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May 2008
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April 14, 2008I just spent five days in Denver for the American Copy Editors Society conference (ACES: The few, the proud, the defiantly picky!), and although the conference left little time for sightseeing, I did manage to get to the Tattered Cover's historic downtown store twice. I was going to get all evangelical about Dallas' need for something similar, but I see that while I was gone, we had the announcement about Legacy Books coming to the Shops at Legacy in Plano. Well, I'm really, really happy for Plano, and I hope Legacy does indeed follow the inspiration of Tattered Cover and other legendary indies. But Dallas -- c'mon, Dallas, are we gonna let PLANO have a better bookstore? Geez. So allow me a brief moment of evangelicism: TC is pretty much everything a great bookstore should be -- filled with creaky wooden floors and shelves, with sections that are beautifully organized but in a "thinking outside the box" way that leads you to selections you never knew you desperately needed until ... there they were. The last thing I need in my house is more books, but somehow two TC shopping bags found their way home with me. On my first trip, midday on a Wednesday, the store was full of contented customers being helped by fabulously eccentric, incredibly book-smart employees. I've been in a local big-chain bookstore at that same time of day when I was the only custumer in sight. My favorite part of TC is the utter care taken in terms of helpfulness. All over the store, little handwritten signs answer the questions to apparently frequently-asked-questions. You might wonder, while perusing the journal section, "Where are the purse-sized address books?" A teensy sign points the way: "The itty-bitty address books are over on the checkout counter, near the bookmarks." Ahhh. Customer Service. It still exists; who knew? The entry "Musings from the Tattered Cover" has no entry tags. She took the stand today in her federal lawsuit to stop publication of stop publication of Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon." And she is NOT happy. "This book constitutes wholesale theft of 17 years of my hard work," she testified. Here's the complete Associated Press report: The entry "J.K. Rowling in court" is tagged: Harry Potter , Harry Potter Lexicon , J.K. Rowling I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed. -Robert Hass, "Meditations at Lagunitas" Robert Hass, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner in poetry, reads Friday night at Arts & Letters Live. The entry "Morning Verse" has no entry tags. |
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