Category: News

March Staff Pick: The Farewell Tour

February 22, 2023
by Robin Wood

The Farewell Tour by Stephanie Clifford (Harper, March 7), picked by Assistant Manager Allison

***Now out in paperback!***

It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.

Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and Nashville, plus a few new ones. She yearns to feel the rush of making live music one more time and bask in the glow of a packed house before she makes the last, and most important, stop on the tour: the farm she left behind at age ten and the sister she is finally ready to confront about an agonizing betrayal in their childhood.

As the novel crisscrosses eras, moving between Lillian’s youth—the Depression, the Second World War, the rise of Nashville—and her middle-aged life in 1980, we see her striving to build a career in the male-dominated world of country music, including the hard choices she makes as she tries to redefine music, love, aging, and womanhood on her own terms.

Allison enjoyed both the book and audiobook versions of this novel. She writes, “Stephanie Clifford fills out the singular story of one woman’s hard rise to country music stardom with the history of country music and the evolution of American culture. Water Lil is a character you won’t soon forget.”

“This well researched novel is also a love letter to country music and the west. If you’ve spent time with either, this novel will be hell bent on tugging at your heartstrings.”

Allison’s playlist for the book includes Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (the song “Bo Weavil Blues” is central to the novel).

February Staff Pick: Picasso’s War

January 23, 2023
by Robin Wood

Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America by Hugh Eakin, picked by store co-founder, George Cooper

At the beginning of the 20th Century, America was a cultural backwater, with no sense of the art revolution in Europe. This is a sterling thriller about how a scrappy group of modern art lovers, through two world wars, founded the now iconic MOMA and brought Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh and the world of modern art to America. And in the process saved countless works from Nazi hands and established this country as the center of the art world. A nonfiction page turner.

~ George Cooper

“[Eakin] has mastered this material. . . . The book soars.” – The New York Times Book Review

January Staff Pick: The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

December 29, 2022
by Robin Wood

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw (West Virginia University Press), picked by bookseller Lori

Bookseller Lori read a lot of books for the upcoming Key West Literary Seminar, Singing America: A Celebration of Black Literature, for which she is serving this year as chairperson, and one of the standouts was The Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw.

Lori writes, “This book explores the passions, vulnerabilities, sensuality and raw emotions of four generations of black women who want – and desperately need- to be so much more than ‘good’ church women all their lives. It’s raw and very relatable to a former church girl like me.”

The award-winning collection is also currently in development for TV by HBO Max.

December Staff Pick: The Light Pirate

November 25, 2022
by Robin Wood

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton (Dec. 6, 2022, Grand Central Publishing) picked by store manager Emily

Tragic, but hopeful and completely enthralling. The Light Pirate is an essential read.

After living in Florida for nearly a decade, I’ve prepared for a few hurricanes. I was drawn to the first few lines of the description – a family prepares for a storm. I’ve been very lucky when it comes to storms, but I know as well as anyone the internal drama that comes with deciding if you should stay or go as a hurricane approaches. I thought it would be an interesting read but I wasn’t prepared for how deep it would take me down the rabbit hole.

Since reading this book, not a day has gone by that I haven’t brought it up in conversation. As Key West prepared for Hurricane Ian (or didn’t prepare as the case may be) I found my chatter increased. I think I became a little annoying as I told all of my fellow booksellers that they needed to read The Light Pirate.

The book begins as the Lowe family, Kirby, his wife Frida (pregnant with their first child) and his two sons from a previous marriage prepare for an incoming hurricane. This is nothing new for the family living on the east coast of Florida. But Frida feels this one is different, and of course she is right. It’s a story of our changing planet, yes, but at its core it’s a story of family and what and who makes a place a “home.”

~ Emily Berg, store manager

Author Lily Brooks-Dalton will be in conversation with Emily and store co-founder Judy Blume at Hugh’s View at The Studios of Key West on December 8th at 6:30pm. Tickets include a copy of The Light Pirate and are available for purchase now online.

A Q&A with Lily Brooks-Dalton

November 25, 2022
by Robin Wood

We had the opportunity to talk with Lily Brooks-Dalton, author of The Light Pirate (12/6, Grand Central Publishing) in advance of her December 8 in-person event (click here for ticket information) in conversation with store co-founder Judy Blume and store manager Emily Berg at Hugh’s View at The Studios of Key West. We are wildly excited about meeting Lily and can’t recommend The Light Pirate enough (it is also our featured staff pick for December)!

Q: How did you arrive at the story you tell in The Light Pirate? Did you start out with a specific goal or idea or character?

A: I was actually here in Key West when I first started ruminating on preparing for storms and wondering whether there was a story I wanted to tell wrapped up in that rhythm. I was doing a residency at The Studios of Key West and there was a hurricane coming that didn’t end up hitting the Keys, but there was this palpable tension in the air that I kept coming back to. And then I started thinking about linemen, and all this labor that goes into keeping the lights on… so probably the first concrete story moment I had was imagining this little girl tagging along on storm duty with her father, waiting for him in the bucket truck while he worked on the downed lines. That exact scene didn’t actually make it into the book, but that was where I began. And the story grew from there.

Q: The book is told from the perspective of more than a few characters. Was there one you think of as your protagonist? 

A: I think of Wanda as my protagonist. The book begins on the day she’s born (I guess technically the day before) and it spans her lifetime, so even though we’re also following the people around her, I’d say she is at the center.

Q: You’re from Florida but now living in California. Did you ever think of telling this story from a West Coast perspective?

A: Well, I actually grew up in Vermont. I struck out on my own fairly young, and right around that time my parents decided to relocate. So Florida has always been my home base as an adult, but I’m not sure I get to say I’m from here. I started working on The Light Pirate about a year before I moved to California. At that point I was actually living out of my truck and traveling around, but I had just spent a big chunk of time in Florida and so the landscape was still very fresh for me. I didn’t even consider setting it somewhere else, Florida was at the heart of the idea from the start.

Q: What was the process like seeing Good Morning, Midnight go from book to film? Could you see The Light Pirate as a movie?

A: It was extraordinary. It’s hard to describe really, beyond saying that it was special and weird and it had a resounding impact on my life. I’m really grateful that it happened. As for The Light Pirate, if we were to do an adaptation, I see it as a TV show. There is more story to tell in this world than even the book contains, and I wouldn’t want to shrink down what is already on the page to fit it into a 2 hour container. I would want to let it expand and breathe! So, I think television offers more space to let something like this unfold.

Q: What are you reading and recommending these days?

A: I just finished Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet, which I liked very much, and then I will also recommend Beneficence by Meredith Hall. I read it a while ago but I’m still thinking about how gorgeous it was. And I also want to chat up The Water Will Come by Jeff Goodell, which is nonfiction, because it has a terrific Florida chapter and just in general was a text that I really valued and learned a lot from while I was working on the novel.

Gift cards = happy choices

October 30, 2022
by Robin Wood

Not sure if your gift recipient would enjoy The Marriage Portrait or Ina Garten’s Go-To Dinners? Give a Books & Books @ The Studios of Key West gift card and let your loved ones pick out their own #nextfavoriteread.

Call the store or order online. Individual gift cards are mailed First Class mail for free. Gift cards are good for books, art supplies and holiday gifts, and your recipient can shop online or in store.

We have several ways to make your gift card stand out. For $4.99 (plus shipping), add a fun pouch that makes a great gift card presentation and then can be used for coins or other small knickknacks.

For $2.00 extra (First Class shipping included free) have the gift card mailed in a festive holiday card. For any of these gift card options, upgrade to tracked, 3-day expected Priority mail for $9.00. Note your upgrade choices in the comments section if ordering online.

Courtesy of the American Booksellers Association

November Staff Pick: A Minor Chorus

October 28, 2022
by Robin Wood

A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt (W. W. Norton & Company), picked by Assistant Manager Allison

From November 2022: The first thing we ask when we meet a new bookseller is: What are you reading and recommending?

Allison Rand, our new assistant manager, hit her answer out of the park, offering up this month’s featured staff pick, A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt. Read her review below.

Allison is an experienced bookseller, having worked at RJ Julia in Madison, CT, The Harvard Coop in Cambridge, MA, and Collected Works in Santa Fe, NM.

Her favorite genre is literary fiction. She recently read Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout and The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell, and is currently reading Getting Lost by Annie Ernaux.

***

A gorgeously written debut novel that poses the question, how can I write a novel, how can I expose myself to life and love through the lens of queer indigenous authenticity.

Growing up Cree in Northern Alberta, Billy-Ray Belcourt’s narrator knows he has to leave the rez. Now, living in Edmonton as a grad student and meeting men on Tinder, he starts slipping into a depression.  He begins to ask, what of love, of excess, of finding the loudness, the bigness of one’s own voice and expression?  He poses these questions and more to his people from the past and academic present. 

In a stream of conversations, Belcourt uses the language of academia and literature to find a path to the heart. If you loved Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous, and Tomasz Jedrowski’s Swimming in the Dark, you won’t want to miss A Minor Chorus. 

~ Allison, Assistant Manager

    

October Staff Pick – Bitch: On the Female of the Species

September 30, 2022
by Robin Wood

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke (Basic Books), picked by bookseller Riona Jean

Do you love weird animal facts? Do you love academia? Do you love sticking it to the patriarchy?

This book boasts all three with panache and grace.

Cooke is an accomplished zoologist who interviews a bevy of scientists across the globe in order to expose the glaring gap in knowledge about the female of any species (from insects to mammals to birds). Her writing is feisty, fierce, and witty without being grandiose or over-embellishing facts.

Learn about murderous meerkats, polyamorous birds, and frisky bonobos, all while discovering how scientific studies contradicting the patriarchy have been dismissed, hidden, or unfunded. I can’t get this book into your paws fast enough!

~ Riona Jean

Riona enjoyed this book as an audiobook (read by the author). Get it from our audiobook partner, Libro.fm. Bitch: On the Female of the Species (audiobook)

September Staff Pick: Unseen Magic

August 25, 2022
by Robin Wood

Unseen Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones (Greenwillow Books), picked by social media manager Robin

Written for a middle-grade audience, Unseen Magic will also appeal to adults looking for a charming mystery with Scooby-Doo vibes.

Aldermere is the first place that’s ever felt like home to 11-year-old Finley, but it has a few quirks: you have to remember to pay the ravens, and you should be wary of unmarked doors, they could lead anywhere.

Fin doesn’t mind a few random rules. She has a list of her own – things to avoid – certainly, adults who look angry, but also ringing phones and knocks at the door. Fin manages her fears with the help of a special tea from the roving, magic tea shop. Then one day, the tea shop owner gets hurt, and Fin’s attempts to make the tea herself result in a monster made of tea.

In order to find out who the monster really is, Fin will have to face her fears, rely on her friends, and discover she is braver than she knows.

Unseen Magic is a middle-grade monster romp that will appeal to fans of Rick Riordan and Kelly Barnhill. It’s insightful, fast-paced, twisty, and fun.

Celebrate Your Freedom to Read

August 25, 2022
by Robin Wood

Banned Books Week: September 18 – 24, 2022

Courtesy of the American Library Association, ala.org

The goal of Banned Books Week is to draw attention to the fact that books are often challenged or banned, pulled from school and community libraries, with relatively little fanfare. But this year, book banning has not been quiet.

In 2021, the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom said it received reports of 729 challenges, representing 1,597 books. This up sharply from the 2020 numbers of 156 challenges, representing 273 books.

PEN America reports that it found 1,586 book bans in 86 school districts in 26 states between July 1, 2021 and March 31, 2022.

This is a tactic designed to push marginalized writers and readers off the page, and to shut down discussions about race and sexuality, among other topics, that many people find controversial. But what one person finds controversial, another may find enlightening or affirming. The goal of Banned Books Week is to encourage people to read widely and make up their own minds — and to encourage us all to stand up for the right of everyone to read freely.

Celebrate your right to read with us September 18 – 24. You might be surprised to see many old favorites in our banned books display, including several of Judy Blume’s books, as she is one of the most frequently challenged authors of the 21st century. Pick up a book that someone else doesn’t think you should read. Read dangerously!

If you want to make your voice heard, standing against censorship, you can join booksellers and their customers in a petition condemning book banning. Also, check out the ALA’s new campaign, Unite Against Book Bans.