All Hallows Read

Nativefruit Press & Bindlestiff Books will host a poetry & prose event, All Hallows Read, on Monday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. Presenting will be Kiki Volkert, D. Ted Tarnovski, Akirah Justice, and Spooky Vibes. There will be a costume contest and open mic. In our back yard, weather permitting; inside if it’s too cold.

Nasty Woman buttons

We have just received a new shipment of buttons (and are promised more designs in the next few days) inspired by recent events.

We’re also processing several boxes of newly arrived discounted books, and we have several more boxes on the way. Every day dozens of titles will go on display in nearly every section — so many that we may have to put up temporary shelving to accommodate them.

Bindlestiff Best-Sellers

Here, in descending order, are our best-selling books for the last month:

Sy Montgomery, The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness

Chimamanda Adichie, We Should All Be Feminists

Gemma Harris, Can a Bee Sting a Bee?: And Other Big Questions from Little People

Adreienne Maree Brown & Walidah Imarisha, editors, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements

Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad (a novel)

Te-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name (novel)

Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend (novel)

Matt de la Peña, Last Stop on Market Street (picture book)

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her (novel)

Italo Calvino, The Complete Cosmicomics (novel)

Beverly Cleary, The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Peggy Orenstein, Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape

Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood

2 labor history book events

Bindlestiff Books is co-sponsoring two events this week with Wooden Shoe books:

Tuesday, Oct. 11 at 7 pm we are co-sponsoring a presentation by Eric Chester, author of The Wobblies in Their Heyday, at Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South St. This book examines the Industrial Workers of the World on the eve of World War I, arguing that its increasingly successful organizing in basic industry led to the massive offensive by the federal government (and by the states) that led to the imprisonment of more than 1,000 Wobblies, and forced the union to divert much of its energy and resources from organizing to legal defense.

Saturday, Oct. 15 at 7 pm, we cosponsor a joint book talk by Anatole Dolgoff, author of Left of the Left: My Memories of Sam Dolgoff (AK Press, 2016), and Andrew Cornell, author of Unruly Equality: U.S. Anarchism in the 20th Century (University of California Press, 2016). at Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South St.

Sam Dolgoff, a house painter by trade, was an IWW organizer and radical activist from the 1920s until his death in 1990. He rode the rails as an itinerant laborer, bedding down in hobo camps and mounting soapboxes in cities across the United States. Self-educated, he translated, edited and wrote some of the most important books and journals of twentieth-century anti-authoritarian politics, including the most widely read collection of Mikhail Bakunin’s writings in English. His son, Anatole, recalls his father’s life and the working-class culture of which he was a part.