NEWS

 

“Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society.”

– Rep. John Lewis

Dear Readers,

I’m writing to you from my porch as a cracking thunderstorm rolls over town. Meanwhile six hours north, U.S. Representative John Lewis lies in state at the Capitol to allow the pubic to pay respects for his service to our nation over the course of 17 terms in Congress and over 55 years fighting for the liberation of Black Americans. As he said of the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, “There will be no turning back.”

This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests – four and fifty and one-hundred-fifty years in the making – have erupted over us like these turbulent summer storms – loud and moving in their power and conviction, drenching our thirsty nation, providing for a movement that must persist long after the lightning flashes of summer.

Thank you Rep. Lewis for your service and the hope and optimism you held for us to fill our canteens and carry on with your work.

With gratitude,

Adah

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SHOP UPDATE

We’re re-opening Main Street Books for public browsing next week. On Monday, August 3rd, readers can visit us without an appointment. We will be practicing these safety protocols:

• Staff and customers must wear face masks.
• Sanitizer is provided at the door for use on entry and exit.
• The number of customers in the store at one time is limited to 10.
• Surfaces will be cleaned regularly by staff.
• Floor will be marked to facilitate distanced waiting and browsing.
• Acrylic guard separates customers and staff at register.
• Reading area is closed for now.

We’ve been practicing these measures for weeks and are comfortable & confidant in our ability to keep everyone as safe as possible. If you’re still keeping yourself or family isolated, we will continue to offer our online ordering and pick-up system. That’s not going anywhere!

You can continue to make shopping appointments through Sunday, August 2nd.

Main Street Books is open for shopping by appointment. Appointments are available Monday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm. Appointments are 40 minutes and begin on the hour. The shop is cleaned between appointments. Shoppers must wear a mask during their time in the shop. See you soon! Schedule your appointment. Sunday, August 2nd is the final day for shopping by appointment. HERE.

WEDNESDAYS at 10:00 AM

Watch & sing along with Tunes & Tales with Jamie LIVE on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is @mainstreetbooksdavidson

Jamie brings her ukulele and her puppet, Junior, to sing and read books. She’s basically our very own Mr. Rogers.

SATURDAYS at 10:00 AM

Watch and dance along with Moving Stories with Camerin LIVE on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is @mainstreetbooksdavidson

Camerin teaches with Brain Dance movements and encourages kids to move to the story that she reads each week.

Well-Read Black Girl Book Club
Now meets on Zoom with our bookseller host, Andrea Jasmin.

This month’s book: KINDRED by Octavia Butler

The goal of WRBG Book club is “to introduce a cohort of diverse writers to future generations – contemporary authors who are non-binary, queer, trans, and disabled. To address inequalities and improve communities through reading and reflecting on the works of Black women.” Read more about the national WRBG movement here.

THURSDAY, August 20th at 7:00 PM
REGISTER HERE

 

An “Everything Bagel” Book List:

great new books that publish today!

Our online Bookshop is alive and well. This week, each book cover is linked to our Bookshop so that you can order online. Just click to purchase and support Main Street Books.

 

Crossings

by Alex Landragin / genre-defying historical fiction / magic realism

On the brink of the Nazi occupation of Paris, a German-Jewish bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript called Crossings. It has three narratives, each as unlikely as the next. And the narratives can be read one of two ways: either straight through or according to an alternate chapter sequence.

The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.

The Memory Police

by Yoko Ogawa / Dystopian literary fiction

On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, things are disappearing. First, animals and flowers. Then objects—ribbons, bells, photographs. Then, body parts. Most of the island’s inhabitants fail to notice these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the mysterious “memory police,” who are committed to ensuring that the disappeared remain forgotten. When a young novelist realizes that more than her career is in danger, she hides her editor beneath her floorboards, and together, as fear and loss close in around them, they cling to literature as the last way of preserving the past.

Memorial Drive

Natasha Trethewey / Memoir

At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey investigates this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.

The Island Child

by Molly Aitken / Literary fiction

Oona grew up on the island of Inis: a wind-blasted rock off the coast of Ireland where the men went out on fishing boats and the women tended turf fires; where the only book was the Bible; and where girls stayed at home until they became mothers themselves. The island was a gift for some, a prison for others. Even as a child, Oona knew she wanted to leave, but she never could have anticipated the tumultuous turn of events that would ultimately compel her to flee. Now, after twenty years–after Oona has forged a new, very different life for herself–her daughter vanishes, forcing Oona to face her past in order, finally, to be free of it. Heralding a singularly gifted new voice in fiction, The Island Child is a timeless story of birth and betrayal, storms and shipwrecks and fairy children, and the weight of long-buried secrets.

 

And on a bubblier note, a Cornelius artist called us last week to let us know that she took a photo of our heart window this spring and submitted it to Jones Soda, a company that crowd-sources photography for their bottle labels. Over the weekend, I spotted one in the wild! How cool is that?! Thanks Francine Field!