Happy Holidays!

Well, as you can imagine, it's been a frenetic couple of weeks at Wellesley Books but we're almost through the holiday crush. In what's become a Christmas Eve tradition, we'll have most of my family deployed on the floor tomorrow, so stop in and say hello if you are doing some last minute shopping.


As a reminder about our next meeting on Wednesday, January 25th I'm including this snippet from today's Writer's Almanac:

"It's the birthday of Norman Maclean, born in Clarinda, Iowa (1902). He was a fisherman, firefighter, scholar, and teacher, but it is as the author of his autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, that he is best known. Just as he described in his book, Maclean grew up at the junction of two great trout rivers in Missoula, Montana, in a family that didn't draw a clear line between religion and fly-fishing. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and his rowdy younger brother, Paul, like the sibling in the book, was in fact murdered under mysterious circumstances. Maclean did not publish the story of his last summer with his brother until he was in his 70s, but after it appeared in 1976, it very quickly became a classic of American literature.

"After A River Runs Through It, Maclean wrote about a Montana wildfire that had claimed the lives of 13 firemen and smokejumpers decades before. Part mystery, part investigation, and part autobiography, Young Men and Fire (1992) would be Maclean's final book, posthumously published two years after his death in 1990."


By the way, I also wanted to highlight a great write up in yesterday's Boston
Globe on Nick O'Connell and Cask Force.  You'll remember it was last January that we did an organized  tasting of some of his whisky and we've sampled others over the course our meetings. I've run into Nick a couple of times over the last few months and he's eager to come in for another round of tasting.  We'll see if we can get something set up soon!


Until then, I'm wishing you all a happy and joyous holiday!

Next BBGG Norman Maclean - Wednesday, January 25th

It's a busy time of year both in and out of the store, so this is coming out a bit late, but I wanted to thank everyone who made the effort on a cold/rainy night for our discussion of A Tale for the Time Being.  I have to admit, I was little nervous about the reception for the book before the meeting, but I think it may have been the most overwhelming supported books of any we've read.  (Of course, Parker will be the ultimate judge.)  I was most pleased with the number who said they would never have picked the book up on their own but are now recommending it to others.

I wanted to provide links to a couple of items we talked about over the course of the meeting.  Charlie Cassidy sent this article on the Hikikomori, the approximately half a million people in Japan who have dropped out of either school or work due to bullying or severe parental pressure.  And, once again, here is the link to the This American Life episode featuring the disconnected phone box where surviving relatives and friends have conversations with victims of the tsunami.



I'm very excited about our next book, Young Men and Fire, by Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It.  This non-fiction account of the Mann Gulch fire in 1949, in which an elite team of smoker jumpers parachuted into a wild fire is part detective story, part western, part tragedy.  All of it is told in Maclean's distinctive, concise prose.  Hope you can make it!



I'm in the store every Sunday and on Wednesday December 21st.  Stop in if you can.  Otherwise, I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday Season!