Star Books is closing

Avol's owner Ron Czerwien emailed a few weeks ago...

In recent years Madison has lost McDermot's, Bookworks, Big Deal Books, and is about to lose Star Books.

I'd walked by recently and seen a poster in the window reminding customers to place Harry Potter pre-orders. The latest installment's slated for July 21st publication, so that didn't strike me as the last gasp of a business about to advertise a 25%-off storewide clearance sale...

...in marginally more optimistic wanderings...

I recently stopped by Avol's while Bookworks owner Peter Dast was on the premises, and interrupted his late lunch of Fat Squirrel and a messy burger (some sort of sauce-laden sandwich, at least) but he was happy to chat re: the ethics of dealer competition, book digitization a la Bartelby and google, and the impact print-on-demand technologies will have on the long-tail of obscure academic texts. Oh, and recommend some books (19th century travel is a particular passion). I offered a vague prompt--"my sister's going to be working in Indonesia, so..."--and now have two more to add to the reading/moving crates. And some Redmond O'Hanlon to track down.

Dast is usually in the store Thursday afternoons. Stop by to pick his brain. Maybe I'll bring my own beer next time.

finally...

There was a notable omission from that independent bookseller poll in the madison.com forums. Hank Luttrell of 20th Century Books piped up in the comments to point out that he'd helped compile Sustain Dane's list of local independent booksellers, and was wondering why he was left off the poll. My bad.

I'll be pedalling over later this week, and Hank emailed yesterday, with some more precise directions...

if you stop by, be aware that we are on the second floor of 1421 S. Park (just north of Arby's and Midas Muffler, across the street from the Labor Temple). I'm here (unless I'm at the post office) 10:00-5:30 mon-sat., and noon-5:00 on Sunday.