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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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“A first book has some of the sweetness of a first love.”
–
Robert Aris Wilmott
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Who else is celebrating their birthday and graduation during quarantine or know someone who is? If so, might I suggest a cookbook to celebrate the occasion?
My birthday was in early April and my partner made Beef Burgundy from the
Instant Pot Miracle 6 Ingredients or Less
cookbook and it turned out wonderfully delicious. Also,
FoMu
is still making deliveries and we spurlged on a Cookies & Cream ice cream cake (totally vegan) and let me tell you, this cake is what dreams are made of. We got an 8 cake which is too much for two people so we'll be able to celebrate my canceled Simmons University commencement with the same cake. Your birthday or graduate person will love you to pieces for a home-cooked meal and vegan ice cream cake!
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Right, onto bookish updates: currently I am reading loads of books all at once, alternating after a few chapters. In recent years, I've been trying to read more books by and about Asian Americans. Growing up in the US, I often felt that there weren't enough books that I could relate to, so I'm making an effort to read stories where I can see myself in them. The stand-outs so far are
Supernova Era
and
A Wish in the Dark
,
I'm almost finished with both and I highly recommend them. Supernova Era is a book for the times! And A Wish in the Dark is brilliant - how many Thai inspired fantasies have you read lately? None? I say go for this one!
Yours in books,
Sinny @ PSB
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Join our next virtual event!
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Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
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The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home: Fiction
Porter Square Books is pleased to bring you a *virtual event* with Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor, brilliant co-creators of Welcome to Night Vale and authors of
The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home
! This event takes place on Thursday, April 30th at 7pm from the comfort of your own home (the secret faceless old woman who lives there is also invited). To join this event via Crowdcast, register at the link below.
From the
New York Times
bestselling authors of
Welcome to Night Vale
and
It Devours!
and the creators of the hit podcast, comes a new novel set in the world of Night Vale and beyond.
In the town of Night Vale, there’s a faceless old woman who secretly lives in everyone’s home, but no one knows how she got there or where she came from...until now. Told in a series of eerie flashbacks, the story of
The Faceless Old Woman
goes back centuries to reveal an initially blissful and then tragic childhood on a Mediterranean Estate in the early nineteenth century, her rise in the criminal underworld of Europe, a nautical adventure with a mysterious organization of smugglers, her plot for revenge on the ones who betrayed her, and ultimately her death and its aftermath, as her spirit travels the world for decades until settling in modern-day Night Vale.
Interspersed throughout is a present-day story in Night Vale, as
The Faceless Old Woman
guides, haunts, and sabotages a man named Craig. In the end, her current day dealings with Craig and her swashbuckling history in nineteenth century Europe will come together in the most unexpected and horrifying way.
Part
The Haunting of Hill House
, part
The Count of Monte Cristo
, and 100% about a faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home.
Joseph Fink
created the Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead podcasts. He lives with his wife in the Hudson River Valley and Los Angeles. He is the author of the novel
Alice Isn’t Dead
.
Jeffrey Cranor
co-writes the Welcome to Night Vale and Within the Wires podcasts. He also co-creates theater and dance pieces with choreographer/wife Jillian Sweeney. They live in New York. Together, they are the authors of the New York Times best-selling novels
Welcome to Night Vale, It Devours!
, and four Welcome to Night Vale episode script books: Mostly Void, Partially Stars, The Great Glowing Coils of the Universe, The Buying of Lot 37, and Who’s a Good Boy? In 2016, Fink and Cranor announced their podcast network
“Night Vale Presents”
which has produced 14 original fiction and non-fiction podcasts. For more on Welcome to Night Vale, upcoming events, and the books, visit:
www.welcometonightvale.com
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Featured Staff Pick for Adults
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Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer
Trying to start that new sci-fi/fantasy novel during quarantine? Just looking for some inspiration to keep your spirits up? Do you enjoy reading snippets about storytelling from some of your favorite authors? How about creative and zany illustrations? This book's for you!--
Stacey
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Recommendations for Your Pets
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OK, so maybe the recommendations are really *for* your pets, but we had a great time today looking at all of your pet pictures, enjoying all of their creative names (the "7" is silent!) and recommending books for humans to read. See some of out pet friends in the slideshow below or scroll through our
Twitter feed
to see all of them.
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Virtual Mother's Day Display
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Digital Audio Books:
A terrific way to support local indies!
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Events are back, baby! Want to stay up to date on the full upcoming line up of virtual happenings? Make sure you're signed up for our events newsletter!
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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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Make your shopping easy by buying bundles, handpicked by our expert booksellers. We'll be adding more of these so stay tuned.
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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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Breaking: We Are One of the Cool Kids Who Are "With It" In Terms of Hot New Music
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How could we say "no" to such a validating request? Here are four books that we think evoke the experience of Fiona Apple's new album Fetch the Bolt Cutters (or "FtBC" for fellow kids like us).
The Polyglot Lovers
by Lina Wolff
:
An act of exquisite literary revenge both in what happens in the plot and what the book achieves itself. Plot literally involves a woman finding a way to free herself from the guilt she feels over an act she...really shouldn't feel that bad about.
Die, My Love
by Ariana Harwicz
:
If FtBC is shining a light,
Die, My Love
is the dark shadow it might cast. Executive summary: If a man were doing the same things our protagonist does society would either give him a book contract or advise him to buy a sports car.
Calamities
by Renee Gladman
:
An exploration in confined creativity, both in terms of the form of the essay/poems and in terms of how society confines the creation of women of color.
Brute
by Emily Skaja
:
You could call this collection a "break up album," if by "break up album" you mean "poetic exploration that uses the end of a particular relationship to explore the dynamics and power structures that define and restrict what it means to be in a relationship."
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I always loved art class in school, but as I got older I gradually stopped drawing and painting at home. Not because I didn’t like it, but because I was becoming too much of a perfectionist. By early high school, I stopped taking art class altogether. I’d see fantastic art by other students on the walls of my school and think, I don’t belong in that class .
And so things remained for years. Now, as the card buyer at the store, I’m constantly seeing the work of dozens of talented illustrators. The itch started to come back, and I found myself flipping through drawing books at the store, buying sketchbooks and colored pencils, and then stuffing them away in a closet and doing nothing with them.
One of those books was
50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful, Ordinary Life
by the creators of Flow Magazine (also excellent). It couldn’t be more perfect for these times -- the prompts and lessons are almost exclusively centered on ordinary objects in your home. I started flipping through the other day, and one prompt in particular caught my eye: “Glue half of a picture of a face on this page, and draw the other half.” This was my absolute favorite art assignment in middle school. I remember vividly the Baby Gap ad I chose and the hours of work I put in, laying on my bedroom floor. It’s still my favorite thing I’ve ever drawn.
To be honest, I haven’t been feeling very inspired lately. But that reminder was a push: just start. So I did, skipping around in the book for some easy looking prompts. So far I don’t like anything I’ve drawn (they’re all pretty terrible actually). But it will be so much easier to sit down and draw again now that the ice is broken.
Some of my favorite prompts from the book:
Draw and decorate a bunch of pairs of socks.
Draw your bookshelf. Then, make a closer study of your favorite items on the shelves.
Draw a house with the front wall removed, and fill in what’s happening in all the rooms.
Illustrate a comic strip of your daily routine.
Draw your shopping list, or illustrate and hand-letter a recipe card.
Cut out paper dolls and give them different outfits.
Gather everything of one type (utensils, different kinds of glasses, etc.) and draw them all.
I like the structure of having a book to guide me, but you don’t need one. Just pick some of the objects you’ve been staring at for weeks and see if drawing them makes them feel new to you. Or use old photos and draw items from your childhood home, or the vacation home you wish you could visit.
Whether it’s drawing or some other form of art that you loved to make as a child and have lost touch with, just start and you’ll have the hardest part out of the way.
--
Katie
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Need help breaking up with consciousness? Caleb reads from
Why We Broke Up
(which, sadly, is not
Twilight
) by Daniel Handler
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And of course, don't forget to meet us over at our Instagram story at 8:45pm for tonight's live bedtime reading!
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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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Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds with Ibram X. Kendi
Jason Reynold's "
Stamped
Jr" is a great resource for kids and adults who want to talk to kids about the systemic racism rooted in our country's history. Reynolds weaves together historical moments (some that students may have studied in other contexts, others totally new) in a way that connects them to a larger picture and to today. His playful asides make it feel far from textbook reading; perfect for at-home study. Highly recommend the audiobook from Libro.fm - you'll really feel like you're hanging out with Jason Reynolds in your living room! --
Leila
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We Want to Hear from You!
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What is your reading super power?
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The dark art of reading & walking at the same time
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I ask the best questions in book club
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I don't need a bookmark to keep my place
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I can listen to an audio book & read a print book at the same time.
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I can tell immediately from the 1st page if I'm going to like a book.
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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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