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Open for Shipped Orders!
Our physical store is closed, but you can still get many books shipped to you directly from our warehouse. Here's how:
1. Only order titles with an inventory status of "Available at the Warehouse"
2. Select the "
UPS/USPS Ground Shipping"
option
3. Pay with a credit card
We are happy to fulfill other orders, but will not be able to process them until at least May 4. Other options: try
Indiebound.org
or
Bookshop.org
- keep it indie!
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“
Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.
”
–
John Waters
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Hello friends and fellow green-thumbers,
It’s that time of year again. A yearly occurrence I gleefully anticipate: the renewal of my
Somerville Garden Club
membership and the start of the spring sowing season. Membership card in hand, I normally sprint over to
Pemberton Farms
to spend an exorbitant amount of time. I survey every plant, debate about bud-to-leaf ratio, and convince myself we don’t have money to spend on a large, recumbent stone dragon. Then, little old car laden with greenery, head home to assault what little yard we have. This year, while I’m absolutely
renewing my SGC membership
,
there’s not going to be a fun trip to Pemberton’s soon.
When I took the dogs out on Saturday, I had no intention of doing this, but I suddenly found myself holding clippers and cutting away last year’s dead matter. It turned into a multi-hour unplanned gardening session of the Masked Gardener (alas it’s impossible to tell that I’m smiling while wearing a mask AND sunglasses). When I was done and took a step back, I realized how nicely the garden (much of which is from Pemberton’s) is already growing back. My strawberry patch has perked up, my mess of Aster is already a couple inches tall, and several of my bee and pollinator plants have burst forth. I fixed some fences, placed a few shepherd’s hooks, and fed the birds. It was then that I had a thought: even though this spring isn’t going as planned in terms of my garden, it’s enough. Truthfully, that feels like a good mantra for this quarantine period in general. So, I’ll sit outside (masked, away from the sidewalk), read the delightful SGC newsletters (mailed!), and daydream about that first visit to Pemberton Farms.
Yours in seeds and buds,
The Masked Gardener (aka Stacey)
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Sophie Egan with Louisa Kasdon
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How to Be a Conscious Eater: Making Food Choices That Are Good For You, Others, & the Planet: Nonfiction
How we wish we had heard from Sophie before we were all confronted with our pantries and freezers!
Using three criteria—
Is it good for me? Is it good for others? Is it good for the planet?
—Sophie Egan helps us navigate the bewildering world of food so that we can all become conscious eaters. To eat consciously is not about diets, fads, or hard-and-fast rules. It’s about having straightforward, accurate information to make smart, thoughtful choices amid the chaos of conflicting news and marketing hype. An expert on food’s impact on human and environmental health, Egan organizes the book into four categories—stuff that comes from the ground, stuff that comes from animals, stuff that comes from factories, and stuff that’s made in restaurant kitchens. This practical guide offers bottom-line answers to your most top-of-mind questions about what to eat.
Sophie Egan
is the former Director of Health and Sustainability Leadership for the Strategic Initiatives Group at The Culinary Institute of America, and former Editorial Director. She contributes regularly to
The New York Times'
Well blog and has written for
The Wall Street Journal, TIME, The Washington Post, Mic, Bon Appétit, WIRED,
and The Kitchn. Egan is the author of
Devoured: How What We Eat Defines Who We Are.
She holds a master of public health from the University of California, Berkeley, with a focus on health and social behavior. She lives in San Francisco, CA.
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Featured Staff Pick for Adults
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The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre
Imagine keeping a secret when everyone could be an informant, and every room could be bugged. A page turner and a nail-biter if there ever was one.
--John
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Caleb's Quarantine Specific Writing Prompts
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1. What's your favorite room in your house (or whatever location you're currently quarantined in)? Now what does that look like when you flip it upside down? Write a scene in which the gravity's been turned off; the more details the better!
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2. Have you read/watched Locke and Key yet? Say you had the Anywhere Key (a key that unlocks a door to any location)--where is the ONE place you'd use it to go? Write a scene there.
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3. A genie shows up on your Zoom call to grant you the following wish: you can have One (1) day doing whatever you want but you have to write down every last detail, otherwise who knows what could fill in the cracks?
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4. So this whole isolation thing might be feeling a bit like Groundhog's Day, but what would your one repetitive quarantine day look like as an episode of your favorite cartoon? Probably absurd, but
how?
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5. What sort of cool Essential Supplies could I have bought with all the money I spent on an MFA?
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Okay, maybe that last one is just my bad for the laughs...or maybe I've already lost it. Stay sane out there, folks. When in doubt, write your way out!
Frantically,
-Caleb
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Recommendations from You!
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It was a dark, stormy, generally unpleasant day yesterday, the kind of day where you don't even want to get out of bed. So we asked for book recommendations from you and got some great ones.
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Digital Audio Books:
A terrific way to support local indies!
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For all the latest on events, new books, reviews, and more for young and young-at-heart readers.
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Virtual Bookseller
Looking to get some good book recommendations, personalized
just for you?
Check out our Virtual Bookseller! Just fill out the form with your likes and dislikes, genres and favorites, and we'll crowdsource a bunch of great picks for you with our crack team of
real life
booksellers. Give it a whirl!
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Preorders are a great way to support PSB while we're not able to actually be at the store for two reasons:
- They bring in income now while the store is closed.
- We can deal with them later!
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You can see all of the books from the future we're excited about here.
But you can preorder more than just what we're excited for. Any book with an inventory status (who knew you'd have to get to know our online inventory statuses so well) of "Coming Soon--Available for Pre-Order Now" or "On the Horizon--Available for Pre-Order Now," is, uh, available for preorder now.
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Miss one of our bedtime stories? Or one of the tours of our libraries in the epic YouTube series PSB: Cribs? Good news! We've made playlists on YouTube so you can catch up on all of them.
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Are you missing out on our recommendations, pining for our Staff Pick display?? Our April crop of staff picks is now live on our website! We'll feature titles throughout the month, but you can browse the full list at the link below. As ever, all staff picks are 20% off - so go crazy!
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Katie here, the one behind all the socks, cards, and random gifts that are so fun to browse in the store. I miss seeing you all share a laugh when you point out a funny card to a friend, or find that perfect gift to include with a book for some lucky recipient. Blue Q is a personal favorite of mine (and yours, judging by how many pairs of socks we go through at the holidays). If you’re missing that quirky sock humor, here’s a
fun story about the origins of Blue Q
along with a ridiculously easy craft to lift your spirits - your very own
Flat Cat
.
This quote from the origin story got us thinking a little bit.
"The Flat Cat was our first and only product, introduced at the New York Stationery Show in May of '88. We rented a 10x10-foot booth, and decorated it as a surreal living room to grab people's attention. Since we had no money, we just painted old chairs, a coat rack, broom, broken TV, and other junk bright yellow."
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What business could you start just from what's kicking around the house? What would your thrown together convention booth look like? Can you actually build it without worrying your neighbors and/or housemates? Is it wise to use power tools during a pandemic? OK, that last one is probably "no," but you could easily occupy a day or even a weekend dreaming up and knocking together your very own million dollar idea. Who knows, maybe in twenty years you'll be giving interviews from your villa in the South of France that start with, "We were in quarantine for COVID-19 and this newsletter from my bookstore got me thinking..."
-Katie
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On a dark and stormy night Meaghan read from a classic of quarantine fiction, Frankenstein.
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Meet us over at our Instagram story at 8:45pm for tonight's live bedtime story with Meaghan!
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Support Cafe Zing baristas!
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Although Cafe Zing is its own business separate from ours, we really don't see it that way: Zing workers are part of the Porter Square Books family. They keep us well supplied - very well supplied - with caffeine, kindness, and some great tunes. Sometimes they give us staff picks; sometimes we give them exact change because we've bought the same, perfect, comforting, delicious beverage twice a day five days a week for how long, now?
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Featured Staff Pick For Kids
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Sunny by Celia Krampien
A colorful, silly story about a girl who makes the best of everything. A good story for looking on the bright side of things.
--Stacey
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We Want to Hear from You!
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How do you organize your books at home?
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Like a library, alpha by author in sections.
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I can't explain it, but I know where all the books are
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I just kinda pick 'em up & put 'em down
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Deacon King Kong by James McBride
“Deacon King Kong is a quintessential New York story. Set in the Brooklyn projects in 1969, a perpetually inebriated deacon called Sportcoat aims a gun at the neighborhood’s main drug dealer in the public plaza and pulls the trigger. Incredibly well-constructed and hilarious at times, McBride’s story entwines a number of storylines that are kickstarted by this central event. The local Italian gangster, the veteran cop, the meddling churchgoers, and the drug pushers all have their own agendas, hopes, and dreams that are affected. And though Sportcoat doesn’t remember his actions and is always under the influence of gut-rot moonshine, I couldn’t help but root for him as I was reading this. His delightful ineptitude and absence of clarity made this book impossible for me to put down. If you’ve never read McBride before, this is a great introduction.”
--Stuart McCommon, Novel.
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See you next time here at Shelf Stable!
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We'll get out our next issue as soon as we can. In the meantime, don't forget about all the other places you can catch up with us from afar, on
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
:
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25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140
617-491-2220
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