Thank you for renewing your membership or donating to the GoFundme fundraiser, either of which extended your membership into 2022!
And what a marvelous membership it is! Books, snark, e-lists, parties (when parties exist), podcasts, and bookshop presses. Who doesn’t want to be a member in an exclusive club? Depends on the club, you say? We get you. Ours, fortunately, lacks the leather chairs and crippling oppression that characterizes OTHER private clubs. Ours is VERY affordable, and smart, and silly. So, kudos to you for finding it and keeping it. Thank you.
What has the second week back from New Years brought into the impossible-to-mop floors of Brown and Dickson Bookstore? (Seriously, we’d get a mat but it would make no difference. Richmond is slushy and it’s Canada after all). As you’ll see in this robust Member New Arrivals list, we’ve acquired an EMBARRASSMENT of Folio Society riches, books on science, philosophy, a few high marks of weird lit, a WHACK of Roald Dahl, and other things. We have so much new material we had to stop cataloguing for this list and save some for next week because the corporate demarcations of Time still control our brains, once in a while.
Additionally, our shop Spotify account has compiled its Year Lists and it’s revealed so much about us. Jason listens to Tame Impala A LOT, and Ru Paul’s Drag Race determines a fair amount of our tastes. Lays the foundation of it, basically. As do movie soundtracks. We don’t mind. In fact, just yesterday, a twenty-something was in the shop when Nobody Speak by Run the Jewels came on (we got it from the movie Booksmart, we aren’t that cool). He immediately came up to the counter, leaning on it a bit.
“You like Run the Jewels?” he asked, a bit threatening in his coolness.
“Honestly,” Jason stammered, “we heard it on the Booksmart soundtrack and added it to Spotify.”
The kid paused, as if determining a deep truth.
“That’s dope,” he said, giving an approving wink.
PHEW!
Even after all these years damning convention, we still get nervous when Judged by the Young. We’re still in the game! And though we can no longer hear the anti-teenage tone used at convenience stores to drive away slackers, although we can’t hear much of anything anymore, it’s good to know that the tossed, crumbled sweater-in-the-corner that is our style has value.
Even if we all feel like a dirty, ignored pile of laundry sometimes we have value. This is the lesson, friends.
Welcome to the club.
Much love,
Jason and Vanessa
