“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
– Stephen King
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Last week, I had the opportunity to go into the studio where I take pottery classes for the first time in four months. I’m no expert, but I took wheel-throwing classes as a child, and about a year ago found that my hands still remembered and liked the movements, a muscle memory imprinted with the young joy of creating something from a lump of nothing and getting messy in the process. On my shelf in the studio, I found the dried-out remnants of the last project I was working on in March, a series of miniatures: a tiny mug, an eensy vase, a bowl for one large grape. They’d dried too much to refine and trim down in the way I’d originally planned. Instead, into the kiln they went, half finished and rough around the edges, miniature monuments to a moment in time before all this.
I also had several bisqueware pieces waiting: these pots had gone through a first firing in the kiln, which rendered them to a fragile and chalky state, ready to be glazed and then fired a final time. Carts and carts of bisque fired pieces line the back of Mudflat. There’s a hunt involved: delicately picking through the rows and rows of pottery, lifting a bowl here and there to check whether it’s got your signature, carefully pulling out someone else’s teapot so you can see what’s nestled behind it. In the best of times, it can be hard to find your pieces -- certainly for a potter like me, still in the uncomfortable stage of being an experienced beginner who can create bowls that look like bowls and mugs that look like mugs but with no certain distinguishing features to call me back to them. After months away, it felt almost impossible. Luckily, I found I’d taken a photo of them in the before -- possibly for exactly that reason -- but I still needed to flag down help to find them. Eventually we excavated each from the shelves. A pitcher had grown a handle I'd forgotten I’d added.
In the glaze room, I stood before the giant wall of tiles: a grid that shows nearly every possible combination of glazes and clays, hundreds of colors and textures and choices. The process of pottery is a drawn out one: you throw a piece on the wheel, dry and trim it, fire it, glaze it, and fire it again, all of which takes weeks. Occasionally all that buildup leads to making a safer choice: a glaze you know, a single treatment, a comfortable color -- because you don’t want to have invested so much time into something and then risk it in the final step, and glazes are notoriously unpredictable. Yet the time and distance I’d gotten -- the unfamiliarity of these pots I’d made with my own hands -- on that day it empowered me to choose glazes I’d never combined before. An iridescent yellow pitcher. A lavender layered with black blue to, I hope, create a rich indigo. Rich, runny pinks and purples. I have a feeling they’ll elude me again when I head back to pick them up in a few weeks. I look forward to catching myself by surprise.
--Leila
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Read our reopen procedures and policies!
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It's been almost a full first week of being partially reopened -- it's been wonderful to see everyone's face (well, the top half above the mask anyway) and we're so grateful to everyone who has been so respectful of our policies and made this week (almost) easy!
If you have concerns about visiting the store with the general public, we've reserved Saturdays from10am-12pm for vulnerable shoppers. This is a great time to come visit. We are asking folks to please use their discretion about coming in at this time -- we won't be quizzing you on why you're vulnerable as we know it's personal! If you aren't a part of the vulnerable population (or a caregiver to someone in this population) we ask you to please plan to visit after 12pm on Saturdays or during the week to allow these customers the safest experience possible.
In-Store Shopping Hours, Starting
Tuesday, July 14:
Tuesday-Friday: 3PM-7PM
Saturday: 10AM-2PM, with 10AM-12PM set aside for vulnerable customers
We really appreciate your support.
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Join our next virtual events!
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Lindsay Ellis with Caitlin Doughty [Ticketed!]
Axiom's End,
Thursday, July 23th at 7PM
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Porter Square Books is delighted to present a virtual talk with Lindsay Ellis, author of the highly anticipated debut novel
Axiom's End
, in conversation with the world's coolest mortician, Caitlin Doughty (
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
)!
This event takes place on Crowdcast, and is ticketed. Your ticket includes entry to the virtual event as well as a signed copy of
Axiom's End
shipped directly to your home! (Psst -- there's a coupon code to remove the shipping charge if you're local!)
The alternate history first contact adventure,
Axiom's End is an extraordinary debut from Hugo finalist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis. It’s fall 2007. A well-timed leak has revealed that the US government might have engaged in first contact. Cora Sabino is doing everything she can to avoid the whole mess, since the force driving the controversy is her whistleblower father. Cora neither knows nor cares whether her father’s leaks are a hoax, and wants nothing to do with him—until she learns just how deeply entrenched her family is in the cover-up, and that an extraterrestrial presence has been on Earth for decades. Realizing the extent to which both she and the public have been lied to, she sets out to gather as much information as she can, and finds that the best way for her to uncover the truth is not as a whistleblower, but as an intermediary—the first and only human vessel of communication. Their otherworldly connection will change everything she thought she knew about being human—and could unleash a force more sinister than she ever imagined.
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**Were you looking forward to our July 16 event with J. Courtney Sullivan and Joanna Rakoff for
Friends and Strangers
? Us, too! Unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties with our host platform - our first in all these months, and we're so sorry about it. The good news is we're rescheduling it for Thursday, July 30. Stay tuned for details!**
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Want to show your love of Porter Square Books? Order your very own Porter Square Books T-shirt!
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Visit your friends at Cafe Zing!
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Did you know our beloved Cafe Zing is open for customers? Now you know!
Open Wednesday-Saturday, 8am-2pm!
See you and your extra-shot, biggest-size-you-have iced latte at the cafe.
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I look for gifts. Not in a “find a silver lining” kind of way, and definitely not in an “everything happens for a reason” way, and super double definitely not in a “maybe this was actually for the best,” way, but in a “prop myself up” way, or a “find gratitude" way, or maybe a “what can we carry forward” way. Identifying and celebrating positive things that have happened because of the new world we’re in is one of the ways I am coping with the new world we’re in.
I’ve already written a little bit about this, but something else came up at the bookstore and involving books so I thought the Shelf Stable crew would like to hear about it.
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In the before time, I read a really odd, really interesting, book called
Ornamental by Juan Cárdenas, translated by Lizzie Davis. It’s the kind of weird and interesting book that I know Kate also likes so, like a good Galley Auntie, I gave her my copy. (I will gladly write a piece about being a “Galley Auntie” if anyone is interested.
[Editor's note: We are.]) And then, well, you know what happened. Along with everything else shutting down, Kate ended up stuck in Utah for almost four months so, though we saw each other on Zoom meetings, we never really had the chance to chat about
Ornamental or, really, any of the other books we’d been reading when the lockdown started. Until last week, when we were in the store again, with the books again, and with customers again.
One thing struck me as we chatted about a book we’d both read four or more months ago. The book features a relationship that is, any way you look at it and at pretty much every level, morally and ethically reprehensible. But when you’re in the mind of the narrator, when the prose is carrying you along from one scene to the next, when your attention is being directed at hypothetical drugs and oddly placed guard dogs, the true, fundamental, and irrevocable problems with that central relationship fade from your focus.
As a reader, I love books that use misdirection like that, books that seem to be about one thing, but find a way to be about the exact opposite. Realizing this made me like
Ornamental more and respect Cardenas’s achievement more. It also put some of the other strangeness in a different light, giving in sinisterness I hadn’t seen when I read it. I don’t think I would have seen this if Kate & I had chatted right away, while the narrative voice was still fresh in my head. So, the enforced distance of the lockdown gave me this gift of a better reading of
Ornamental. Not compensation. Not justification. Just, it’s own little spark of positivity to help keep me going.
Josh
P.S. As much as I love the online discussion about books, as easy as it is to transition a lot of book-centric socializing online, as I said to Kate while we were chatting, “I am very happy to not be typing about books for once.”
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I love searching for and identifying wildflowers (even if I'm not very good at it). To make a long story very short, I was a van dweller for a year, and my favorite ways to engage with nature was seeking out and documenting the flowers along hiking trails. The scope of what I can find is much smaller these days, but I am just as excited by the little pops of color that force their way through cracks in the pavement or under garden fences. A friend of mine published an article recently about the
value of finding nature in urban spaces, especially during the pandemic. And I've been doing that by pressing flowers.
Most of the flowers I've pressed so far have been pulled from overgrowth and side lots after a furtive glance to see if anyone was watching me. But when you pay attention, the variety of flora that exists even in a major city is staggering. In April, I found periwinkles sprouting everywhere, and since I've found chicory and daisies and took cuttings from blooming lilac bushes. If you want to be able to identify what you find around you, the best place to start is, of course, a field guide. I use the National Audubon Society's
Field Guide to Wildflowers, Eastern Region
, though I do find that this can be a little too generalized. Maybe try the
Wildflowers of New England
field guide instead? I'm considering it.
So, you've found some flowers, you've identified them, and now you want to press them. I've used pressed flowers for decoration and art pieces, but want to start collecting them in a scrapbook where I can record their identifications. Wooden flower presses are a thing, but when you own as many books as I do, it doesn't quite seem worth it. My pressing method is as follows: place the cuttings between two pieces of paper, put them under a big stack of books, come back in a month or two.
Happy scavenging!
--Meaghan
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We want to hear from you!
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We're gearing up for a new look - on our website! What do you like least about our website now?
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The search function is hard to use.
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Those online orders sure get confusing.
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Where are the events again?
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It's hard to use on my phone!
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Porter Square Books is proud to partner with the
Prison Book Program to help provide access to books to people in prison. Order any title off this wish list and select the "Curbside Pick Up" shipping option and we'll give to the Prison Book Program to distribute.
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Antiracism Books: A Place to Start
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Mini Illustration Giveaway!
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The wonderful authors/illustrators
Ruth Chan
and
Elisha Cooper
organized #kidlitartsurprise. Through their efforts, we have received gorgeous mini illustrations (originals) by several illustrators who wanted to help support indie bookstores right now.
For every order with a hardcover kids picture book, you will receive one mini illustration chosen at random -- they're all lovely! You can get an original by one of the following awesome creators:
You don't have to get a book illustrated by one of the contributors, though they'd surely appreciate it (several have new books! Each name above is linked to the illustrator's work on our website). Check out some of the awesome illustrations below:
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A Burning
by Megha Majumdar, featuring a cast of readers
For readers of Tommy Orange, Yaa Gyasi, and Jhumpa Lahiri, an electrifying debut novel about three unforgettable characters who seek to rise--to the middle class, to political power, to fame in the movies--and find their lives entangled in the wake of a catastrophe in contemporary India.
“Majumdar’s suspenseful narrative holds a mirror up to society at large, reflecting the lies people tell themselves to rationalize sacrificing morality for personal gain. Unintended consequences from an impulsive social media post explode against a backdrop of deep economic insecurities and centuries-old prejudices. A searing debut, this novel is timely and timeless. It packs a punch way above its weight. Brilliant.”
--
Lisa Johnson, Penguin Bookshop
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Digital Audio Books:
A terrific way to support local indies!
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Want book recommendations, personalized
just for you?
Fill out our form with your likes and dislikes, genres and favorites, and we'll crowdsource a bunch of great picks for you with our crack team of
real life
booksellers. Give it a whirl!
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Our 'get 3 paperbacks' bundle options have expanded to include Caleb, Meaghan, and Shana! Get 3 paperbacks handpicked by the bookseller that fit in with their theme. You can find all bundles.
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EXPANDED OPTIONS:
Journals, Stationery & Crafts
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Sometimes a new notebook is what it takes to get the juices flowing!
We have now made a much wider variety of notebooks, journals, and even calendars available for order from our website,
like this classic Moleskin
. Now, along with items with an inventory status of "On Our Shelves Now," you can order journals, notebooks, diaries, calendars, planners, and more with an inventory status of "Available at Warehouses."
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Face Masks
Face coverings are going to be with us for a while, so
we’re now offering non-medical grade cloth masks (including kid size) from a variety of makers. Right now quantities are limited, but additional styles are on the way. We’ll keep you posted!
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Book Bundle Offerings
Make your shopping easy by buying bundles, handpicked by our expert booksellers!
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Meaghan has been craving a jelly donut for days. This story didn't help, but it sure was nice to listen to Chris O'Dowd read
Arnie the Doughnut
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Support Cafe Zing Baristas!
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Although Cafe Zing is its own business separate from ours, we really don't see it that way: Zing workers are part of the Porter Square Books family. They keep us well supplied - very well supplied - with caffeine, kindness, and some great tunes. Sometimes they give us staff picks; sometimes we give them exact change because we've bought the same, perfect, comforting, delicious beverage twice a day five days a week for how long, now?
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They're here! Check out our bookseller's favorite books this month, and enjoy that sweet, sweet discount.
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A hapless millennial's smart appliances decide she needs some help with her career, her love life, and her relationship with her mother. Always listen to your refrigerator.
--Sarah
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A plaque. A press release. A mislabeled photograph. Like a paleontologist drawing a beast from a jaw bone, Herrera tells a story greed, imperialism, and complicity from a few fragments of information. The El Bordo Mine Fire is just one almost forgotten tragedy but, like Rukeyser's Book of the Dead, the bright, poetic light Herrera shines on it with A Silent Fury, casts a shadow on our biggest questions.
--Josh
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See you next time here at Shelf Stable!
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Did you miss an installment, or want to share with a friend? The Shelf Stable Archive has all our past issues!
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And don't forget to subscribe to our Events Newsletter for the full line up of events coming up, and our Kids Newsletter for
all the latest on events, new books, reviews, and more for young and young-at-heart readers.
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Looking for other ways to keep up with us? Check us out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube:
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25 White St. Cambridge, MA 02140
617-491-2220
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