Sold a fair number of these yesterday alone! May need to break out radio silence & do these more often, huh?

We don't send many emails, and we almost never send emails featuring nothing but books. But today we thought, why not now? Ten(ish) books -- or bookish magazines -- we're excited to be featuring this summer. mailchi.mp/ebbookseller...

It’s hard, but crucial, to be consumed with the potential of human / artistic creativity, when the bulk of our economy is built around short-cuts and fakes, and the whole of our present federal government destruction.

this is my kind of company motto right here

Love that our in-store bestseller list can run the gamut between "Sure, that makes sense, that's selling everywhere" to "What the hell, what?" ebbooksellers.com/lists/LkUnOZ...

Today I learned that it was Northern California booksellers who first (or at least most emphatically) emphasized the “independent” in “independent bookstores.” The association here at the time was the first to put it in the association name. How ‘bout that!

Our broad commitment to university presses — to selling them, ideally; & promoting them, at least — is apparent w/ even the most cursory browse of our shelves. So, yeah, fantastic, long “state of the union” type pieces like this are incredibly important for us. www.publicbooks.org/publishers-a...

🤩

Staying a little late a Local Economy event, which gave me a chance to chance this pleasant front-of-store color from this early-evening sun. The vibes & music are solid.

Probably shouldn't have let a handful of weird business perverts unwind the cultural miracle of American research universities

Two funny spam emails this week asking if we'd benefit from sponsorship opportunities with Shania Twain.

This right here is necessary reading.

🚨Bad news. A THIRD National book banning bill has passed committee in the house.🚨 Meet the CHARLIE act that will prohibit the teaching of what they call: equity ideology (not white supremacist jingoistic history) More from @authorsabb.bsky.social when we have it. www.congress.gov/bill/119th-c...

Agreed! The *effects* of framing physicality as "inconvenient," as a problem to be solved, usually by somebody with deep pockets eager for deeper profits, are more often than not the causes of far more inconvenience.

It is with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins. The Saxophone Colossus died this afternoon at his home in Woodstock, NY at the age of 95. 1/2

just got to the love shack, you wouldnt believe the size of the chrysler in the parking lot

That this dude is at the helm of one of the companies around which the western world’s economies run is, let’s say, *telling* of the present state of things.

ProPublica used leaked tax returns to calculate that through complex tax avoidance schemes, Jeff Bezos pays a tax rate of 0.98% www.propublica.org/article/the-... So if we doubled the taxes he pays, that would mean he'd still be paying less than 2%.

*Sigh* Adding Pizza Hut to the list (see previous post).

An unsolicited (& surely unnoticed) memo to enormous tech companies who have cornered the market on the daily working life of millions -- say, Adobe and Google: knock it off with the AI clownery. You were doing fine!

Love the blurb for this: “This book masterfully reveals how the jammed guillotine, the derailed train, and the misfired missile truly shape our world. Elegant, essential, and profoundly disruptive: a truly innovative insight on how technology actually happens." ebbooksellers.com/item/Jt0yuxc...

Lots of good bookstores in the East Bay are finalists for Best of Oakland. Happily, we're one of them! www.oaklandmagazine.com/best-of-oakl...

I used to get a little bummed when the cool kids didn’t know of our store. But fear not, I now just assume they’re not so cool after all.

Got to spend this past weekend at the LA Art Book Fair. It's a perfect blend work work and pleasure, exhaustion & exhilaration. It is going to be so fun featuring some of these new finds in the store over the coming months.

Yeah, there really is a book for sale on Amazon called Infinite Jeffs, where they replaced all the words of Infinite Jest with the word "Jeff". It's 25 bucks. www.amazon.com/Infinite-Jef...

Only a deeply impoverished mind could see the accumulation of a billion dollars as a marker of the heights of "human potential."

Happy to announce that Translator issue 3 has arrived at the store. This is such an amazingly rich new magazine -- all translated reportage, richly designed. It's such a treasure. translatormag.co/products/iss...

A quick word or two:

As we have done since well before we were even East Bay Booksellers, we will be closed for International Workers' Day / May Day (Friday, May 1). I cannot rival Gary Snyder's epic toast, but I also like posting this bit from a newsletter I wrote several years ago: ebbooksellers.com/internationa...

There's more I'd like to say (& maybe will yet) about the resurgence of indie bookstores. I still have questions re: marketshare of books (vs. our corporate / online retailers). But it's definitely true, per the article, our sales boomed for a time post-COVID. www.fastcompany.com/91461983/ind...

Going through today's sales report. Love to see the deep browsing you all did! Always nice selling from display quantities, but REALLY love it when the single-copy treasures are found. Show off your Independent Bookstore Day wares to friends, and be sure to tell them where you got them.

Today is Independent Bookstore Day. Honoring our longstanding tradition, our booksellers are getting commission bonuses this weekend for purchases of all their staff picks! We have shelftalker cards throughout the store and a handy webpage here! ebbooksellers.com/staff-recomm...

The thing is that this has been true for a long time. Thinking that liberal arts degrees are impractical is received wisdom that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. This claim is only "counterintuitive" if you have bad intuition about higher ed, and, accidentally and on purpose, most people do.

The "death" of English departments and other liberal arts fields is not about their obsolescence but about the fact that they're being actively *killed* by institutions that don't value them on principle, not because of any evidence. Glad ppl are catching up. www.nybooks.com/online/2023/...

New newsletter went out this morning. TLDR: never stop rabble rousing. us16.campaign-archive.com?u=a0d5650803...

Been staring at a blank screen trying to think of what to write in prep for Independent Bookstore Day this coming Saturday. It’ll come to me & us both eventually, both the newsletter text and April 26th.

The section that the Guardian censored… By Prof Judith Butler

Well...

New Coming Soon (which is to say, MAY 2026) list is up on the site! ebbooksellers.com/lists/L7ztDz...

So very excited for this in general … and for our dear friends at The Center for the Art of Translation in particular. www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

The women who sing lullabies for the dying: How the Threshold Singers of the East Bay create soundscapes for the end of life: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/threshold-si...

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

Love this. ebbooksellers.com/item/u60uZZa...

One very cool thing that brightens a part of the day, esp on days that sometimes desperately need brightening, remains looking at what's sold that day. Not that the gross number is necessarily huge. The ideas, though, are massive. In an incurious, dumb, mean time, it gives one hope yet.

Recent days have really underlined the fact that we humans are capable of the coolest technological wonders ... and, alas, the most depraved.

Huge bummer to hear about Millennium closing its doors in Rockridge next month.

There’s only one thing imperiled in the phrase “Great American Novel,” and it’s not the novel.

Thoroughly enjoying reading this aloud at the store today. ebbooksellers.com/item/HnQMryI...

Reading Diane Negra’s I’M SORRY YOU FEEL THAT WAY. Straightaway gets to one of those seemingly obvious things that only become so AFTER you say it: convenience is extended mostly to make somebody else money, & is usually paid for by those who can’t afford it. ebbooksellers.com/item/jox8MGW...

Tfw a customer reports back that their last four books didn’t quite hit for them, and three of them were your personal staff picks.