A Wine List for the Longlist
To drink with Alice McDermott’s Someone...
With a gift for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, Alice McDermott’s deceptively simple, yet deft command of language conveys the complexity of her central character: Marie, an older woman from a tight-knit Irish-American community in Brooklyn looking back on her closely-observed life. Someone would go nicely with a bottle of 2011 Montevertine Pian del Ciampolo, as it too has a measured and subtle depth beyond its initial commonplace impression. The wine is– like Marie– traditional, unshowy, and precise.
The National Book Foundation thanks Max Davis, of Brooklyn’s Smith & Vine, for A Wine List for the Longlist, which celebrates the ten Fiction books Longlisted for the 2013 National Book Award. Finalists will be revealed October 16.
alwaysbringabookwithyou
all-these-paperback-dreams
Barnes and Nobles is gonna start serving food and alcohol.
Everybody’s cracking jokes about how it’s a desperate attempt to stay relevant in the age of Amazon.
But you know what? Props to them. This is exactly what Blockbuster didn’t do. At no point was Blockbuster like “Hey, movie rentals aren’t the lucrative enterprise they once were. Perhaps it’s time we become known for our cheesy garlic bread.”
that’s a fantastic plan, honestly? i would 100% go sit at a bookshop, buy a glass of wine, and pick up the newest biography. 50/50 i’d decide to buy it after a couple chapters, and even if i don’t, that’s still money i spent at B&N!
They could host book clubs with food and drinks where one of the employees shares their experiences with a book of their choice and tries to convince the guests to buy it.
Barnes and noble realizing the only reason people go to brick and mortar stores is for the experience and access to an enjoyable physical space they can socialize in (sure isnt for the price) and capitalizing on that is a stroke of genius and a really refreshing approach to the dilemma of competing with online stores
