I had a good time this evening catching up with Christine and our Foreign Authors book group. We discussed The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany. The last book we’d read that was set in Egypt was a few years ago so it was nice to “visit” the country again. Now we are all wondering about the film version and if/when it will be released nationwide. Anyway, you can read some of my thoughts on the book here. Next month we’ll be reading The Dancing Girls of Lahore.

I did get to the bookstore a bit early of course to browse around and saw three books on the “new & noteworthy” shelves that caught my attention: The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu, Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir, and Astrid & Veronika by Linda Olsson. Anyone read these books and can recommend them?

Now I’m off to finish a very entertaining whodunit.

Has anyone heard or seen Indies Under Fire: The Battle for the American Boookstore? I hadn’t heard about this documentary before but I was reading my latest Bookforum and there’s an interesting article about it.

The documentary follows the stories of three California bookstores and shows why more than half the independent bookstores that were open in 1992 were out of business by 2006. Of course the demise for many of them is due to the fact that they can’t compete financially with the big box stores. But, it was a bit suprising to me that another reason mentioned in the article is that it can also boil down to aesthetics. Indies aren’t as visually pleasing? Well, I haven’t seen a bookstore I didn’t like so what do I know.

I wish I had an independent bookstore around me but I will be honest and say chances are I would also visit the big bookstores and yes, I’d still buy online (gasp!). I mean, I wish I could just shop at an indie bookstore all the time but when you buy so many books you need to find ways to save too, right?

So do you shop indie? Do you have a favorite one? I do have a favorite, BookPeople in Austin, Texas. Only wish it wasn’t four hours drive away from me.