppliers of organic fruits & veggies at: MARKETLINE: BUY LOCAL, BUY FRESH. Also support your local FARMERS MARKET. Here is a list of SOUTH-EAST MICHIGAN FARMER MARKETS. They have gudebooks, food glossary and tips for buying at market.

The Local First movement is growning, and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) has played a large part in encouraging Local First campaigns across the country. Find out more about supporting the local economy at BALLE’s Local First website.

You can make a difference, now! Many people chose to support the local first movement by participating in America Unchained Day on Saturday, November 18, 2006. On that day, people across the United States made a point to shop only at locally owned businesses. Even though the day itself has come and gone, you can still take up the challenge on your own or with a group of friends. You may even discover that shopping locally is just as–if not more–convenient and fun than driving to the nearest Wal-Mart, Starbucks, or Costco in search of the items or services you need.

If you’re interested in learning more about supporting a local economy, the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) has provided a helpful book list for further reading on the subject. AMIBA also has a long list of links to websites of organizations with similar goals. A recent article featuring Detroit area independent bookstores (including Book Beat) was featured in The Detroit Free Press. Read the article on local independents at: ESCAPE THE CHAINS: Browsing the shelves has added allure in independent bookstores.

author Javaki Hilmon & friends at Book Beat

Everyone’s got one, and now Book Beat too has joined the swampy lagoon of bloggers in digital wonderland. We’d like to use our “Backroom” space to offer reviews, interviews and more in-depth comments on the world of books, authors and culture than is possible to do in our fractured newsletters. We will also use this space to archive bookstore events as well as posting off-topic subjects that are of special interest to our customers. Our archive of bookstore history, events, and author readings (on video), will eventually be edited and posted.

We’d like to invite writers and reviewers to send submissions or ideas for consideration. We are just at the beginning, and hope to add more features as we go. Our focus will continue to be on fine arts, photography, music, quality lit, children’s lit, creativity & books for all ages.
Our category list appears to the right and top of the page. You’ll also find our nifty and streamlined Gort Jukebox above that, which we will keep stocked with thoughtful music & poetry. We will be adding and changing it semi-often. We are thankful to the fine folks at the Somniloquy Institute who designed the streaming Gort Jukebox to function whenever the window is left open. Our bookshelf of online goodies appears at the top of the page where you can browse our select offerings. Or enter The Book Beat Cavern for the total experience. For those unfamilar with us, we are also a real 3-D bricks and mud bookstore, located near the avenue of fashion in metro-Detroit. Click here for Book Beat directions. We Thank You for your support and comments.

Book Beat staff

Special thanks to web-mistress Anneke Auer at the Somniloqy Institute who has designed our site & blog.