The Topic Will Be CHANGES!

 

It’s next Wednesday, August 13, that Tim Mulherin will be at Dog Ears Books with his presentation on This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern Michigan. See my Books in Northport post for July 11 to learn more about the book between now and next week.

We will convene at 7 p.m., and I hope you will be able to join us then for a diversity of views and what it bound to be stimulating conversation.

As always, this is a free bookstore event, but you may want to get here a little early to be sure of a good seat.

"What are your hours?"

I've been cagy about hours this year and haven't posted any since Memorial Day, but now I'm ready to commit.

Monday, 11-5

Tuesday, 11-3

Wednesday-Saturday, 11-5

Sunday - CLOSED

The reason for shorter hours on Tuesdays is that in July, beginning on the 8th, I'll be selling books in the evening at the Friends of Leelanau Township Library Summer Author Series events, and I need to go home and give my dog a break before heading back to Northport. 

Summer FOLTL guest authors are as follows:

July 8 - Karen Mulvahill, The Lost Woman

July 15 - Hayward Draper, The Colony

July 22 - Jenny Robertson, Hoist House

July 29 - Aaron Stander, Smoke and Mirrors

All these events will be held at the Willowbrook, 201 Mill Street, and will begin at 7 p.m.

See more discursive book ramblings here. 

Holiday Excitement

 If you stopped by, you had fun, too! We sold all the books from my first order, but I've restocked, and she signed all I have.

Sumer is icumen in

First, a reminder: Fleda Brown will be at Dog Ears Books on Friday, May 23, reading from her new chapbook, Doctor of the World, beginning around noon. We are gathering informally, and since it will be lunch time I’m inviting people to bring a sack lunch. (I’ll have some nonalcoholic punch to quench your thirst.) How often do you have a chance to meet a poet laureate? Fleda held that position in Delaware. Poetry and conversation will take place in the newly rearranged gallery next to the bookstore. 

Then, an announcement: On Memorial Day, the following Monday, children’s author and retired elementary school teacher Kathy Groth will be here for an hour or two, beginning around midday, to inscribe her new book for purchasers. Sunken --  Shipwrecks of Lake Michigan takes two young children with a magic map on an underwater adventure into history and mystery. If you’ve only got five minutes, that’s time enough to stop by to have the author write a personal note in a copy of her book for the inquiring and adventurous young people in your life (with lots of information for adults, as well).

 

Finally, a preview: We will be having a book launch on Tuesday, June 10, from 5 to 7 p.m. for Marilyn Zimmerman’s In Defense of Good Women. That will be exciting! There’s another poetry reading in the works, also, with guest poets Teresa Scollon and Jennifer Clark. As soon as I have a date for that, I'll let you know. 

The Book Program for July in Northport

Beginning Tuesday, July 9, Dog Ears Books will be closing at 3 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons for the month of July. Your bookseller will be found those evenings (with books to sell) at the Willowbrook Inn, where the Leelanau Township Friends of the Library Summer Author Series will take place. 

 

All Summer Author Series events at the Willowbrook begin at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30 and cash bar. On the first evening, I will be interviewing author Don Lystra. We will discuss fiction writing in general, and I’ll ask him some questions about his latest book, Searching for Van Gogh, a coming-of-age story set in Michigan in the 1960s. 

Please join us!

New, Restocked, and Looking Forward

 

Not only is it late September, but this coming Saturday is Leelanau UnCaged, Northport's big, beautiful annual street fair. This year BATA (Bay Area Transit Authority) is offering FREE BUS RIDES to Northport from Traverse City! And at 4 p.m. on Saturday, poets Fleda Brown and Michael Delp will give readings at the bookstore (a free event, as is the day's music and entrance to UnCaged itself), so please plan to stop by. The weather forecast is for yet another gorgeous Northern Michigan fall day.

Dog Ears Books will be open all afternoon on Saturday until at least 6 p.m. Our dedicated fall hours, remember, are Wednesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with Monday and Tuesday as "by chance or appointment" days), closed on Sundays. And with each passing week, I am ordering new books for the store, restocking popular local offerings as well as bringing in the sometimes unexpected. 

 Definitely here through October. Winter is still up in the air....

We always have a good time with Lynne Rae Perkins!

 

Lynne Rae at Dog Ears Books, August 2012

She has been here before, and now she's coming again, and I couldn't be more pleased. I hope you'll be able to join us on Saturday, October 1st, when Lynne Rae Perkins will be signing her new book for Dog Ears Books customers from 12 noon to 2 p.m. And this one is a mouse story! 

In the spirit of her squirrel book, Nuts to You!, this new one, Violet & Jobie in the Wild, takes a pair of house mice on a series of adventures, beginning when they are caught and transported to the wild. It wasn't a life they chose, but Violet and Jobie learn there is much more to the world than traps baited with cheese and peanut butter. 

Violet & Jobie in the Wild is an illustrated chapter book, perfect for middle-grade readers but too good not to share with the whole family!

Hardcover with dust jacket, $16.99

At Last! At Last! Big News!

Sorry I've been so lax about posting to this blog, but it has been a very strange summer. Now, however, I have BIG NEWS! Sarah Shoemaker, Northport resident and author of the acclaimed Mr. Rochester, has a new novel coming out on September 6, and Dog Ears Books is getting together with Sarah and the Leelanau Township Library and Friends for an open house-signing-launch at the library in Northport! You can read about the book here, but mark your calendar now, because the event is the Tuesday evening following Labor Day, and you don't want to forget. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m., books will be available for purchase, author will be happy to sign books. There will be no formal presentation, so just drop by whenever you can make it, and we will be there -- probably not past 9 p.m., but you'll want to come before refreshments run out, anyway. Hint: Think Greek. 

 

Bookstore Plans as Summer Gets Underway

June Days and Hours

Dog Ears Books will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the month of June. (In July we will go to our 7-day-a-week schedule.) Beginning on June 21, we will also be open Thursday evenings from 6:30 to 9 p.m. See below for more about Thursday evenings at Dog Ears.

Our Summer Plan

Dog Ears Books will be celebrating its 25th anniversary this summer of 2018 with a special guest series called Thursday Evening Authors. Our first scheduled guest in the series is Rachel May, on June 21, to be followed by Fleda Brown on June 28. All TEA guest appearances will begin at 7 p.m. 

Rachel May is the author of An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery. Presently on the faculty of Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, May will be making her first visit to Dog Ears Books in June, and we look forward to introducing her to our Northport and visiting bookstore customers. Her research into the background of a 200-year-old quilt took her deep inside the history of the United States (and beyond) and challenged some of her own long-held assumptions about roles played by the North and South in the slave trade. If you are at all interested in American history, fascinated by quilts, or just love people's life stories, you won’t want to miss Rachel May’s appearance on June 21.

Fleda Brown of Traverse City, former poet laureate of Delaware, is an accomplished essayist as well as a brilliant poet, and we are honored to have her once more as a guest at Dog Ears Books. Fleda’s latest book of poetry, The Woods Are On Fire, is a collection of some new poems and others from her previously published works. If you are a listener to Interlochen Public Radio or a reader of the Traverse City Record-Eagle, it’s very likely you have encountered Fleda Brown’s voice and recognize her own poetry as direct and striking. On the other hand, if you are new to Brown’s work — even if you’re a little afraid of poetry or “don’t understand” it — this is an opportunity for you to make a very memorable acquaintance, so please join us on June 28.

Guests for Thursday Evening Authors in July and August will be announced here as the schedule grows and will be announced on my blogs, “Books in Northport and “Northport Bookstore News,” as well. For further information, you may call Dog Ears Books, 231-386-7209.

Introducing TEA at Dog Ears Books

First TEA guest - June 21

As we celebrate our 25th bookstore anniversary this summer, Dog Ears Books will offer a new feature called Thursday Evening Authors, or TEA. Our "tea" will probably be iced and served from a punch bowl, or it may be punch, and we’re not planning china-cup formality in other ways, either, but we hope that holding TEA as a regular weekly event will make it easier for our friends to remember. 

Each Thursday, beginning on June 21, the bookstore will be open from 6:30 to 9 p.m., with each evening’s author scheduled from 7 to 9 p.m. Presentation format will probably vary from simple conversation and book signings to prepared talks. If we have a Thursday in July or August with no author scheduled, we’ll still be open from 6:30 to 9. So remember -- 

TEA stands for -- 

Thursday Evening Authors 

at Dog Ears Books,

106 Waukazoo Street 

Northport, Michigan

beginning June 21, 2018

First TEA guest, on Thursday, June 21, will be Rachel May, author of An American Quilt. That's from 7 - 9 p.m.

An American Quilt: Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery, by Rachel May. New York: Pegasus Books, hardcover release May 2018, $27.95

More about this book and the Marquette, Michigan, author soon!

Author to Speak on Fascinating New View of Audubon

AUTHOR PRESENTATION

DOG EARS BOOKS

Gregory Nobles on John James Audubon

Thursday, Aug. 3

7 p.m.

Free, fun, informative!

Please join us!

(You may learn a few new things

about our America's foremost bird artist.)

Kilcherman Apple Book Coming Very Soon!

Antique Apples from Kilcherman’s Christmas Cove Farm explores a very special farm the rolling hills of Leelanau Township. Phyllis and John Kilcherman grow 250 varieties of heirloom apples, varieties in danger of disappearing from our modern food supply. The book, coming soon from Arbutus Press, features Kilcherman family and farm history dating from the land's public offering by the U.S. Government in 1851. Color photos of the orchard in three seasons, photographed by Dianne Carroll Burdick, capture the living apple community from the bee’s pollination to apple harvest. Phyllis also shares recipes both traditional and creative uses of apples in meatloaf, coleslaw, and baked beans, as well as her most prized and sought-after recipe for apple pie from her grandmother. You’ll find folklore, poems, and the apple histories in these colorful pages.

We will launch this book at Dog Ears Books in Northport on Saturday evening, September 3, with a signing beginning at 7 p.m. The public is cordially invited.

Antique Apples from Kilcherman’s Christmas Cove Farm

by Phyllis and John P. Kilcherman

Photography by Dianne Carroll Burdick

Traverse City, MI: Arbutus Press

144pp/color

$25.00

Colorful, Captivating Leelanau County

Our foremost county photographer and a very talented local painter are featured artists in a new book coming from Leelanau Press, which should be available at Dog Ears Books before the 4^th of July. I’m taking prepaid orders now for --

Leelanau Trek: One Shoreline, Two Visions,

by Ken Scott and Kaye Krapohl

Hardcover, $39.95

On the subject of Ken Scott, I am down to my last “Back Pages” calendar for 2016, and since it’s the sixth month of the year, the price for that last calendar is my wholesale cost, $10. (In the photo below, there are two calendars, but one sold right after I took the picture.)

My new policy for bookstore windows and bulletin board is to restrict postings to books I’m selling, bookstore events, and items of my personal choosing (mostly related to books). One exception to the general policy is the poster in the window now for the upcoming Leelanau Children’s Choir concert on June 10. Why this exception? Because I want to do all I can to support this group.