Book News & Reviews

The Bonfire of the Vanities - By Tom Wolfe

1/20/2025

I’ve really enjoyed Tom Wolfe’s out of context quotes in “The Bonfire of the Vanities” thus far:

“Who in the name of God would bring a half-eaten eight-ounce jar of Hellmann’s mayonnaise to a public meeting?”

“Christ almighty! A Master of the Universe couldn’t be a saint, after all…”

“Then he covered the telephone with his hand and looked straight up at the ceiling and said out loud to no one, except Mammon, “The frogs! The [freaking] frogs!”

"A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak."

"She was intoxicated, not by alcohol - alcohol was fattening - but by Society."

The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer

1/20/2025

“He wept out of bitterness and longing and despair; he wept from exhaustion and failure and the shattering naked conviction that nothing mattered….there was nothing in him at the moment, nothing but a vague anger, a deep resentment, and the origins of a vast hopelessness.”

Kinfolks - By Gurney Norman

1/20/2025

“Betty told Pauline to shut up. Jenny told Betty to kiss her ass. Junior called L.C. a son of a bitch and Wilgus said goddamn. Delmer and L.C. were on their way outside to have a fistfight when old Grandma Collier told them all to hush their mouths.”

I also love the brother/sister correspondence piece that can be found in another Gurney Norman book you should read - Divine Right's Trip

Roots to the Earth - By Wendell Berry

1/20/2025

“Always, on their generation’s breaking wave, men think to be immortal in the world, as though to leap from water and stand in the air were simple for a man. But the farmer knows no work or act of his can keep him here. He remains in what he serves by vanishing in it, becoming what he never was.”

Birdwhistell Books 2025: Another Year Over and a New one just begun

12/26/2024

Birdwhistell Books just made it through it's first calendar year! Here are just some of the things you've helped us accomplish this year:

Learned a ton of invaluable information
Added four new book shelves and a display table
Doubled our available space
Began offering a Discounted “New” Books
Expanded our Children’s Section
Expanded our selection of prints
Celebrated our first year anniversary
Remained profitable all year

Thank you all so much! But now it's almost 2025, and we cannot wait to show you what we have planned for the bookstore this coming year. Here are just some of our ideas:

Monthly "What We're Reading" and "What Our Readers are Reading" Posts
Monthly book club
Selling first editions & rare titles on Abebooks
Opening an online bookstore for new books

We cannot begin to describe how much we enjoyed building Birdwhistell Books, and we're looking forward to many more years to come! Make sure you're following us on Facebook because we plan to post more frequently, do more giveaways, and provide a place for reading related discussions throughout the year. If you want to follow along on our bookstore and reading journeys on a more frequent basis you can find us posting regularly over at Blue Sky. Thank you again, and we hope to see you at the store in 2025!

Why BIrdwhistell Books?

12/27/2022

Why are we starting a used bookstore in 2023?

It's not like used bookstores are big money-making businesses...in fact, it's hard to find one still open even in bigger cities;
It's not like people are starving for entertainment options...honestly, between YouTube, streaming services, and social media you could entertain yourself to death; and
It's not like people are hurting to buy new and used books...Amazon has about any book one could ever want at the click of a button.

So I'll ask once again....why are we starting a used bookstore in 2023?

Because we believe finding discarded books and ideas and bringing them back to our community is a good in and of itself, regardless of its profitability. As long as we can break even, then spending our days searching for, reading, and passing on discarded books seems like a good way to spend a life.
Because we believe that books do not merely entertain...they offer one of the best avenues to expanding your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. A good book doesn't merely amuse and distract you from this world. Instead it enriches and deepens your intellectual, emotional, and spiritual connection to people and places throughout space and time.
Because we believe that some of the best books are not the ones you always start out looking for. People need spaces to browse and stumble upon ideas they haven't thought of yet. We do not have a selection that compares to Amazon, and if you are looking for a particular title then we cannot guarantee we'll have it. However, if you spend some time browsing our shelves, you might just find the perfect book you didn't even know you wanted.

That's why we are starting a used bookstore in 2023...we hope you check it out.