Reading Between the Lines...

English Vacation, English Reading

2009-09-28T03:59:00.000-05:00

Got a favorite blog post? Anything that inspired, tickled your funny bone, or just made you think a little more about an interesting issue, please share the ideas with us ...

We've been studying blogs written by others in the book world for the last few months to help guide the content development on our new website in development. There's a LOT to learn from our fellow bookish types. Here's a sample of one we enjoyed this week. What about you? Any you'd like to share?

We're always open to new ideas!

Games!

2009-08-10T17:01:00.001-05:00

Who doesn't love games? Kat found a great treasure trove -

http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/literature

Check it out!

Having Fun in the Digital World

2009-08-10T12:54:00.003-05:00

We are really starting to get excited here in our little bookstore. Melly has taken over the podcast for Season Two which airs this week. Our Drupal programming skills are getting better each week (we MIGHT be ready for our target launch date of September 8th for our new site), and we've been studying best practices in creating MEANINGFUL digital content each week.

Just a sneak preview: the new website will have video interviews of authors ... including local authors, we'll have regional listings of literary events throughout our area with the ability for our neighbors (virtual or physical) to add events from their own organizations or book clubs, and our links to the national indiebound movement will be stronger than ever.

And best of all, our coverage of local authors will be the strongest we've ever had! So, if you or another author you know wants to be featured on the new website .. make sure you've activated your indiebound affiliate on your own author's website and then let us know. We'll need a digital copy of your headshot, a bio (include any links to reviews or favorable coverage of your published book), and your complete booklist. If you need help linking to indiebound.org simply send an e-mail to paige@indiebound.org.

Enjoy your last summer days!

Miah Olmsted

Chief Who in Whoville

Back to Books

Hudson, WI 54016

Twitter: @BacktoBooks

715-381-1188

Upcoming bookclubs!

2009-08-02T11:11:00.002-05:00

As fall approaches so do our book clubs! Back to Books will be starting up the Boys book club again this year and we are proud to announce our newest book club, the Sci-Fi book club!

As of right now the books for the Boys book club have not been chosen, but they will be in the upcoming weeks.

As for the Sci-Fi book club the books have been chosen!
They are: Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds
Federations by John Adams
The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
The Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

All of these books are either newer Sci-Fi/Fantasy books or they are older books that have stood the test of time and are still as enjoyable to read as ever! We hope you enjoy these books as much as we do!

Happy Reading and we hope to see you soon!

David Cincotta
Staff Member

Author Event

2009-06-09T20:51:00.002-05:00

Janet Conner will be at Back to Books on June 16 at 6:00 PM. She is the author of "Writing Down Your Soul." According to Conner, writing from your soul can change your life by getting you away from your conscious mind, getting you in touch with your authentic self and activating limitless intelligence and wisdom. Janet now lives in Florida but graduated from high school and college in Wisconsin. She teaches workshops, teleclasses and retreats in Florida.

Join us at Back to Books for an evening of writing and discovery.

summer reading group

2009-05-22T12:04:00.002-05:00

It's almost summer and some of us have more time for reading. We'd love to start a young adult reading club and /or an adult reading club during the day or early evening. We can enjoy the weather and talk books. Let us know what you think.

The knitting Group

2009-05-22T11:58:00.002-05:00

Hi. It's Ann and for the second month in a row I will be away the last Friday of the month. I suggest we meet June 5 at 6. perhaps it would be fun to find an space outdoors to knit and talk books. Tell me what you think.

Jayna - Being Efficient

2008-11-30T09:39:00.004-06:00

Hello hello and happy holidays! It's that time of year, when there's just not enough time to do everything you'd like, especially for college students. Finals are in only 2 weeks, unbelievable! Since I commute to Menomonie for school, I've started listening to audio books. I began with Dragon Harper by Ann McCaffrey. Hate to say it but I only got through the first 2 disks, it just did not hold my interest. Her books are better when read, not heard.

Now I'm listening to 2 at the same time, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk. Just to warn you, Haunted is a wee bit disturbing, read/listen at your own risk. Not as in scary, but as in truly unsettling.

And recently I was ecstatic to find an awesome old copy of The Tale of Genji at the library! It was written by Lady Murasaki in Japan around the 11th century. One of the oldest novels in the world, and it's huge at 1200 pages. Can't wait to get started on it!

Melly: brushing up on her history....

2008-11-14T19:39:00.011-06:00

Greetings fellow readers! :)

For the unfamiliar- I've been an employee at Back to Books for a little over two months now. I'm still familiarizing myself with the many neat activities and events that personalize our business and connect us with our local community. In doing so, I've decided to give blogging a shot!

So...

Being a junior in high school, I've boldly decided to accept the challenge of taking AP U.S. History (APUSH) this year! With the insanely large amount of textbook reading that this class entails, you'd think that I would have had enough of learning about history... think again! At the recent Midwest Booksellers Association Trade Show, I got my hands on a couple of neat history books that I would other wise have been uninterested in:

Jamestown: The Buried Truth

William Keslo

In this book, the author William Keslo performs an archeological dig, dissection and reconstruction of four-hundred-year-old artifacts and human remains of colonial

Jamestown, Virginia. He uncovers details of how the first settlers spent their days, how they lived and died, and what they accomplished and suffered.It is an adventurous non-fiction that gave me a different perspective on the English settlers in the 1600's.

The Art of Ill Will

Donald Dewey

This fascinating book tells the history of the American Political Cartoon, beginning with the Join or Die advertisement by Ben Franklin in the 1750's and ending with modern day cartoons. It analyzes some of the craziest ones and connects them to the politics and hardships of the time which they were written. Not only is it an informative, interesting non-fiction, but it has pictures! This book grabs the attention of any reader... even if they are not history buffs.

Other history-oriented books I've enjoyed lately....

Charlie Wilson's War

George Crile

If you haven't spoiled the plot by watching the movie yet, I fully recommend this book before its movie-counterpart. Just as captivating as the action-packed movie, and a truly unique perspective of Charlie Wilson's run-ins with the CIA, Afghan rebels, and members of the Soviet army.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe

My most recent and modern history-related read... The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is about the acid movement of the 1960's focused on Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. Shockingly disturbing and graphic, Wolfe reports with a strictly accurate and real journalism style and writes in a way that portrays the "stream of consciousness" of his characters. A definite page turner!

Thats about all of my historical revelations at the moment... but I will continue to explore the past and report back with any

thing else I find to be interesting! Continue your journeys in reading!!! :D

Melly

Roxy - What I've been up to

2008-11-11T19:19:00.013-06:00

Hey everyone! It's Roxy and I was just taking some time out to let everyone in on what I've been up to lately.

I just finished an e-mail about Sean Chercover and his author event tomorrow Wed. November 12 at 7pm. You can check out our information about our author event with Sean Chercover at: backtobooksonline.com Go to the "Store Events" link on the right menu and click on the Sean Chercover Author Event. You can also check out Chercover's own website at: chercover.com

I also just checked my Indie Bound account. Booksense became Indie Bound over the summer, and Indie Bound has a hip new look. You should definitely check it out at: indiebound.org

You can also join the Indie Bound community and sign the Declaration of Indie Bound. Joining the Indie Bound community gives you the opportunity to become a fan of Indie Bound Bookstores and make friends. You can comment on friend's profiles and on your favorite bookstore's profiles, telling what you like the best about those stores.

Indie Bound also has a wish list feature. This means you can make a wish list of all your favorite books and support your local Indie Bound Bookstores and your community in the process!

Oh! and I should mention the points system. If you leave messages on people's profiles and store profiles, invite people to join the Indie Bound community, make a wish list, and become a fan of Indie Book Stores you earn points. There are other ways to earn points too, but those are the most common ones. Anyway, if you get 100 points or more you will periodically get put into a drawing for a gift basket from your local Indie Bound Bookstore! So get involved in your Indie Bound community!

Anyway, it's about time to get going...I'll talk to all of you later. Happy reading!

Jayna - Making Time

2008-10-05T11:42:00.004-05:00

I've been so busy lately with school projects, work projects, getting out of my lease (and everything that comes with it), and I'm left with so little time to myself. But I still manage to read a few books a month!
We went to the Midwest Bookseller's Association show last Saturday! The breakfast was very entertaining, we heard Laurie Keller (The Scrambled States of America, Do Unto Otters, Arnie the Doughnut, Grandpa Gazillion's Number Yard), Polly Horvath (My One Hundred Adventures, The Vacation), and John Green (Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns). Laurie was hilarious, she lives in Michigan and creates amazing illustrations for her books. John Green was pretty cool too, he was funny but really was passionate when he spoke - he loves the independents and inspired me to work even harder for the store. And of course at the trade show I got so many amazing books that I want to read!

PhoDography by Kim Levin is wonderful since I take horrible photos of my dog constantly, the poor guy. It has really great tips for taking good photos, like what to do if you have a black dog! But anyway I do have more books to add later, from the little publishers who try so hard!

Anyway, here's my list that I've read in the last month or so:
Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman!!)
Fool by Christopher Moore
Number9Dream by David Mitchell
Paint it Black by Janet Fitch (& White Oleander, not as good)
A Nora Roberts book, don't remember the title but it was good for a quick read,
Rant by Chuck Palahniuk (LOVE THIS BOOK!!)
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Vamped by David Sosnowski
Vittorio, Blood Canticle, & Exit to Eden by Anne Rice
Children of the Fringe by Orson Scott Card

Miah - Make a difference

2008-10-03T17:55:00.006-05:00

It's Friday night again. Another weekend of reading and relaxing .. yeah, right. Ever work in retail? You know where this is going.

So ... while I'm on a work kick I thought I'd talk some this week about the best business books I've read. If we're really lucky perhaps a few esteemed gentle politicians will stumble across one of these gems and figure out how to tool up a few basic leadership skills.

We'll be starting our new audio book rental program in a few weeks. Perhaps you'll find something here to prompt you to try it out.

I thought I'd start with the intriguing 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. What more can I say? You get what it's about. Refreshing concept. Great book. Loved it ... loved it!

Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters by Bill Tancer. I read it because Steven Dubner the co-author of Freakonomics (another great read) suggested it (as indicated by the cover review). You should read it because it's fascinating! It's amazing and more than a little scary to realize how many of our deepest ideas and preferences are being recorded daily on Google. It's just extraordinary to learn how that information is collected and processed.

In the mood for a really interesting story? I highly recommend T. Boone Pickens' book, The First Billion is the Hardest. It's inspiring, he tackles big issues that are of common concern for most people and he's got a darn fine set of ideas for revamping our energy usage in America.
It's a real maverick's story with a creative approach to a complicated problem.

Once you get inspired, it will be a lot easier to carve your own path in your work and personal life after you've read Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Define your talents and strengths. Then use your business skills and general capabilities to apply creative solutions to your busy life.

While you're at it ... perhaps you can apply some of those solutions to mine too!

Miah

2008-09-25T23:04:00.005-05:00

It's Midwest Bookselling Season .... or so it seems this week as we travel to our regional bookselling conference to meet with authors and publishers alike. there are many exciting new titles coming out this fall and winter (just in time for holiday gifts .. Wahoo!). Of particular excitement for this week though are the newly awarded Midwest Booksellers Choice awards for 2008.

Announced this evening were the winners: Nancy Horan in the fiction category for Loving Frank and in the nonfiction category Little Heathens by Mildred Armstrong Kalish. Both of them won my votes that's for sure! I've been telling folks about these two for almost a year.

Several other local favorites of mine which won honorable mention, Leif Enger's new book So Brave Young and Handsome, Whistling in the Dark by Leslie Kagen, and of course The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl.

And ... you guessed it folks .... in the children's category Kate DiCamillo came up with a winner again in Great Joy. She's just an amazingly creative writer! Her cohorts in the winner's circle for children's books included Jody Feldman with The Gollywhopper Games and Anne Ylvisaker with Little Klein.

I'm off to bed now .. tomorrow's another exciting day ... we get to hear "the pick of the lists" ... publisher and author selections of their favorite books for the rest of 2008. Come bring your book club shopping with us this fall, I think we're going to have a lot of wonderful selections to talk about!

Ciao ....

Miah - Back from Afar

2008-09-10T21:50:00.003-05:00

Summer was wonderful. Lots going on for the Olmsted clan as I'm sure it was for you and your near-and-dears. All good things must come to an end though, so as the summer days have waned into fall we've shlepped Olmsted darlings off to colleges far and wide.

Two thousand miles on the family car later, while they're reading those college textbooks this mama's reading the stack of books by the bedside! It's seems to be mystery month this September since one of our veteran booksellers, Jon Howard, has featured a number of excellent titles in our podcast "Books in the Basement". In addition to Robert Ludlum's new Bourne Sanction, I'm reading a classic I've always wanted to get too ... Agatha Christie's A Murder is Announced in anticipation of the grand dame's 118 birthday.

That should get me in the mood for our next author book signing event Saturday afternoon with William Kent Krueger and his new Cork O'Connor novel Red Knife 2pm September 13th.

Come and see me downtown. We'll talk books and shmooze. It's good to be home!

Mike - Stephanie Meyer Strikes Again

2008-06-30T15:42:00.002-05:00

So I recently was talked into beginning Stephanie Meyer's "Twilight" series. At first I was skeptical since everyone says the books are so romance filled and girly. That was not my experience. In a week I've finished the first two books and have made a considerable dent in the third. These books are written in a style so captivating that it is hard not to identify with the characters and feel the same feelings that the author has given them.

Jon-Late Night Post

2008-06-25T23:10:00.011-05:00

So yeah its been awhile since my last post and I have read a lot since then. Last I wrote I was still reading Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth; which now I've finished, and about 3 other books. Well first off Percy Jackson ended up being just as I said before. A straight shooting plot story, some trash for the mind. However it was pretty good and wrapped up some lose ends while unraveling some others.

Also I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. I had been recommended to it by some other employees (Mike that

means you). It was a good book however. I came into it with some apprehension seeing as it's about like 6 year olds but it had everything a great book needed: a great plot, a surprise twist at the end (it really is a great ending cause I almost didn't see it coming and it really shows Ender as being human). Great book and I hear that they are thinking of doing a movie adaptation. I'm really interested in seeing how the movie is able to portray the book (for example the battle school game). Read it!

Wow another book? haha. yup. 2 more to go. Next I read The Good Guy by Dean Koontz. Real good book and real good story. Very surprise ending

that I did not see coming at all. Also the characters in it you really come to root for and start to care about. It's one of my favorite Dean Koontz book. It's this along with Life Expectancy, The Hudsband, and Velocity.

So yeah I know all I've been doing is praising books this post but this book deserves it the most. Patrick Rothfuss' The Name of the Wind. This book was recommended to me by everyone, and I mean everyone that has ever read it (that includes pretty much all the people who work at the store). So naturally I had pretty high expectations for this book and needless to say it was amazing and did not let me down. All 722 pages were amazingly written. The only drawback that I had in the whole book was the ending and how it seemed to have just stopped. Some other employees informed me that the author had to do that and make a break in the book because he had written all the books together and needed to split them otherwise the book would have been like 3000 pages long and that would have been kind of extreme. Amazing book and I recommend it to anyone who wants a great plot that has an amazing main character. I can't wait for the next book in the series to come out. I give it 2 thumbs up and 5 gold stars and 1000 points (refer to scale for conversion factor). yeah justing kidding but seriously it was great.

So yeah that about wraps it up for me. O I have one last thing and it's kind of a shameless promotion for my podcast that I've made. It's BooksInTheBasement and can be listened to and downloaded here

listen to it haha.

well until next time....

Jayna - Can't Believe How Much She's Reading..

2008-06-06T17:48:00.006-05:00

Wow. I have so much time on my hands right now so I've been reading a lot. Actually, that's not it, I've just found a few different series that keep me so addicted that I read them like a crazy person. Case in point - the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyers! Dear lord I am obsessed. I understand now why so many young girls are infatuated with Edward... because I am too. Good thing I have Alex (my boyfriend), or else I would be feeling so lonely, because she writes about love in the most amazing way. I finished Twilight in a day, New Moon the next, and I'm going to finish Eclipse today, hopefully. Wonderful, amazing, emotional books, it's all about love though. I also finished Kushiel's Chosen, which is the book in which Phèdre searches for Melisande after she escapes from her scheduled execution, and dealing with her lover Joscelin because he cannot stand her going back to being a courtesan.

Also in my to-read list, Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (because Neil Gaiman recommends it), and the rest of the Alvin the Maker series by Orson Scott Card. Wonderful man, he is. Wonderful.

Oh, and props to Roxy for starting Name of the Wind.

Roxanne - I'm finally starting it!

2008-05-31T16:26:00.004-05:00

Just so everyone knows (and in case there was some sort of hit put out on me because I hadn't started it) I've officially started reading The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (so please, call off the hitmen.) Anyway, I have been told by several staff members, and everyone else that has read it and talked to me about it, that this book is totally amazing and I have to read it. Patrick Rothfuss even came to our store for a last minute author event, and I have a signed hardcover copy sitting on my bookshelf since then, but I hadn't had the chance to read it until now (and just so you all know, I'm an English major so it's not like I didn't have to read book after book for school.)
But anyway, I started it this morning and I'm somewhere around page 12. Needless to say, the writing is great, and I can't wait to get back to it. I'm not reading it very quickly, though. Being a writer myself I've started to pay attention to writing. I can ignore writing if I'm reading junk (okay, that's not true - I refuse to read the paper mainly because journalists have never proven to me that they have a college degree by putting what they learned in college into their writings, but that's another issue altogether) but this isn't junk, so it may take me a while to read it. But the important thing is that i started it!

Jon - Another one bites the dust

2008-05-30T19:40:00.004-05:00

Well at the moment i have 3 grocery bags and a smallish bookshelf full of books that are on my proverbial "to read" list. well currently I have got one down, this one was The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum. See this is one of the first I have read by him, I started to read The Ambler Warning but never finished it and it ended up being up dog tagged and tossed into the bags with the rest of them. When picking up this book and reading the back it sounded pretty good. Had it's twists and its turns. Read it and found it to be pretty linear and predictable. On the bright side it is a pretty good plot and it's right up the alley of his other books. Over all i think I would give it 4 out of 5 stars. Reading this book makes me want to read his Jason Bourne series. Maybe I'll pick those up sometime. Also I'm reading the 4th book in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians. The Battle of the Labyrinth. I'm about 3/4 of the way done with it and so far its been good. A real plot runner, some trash for the brain I guess I would call it. Pretty good though. Don't know what I'm going to read next. I'll keep ya posted though.

Jayna - Musings on Her Current Books...

2008-05-30T16:49:00.007-05:00

Hey all, this is Jayna. I've been confined to my bed, being sick for the last week, and only the last few days was I well enough to actually read. So I crunched through a few titles.

A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban was a book all of us employees were asked to read, and it was a breeze. It's a young adult story about a girl who is trying to deal with herself, from fitting in to finding a calling. She wants to be a piano prodigy, but her anti-social dad buys
her an organ instead. Great read, it makes you feel happy afterwards!

Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey is actually not the first in the series (Kushiel's Dart?), but I think it was actually good to start with. From what I gather the first few are about Phèdre, a very 'interesting' courtesan. This book follows the story of her adopted son, Imriel, and his coming of age in dealing with his disturbing past. The series is set in a fantasy world sometimes loosely based on real history, in a sort of medieval time period. I liked beginning here because I got to know many events that happened in the other books, which makes me much more interested. It has a ton of romance and schmex, which keeps it fun... ;)

I'm also in the middle of Once and Future King by T.H. White, which is about
King Arthur, but I seemed to have lost the book in a box somewhere... (I'm packed up to move to my new house) It's really similar to the Disney movie so I think they based it off of this book.