Our New Location

Sam Weller’s Bookstore will soon be moving to a new location in Salt Lake City. It's been a little more than two years since we first made that declaration. Today I am very happy to announce that a new location for our bookstore has been secured. Tony and I have signed a lease for a site in Trolley Square.

At the beginning of this process we believed we'd complete it within ten months — well, that was naive. It's been a long, difficult two years. I don't think there is a block in the downtown area that doesn't have available property we've left unconsidered. And there have been some tempting properties with some generous and creative owners. But due to a variety of factors, we were unable to swing a deal until this week. To remind you, we determined that our next location must have the following factors: free parking, affordable occupancy rates, footage ranging from 10,000 - 15,000 square feet, close proximity to stable traffic generating entities, close proximity to a TRAX stop, and architectural character. Add in a challenging economic climate, a difficult commercial real estate market, and a changing book industry and you get a very tall order to fill!

Trolley Square was among the first property owners to approach us with available space. But Tony and I were skeptical about leasing property and about locating out of the downtown core. Over time and many hours of negotiations, our concerns were allayed. We are delighted with our space in the old movie theaters in the trolley barn that abuts Sixth South. We are thrilled to be joining such esteemed local businesses as Tabula Rasa, Cabin Fever, and the Desert Edge Brewery. And we look forward to more local businesses joining us in Trolley.

Architectural plans are currently being drawn and construction schedules finalized. So I do not have a hard opening date to share with you yet. We are estimating relocation will be complete in early Autumn. Will we still need help moving? You betcha! Please contact Jan here at the store (801-328.2586 or books@samwellers.com).

I don’t have to tell you all that the book business is evolving at a rapid pace. Some of the issues are newer, some have been with us since the early 1990’s. Salt Lake City itself has changed considerably since the 1980’s and is currently undergoing another significant transformation. Sam Wellers has sold books in Salt Lake City since 1929, moving and changing all the while. Since we intend to continue to serve your bookish needs, we will continue to evolve with the City and with the times. We look forward to showing off the new space and our new and vastly improved web site soon. In the meantime, remember we’re here, we’ve got books, we’re selling them. Don’t be strangers! Come on down.

To get things kicked off, we're having a celebratory sale this Friday, June 17th and Saturday, June 18th. Used and Rare books will be 25% off. But we want you to help us clear out. So if you purchase 10 or more used books, or 10 plus rare books, you'll receive a 33% discount. In a Bargain Book mood? Buy 20 of those for $7.00.

Here's a photo of the Wellers staff celebrating the news Wednesday night.

Best Wellers is Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

Reviewed by Zach Sampinos

“It's what it's all about—can you sit still on fire? Can you be there when it's all a horrific, beautiful, comedy?” Veselka's response to her title and why she chose it. The word zazen, defined as sitting meditation, expands into something both serene and terrifying in this book. Della, the unlikely narrator, paleontology scholar, and part time waitress, has had it with her city, with its ineffective counter-culture running in circles, its box mall churches cropping up all over, and its semi-regular bombings.

The book screams the way only honest fiction can, yelling at us: Hey! You're stepping deeper into the mouth of Hell, are you sure you can't be dissuaded? Zazen pokes fun at superficiality, impish iconoclasm, and our hardwired ways of turning the other cheek and continually not reaching out. It's also a novel about family, and what it means to love and be loved.

In-between serving tofu scramble and celebrating her deceased sister's life and juggling with her own identity, Della starts calling in bomb threats. It begins innocently, with prepaid phones and dubious targets, but it quickly escalates into something a little too real. Della's plan however flawed, is one that you just can not easily ignore.

Justin Cronin Reading at the Library!

Join us on Thursday, June 2nd at the Salt Lake City Library's Nancy Tessman Auditorium for a reading with Justin Cronin, author of the New York Times bestselling novel, The Passage.

The Passage became a blockbuster hit when it was published in hardcover. Cronin says of its success, “The Passage taps into a great deal of our shared anxieties about the world we live in. These are fraught times, to put it mildly, and the dangers we face, internal and external, in ourselves and in others, seem like strange new monsters to wrestle with. But at the same time, The Passage is not an unremittingly bleak story. I think we’re all wondering what will redeem us. It’s a hopeful thing to think that it could be something as simple as love for a little girl.”

The Passage is a breathtaking tale of catastrophe and survival and a mesmerizing work of sacrifice and hope. In telling this epic story of a girl given the chance to save humanity, award-winning and highly acclaimed author Justin Cronin’s ambitious vision and powerful prose combine to make The Passage this summer’s most anticipated read.

Join Us!

Tonight (5/27/11) we are proud to welcome author and filmmaker John Sayles to our store! The reading of his new book, A Moment in the Sun, will begin at 7pm with a signing to follow. Please join us - no ticket is required!

Fuzzy Nation

I recently finished reading John Scalzi's latest novel, Fuzzy Nation. Fuzzy Nation is a "reboot" of H. Beam Piper's classic, Little Fuzzy, which is on my reading list, but I haven't gotten to it quite yet.

Jack Holloway is an ex-lawyer turned independent contractor-prospector on the planet Zarathustra, who hits the mother-lode. His cut of the find will make him rich beyond belief. There's only one problem. When he gets home he finds he's been invaded by the cutest little alien creatures. Who seem just a bit too smart to be ignored. You see, ZaraCorp (the mining company he's contracted with) is only allowed to exploit Zarathustra and its fabulous mineral riches because it has no intelligent life, and they want to keep control at all costs.

John Scalzi will be reading from and signing Fuzzy Nation at Sam Weller's Bookstore Wednesday, May 18th at 6:00 PM. Join us!

Another Personal Mythology Bites the Dust

We've been cleaning a lot of back rooms and storage areas lately. That's not a shocker. What does regularly surprise me are the stories that are churned up along with the dust. Over the years I've told myself a lot of stories about the spaces we occupy in the David Keith Building. Some of them are true; others, more fanciful.

The space we've always referred to as "the third floor" has been primarily storage for the bookstore. After the great fire of 1972, Sam remodeled our share of the third floor just as much as was necessary to store USGS materials, assorted periodicals of local interest, and large quantities of books he bought on their way to the remainder companies. Other rooms stored financial records, the old tires from Sam's cars, wood and shelving, and spare computer equipment.

That's the room I accessed most often, the computer equipment room. For years it seemed I was constantly switching out dumb terminals, dot matrix printers, and their associated parts. They were in what was, prior to the fire, an office leased to another party. Its entry was one of those beautiful wood doors with a large glass window and a transom on top. White and gold letters on the door's molding spelled out "K. D. Speciale." I was so intrigued by that name that nearly every time I went into the room, I speculated on its owner.

K.D. Speciale, I decided was a detective. He was one of those hard boiled guys who smoked a lot and had his feet on his desk even when he was meeting with a client. Of course he wore a fedora. Mr. Speciale also ate at the counter of Lambs Restaurant, where he also went for "a cup" when he was troubled by a difficult case. I won't even go into the cases I made up for him.

In March a group of Polk Directories for Utah came down from the third floor. For you web only kids, they were like the phone book with the added fun of reverse directories in the back. Also like phone books, they provide fascinating snapshots into particular places and times. One can look up addresses and see what person lived there or what business operated at that location. As I passed them on the landing to the lower level recently, I decided to look up K.D. Speciale. I wanted to see who he really was. A coworker joined me when I sat on the stairs and opened a volume. As I flipped through the pages looking for the right address, I told my coworker about my peculiar relationship with Mr. Speciale.

Alas! The business was a very legitimate advertising and printing firm. Not only that, the actual name of the firm was "K. D. Specialeties." Sigh. There go the feet on the desk. There goes the snub nosed pistol in the top drawer and the bottle of whiskey in the bottom. Goodbye K.D. I hardly knew you.

Frank Recommends

Arctic Dreams
by Barry Lopez
from Vintage Books
$16.00

A wonderful book of the far north. It's been many years since I first read this books, but parts still stay with me . . . especially what polar bear milk tastes like. You'll have to read it to find out!