West Philly’s newest bookstore/community space, Making Worlds, is reopening Thursday, Sept. 24. They are at 210 S 45th Street, and are reopening on a limited basis from 3 to 7 pm, Thursday through Sunday.
Bindlestiff Bestsellers
15 AugThese are our best-selling titles for the last month, in descending order of sales:
Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys
Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Zadie Smith, Intimations: Six Essays
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half: A Novel
Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race
Kelly Starling Lyons, Going Down Home with Daddy (picture book)
Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Ibram Kendi, Antiracist Baby
Richard Powers, The Overstory: A Novel
Robin Diangelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
Neil Gaiman, ed., Unnatural Creatures: Short Stories Selected by Neil Gaiman
Mary Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man
Robert MacFarlane, The Lost Words (picture book)
Zetta Elliott, A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart (picture book)
NK Jemisin, The City We Became
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy
Duncan Tonatiuh, Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation (picture book)
Janet Hardy, The Ethical Slut, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships, and Other Freedoms in Sex and Love
Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Andrea D’Aquino, A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa (picture book)
N.K. Jemisin, How Long ’til Black Future Month?: Stories
Bindlestiff Bestsellers
11 JulThese are our best-selling titles for the last month, in descending order of sales:
Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard, Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice
Marc Martin, A River (picture book)
Kimberly Ridley, The Secret Bay (picture book)
Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist
NK Jemisin, The City We Became
Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half: A Novel
Robin Diangelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
Angela Davis, Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Madeline Miller, Circe
Zora Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”
Robin Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Gaia Cornwall, Jabari Jumps (picture book)
Samuel Otter, Philadelphia Stories: America’s Literature of Race and Freedom
Tami Charles, Freedom Soup (picture book)
Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood
Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
Adreienne Maree Brown, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good
Saidiya Hartman, Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Closed July 4
2 JulBindlestiff Books will be closed Saturday, July 4. We will be open Sunday, July 5, for curbside orders/pickup only.
My Indoor Adventures children’s writing contest
14 JunThe deadline for the My Indoor Adventures submissions has been extended to July 1. details at: https://abookaday.edublogs.org/our-community/
Here’s a link to a short video about the project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15xO-ppRywmL-D1HFgm3Pp-VBvqHdeKlt/view?usp=sharing
People’s Books and Culture closes
13 JunSadly, one of West Philly’s oldest bookstores has closed. People’s Books & Culture (formerly Penn Book Center) did not survive the pandemic, which hit just as the new owners were in the process of transitioning the store to a more community-oriented space (for many years it relied on textbooks to support its always eclectic offerings),
https://www.robly.com/archive?id=8894586fa149e8ac4becf47d0679c1aa&v=true
Bindlestiff Books has reopened
5 JunFor the next few weeks, we will be open on a limited basis as the city eases out of the “Yellow” period. We ask during this period that all customers wear masks, that no more than 5 customers are in the store at a time, and that customers keep a reasonable distance from other customers. We are minimizing contact for payment by accepting Venmo, and enabling tapping for credit cards that do not require insertion.
We will endeavor to be open the following hours (weekend hours are completely reliable; it might make sense to check weekdays before making a special trip):
Wednesday & Thursday, curbside pick-up only. Please call 215.662.5780 to make sure we have the book (or to arrange for it to be ordered) and arrange for it to be handed off to you. We hope to be open Noon – 7 on these days.
Friday & Saturday, open to customers. Noon – 7. If you prefer, you can phone and arrange curbside pickup.
Sunday, open to customers. Noon – 5. If you prefer, you can phone and arrange curbside pickup.
Online story for children 7-9
26 Maydetails at https://www.jkrowling.com/j-k-rowling-introduces-the-ickabog/ New chapters will be posted every weekday between 26 May and 10 July on The Ickabog website, and children are invited to submit illustrations.
Reopening Friday, June 5
23 MayThe city and state have announced that businesses will be allowed to reopen June 5, and we are looking forward to seeing you again. We will be open Noon – 7 pm Friday and Saturday, and Noon – 5 pm on Sunday, June 7. After that, hours may be a bit irregular as we reconnect with our volunteers and rebuild the schedule.
On Wednesdays, we will have special curbside service. Customers will be invited to phone in their requests, and a staffer will pull them from the shelf (or order them for future delivery, if necessary), for a contactless delivery.
As part of our efforts to mitigate the risks of infection we will be cleaning the counter and other surfaces before opening each day, keeping windows open to promote air circulation, asking customers to wear face masks (and doing so ourselves), opening up as much room in the store (taking down the table and clearing boxes from the back room, where we keep most of the nonfiction) as we can to make it possible to keep some distance from other customers, and keeping the number of customers in the store at any one time down. (And, of course, we ask customers and staffers who aren’t feeling well to take the day off.)
We can handle contact-less payments through Apple pay and dipping-enabled credit cards, or by Venmo.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Available May 19
8 MayBindlestiff Books has received a case of Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, set in the years leading up to her Hunger Games trilogy. Copies will be available on May 19. The book is 528 pages, and costs $27.99, hardcover.
We are accepting pre-orders for the book, and exploring options for some sort of physically-separated release celebration. Otherwise, we would arrange deliveries in the neighborhood the morning of the 19th. We can take payment by Venmo, check, etc.