Early this week I was greeted by a very happy surprise. You see I am one of those people who love to read lists and plan my travels accordingly. Where are the best vacation spots? Surely I should go there. What are the best hotels in the world? A girl like me absolutely needs to stay there. Well what a surprise to see a list of the Top 10 Book Stores in Louisiana and to find that my little bookstore- only in business now for a bit over a year- actually made the list! I did not even know we had been nominated. And then to read the article accompanying our listing and see what a nice write up they had done we are just so excited and flattered. Now I think all of the other list lovers out there should take a grand tour of the 10 Best Bookstores in Louisiana and come by and see us!
So while our reputation grows in a state wide kind of way, the reputation of one of our friends and favorite authors grew in major nationwide ways this week.
Rod Dreher has written a new book called The Benedict Option. Since it’s release less than two weeks ago Rod has appeared on national interview shows like Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News . There have been articles all over the place including The National Review. David Brooks has written an op-ed piece about it for The New York Times calling The Benedict Option “already the most discussed and most important religious book of the decade”, and now we have news that the book has made it’s debut this week on The New York Times Best Seller list at # 7. And yet with all this fame Rod was kind enough to meet me and personally signbooks while he was home between stops on his book tour, signing amidst the pollen of a south Louisiana March afternoon. Because we are the only provider of signed copies currently on the internet we have orders coming in through our web site from such diverse places as Texas, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Missouri and of course, Louisiana.
Congratulations and thanks to Rod, we can’t wait to see where you end up next in this whirlwind!
And finally; in my last blog I mentioned that we are expanding our borders as we do more and more pop-up book sales at events. Since then we had such fun selling bird and plantation books at the John James Audubon exhibit of the Audubon Pilgrimage, then we traveled a few miles east to bring The Asphodel Cookbook and my brother-in-law’s novel The Face of his Brother to the Jackson Assembly. For those of you who did not know my mother-in-law she was very active in promoting tourism to the Feliciana’s and this year’s event was particularly appropriate for us to make the cookbook available as The Levy House (the building that housed her restaurant at Asphodel Village ) was on tour. Pair that with Mark’s book being set partially in Clinton, and as you can imagine, we were very warmly received. We spent the days hearing stories of Nootsie and her brood from days gone by.
So where will we “pop – up” next you may ask? Well the Dave Fest of course, the annual celebration of writer James Lee Burke’s favorite character Dave Robicheaux which is being held this year on Saturday April 1, 2017 in New Iberia – No Fooling, ma chere, we will see you there !