Food For Thought Books in the news

A nice letter to the Amherst Bulletin from our longtime friend Gerry Weiss:

To the Bulletin: A valuable community resource is in financial trouble. Food for Thought Books is in danger of closing unless they and we find a way to keep them going.

It has been hit by the same factors contributing to the nationwide decline of independent bookstores: big box stores, Amazon, e-books, the economy and a severe drop in textbook sales. For over 30 years, Food for Thought Books has been the only not-for-profit, worker-owned collective bookstore in Western Mass. But it is also a community gathering place where people come together with artists and activists to share ideas.

This gathering and sharing can't be done on Amazon or BarneslandNoble.com. Yes, you can buy books more cheaply on Amazon, but you can't talk to friendly and knowledgeable sales staff, browse the store, sit and read a book to your child and meet local writers. And if the store closes, we have another empty store front and a loss of foot traffic downtown. Every store that closes means a loss to the town; a loss of a business that that gives back to the town. The money you spend in locally owned businesses stays in Amherst. The money you spend at Amazon or B & N stays there.

So the next time you are on one of the big sites to buy a book, switch over to FoodforThoughtBooks.com, and order your book there, or call or stop in. And you can also see what else you can do to help on the website or at the store.

Gerry Weiss
Amherst

Thanks, Gerry!

Thank You, Sonia Sanchez!

Food For Thought Books Collective would like to express our profound gratitude to Sonia Sanchez for an amazing fundraiser last night.

Thanks also to the lovely folks at Afro-American Studies Department at UMass for making it all happen, not to mention all the wonderful people who showed up to make it such a special evening.

Please know your support in these difficult times is deeply appreciated. We are truly blessed to have such a powerful, creative, and compassionate community to see us through.

Patti Smith wins National Book Award

Hell yes: Patti Smith wins the National Book Award for her recent memoir Just Kids.

In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

Congratulations Patti!

Winter Hours

Please take note of our new winter hours!

Monday, Wednesday, & Friday: 10:00am to 6:00pm
Tuesday & Thursday: 1:00pm to 6:00pm
Saturday & Sunday: 11:30am to 6:00pm

Remember: you can always shop for books online at any hour, comfy, at home & in yr jammies, at our fantabulous website: www.foodforthoughtbooks.com

Zadie Smith reviews Jaron Lanier

Zadie Smith pens a thought provoking review of Jaron Lanier's recent You Are Not a Gadget (wrapped in a review of The Social Network, the recent movie about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom she went to Harvard with...)

You want to be optimistic about your own generation. You want to keep pace with them and not to fear what you don’t understand. To put it another way, if you feel discomfort at the world they’re making, you want to have a good reason for it. Master programmer and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier (b. 1960) is not of my generation, but he knows and understands us well, and has written a short and frightening book, You Are Not a Gadget, which chimes with my own discomfort, while coming from a position of real knowledge and insight, both practical and philosophical. Lanier is interested in the ways in which people “reduce themselves” in order to make a computer’s description of them appear more accurate. “Information systems,” he writes, “need to have information in order to run, but information underrepresents reality” (my italics). In Lanier’s view, there is no perfect computer analogue for what we call a “person.” In life, we all profess to know this, but when we get online it becomes easy to forget. In Facebook, as it is with other online social networks, life is turned into a database, and this is a degradation, Lanier argues, which is

based on [a] philosophical mistake…the belief that computers can presently represent human thought or human relationships. These are things computers cannot currently do.

We know the consequences of this instinctively; we feel them. We know that having two thousand Facebook friends is not what it looks like. We know that we are using the software to behave in a certain, superficial way toward others. We know what we are doing “in” the software. But do we know, are we alert to, what the software is doing to us? Is it possible that what is communicated between people online “eventually becomes their truth”? What Lanier, a software expert, reveals to me, a software idiot, is what must be obvious (to software experts): software is not neutral. Different software embeds different philosophies, and these philosophies, as they become ubiquitous, become invisible. ...read more

Calendars & Planners for 2011

We've got a ton of new calendars & planners for 2011 in stock. One of our personal favorites is Nikki McClure's wonderful calendar, featuring her extraordinary papercut images combined with singular potent verbs that inspire both reflection & action. Only $16.00!

Also awesome & in stock: Slingshot organizers! A bestseller for us for the past decade or more, the Slingshot organizer is packed full of radical dates for every day of the year, space to write your phone numbers, a contact list of radical groups around the globe, menstrual calendar, info on police repression, extra note pages, plus much more.

The classic pocket version is still only $6.00 and the larger spiralbound version is still only $12.00.

Come by & check them out today - the new year is coming soon!

Art in the Window - Zamont Hassan

As part of our ongoing project of Artists in the Window we're currently featuring the extraordinary multilayered work of Zamont Frenkel Hassan. Be sure to stop by & check it out!

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Artists in the Window is an ongoing series of displays by local artists in our right-side front window. We provide this service to give our local artists a free venue to share their work with the community.

Are you an artist interested in displaying your work in our window? Click here for more information.

¡ Felíz Día de los Muertos !

Happy Day of the Dead everyone!

The Coke Machine - An Interview with Michael Blanding

Tara Lohan at Alternet talks with investigative journalist Michael Blanding about his new book, The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World's Favorite Soft Drink:

People ask me why I singled out Coke, and in some ways I did that because it is such an iconic brand and such a symbol of capitalism, but I think the lessons I drew from investigating Coke are not specific to Coke -- it's not some evil corporation that is somehow worse than all the others. In fact, a lot of the lessons about how and why the company does what it does and how people have ultimately been able to hold Coke accountable are just as applicable to BP or Halliburton or other major corporations. I think of the Coke Machine as in some ways a metaphor for the darker side of corporate capitalism and I hope that my book can be seen as a way of exposing that. ...read more

Don't miss the book's nicely done website, The Coke Machine.

Important News from Food For Thought Books

Please take a moment and read this letter we have written to our community about the future of Food For Thought Books:

Dear friends,

We are writing to you today to share an important update about what is happening with us because you are part of the community that has always made our collective a special place. We are writing you today because that is what friends do when they need help: they turn to their friends first and ask for it. We want you to know that we need your help now and that we are thankful for all the support that you have given to us in the past.

read more...

On Teaching the Graphic Novel

Alexander Chee muses on his experiences at Amherst College teaching a seminar on graphic novels.

... an Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Kuniyoshi, is one of the pieces of art that led me into my interest in the graphic novel. The visual pun at its center emits a narrative force, a dramatic irony—you are drawn into the story about to happen, the idea that the fox has cast this illusion around it and has not yet been caught by anyone except the artist and the reader. Comics and graphic novels at their best play with this and the other forces a visual pun brings to bear. It’s one of the things a comic or graphic novel can do that prose alone has to play catch-up with—creating in the mind of the reader simultaneous contrasts, the fox as woman as fox as illusion. ...read more

The rest is full of such excellent insights. Be sure to check out the excellent & varied reading list at the end.

And did we mention that his novel Edinburgh is an eloquent, powerful, and deeply moving read? Here, read the prologue and you'll see.

Homophobia is Killing our Youth

Today is Spirit Day, a day when gay, lesbian and queer organizations are asking folks to wear purple in honor of the LGBT youth who have committed suicide in recent days due to homophobic abuse in their homes and schools.

MakeItBetter Amherst has organized a candlelight vigil on the Amherst Common tonight to commemorate this new holiday at 6:30pm. Be there!