Baklava Benefit Sale for A Book A Day

A Book a Day will hold a baklava sale to raise money to buy art books for local public schools. A Book a Day program, a Penn Libraries–funded initiative, donates newly published children’s books to the Henry C. Lea School and the Penn Alexander School. Every month, eight new hardcover books are delivered to the school library, giving kids access to intriguing books on music, art history, poetry, and street art.

To learn more about A Book a Day, please visit: http://abookaday.edublogs.org

Saturday, October 27, 10:30 a.m. – 3:30 p.m. Bindlestiff Books, 4530 Baltimore Ave., West Philly

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Audience Poetry at Festival for the People

Bindlestiff Books is one of several local cultural institutions contributing to an audience poetry typewriter installation as part of the Festival for the People. The festival at Cherry Street Pier will be open until October 28th.

Festival for the People is taking place this month at the Delaware River waterfront, embracing the collectively dynamic energy of a wide range of local and international art forms, including writing and poetry. Through the duration of the 3-week festival, poets and visitors will activate typewriters stationed across the venue with their own poetry. Bindlestiff and other organizations have contributed writing prompts — there’s a different one at each typewriter….

 

Bindlestiff Best-Sellers

These are our best-selling titles for the last month, in descending order:

Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem

Keri Smith, The Guerilla Art Kit

Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow

Shana Corey, The Secret Subway (picture book)

Naomi Alderman, The Power

Chapo House, The Chapo Guide to Revolution: A Manifesto Against Logic, Facts, and Reason

Deray McKesson, On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope

Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon

Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Hala Alyan, Salt Houses

Roxane Gay, Difficult Women

Dav Pilkey, Dog Man: Lord of the Fleas (YA graphic novel)

Ursula LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness 

Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (chapter book)

 

 

Special Orders, Deliveries Delayed

UPDATE: This week’s delivery of books from our distributors arrived Oct. 9, as scheduled. We are still trying to recover 5 boxes of books from last week.

UPDATE 2: We were unable to recover the books, which have now been returned to our distributor. UPS made two more “attempted deliveries” hours before our scheduled opening despite promising our distributor that they would deliver the books during our posted hours (UPS told our distributors we did not have posted hours when we complained, which is consistent with decades of experience dealing with this company). We are going through order by order to reconstruct which books were returned, as the box received includes books from several weeks of orders.

UPS is refusing to make deliveries to Bindlestiff Books at this time, demanding that we make special ransom payments for each package in addition to the freight charges paid by our distributor. We have filed a complaint with our distributor and hope they will be able to intervene with UPS and get them to resume deliveries. But UPS has been increasingly resistant to making deliveries over the past six months, in one case a driver pulled up in front of the store while we were on the phone with UPS discussing a long-overdue shipment which they said was on the truck, remaining there for a few minutes — only to drive off without making the delivery as soon as the phone call ended.

We can not say whether their refusal to  deliver books arises from UPS’s general sloppiness and disorganization, which we have suffered from for decades, or is part of a company effort to transform their delivery model to collect from both shippers and recipients, holding packages hostage unless special payments are made. Unfortunately, most distributors and publishers insist on shipping via UPS, and so our ability to receive new books is seriously impacted. We will continue to ask shippers to intervene with UPS when it refuses to make deliveries, in hopes that the situation can be remedied before we are forced to close.

Black Women’s Arts Festival

Bindlestiff will be tabling at the 12th annual Black Women’s Arts Festival this weekend (Sept. 15 & 16, The Rotunda, doors open at 1 pm). We’ll have a selection of books on the arts, culture and related areas. There’s a full schedule of performers, including dramatic performances, singers, dancers and more. Admission is free, though donations to support the festival are gratefully accepted.

Baltimore Avenue profiled

The American Airlines magazine has an article on Baltimore Avenue, which stresses its diversity and has interviews with many people from the strip. The author knows enough to recognize that we’re in West Philadelphia (not University City), points to the Paul Robeson house, and notes our “neighborhood bookstore vibe … offering a smartly curated selection of fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, graphic novels, kids’ titles and more.”

Dollar Books

Bindlestiff Books will offer a wide selection of new books for $1 as part of the September Dollar Stroll, Thursday Sept. 13. The store will be open until 8 pm.