The warm and winning story of opening a modern bookstore where there were none, Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller recounts Nadia Wassef’s troubles and triumphs as a founder and manager of Cairo-based Diwan The streets of Cairo make strange music. The echoing calls to prayer; the raging insults ... more >
This year I didn’t have as many A reads as I did last year but these B+ books are strong ones that almost made it. My list ranges from historical to contemporary, has fiction and non-fiction, and even a picture book of cats. In kinda, sorta chronological order in which ... more >
Meet Nina Hill: A young woman supremely confident in her own…shell. The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might ... more >
Can one unlikely bookshop heal two broken souls? It is 1968 in rural Australia and lonely Tom Hope can’t make heads or tails of Hannah Babel. Newly arrived from Hungary, Hannah is unlike anyone he’s ever met–she’s passionate, brilliant, and fiercely determined to open sleepy Hometown’s first bookshop. Despite the ... more >
Heroic bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street. There’s nothing in the bag to indicate who it belongs to, although there’s all sorts of other things in it. Laurent feels a strong impulse to find the owner and tries to puzzle together who she might ... more >
Amazon steps up Australian book sales through The Book Depository – While Amazon is working to increase its presence in Australia via its subsidiary business, The Book Depository, Australia’s own online retailer, Booktopia, acquired Bookworld, which was the second largest Australian online bookseller. Booktopia’s CEO, Tony Nash, insists that he doesn’t consider ... more >