January 2024 | Rooted in Community | |
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Kroner's Korner
(We're passing the mic again to our favorite west-side neighbor!)
Maybe the floors you walk sometimes squeak. It is likely the older the floor, the more they seem to creek and groan. We know the 150+ years on Kroner's floor lay heavy. We sometimes wonder if it isn't a groan. Maybe it is a whisper. Maybe the floors are warning us against missteps....because they have seen missteps. Maybe they are telling us we are stepping in the right direction. Maybe, just maybe, they are not telling us anything, or judging. Maybe they are just there to encourage us that good or bad...we walk into experience...and experience over time becomes wisdom. Maybe look at the new year as a journey of 1,000 steps on a floor that will record your progress, good and bad, but all of them important. Each step an experience.
OR maybe the floor is just there to hold us up and to keep us from falling into the room below. Either way it supports us. Maybe.
~Kroner's Team
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Tsundoku, Stack One (New Books)
Tsundoku is Japanese for the act of acquiring reading materials and letting them pile up in one’s home. We thought it a perfect heading, so much so that we have two stacks, one for new books and one for used. If you’re like us, tsundoku is a constant state of being.
Blackouts, Justin Torres, $30.00
This novel takes its influences from a number of pre-existing forms: fiction, image, theater, psychological study, weaving them together into something new, born from these multiple pasts. While working in a used bookstore in San Francisco (yeah, buddy), Torres was going through a donated box of books when he came upon an artifact of queer history: Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns. Intrigued by the research and the researcher (a woman all but erased, her work co-opted and twisted by medical "professionals"), Torres wrote this beautifully stylized novel, another token that the past is never really past.
everything I know about love, Dolly Alderton, $18.99
A journalist and former dating columnist, Dolly Alderton's memoir is charming, cheeky, and decidedly British. The book moves from Alderton's teenage notions of love into her adult experiences, covering romances, dates, friendships, the internet, jobs: all the modern trappings that give vitality and humor to our time as eager young lovers. A light, sweet book to curl up with, warming your winter heart.
Kink (stories), edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell $17.99
If you're looking to warm more than your heart, consider this saucy anthology of contemporary writers. Is there a more tantalizing introduction to new authors than to read the stories they write about sex? Of these 15 authors and their wide range of kinks and orientations, something is sure to grab your...attention.
We've Got You Covered, Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, $29.00
So what could be sexier than sex? Free universal healthcare.So while the authors of this book don't suffer delusions of a perfect plan, they do have a plan, offering up a clear tear-down of the current system, a reevaluation of the purposes and values of healthcare policy, and an outline for restructure. Conversational, clear, and thoughtful, this is great book to jump-start your brain on healthcare advocacy in the new year.
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...when you held one of those volumes in your hands you were leafing through another person's life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris café, cried herself to sleep after the last chapter. The scent of their store was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a pinch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.
—Jodi Piccoult
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Tsundoku, Stack Two (Used Books)
This portion of our Tsundoku section plays by different rules, since it deals in used books rather than new. With new books, we have a general sense of what we order and stock, but our used books are totally free range, flowing in and out of the store on their own mysterious tides. So while a book may get mentioned here, it could be gone in a heartbeat. But maybe you'll get curious...
The Secret Crypt, Salvador Elizondo, $8.00
This book, originally published in 1968, came in with, among other things, The Midnight Library, The Handmaid's Tale, some horror, and a heartwarming tale about a dog. This one, with it's unassuming cover, was the most curious. Salvador Elizondo was a Mexican writer who rose to influence in the 1960s, his work experimental, cult noirè, and postmodern. That said, The Secret Crypt is a novel about a novelist named Salvador Elizondo, writing a book called The Secret Crypt.
Vermilion Drift, William Kent Krueger, $7.50
Used copies of William Kent Krueger's books never stay on our shelves for long, and this particular copy is signed ("To Bill," to be fair). I'm skeptical it will even make it to the release of this newsletter, but this way you know it was here...
The Encyclopedia of Country Living, Carla Emery, $12
One of our young volunteers was cleaning books and was totally amused by this cover, which lists some of the things to learn with this book. His favorite was how to catch a pig, so we looked it up, and dear Carla suggests locating your neighborhood football players to assist. Our volunteer couldn't be happier with this suggestion.
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How do you stock your shelves? | |
Keeping our shelves and tables full of fresh, interesting and relevant books is our goal each week. We want you to be able to find the books you want to read, even if you don't know what they are until you find them in our store.
If you have spent any time here over the past few months, you may have noticed that the number of new books in our store has increased, and that you can now find them sprinkled throughout the entire store, across genres. We hope to add even more in 2024. This is important to us because we want to support authors and publishers by selling new books. If we don't have that book you are seeking, we can order it for you. Typically, it takes about 5 days for us to secure your requested new book.
Still, we remain a predominantly used bookstore. This is also important to us because used books are good for the environment, good for people's budgets, have a shared history, and well, have that old book smell that we all love. We source our used books through a variety of ways. Many of our used books come from you, our customers. We offer store credit or cash, and you can contact us to set up an appointment. No walk-ins accepted, no matter how much we love you. We also go on book runs to thrift stores, library sales, and estate sales throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. Beth typically does this on Tuesdays, returning to La Crosse with her Toyota Corolla overflowing with bags of books. Each book is then cleaned, priced, and shelved for you to find.
And this is how we keep our shelves and tables full for what we hope is a wonderful magical browsing experience for YOU.
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Customer Corner: Jean
140 Books Completed in 2023!
I sat down with friend of the store, Jean Ferris, to check-in with her on her reading list from 2023. As we reviewed her list of 140 books read, I noticed that she revisited a few of her childhood favorites: Heidi, Little Women, and Inga of Porcupine Mine. She shared, "I never tire of these stories. They are simpler. More pure." They remind her of her childhood and the love of books she shared with her mother. She then shared a story of walking down the street to the public library in the now non-existent mining town of Puritan, Michigan, where she lived as a young child.
This trip down memory lane prompted Jean to pull out a book gifted to her from her mother around 1946: The Townsmen by John Sedges. As I admired this book, Jean taught me that it was published under a pseudonym, and that the author was Pearl S. Buck. A perfect example of how our customers are always teaching us.
In 2024, Jean hopes to continue her learning by reading books about England, Scotland, and Ireland. She is also interested in learning more about the Salem Witch Trials and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
It was such a joy to discuss books and reading with Jean. Does anyone else feel inspired by her?
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