Gerald Elias at Sam Weller's Books

Concert violinist Gerald Elias will be joining us at Sam Weller's on Saturday, November 21st to read from and sign his mystery novel, The Devil's Trill. In addition to reading, Mr. Elias will bring his violin to the store to delight our ears with samples of the pieces mentioned in the book!

The Devil's Trill centers around the Grimsley Competition, a competition held once every 13 years, open only to those 13 or younger. The winner gets to play the Piccolino Strad, a perfect three-quarter sized violin, in a concert at Carnegie Hall with a full orchestra, and huge jump start to his or her career as a concert violinist. Daniel Jacobus, a crotchety, blind violin teacher, hates this competition with a passion. Jacobus believes that it pushes children to begin performing too early, with no understanding of music beyond the absolute technical.

On the night of the recital, the violin goes missing, and Jacobus, with his well known opinion, is the primary suspect. Together with best friend and former trio member, Nathaniel Williams, and his new student, Yumi Shinagawa, Jacobus must find the real culprit and clear his name.

Daniel Doen Silberberg

Sam Weller's is excited to host Daniel Doen Silberberg for a signing on Tuesday, November 10th, at 6:00 PM.

Wonderland: The Zen of Alice is a highly original riff on Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, using the classic story as a jumping-off point for conveying the Zen concept of "one mind". Daniel Silberberg's first book is a unique contribution to contemporary American Zen, which honors its historic roots and yet strikes out into fresh areas.

With stories from his own life as well as from the larger cultural swirl around him, Silberberg reflects on the differences between how we perceive the world around us and the way it actually is. He offers important ideas on how to live fully and happily and how to discover Wonderland in our own lives.

Doen Sensei received transmission of the Zen lineage from his teacher Dennis Genpo Merzel Roshi, director of Kanzeon International and founder of Big Mind, in December 2003. He also trained under John Daido Loori Roshi, Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery and founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order, and under Taizan Maezumi Roshi, who brought this Zen lineage to the West.

Besides being a teacher and lineage holder in the White Plum Sangha, which derives from Maezumi Roshi and the Rinzai and Soto Zen schools, Doen Sensei also trained under Wilhem Nyland and other teachers in the Fourth Way. At the request of Mr. Nyland, Doen began to teach his own Fourth Way Group in 1979.

Doen Sensei has been a practicing psychologist, performance coach, and jazz musician. He has also been an avid martial artist, chess student, explorer of technological innovation, and writer. His first book will be published by Parallax Press in the Fall of 2009. He was the head of administration and Executive Vice President at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York, and was Vice Abbot of Big Mind Western Zen Center (formerly Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City, Utah) before undertaking his present role as teacher and director of Lost Coin Development.

Buy a Soul, Bitch

On Saturday night, 10/24/09, David Sedaris had a reading at the Capitol Theatre here in Salt Lake City. John, Jason, and I represented the store and sold his books in the lobby. Along with his own numerous titles, Sedaris was recommending Our Dumb World from The Onion so we were selling that too. We got there early, set up, and waited for the masses to arrive. We sold a few things pre-show and, as usual, Sedaris did a small pre-show signing to cut down on how long we'd have to wait around after. Since we all had seen him read before, the three of us stayed in the lobby, flipping through the fabulously offensive Our Dumb World and talking about videos we like on Youtube. We could semi see/hear the reading on a closed-circuit television hanging on the wall near the auditorium entrance, and the crowd was eating it up. They absolutely loved him; it's hard not to. I think the best part was the fact that the stage and lighting was still set up for Macbeth, the Capitol Theatre's current show. On the television, with the spotlight on him washing out his outline, Sedaris looked like some kind of hat-less pope on a very dramatic blue stage preaching to his hundreds of disciples. As soon as it was over, we got slammed. His books were flying off the table left and right along with Our Dumb World, which no one bought before the show but we couldn't keep on the table after. No one can sell someone else's book quite like David Sedaris. Then it was time to wait while Sedaris signed books for everyone. One of my favorite things about him is that he will sign for as long as it takes for everyone in line to get their book signed, no matter how long that takes. He told us later that he once signed for seven hours straight, it's amazing he doesn't have some severe carpal tunnel going on.

It was the last girl in line's birthday so Sedaris gave her a lesbian iPod holder from his bag of goodies. The bag generally contains hotel shampoos and soaps, travel packs of ibuprofen and Advil, and condoms. After the birthday girl left, we got some stock signed and Sedaris asked us out to dinner. We said yes. We went across the street to the Bay Leaf. Dinner was filled with delicious food and great conversations about the book industry and how digital readers could change things for us booksellers who like a good old fashioned hold-in-your-hand, real live book. I need to mention the food for a moment. We had black eyes peas and fried pickles (yum!) for appetizers, Sedaris and John had blackened catfish, Steve had the meatloaf, and I had corned beef hash. Then it was dessert time. We got peach cobbler and apple brown betty, both a-la-mode. When Sedaris, Steve, and I were waiting outside while John was making his way out, a youngish guy walked past and told us we were "buying into a lesser society". Sedaris and I looked at eachother in surprise with perfect O faces as the guy kept mumbling things at us. I rather sarcastically told him "thanks, have a good night" to which he responded "buy a soul, bitch". I then asked Sedaris if I could borrow some money to buy a soul and he said that maybe if we hadn't ordered dessert, we could afford one.

Brandon Sanderson!

One more chance to get a signed copy of The Gathering Storm, volume 12 of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time! Brandon Sanderson will be at Sam Weller's Bookstore to read and sign on Monday, November 2nd, at 6:30 PM. Brandon won't be back in Utah at a signing until mid-December, so this is your last chance for a while!

I've been reading The Wheel of Time since I was 14 years old (1992). I've eagerly awaited every new volume and devoured them as quickly as possible, so I could barely wait until I got home to read The Gathering Storm after I picked mine up on Tuesday, and I'm about halfway through. I'm so thoroughly excited I can hardly stand to be at work rather than curled up in a comfy chair at home.

It's the beginning of the conclusion, and I know that you will love it, too, but you don't have to take my word for it.

Literary Weekend

I spent last weekend surrounded by books and memories. It was a lovely feeling, a bit bittersweet at times, but lovely nevertheless.

First up were the activities associated with the Utah Humanities Book Festival For us, the preparation starts months beforehand, when the booksellers who will vend at the event get together for the Author Lottery. It's a gathering akin to a sports league draft except that I actually care about it. Each bookseller arrives with a list of the authors she'd most like to sell at the event. Then we take turns choosing authors until every author who'll be joining the Festival has a store to sell his or her books. It's thirty to forty minutes of what probably seems mundane to many, but to us it's exciting. What happens during that time sets the stage for the Book Festival to come.

The Festival itself was enjoyable as always. What bookseller can rightly complain about being surrounded by books, their authors, and the people who love them? I so enjoy standing at our booth in the Urban Room of the Salt Lake City Public Library and talking with the passersby. I did disappoint one man who responded to my, "Let me know if you have any questions," with an actual question, "Is there a God?" I think my answer disappointed him. But the book related conversations I had were delightful, scintillating, heartening. It makes me happy when people tell me how much books mean to them; how their lives are richer; how much they've learned; how they laughed and cried. And it makes me just as happy to listen to Festival goers talking with the writers they know and love, and the ones they've just discovered. And there was a lot to love: from the immensely talented local favorites Sara Zarr and Shannon Hale to East Coast writers Dylan Landis, Jed Perl, and Edwin Torres. It does a bookseller's heart good.

This year the Book Festival concluded on Sunday with a presentation by Selected Shorts. Yes, they do leave Symphony Space once in awhile. Isaiah Sheffer and two of his talented actors read some pretty bleak Utah related stories to an auditorium of eager listeners. There was also a sing-along quiz during intermission. Envision, if you will an auditorium filled with a variety of voices singing, "Don't fence me in," after Mr. Sheffer sang, "Oh give me a land, lots of land, under starry skies above," and you get the idea. Actually, that was our best song. The responses to his other first lines were much weaker. We didn't know as much of the great american songbook as I thought we would. Oh the shame! While the stories were recorded for broadcast at a later date, I doubt the sing-along was — and you should all be grateful for that.

Sitting in that auditorium for the first time since I attended Sam's memorial service there was the bittersweet experience to which I referred. Tony used to call Sam and Lila on Sundays to tell them to listen to Selected Shorts. Sam would run the tuner up and down the dial and pronounce that he couldn't find it. Their radio didn't "get FM." But Sam loved radio. And he loved the writings of his friend Wallace Stegner. When the actors read two Stegner stories I couldn't help reflecting on how much he would have enjoyed being there. He would have emoted loudly, possibly at awkward moments, and provided a running commentary that would've driven the engineer recording the event wild. He would have embarrassed me. And he would've loved every minute of it.

Each year of the Utah Humanities Book Festival has a different mojo. While this one was a bit quieter than Festivals in the boom years, it was no less enjoyable. I found great books and made great some great memories. And as I walked out the doors on Sunday afternoon, I was already looking forward to next year's authors lottery.

New Day, New Sale

Last March we announced our intention to downsize and move from our Main Street location. Loyal customers and old time Salt Lakers flocked to our store to share their memories, give us their good wishes, and take advantage of our moving sale.

All of those actions helped us. The good wishes and the love were invaluable during a time when we felt beleaguered. The stories were heart warming and fascinating. We were so moved by your stories that we created the Moving Histories Project to document them. Many of the videos we shot are on our YouTube channel now.

And what about that sale? Well the sale was designed to begin to reduce stock and, most importantly, help us downsize in place while we put our building on the market and searched for a new one. And you, dear customers, have helped us achieve that goal. Thank you.

So now we move on to another phase of preparations for our relocation: reducing the Bargain Rooms. Those who frequent us physically (instead of virtually) have watched our Bargain Book area grow from one room to two rooms and now three rooms. The books in there aren't junk, they wouldn't be on any of our shelves if they were, but they're not the right stock for our regular shelves. As they've moved from their former sections, each of the books was marked to $1.00, $3.00 or $5.00. And now they're even cheaper. We need to move those books out so we can move on. So if you buy 10 or more books from the Bargain Room, you'll get 50% off the lot of them.

Of course you want to know about our move. There's only so much we can say at this point. We're in negotiations with a buyer for our property. We've identified 3 properties that we think look good. Tony and the management team are covering details about reading and stocking philosophies, aesthetics, businesses to potentially partner with, you name it. It's a lot of planning, and it's exhilarating.

In the mean time, we're still here for you. We're stocked with wonderful new and used books and we're dying to show them to you. This is one of the best new book publishing seasons we've seen in a long time. We'd love to share our books and their stories with you.

A Little Sisterly Advice

We're just tickled pink that the one and only Sister Dottie S. Dixon will be stopping by the store tonight to celebrate the publication of her new book, Mormon Kama Sutra. Joining her will be collaborator and provocateur Pat Bagley. It's the 40th Anniversary Edition, you know, and it's hot off the presses. The books at our party will be straight from the bindery. They're $14.95 paperbacks and worth every penny. It's never too late, or too early you newlyweds, to add spice to your life.

For those of you who don't know Sister Dottie yet, check out this link http://www.sisterdottie.com/ and prepare to laugh. She can also be heard on KRCL FM 90.9 every Friday at 3:00 p.m. and Saturdays at 10:00 a.m.

Of course you all know Pat Bagley from his editorial cartoons in the Salt Lake Tribune and his Clueless George books. Pat's also the publisher of White Horse Press, a fine local business that we're always happy to support.

So come on down to the store between 5:30 and 7:30 p.m. tonight (Friday Oct 2) and say "Hey!" to Sister Dottie and Pat, especially if you're going to the opening of The Passion of Sister Dottie S. Dixon: Second Helpings at the Rose WagnerTheater. You'll double your fun.