Our new home!
So, in early February, we'll be re-opening our store up the street at 353 Newbury Street. In January we'll continue to have 339 Newbury Street open and selling extra special books and magazines at super basic prices.
And if you feel like helping out when we move in January, drop us a line or just come by! We can't pay you, but we'll have pizza and beer or soda, and maybe even some store credit.
See you there! Tom says, "Customers want leather section."
In response to regular customer requests AVH is creating a section of the store devoted to leather bound books. Fiction, non-fiction, books of all genres that are bound in full, 3/4, 1/2, or 1/4 leather, whether it be red, black, brown, or in one noteworthy case, green. Some of these volumes are recent fine editions from Franklin or Easton Press with gold decoration and gilt page edges. Others are 100 to 150 years old with marbled endpapers, lithographs and engravings, and frequently names and inscriptions in fine old
copperplate handwriting. Whether you need something to compliment your Jennifer Leather furniture or your Marlon Brando black motorcycle jacket, it's worth dropping in for a look or dropping us a line. Making Lemonade.
Even though they are the current largest booklisting site, we no longer list our books with ABE Books. In the past couple years ABE have become increasingly overbearing and unfriendly towards independent booksellers: they have tried to tell dealers how they should run their businesses, they have (sensibly) looked for ways to increase company revenues...but have not necessarily been doing anything for source of their business, the dealers themselves.
Now ABE have decided to charge a 5% commission on dealers' sales through ABE -- as well as set shipping rates (which in some cases are quite unreal). To pile insult on injury, they are listing all the books |
in the ABE database on the Amazon Books used book program, while inflicting Amazon's onerous and unrealistic requirements on the dealers as well.
So, even though it may cause a drop in our internet sales, Avenue Victor Hugo is taking a stand for freedom from corporate autocracy, from bureaucracy's grasping fingers, and from the subjugation of independent booksellers by financially dubious conglomerates.
Our cataloged books can still be found on BookAvenue, Used Book Central, Bibliodirect, the Avenue Victor Hugo website, and through Bookfinder. New items added every day. Noted
Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop in print again: In the new guide book, Secret Boston by Laura Purdom, published in 2002 by ECW, a Canadian company they say: "This shop has a robust sci-fi collection..but its towering shelves hold a litte of everything, including periodicals of yesteryear." They forgot the cat. How could they forget the cat? Starry-Eyed Poetasters
Recently a couple of show business biographies claimed that their subjects wrote poetry. Though few or no examples of their work were given, their friends and family, all sterling critics, claimed that the stuff was beautiful and sensitive. The surprise is that the writers were very unlikely: i.e. rugged manly acters, specifically Robert Mitchum and Richard Boone.
This gives rise to wondering what other so-called tough guys might also have been of a similar ilk. I seem to recall that Humphrey Bogart was actually a Yale boy, and what of Marion Morison, otherwise known as John Wayne?
On the other hand, the known actor poets can give one pause. There was the Poetry of Jimmy Stewart (best forgotten), and Victor Buono, who used to read humorous stuff on the "Tonight Show" back when Johnny Carson hosted. Are there other starry-eyed poetasters I'm forgetting?
Like the poet said, sort of, maybe some flowers best bloom unseen, so I'll go back to my pursuit of the scattered verses of Bonnie Parker (she of Bonnie and Clyde). Now there's a poet that I quote.
--Tom Owen |
