In the News

With the move upon us, Old Firehouse Books is starting to get featured in the news:

The Book Rack will be changing its name and moving from its current location at 1801 S. College Ave to the 1881 firehouse at 232 Walnut St.

Old Firehouse Books, the business’s new name, will open April 10.

The new store will be 400 square feet larger than its current location, allowing for more books, book group meetings, author signings and community events.

The Book Rack has been in existence since 1980. The current owners, Susan Wilmer and Dick Sommerfeld, have been in the book business since 1983. Although it was initially a used-books-only store, in the past five years the store has sold new books as well. The store hosts a book club of its own and is active in the Be Local movement in Fort Collins.

Old Firehouse is closed on March 26

We are closed today, due to some rather brisk weather. We hope to resume normal operations tomorrow. We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope you are home, snug and warm, with a good book.

so, I really meant to do this sooner

Here's an update on the new store:  the heavy lifting is pretty much done.  There was some carpet that some enterprising soul had glued, and glued, and glued, to the concrete.  That is now gone.  Walls are knocked out to make bigger entrances into each room.  We are putting a short ramp between the second and third room, since each room is on a slightly different level- funny old building!  I think we're mostly to the painting and finishing of walls and floor.  

On Saturday, Molly and I went down to do some market research and hand out coupons to whoever would take them.  What a beautiful day!  So many people out and about- it makes me feel like we're doing the right thing by getting into that mix.  

Also, we got a mention in the Coloradoan!  http://www.coloradoan.com/article/20090322/BUSINESS/90320032/1046/NEWS17

Since there seems to be some dismay about parking, I commented on the fact that we will have some dedicated parking there.  

So go the marketing efforts- I'm pretty new at this stuff, and hope that we are getting the word out.  One more week open at our current location!

You've got to see these!

I'm sharing a link to some beautiful pictures of incredible bookstores.  Amazing!

http://www.miragebookmark.ch/most-interesting-bookstores.htm

Greetings from New York

Hello, bibliophile comrades! This is Kelsey writing from the Big Apple and I am spending my second half of Spring Break in this fine, chaotic city visiting my brother who is living here for an internship. This place is amazing, really, but I must say my heart will always be in Fort Collins.

I am posting because today I had a chance to visit one of New York's many, many locally owned book stores: Saint Mark's Book Shop. I found it on accident online while searching a record store recommended to me by a friend, and thought it might be worth checking out based on the reviews alone. My parents, sister, and I made the long treak from the tip of Manhatten up through the city to find 3rd Street and St. Mark's with only our poor senses of direction and a small, inaccurate map to guide us. After a good two or three hour walk we were about ready to hail a cab and crash back at the hotel, but we pressed on an found it around the next corner. I was worried at first that the place would be a disappointment, and I had dragged my family along with me so I felt responsible for the turnout. We weren't disappointed, or at least my mother and I weren't. My father and sister spent most of the their time at Saint Mark's Book Shop in the art, humor, and fashion sections, but my mother and I got lost in the shelves immediately. The place reminded me a lot of our humble little Firehouse Book Store, but with a style only found in New York. For example, they included an entire section dedicated solely to Anarchist Literature and played a music best categorized as bizaare, to say the least. I limited myself to four books--

• Angels by Denis Johnson: His novel, Jesus' Son, is one of my favorites, and when the woman working there recommended him I knew it was time to pick up another of his books. As far as I can tell so far, it's about a woman traveling cross country on a bus with her baby daughter to escape a brutal relationship.
• Minor Characters by Joyce Johnson: I probably wouldn't have recognized her name had I not read the back of the book, but Johnson was with Jack Kerouac when his fame was just beginning to spark. This book is about the women of the beat generation who faded into the background of their male counterparts, yet lived just as interesting and progressive lives.
• Counter Culture Through the Ages by Ken Goffman: I'd heard of this book before and took the time to skim it in the store. It covers all of life's rebels "from Abraham to Acid House" covering everything from the Spain's conquests to Bill Gates.
• Child of God by McCarthy: This one was recommended to me by a close friend who loved The Road as much as I did. This one sticks with McCarthy's less-than-cheerful outlook and is about a man accused of rape and murder of young women. I'll try to take this one in small doses.

I know how absurd this is-- to be buying books in New York that I could have gotten an employee discount on if I ordered them at work, but I just couldn't resist. I was reminded by a customer who once told me that they are more a fan of buying books than reading them, and I fear that I'm headed on this same dark, dirt poor path. I've started all of them already, in addition to the two I brought along for the plane, and I'm not disappointed.

The woman working there seemed ecstatic that I would ask her opinion on what to read, and would pop up throughout my visit from behind shelves with some other "must-read" from her own collection. Her advice was worth having.

So now these four books are on their way home to sit on my shelf with the others that are half read and itching to be finished. I need more hours in the day. I'm sure you all can relate.

Look Me in the Eye

One of the reasons I like working at Old Firehouse Books is being able to talk to the variety of customers that frequent the store. No one is the same yet strangers can easily bond over a book. My interest with how people, who have such different perspectives in the world, yet manage to connect to each other is one of the reasons I decided to read “Look Me in the Eye.”
The book is the autobiography of John Elder Robinson, who growing up had difficulty interacting with others. He struggled because he was born with Asperger’s syndrome before it was even recognized as a mild form of autism. As a child he was called anything from psycho to sociopath, because of his inability to recognize social signals and therefore respond appropriately.
Beyond his struggles with Asperger’s, John has some amazing stories that include his frequent childhood pranks (some on his little brother Augusten Burroughs) to touring with the band KISS as a teenager.
I liked this book because of the illuminating picture John provides on how he understands life. This is a great book for fans of anything by Temple Grandin or anyone looking to gain a bit of insight into someone else’s world.

Upcoming Book Review: Ignore Everybody

One of the greatest pieces of advice I've ever heard is this: when a person gives you advice, it's just as important to scrutinize the person giving the advice as it is to consider the advice itself. Ask yourself: would you take financial advice from a bum begging for change? Advice on what restaurants are good from a person whose diet is made up of fast food and pizza? I definitely wouldn't. 

So whenever I hear advice on how to succeed as a creative person, I'm skeptical. A person giving advice on writing should frequently write themselves. Someone who thinks they know all about music should, generally speaking, listen to and play a wide variety of music. So I hope you'll believe me when I tell you that Hugh Macleod, author of the blog gapingvoid.com and upcoming book Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity, is a person to listen to. Hugh draws cartoons on the back of business cards, the most powerful of which to me resonate some stark truths he's found in his life as a creative, like so:

Sometimes the cartoons are just his thoughts, which are often crass and humorous:

If any person can tell me how to succeed in the artistic world, it is the man who has the ability to make money by selling doodles on the back of business cards. This is as good a time as any to give full disclosure: I have every reason to like this book, and few not to. I one day hope to make a living off of my creativity. I read Hugh's original Ignore Everybody post a year ago and enjoyed it immensely. I've re-read his thoughts several times since then. I even enjoy Hugh's artwork, which is by no means a requirement for enjoying his book, though there may be some correlation.

If you've never heard of Hugh, want to be a creative and maybe laugh a bit, make your way to his excellent blog and buy Ignore Everybody. The insights in the book are largely the same from the original musings posted, although a few ideas, such as more on the nature of good ideas and how such ideas spread, have been expanded upon. 

And if you have heard of Hugh, know that the book's abundant cartoons (80 to be precise) make it something special and different from its online counterpart. 

If you haven't read the book, here is an excerpt taken from Hugh's site which also gives some more insight into its author:

2. The idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours.
The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.

We all spend a lot of time being impressed by folk we've never met. Somebody featured in the media who's got a big company, a big product, a big movie, a big bestseller. Whatever.

And we spend even more time trying unsuccessfully to keep up with them. Trying to start up our own companies, our own products, our own film projects, books and whatnot.

I'm as guilty as anyone. I tried lots of different things over the years, trying desperately to pry my career out of the jaws of mediocrity. Some to do with business, some to do with art etc.

One evening, after one false start too many, I just gave up. Sitting at a bar, feeling a bit burned out by work and life in general, I just started drawing on the back of business cards for no reason. I didn't really need a reason. I just did it because it was there, because it amused me in a kind of random, arbitrary way.

Of course it was stupid. Of course it was uncommercial. Of course it wasn't going to go anywhere. Of course it was a complete and utter waste of time. But in retrospect, it was this built-in futility that gave it its edge. Because it was the exact opposite of all the "Big Plans" my peers and I were used to making. It was so liberating not to have to be thinking about all that, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have to impress anybody, for a change.

It was so liberating to be doing something that didn't have to have some sort of commercial angle, for a change.

It was so liberating to have something that belonged just to me and no one else, for a change.

It was so liberating to feel complete sovereignty, for a change. To feel complete freedom, for a change.

And of course, it was then, and only then, that the outside world started paying attention.

The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will. How your own sovereignty inspires other people to find their own sovereignty, their own sense of freedom and possibility, will give the work far more power than the work's objective merits ever will.

Your idea doesn't have to be big. It just has to be yours alone. The more the idea is yours alone, the more freedom you have to do something really amazing.

The more amazing, the more people will click with your idea. The more people click with your idea, the more this little thing of yours will snowball into a big thing.

That's what doodling on business cards taught me.

If you get a chance, check it out. In the end, it's a book about finding what you love and pursue it with all your heart. Have fun, be open to new things, and just rejoice in the life you have. As Hugh likes to say, rock on, with whatever it is you do. Hopefully this book will help you rock as much as it's helped me. I'll leave you with one more cartoon, my favorite:

Ignore Everybody And 39 Other Keys to Creativity will be released on June 11th, 2009