Under the Volcano Books

Where’s everybody go Fridays? We’ve got hundreds of new books, yet the night of the week when we once did the most business has gone quiet. Maybe not distracting enough: I’m trying to book another reading one of these nights (did Nick Zedd‘s appearance on the 20th not go splendidly?) but every published writer in English in this town keeps putting me off, waiting for some shipment of their books that never arrives, or thinking we sell books in Spanish (Hello, Morris Berman?). I don’t have the money to pay bands, if I did we’d have floor lamps and rugs first.

Are people sore about the new smoking ban? Listen: someone left a lit cigarette on the windowsill Friday after last, and now there’s a big scar in the stucco I’m hoping my landlord doesn’t see. I hate cigarettes: they’re responsible for the deaths of my father (age 52), grandfather (age 57), uncle (age 60) and millions of other people annually. They are fucking disgusting to boot, and I suspect my neighbors don’t appreciate the end of the alley turning into something like a high school smoking area every Friday night. (I sure don’t like cleaning it up). I feel bad about this, though, because some of my most steadfast supporters like to come here often, and they smoke. To them I can only regretfully say they can do so on the street. I am sorry – but it actually looks like that might actually be kind of cool.

The U.S. premiere of the film about my time in politics in Seattle, Grassroots, is premiering at the closing gala of the Seattle International Film Festival June 10, so I gotta be up there for that. (Next post I’ll introduce you to my replacement for June and July – you’ll love him.) So I got nothing for you Friday nights but more BYOB (don’t buy your caguamas across the street anymore, that guy is a dick and stingy with the returns to boot), lots of guacha guacha guacha (that’s how English sounds to Mexicans) and literally thousands of high-quality, individually hand-selected books at unbelievably low prices, so get your ass, as a good friend is known to put it.

We are now offering an English conversation class Thursday evenings at 6, and will soon have intermediate-advanced Spanish for Foreigners, dates and times TBA, something I’m very stoked about.

After a long time putting it off I decided to publish my poetry in a new volume from Publication Studio in Portland: The Dream of the Cold War: Poems 1998-2008 will be available in hard copy in Mexico come August: the ebook is available for download to Kindle, iPad and other devices at www.thedreamofthecoldwar.com.

I truly feel the store right now is better than ever. There’s twice as much fiction as before, our history, film and Mexico/translations sections feel heavy and full, and there are nearly a hundred classics on the half-price wall.

So come on by.

Friday Night Lights is an excellent book by H.G. Bissinger that can be found in our New World History section. (Any book that can make me interested in high school football has supernatural powers.)