How Books Are Made

The New York Times has published a multimedia documentation of how a book – in this case, Marlon James’ Moon Witch, Spider King (available at Bindlestiff) – is made, from conception through binding.

Story Explorers Book Fest March 12

The Atheneum (219 S Sixth Street) is hosting a book festival for young readers Saturday, March 12, from 10 am – 3 pm. Several children’s book authors and illustrators will be presenting, and Bindlestiff Books are others will be selling books. Preregistration is required for the workshops, admission is free.

Viet Thanh Nguyen – The Committed (March 16)

The Wolf Humanities Center will host Viet Thanh Nguyen reading from his latest novel, The Committed, before joining University of Pennsylvania scholars Josephine Park and Dagmawi Woubshet for a discussion. The event is Wednesday, March 16, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Harrison Auditorium at the Penn Museum, 3260 South Street. Bindlestiff Books will be there before and after the event, selling copies of the new paperback release of The Committed along with Nguyen’s other novels.

Mikel Jollett – Hollywood Park (sold out)

We have reached maximum capacity for this event and have a wait list, so we are not accepting new registrations.

Join New York Times bestselling author and Airborne Toxic Event frontman Mikel Jollett for an in-person event Friday, April 8, to discuss his remarkable memoir, Hollywood Park. Each ticket includes admission to the event and a signed paperback edition.

Hollywood Park is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country’s most infamous cults, and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.

“Hollywood Park succeeds most in compassionately depicting the suffering and struggle of others with addiction: those left to obscurity; those barely holding on. Jollett’s life story shows that you can pass through the gauntlet of pain and trauma to self-reliance and sustainable meaning.”

— National Public Radio 

Friday, April 8, 2022, 5:30 p.m., Theater of the Living Arts, 334 South Street

(doors open at 5 pm)

Attendance is limited to the first 100 to sign up. To reserve your ticket (free with book purchase) for a short presentation and Q&A session, followed by individual book signing:

Please pre-pay for your copy ($17.99 paperback) via Venmo to @Bindlestiff4530. (Copies of the book are still available at Bindlestiff)

This event is presently fully subscribed…

Children’s book author Ashley Bryan has died

West Philly Best Sellers, 2021

These are our best-selling titles for last year:

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir

Christine Kendall, The True Definition of Neva Beane

bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Matthew Burgess, Drawing on Walls: A Story of Keith Haring

Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

Kashuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Madeline Miller, Circe

Alice Walker, Hard Times Require Furious Dancing: New Poems

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age

Frank Herbert, Dune

Ashley Bryan, Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum

Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

David Graeber & David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Mariame Kaba, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Linda Ashman, Rain! (Board Book)

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle: A Novel

Jericho Brown, The Tradition (poetry)

Jessica Love, Julián Is a Mermaid (picture book)

Samin Nosrat, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking

Carole Lindstrom, We Are Water Protectors (picture book)

Octavia Butler, Kindred

Carmen Machado, In the Dream House: A Memoir

Maria Carluccio, The Sounds Around Town (board book)

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

Brit Bennet, The Vanishing Half: A Novel

Innosanto Nagara, A is for Activist (board book)

Monika Vaicenavičiene, What Is A River? (picture book)

Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete: A Novel

Ling Ma, Severance

Anti-Book Fanatics & Our Schools

We are seeing assaults on the rights of children to select and read books that interest them, and of librarians and teachers to stock these in school libraries and classrooms. One Pennsylvania school district requires parents to specifically request that their children be permitted to read “Heather Has Two Mommies”; another prohibits any “controversial” books (a category that seems to include any books dealing with gender, racism, poverty or social struggles) from accessible school libraries, though again parents can request that their children be permitted to read specific titles if the school happens to have them. Few parents will know about these policies, or what books are potentially available.

The Inquirer recently ran an article about how Philadelphia-area authors of children’s books (picture books and young adult titles — many available at Bindlestiff) are being impacted by these anti-book fanatics. https://www.inquirer.com/news/banned-books-critical-race-theory-trans-lgbtq-authors-20211230.html

Bindlestiff Bestsellers

These are our best-selling titles for the last month:

David Graeber & David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Maria Carluccio, The Sounds Around Town (board book)

Kyle Cassidy, Cooking with Roswell

Monika Vaicenavičiene, What Is A River? (picture book)

Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Yotam Ottolenghi, Ottolenghi Simple: A Cookbook

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

Richard Powers, The Overstory

Renee Watson & Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: Born on the Water (picture book)

Jeff Kinney, Big Shot (Diary of a Wimpy Kid Book 16)

Ben Hatke, Zita the Spacegirl

Innosanto Nagara, A is for Activist (board book)

Deatra Cohen & Adam Siegel, Ashkenazi Herbalism: Rediscovering the Herbal Traditions of Eastern European Jews

Mary Oliver, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Frank Herbert, Dune

Ursula Le Guin, The Dispossessed

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

Madeleine Miller, The Song of Achilles

Bindlestiff Bestsellers

These are our best-selling titles for the last month:

Linda Ashman, Rain! (board book)

Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

Asali Solomon, The Days of Afrekete

Jessica Fern, Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower

Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

Frank Herbert, Dune

Michelle Zauner, Crying in H-Mart

Madeline Miller, Circe

Innosanto Nagara, A is for Activist (board book)

Richard Powers, Bewilderment

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age

Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Yaa Gyasi, Transcendent Kingdom

Honoree Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood

Kyle Cassidy, Cooking with Roswell

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

Yael Frankel, The Elevator (picture book)

Adrienne Maree Brown, Grievers

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

All Hallow’s Read

An annual spooky book celebration held as part of Woodlands Cemetery’s Halloween Fun Day.

Sunday, Oct. 24, Noon – 3 pm, The Woodlands (40th & Woodland Ave.)

Peruse a collection of new and used “spooky” books and take one home to enjoy! (If you have some books you’d like to donate for the event, bring them along.) Books about pumpkins, autumn, monsters, goblins and ghosts, fall, etc… An all ages event.

Sponsors: The Woodlands Cemetery & Historic Landscape, Bindlestiff Books, Free Library of Philadelphia, and A Book A Day. For more information or to arrange to donate books: allhallowsread@gmail.com