Greetings.

This blog has been incubating for a little while; I've slowly added to it and played around with it over the last few months without broadcasting its presence at all.  As you can see, it presently comprises a link list of publishers, bookstores, and other book-culture related blogs.  I'm not sure where this is going exactly, but I'd like to briefly share where this idea came from and a few ideas for where it might end up. 

I find paeans and apologias to The Book pretty tiring.  When we have to spend time making things like civic engagement, or literacy, or family values look attractive to people then we've probably already lost a sizable portion of whatever battle we had it in our heads to wage.  If I have to convince someone that books are a fundamental vehicle for human expression, communication, and edification, then forget it.  That's not what this blog is about.  I have no interest in holding anyone's hand who is just going to embarrass the rest of us by frolicking awkwardly in their own  ignorance.

This blog has in mind those who are interested in pursuing various ends within a healthy book culture.  I don't have many answers here and I am not an expert on any of this; the surrounding pages are a result of some of my work at a library, my continued work as an academic, and my bibliographic curiosity.  Many other sites out there are better equipped to help you with books, and I try to do a service of linking to them when I run across them.  Others are much better-read than I am,  and I think that will come across as pretty obvious when this blog ventures out of my own study interests and into "literature", which is really the bulk and center of book culture.  So I'm not making any claims to this site being a normative perspective on the book world or anything, but rather representative of my own idiosyncratic uses of books.  My intention is simply to draw attention to possible futures for book culture that are more sustainable, and to draw more people into a conversation that is often dismissed as nostalgic, impractical, elitist, or irrelevant.

And the time does seem to be ripe for such renewed attention.  The woes of independent booksellers have been voiced for a long time, but it's currently a bit more culturally celebrated to embrace the local, the independent, and the grass-rooted.  The risk of becoming a Portlandia cliche doesn't diminish the utility of the space that's presently open for a sentimental shift away from big-box stores and other structures that can cause problems for book culture.  Meanwhile, Amazon.com is facing increased pressure from U.S. states to pay sales taxes and Borders is a complete mess.  There's no need to trumpet a revolution, but now seems as good a time as any to revisit how we want our community of letters to look.

This is my contribution to that effort.  The links to various resources will certainly continue to be an important aspect of the site, and other features may debut over time.  I'd like to bring in some reflections on material aspects of books & stacks without getting overly aesthetic.  I'll also mention news and may post some bibliographies as well.  Basically, I want to be a help in navigating folks through cultural structures related to the written word (for the most part: publishers, booksellers, libraries, reading rooms), and will mostly focus on the United States, with a bit of investigation elsewhere for comparative purposes (what does translation look like in places that are actually translating at a substantial rate?  What do kulturhauses look like? etc.)  I'm open to suggestions from people, too.  Email me.