Caitlin

Gearing Up for Gardening

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021

If you ever talk to me for more than about five minutes, chances are, I will pull out my phone and start showing you pictures of my garden.  Or my seedlings.  Or the awesome head of broccoli I grew this one time (seriously, it was gorgeous...and delicious).  Or the patch of dirt that will, someday, be home to a riot of colorful blooms.  Gardening is second only to my pets as the primary subject of my camera roll, and it's definitely primary occupation of my free time as soon as the weather breaks until everything is put to bed in the fall...

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Where Have the Unicorns Gone?

Thursday, February 18th, 2021

It started with a discussion of Unicorn Day.

For years, we've been meaning to put together something fun to celebrate Unicorn Day (April 9th, in case you need to mark your calendar), and as we were brainstorming recently, we were listing our favorite unicorn books for young readers.  Slowly, we began to notice an unexpected trend...

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How to Write a Love Letter

Tuesday, January 26th, 2021

Ah, Valentine's Day: a holiday often derided as a "Hallmark Holiday" created as a saccharine commercial venture to capitalize on starry-eyed romantics.  I think it's actually quite an interesting holiday, personally, because at its heart—at least, according to legend—is a letter.

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What's in a [Pen] Name?

Thursday, January 21st, 2021

I don't usually write under a pen name.  To be fair, I haven't had much opportunity—I've got several tiny publishing credits to my name, two of which are in scientific journals and another for a story in Teen Ink Magazine I submitted when I was in high school.  But when I was in college, I published a poem in the college's monthly literary magazine under the name "David Andrews."

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A Slippery Situation

Tuesday, January 19th, 2021

Well folks, we've made it this far.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the vaccine, though there's no telling how much tunnel we actually have left.  As a business, we're doing all right for now, but it's a cautious sort of all right—like when you're not actively slipping on an icy patch of sidewalk, but you know that at any minute the footing could get unexpectedly treacherous.

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What's in a Genre?

Tuesday, January 12th, 2021

When you walk into a bookstore, chances are the shelves are marked with signs denoting genres.  But what happens when a book isn't so easy to categorize?  Caitlin explores the pros and cons of this particular system of classification.

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Exploring High Fantasy

Friday, August 14th, 2020

 

High fantasy (or epic fantasy) as a subgenre tends to deal with matters of grand scale.  Think saving the world from the power of the One Ring, to use Tolkien as an example.  But of course, everyone's familiar with high fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and Patrick Rothfuss' acclaimed Kingkiller Chronicle.  Here are some less well known (or well known, but older!) examples of high fantasy that you might have missed.

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Take Five: Caitlin's Picks

Friday, July 24th, 2020

As booksellers, we have a tendency to only talk about the books we love, but not every book works for every reader.  A book we didn't enjoy would still be perfect for someone else, so we want to make sure they get some airtime, too!  That's why we're starting a new series featuring the last five books each bookseller has read, including both the ones they loved, and those that would be better for another reader.  Our latest list includes Caitlin's recent reads.

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Finding Different Joys

Tuesday, July 14, 2020

We're living in "unprecedented times."  How often have we heard that phrase recently?  Or perhaps its close cousin "difficult times."  Both have started to feel pretty meaningless, a pretty platitude that glosses over the truth:

None of us signed up for this.

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