Rainy Days Are Good Reading Days

Great new Michigan books!

Of course, sunny days are good ones for books, too, but since today is wet I’m finding time to put something up on this blog, the one I too often neglect (posting more frequently to Books in Northport and A Shot in the Light). As you see in today's top image, right now I am featuring Michigan writers and water, a call to all you Piscean fishers and dreamers. I’ve restocked books by Jerry Dennis yet again (reordering his books is necessary quite often!), and one of the latest new books on the round table up front now is Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen’s The Lake Huron Mermaid, companion book to their earlier The Lake Michigan Mermaid. Artist Glenn Wolff is the illustrator for Jerry Dennis’s books (theirs long-established collaboration), and Meridith Ridl provided the dreamy, watery, sometimes abstract images for Linda and Anne-Marie’s mermaid books. 

Mermaids in the Great Lakes!

Leaving water behind but staying on the topic of words and images, fans of Bill O. Smith’s chickadee books will be thrilled with his latest, The Chickadee Year, which takes our favorite little year-round Michigan resident bird from spring nest-making through summer, fall, and winter, and back again to spring. Grandparents, this is a book you will love reading to your little ones, over and over, and Thomas Ford’s illustrations, simple and charming but also realistic, are the perfect accompaniment to the text. Learning is fun with this new chickadee title – and the copies I have in the shop are signed by the author.

Dogs and cats? I usually focus on the dogs, but the cat book here looked irresistible. Cat friends, don’t you just itch to get your hands on it? 

This is Dog Ears Books, though, so old books deserve some attention. How about a complete Shakespeare from 1876? A cookbook from 1889 or a set of natural history books with beautiful color plates? We currently have in stock some lovely modern editions of old classics from Roman times (I must put in a plug for my favorite, the Eclogues of Virgil, which I was delighted to find exploring agricultural topics), as well as (coming up to the 20th century) a nice selection of signed Jim Harrison titles and many books from the “Rivers of America” series, brainchild of Constance Lindsay Skinner, most with dust jackets.

The Dog Ears Books book bag was a big hit this year, and now, down to the last one available, I’m wondering whether I should re-order before the holidays or wait until spring. 

If I hear from enough people who want to give the bags as holiday gifts (you could put “stocking stuffers” in a book bag!), I’ll see about getting more before snow flies. (That is, of course, unless we get snow on Halloween, as we did last year.) As for the new bookmarks, there are plenty of those on hand, never fear. Bookmarks are free, of course, with any purchase.

Postscript: Oh, oh, oh! I am just in love with the cover of this edition of Anne of Green Gables, which just arrived today in my shipment of new books! 

And here's an idea: classic scary stuff for Halloween! Come visit us and explore outside your day-to-day box!

New Bookmarks, New Books, Old Books Newly Arrived

Ask me about any of these books. I wrote an entire post and somehow lost it. 

This coming Saturday, October 19, Dog Ears Books will close early, at 3 p.m., but will be open again, as usual, the following Tuesday, October 22, at 11 a.m. Come see us! We are your best excuse for a beautiful drive!

End of Summer Sale Cart and Other New and "New" Old Books

 

Bargain cart book prices reduced again!

I have a rolling cart of books that have been priced at three dollars each, four for $10, but the cart is getting too full, so starting TODAY, books on the cart are only a dollar each ($1/book). There are all kinds -- very old and nearly new, cookbooks, novels, etc., etc. This is a fun way to shop, so come on down!

Note, however, that the bookstore will be closed on Friday, August 30, but I'll be back for Saturday and Sunday of that Labor Day weekend. Can you believe it will be Labor Day weekend so soon?

This has been my bookiest summer ever, with boxes of printed treasures arriving and departing daily. Below is a tiny sample of my current new and newly restocked and newly arrived old books, all ready to go to good, loving homes.

Restocked

New to my shop

Old one from storage

Newly arrived OLD book

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!

They are HERE NOW!!!

 

Canvas book bags commemorating our over 30 years in business (30 in July 2023, so over 200 dog years, my friends) are available now at the bookstore in Northport. They are $12 each, plus sales tax, so $12.72 per bag. 

I am very happy to have the bags in time for this coming Monday's Earth Day, as they are in keeping with the 2024 Earth Day theme, "Planet vs. Plastics." They will be equally appropriate on Saturday, April 27, Independent Bookstore Day, and every day thereafter! 

(If you absolutely cannot come to the bookstore but want one or more book bags, please do NOT send me your credit card #! Instead, a check or money order mailed to Dog Ears Books, P.O. Box 272, Northport, MI 49670 will reach me. Please include $3 for an order of 1-3 bags, $5 for 4-6. Thank you. -- And don't forget your mailing address!)

Please note: If you come in person and clip out and bring with you my ad in this week's Enterprise, you are entitled to a $1 discount per bag. Open Wednesday through Saturday, 11-3 and usually longer on Saturdays. OPEN MONDAY, APRIL 22, 11-3, FOR EARTH DAY!!!

Coming Soon --and I'm Excited!

Monday, April 22 - Earth Day

 

Saturday, April 27 - Indie Bookstore Day

Mon., 4/22. Not usually open on Mondays, the bookstore in Northport will be open for Earth Day 2024, with beautiful new canvas book bags ($12) in honor of this year's Earth Day theme, "Planet vs. Plastics." 

Sat., 4/27. The new book bags will be equally appropriate on the following Saturday, Indie Bookstore Day (which I've missed by being out-of-state the past few years, but this year I'll be here), and every day into the future!  

Plan to celebrate these happy days with us, please. And thank you!

What Do You Think? Suggestions Welcome

It's time for new book bags and t-shirts at Dog Ears Books. I'm thinking a soft cream color with sage green letters. What do you think?

 

 

Dog Ears Books

Since 1993 – 

 

Disproving the skeptics

for over 200 dog years

and counting!

 

On Waukazoo Street 

in Northport, Michigan

Because, Because

 

Because Kathryn Grody recommended it.

Because a friend told me about the author.

Because it's now in paperback.

Because we all need nature and comfort.

Because the author will be in Northport in July!

Because who can resist otters?

Because -- oh, boy! My kind of story! Yours, too?

Stocked and Restocked

 

 

Black History Month

 

Do you ever wonder why we need a Black History Month? Or a Women’s History Month? Isn’t it all American history? Indeed it is. Having one month of the year focused on Black American history (and, in my bookstore, literature) is not a denial of more inclusive American history but an acknowledgement that parts of American history have been swept under the rug for too long and that we don’t make a better future by pretending the past didn’t happen. As Isabel Wilkerson has written, those of us alive in America today did not build our national “house,” but we’re here now, living in it, all of us, and it’s up to us to do the necessary repairs and maintenance.

 

Besides, you wouldn’t want to miss some of these fantastic writers!!! Biography, fiction, poetry! The essay collection Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resilience, and Restoration, compiled by Tracey Michae’l Lewis-Giggetts, challenges the idea that all of Black life is just hardship and trauma, while Aaliyah Bilal’s Temple Folk, a National Book Award Finalist, brings us masterful and diverse stories about members of the Nation of Islam. And/or, have you read a novel by Jesmyn Ward or Colson Whitehead yet? If not, maybe now is the time. 

Have you asked this question? The author answers it.

 

There’s more already here, and I’ll have additions to the front table next week, too. Come browse!