New bookstore slogan: “the ghost of middlebrow past, present & future.”

The thing I like about being a buyer at a bookstore is I get not only to pass on books but explain why.

Bay Area winter cold isn’t actually cold, but also so fucking cold it makes me angry.

The true mystery in The Traitors UK is how there’s never any rain in the Scottish Highlands during those nearly two weeks of challenges.

Do people get -- or am I overstating the case? -- that they are effectively stealing from a bookstore if they special order a book they have no intention of ever picking up?

*BREAKING NEWS* No Pablo Neruda Love Poems purchased this VERY busy Valentine's Day at EBB.

This book went from mere temptation to ordered today. ebbooksellers.com/item/I12x_a-...

If as a small business owner I’m to be executed at the Revolution, you better believe I’m gonna get a scoop of ice cream right now.

Yesterday, Liz mentioned the "upcoming holiday this weekend,' and I legit thought for longer than a second, "Presidents Day is on Monday, though."

This will give the lie to the old “You wouldn’t punch a guy in glasses, would you?” line.

This looks interesting as hell. iupress.org/978025307577...

I did not have "former Wheaton English prof writes an interesting-looking biography of Abbey Lincoln" on my 2026 bingo card.

One of my golden laws of bookselling is: it's probably just as good that you didn't get that event you pitched.

All these worries about sentient AI killing all the humans, but I suspect its most reasonable response to dealing with terminally dull people is turning *itself* off.

Well now, this looks interesting. ebbooksellers.com/item/SLzAqBF...

Wasn’t expecting to see six Slavoj Zizek digital ARCs as choices in Libro’s monthly free picks for booksellers. Six?!

This is making the rounds, and the reactions are largely to be expected. For my part, I have no clue what commercial-seeking readers want or how many will tolerate it. But my hunch is that it wouldn’t necessarily require a majority for it to be seen as profitable. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/b...

Just out of the Codex Book Art Fair, and I’m happy to report people are still mad creative.

This, from @meganwachspress.bsky.social, is so good. Starts off as an explainer picking apart a dumb NYT story about Oakland and winds up reimagining the very idea of a city in the dying days of the coal economy.

Is there a betting line on an audible, verifiable “Fuck ICE” chant at the Super Bowl?

Guys, we received a ton of new nerdy books today. Who did this, wonders the guy placing the orders.

So I guess the upshot is if complicity is the apparent default status of the consumer, indies should make a profit off it? www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR: www.oaklandreviewofbooks.org/why-were-spo...

One of my least favorite things as a bookseller is when someone refuses to order a book through us because it takes more than two days for a normal bookstore to get a book from across the country WHICH IT SHOULD

This arrived this week, and appears from a cursory spin through it as interesting as I'd expected. ebbooksellers.com/item/9ZxRdsP...

I don’t like getting didactic and moralistic about buying from Amazon. It’s not my way. But, seriously, for books? Books?! If you’re reading - versus simply buying (there’s a difference!) - and still rationalize that it’s fine, I truly question your comprehension.

My spiritual gift is getting other small business owners to tell me how they’re three bad months away from eating their lease and closing. Kidding. That’s the baseline.

I loathe reality tv, but I have to confess I binged the first season of Traitors UK. Don’t know that I have subsequent seasons in me. But I’ve rarely yelled “play the fucking game!!” at a tv.

For the past year, I've changed how I do new title/frontlist ordering. Basically, opposed to ordering months in advance of their release, I'm generally ordering about 4-6 weeks. W/ an array of ordering analytics at my fingertips, I can now more definitively identify my baseline ordering philosophy:

I read a lot of blurbs, but this one is a first: "I have never eaten god before, but reading [...] feels like coming mighty close."

Reading a click-baity story about a sandwich place in the Bay Area that closed, the owner says, due to the abuse she took for her prices. But let me tell you, I've had at least $20+ grilled sandwiches, and in each instance they were pretty goddamn great.

The judges, it seems, are fucking pissed. It’s a nice thing to see.

I always imagine, when they see me blurbing a book, people who know me saying out loud: "But he doesn't like anything!"

I’m not objecting, but I was not expecting this to be a store bestseller. It’s become now a weekly reorder ebbooksellers.com/item/6CvPe_C...

My jaw hung open dumbfounded throughout this long article.

Good lord, the fire dept was RIGHT THERE.

I wasn’t expecting so many preorders for the anniversary edition of Infinite Jest.

This gives real @colonellovely.bsky.social vibes.

“The hardest part of growing up?” — the tidal pull of mortality? the pounding waves of regret? the sinking realization that there may be nothing better than what is?

MAGIC ARCHITECTURE is the more expensive (shockingly trade) cousin to MIT Press’s SICK ARCHITECTURE (saddled with an unnecessary academic designation). Both are deceptively & wildly cool. ebbooksellers.com/item/7u0AIzf...

when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married

Does an economic boycott make any sound in the woods when it isn't argued about on a billion-dollar social media platform?

Operating a book store is not a sound business decision, so we are not to be trusted.

This is pretty great. www.laborpolitics.com/p/how-minnea...

Trump’s version of “de-escalation” is stopping to reload.

Chatting with a couple of folks who closed shops/restaurants at the end of last year, and my takeaway: don't assume somebody else has replaced you somewhere that you love but haven't been in a long time for whatever reason.

I am apparently no longer one of the Kool Kids invited to New Directions dinners at Winter Institute. I need some art book publishers to start coming to these things, so I can fall into their arms. Valiz! Set Margins! RM! Come, burn your money recklessly!

Obama being best positioned to coordinate opposition to this administration (particular in civil society smoke filled rooms) but instead opting to lob pronouncements from Olympus like Jupiter but only for those pronouncements to be podcast recs is so insanely Barrycoded

Got our year-end numbers from the bookkeeper today. That we managed to stock a new store, increase wages, absorb increased health premiums, lose the bulk of our weekend brunchers, make donations, & still limp into Jan with the slightest of non-red on the final line is, frankly, a miracle of math.

Spent some time this weekend with Elizabeth Shakman Hurd's WALLS, and it was as terrifying as it was illuminating. ebbooksellers.com/item/9ZxRdsP...