There Will Be A Book Signing

Maybe you might not have heard, but we are having a major book signing on Sunday, July 30, with best-selling author Adriana Trigiani.  We may have mentioned it a few times already.  As of right now, we have posted the Event on Facebook and are adding information on a regular basis.  We have asked public libraries across eastern and central Kentucky to post our flyers and to add the event to their social media sites.  We have started putting flyers up across the Pikeville area as well.  We have been asking local organizations to hand them out at meetings.  We have started to ask local colleges and universities to announce the event.  The official press release should be going out within the next week, so look for it in your newspapers. A review of the new novel, Kiss Carlo, should be on the Review blog, as well as links from Facebook and in a local paper, a week or so after that.  There might be a few other surprises in store as well.  Once again, we would like to thank Adriana for mentioning us both on her website and in recent interviews.  We are very happy for this great opportunity.  That is all for this week, see you soon.

Have a Beautiful Bloomsday

Yesterday, Friday, June 16, was the minor literary holiday of Bloomsday.  It is in honor of the day when most of the action in James Joyce's literary classic Ulysses takes place.  It is named in honor of one of the main characters, Leopold Bloom, who we follow along on both his and returning character from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Daedalus.  While we have never celebrated this day at the store before, we still love the idea.  However, we are not sure how one would celebrate beyond talking about the book and its complex themes and imagery, or perhaps, having a party in the style of early twentieth-century Dublin.   One thing is for sure, we would not be doing anything the characters do from the book.  While most actions are rather harmless, (e.g. taking a walk on the beach looking at pebbles, placing a newspaper advertisement), many are somewhat strange (teaching a class at a Jesuit school, suffering intestinal discomfort after eating at a pub).  Some are just unusual (attending an friend's funeral, becoming a father figure to a young man).  Others are just downright weird (going out drinking with college buddies and talking about midwivery, having a formal question-and-answer session with a friend about third party events as if you weren't a part of them).  Many actions are immoral (making crude puns to your housekeeper, contemplating the love of your husband while having an affair with an actor).  Some are illegal, then and now (performing a lewd act while ogling a young nanny with her charges on a beach, going to a brothel and hallucinating about your dead mother).  We strongly suggest not doing any of these things.  Maybe we can come up with some better ideas for next year.  (Author's note:  I actually had to read Ulysses in college.  We were originally only going to read excerpts, but the professor changed his mind.  Fortunately, the library had enough copies for the seven of us.  I still had to skip a few pages near the end to finish it in time.  Have yet to re-read it.)

Color Commentary

As many of you may  have noticed, a lot of roses have started to appear around the website.  This is a show of support for our upcoming book signing with Adriana Trigiani and her new book Kiss Carlo.  It is just one of the design elements we have tweaked on our website since it was published.  For many holidays, we have added special illustrations to celebrate them.  Most recently, we had various designs up for Easter.  In the next few days, we will be adding not only more roses and flowers (a major element on Kiss Carlo's cover), but also themed elements in support of Independence Day.  We will also be changing some of the overall color schemes to the site, again in support of the book signing.  This will be about the third time we have undergone a major theme redesign since going online.  To be honest, at least one of those times wasn't intentional, but we couldn't seem to find the original color scheme back in place.  Still, the current look is alright for now.  That is, until we will change it.  We hope you like the pinks and purple that will soon dominate the palette.  Until next week.

Digital Anniversaries Are Always Paperless

With all of the excitement with the upcoming Adriana Trigiani book signing on Sunday, July 30, we almost forgot to celebrate the one year anniversary of the Booknotes website and blog!  The actual site went live in May 2016, so we are a little late in celebrating.  This site was only going to be a test to see how to figure how to build one, but in turned into the actual site instead.  Since we started this site, we have added a few features and took down a few others.  We upgraded the primary store blog to the Blogger format.  Don't worry.  The original blog is still here, and new reviews will be added soon.  At least they should, when the other owner gets around to do one.  To be completely honest, we at Booknotes are not that computer literate.  It is amazing how much we were about to get done with just plug-and-play programming.  Still, there is a lot left to get better.  We are still trying to get some form of sales feature in place, via PayPal.  There is actually a good chance of it in time for the book signing.  Some of the design elements need a little tweaking.  The social media connections could be made to look better.  Although this format doesn't allow for comments, you can still leave them on our Facebook site that might have linked you here.  We really would like your opinions as they do matter to us.  Unfortunately, this week's post is going to be short again.  Maybe more time next week.  See you then.