As independent booksellers in today's market, we experience a frequent compulsion to remind readers of the virtues of real books, recommended and sold in actual stores at the value-based price as set by publishers and authors. It's a survival ploy, sure, and hopefully not too self-righteous, but it's also our appeal to preserve the humanity of literature as we watch it being divvied up into convenient, byte-size morsels, sold for pennies a pop.
Fundamentally, of course, we're just avid readers and book lovers who enjoy recommending books to fellow readers. We find that our customers, a vast majority of whom prefer the tactile sensation of reading and recognize the value in small shops like ours and thousands more across the country, enjoy this discussion of literature, especially when they're frequently introduced to great books that someone else has read and loved. We don't use computer models to schematize your reading tastes, and we're mostly too disorganized in the back-office to extract payment for pushing publishers' emphasis titles. We're just humans selling stories to other humans.
We found so many books worth shouting about this fall that, inspired by the national independent booksellers' Indie Next list, we decided to launch a new seasonal recommendation plan called the Turnrow 20. Out of piles and piles of newly published books, here are 20 new (and relatively new) titles that we have read and can't stop recommending to our friends and fellow book lovers:
1. The Apothecary by Maile Meloy
2. The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
3. Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell
5. Crazy River by Richard Grant
6. Death in the City of Light by David King
7. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
8. A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano
9. The Happy Table of Eugene Walter by Don Goodman & Thomas Head
10. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
11. Nightwoods by Charles Frazier
12. Pulphead by John Sullivan
13. Ranchero by Rick Gavin
14. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
15. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles
16. Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
17. State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
18. The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams
19. Those Across the River by Chris Buehlman
20. Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante
Check back here throughout the month to read reviews of each books, and stop in or write us for our Turnrow 20 flyer which lists and describe the twenty Turnrow-tested titles. As a special bonus, enter the Turnrow 20 Challenge. Read each book on the list and qualify for a $100 Turnrow gift card.
Would you have any interest in structuring a program (perhaps with special pricing) that would allow customers (near or far) to purchase the Turnrow 20 each season? Or maybe half the list (selected by your customers from the 20, or The Turnrow 10). Just a thought... how special it would be to own this very specially selected list each season/year...
Posted by: Deborah Wiles | November 01, 2011 at 05:49 PM
Absolutely. We could do maybe the Turnrow 20 or Turnrow 12, bulk discount. You bet.
Posted by: Turnrow Books | November 03, 2011 at 02:18 PM