My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, is a new collection of essays by 82 well-known writers. One of the bookstores they celebrate is a place very close to us.
Watchung Booksellers is honored to be one out of only 80 bookstores nationwide featured in My Bookstore, thanks to a tribute by local author Ian Frazier. (Other literary figures in the book are John Grisham, Chuck Palahniuk and Ann Patchett.) Watchung Booksellers will be celebrating the release of the book on November 16 from 6 to 8 p.m. with a launch party at the store, complete with book signings and a champagne toast.
“Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world’s longest, best, most thrilling conversation,” writes Richard Russo in the introduction. “The people who work in them will tell you who’s saying what… they’ll put in your hand something you just have to read, by someone you’ve never heard of, someone just now entering the conversation, who wants to talk to you about things that matter.”
There are also readings and a book festival for adult readers coming up. On November 15, two recent graduates of the Rutgers-Newark MFA program will read from their new books; Nick Ripatrazone from his collection of poetry, This Is Not About Birds (Goldwake Press) and Kevin Catalano, from his collection of short fiction, The Word Made Flesh (firthFORTH Books). The reading will take place at 7 p.m. at Watchung Booksellers and will be followed by a discussion.
The BK Book Festival at B’nai Keshet will take place on Saturday, November 17, from 7 to 9:30 p.m. This event will feature noshies from The Smitten Kitchen author Deb Pereleman, as well as readings and conversation with authors Amy Sohn (Motherland) and Helen Schulman (This Beautiful Life). B’nai Keshet is located at 90 South Fullerton Avenue in Montclair.
