Remembering Stuart Brent, Chicago’s Messianic Bookseller

By The Beachwood Booksellers Affairs Division

“Long before the advent of the megabookstore, there was a place of pilgrimage for readers and writers on North Michigan Avenue, presided over by Stuart Brent, who was not merely a merchant but literature’s self-appointed local guardian,” the Tribune reports.
“Mr. Brent, who opened his first store in 1946 and closed his last one half a century later, would periodically get up from behind a stack of publishers invoices on the round table that served as his desk to take a book from a customer’s hand and substitute another he thought would be a better read.
“Mr. Brent, 98, died Thursday at a hospital in Ashland, Wis., near his farm, said his daughter Susan Brent-Millner.”

Posted on June 28, 2010

Calling All Book Clubs

By Fanny Camargo

Hola!
My name is Fanny Camargo and I am the founder of The Spanglish Bookclub. I found your book club on Goodreads and I wanted to get in touch with you for a potential book club mixer I am organizing on Sunday July 18th
We are envisioning an outdoors book swap event hosted by different book clubs. Each club can have small booth with info about themselves and books they would like to swap.
We like to think of this as Chicago 1st annual Book Club Fest.

Posted on June 14, 2010

A Beachwood Summer Reading Guide

By The Beachwood Bureau of Adding Value

The Sun-Times’s fine book editor, Teresa Budasi, offered a package of summer reading choices over the weekend, including the following 10 nonfiction titles. We’ll add value.
Book: Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century.
Author: Michael Hiltzik.
Amazon Product Description: “Yet the story of Hoover Dam has a darker side. Its construction was a gargantuan engineering feat achieved at great human cost, its progress marred by the abuse of a desperate labor force. The water and power it made available spurred the development of such great western metropolises as Los Angeles, Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, and San Diego, but the vision of unlimited growth held dear by its designers and builders is fast turning into a mirage.”

Posted on June 3, 2010