They called us Golden Survivors...She said yes

. . .and we've got the award to prove it! Thank you SF Bay Guardian for including us in your 2009 Small Business Awards. It's an honor to be so regarded by San Francisco's community at large! Here is the link to the full article (if you haven't grabbed a copy of your own yet), and please enjoy the photo of some of our staff which ran with the piece:

SFBG Small Business Awards Recipients (article)

One of the things that makes Green Apple a 'golden survivor' is the special place we hold in our customers lives. Not only are we community driven in the books we select or the authors we host readings with, but if you think about it, Green Apple is literally built on the used books that our customers sell to us. It's the kind of symbiotic relationship that makes me feel all happy inside, but I've never felt as warm and fuzzy as I did last Saturday when I helped a long-time customer Pop The Question to the love of his life in the philosophy nook of our side room. He told me that Green Apple Books embodies all that they love and respect about each other (creaky floors and all), and that he couldn't think of a better foundation for them to build upon. I agree. And so did she. . . .

She said, "YES!" We say, "Congrats!"

R. Crumb on a sneaker?

R. Crumb's art is now on Vans shoes. Here's an excerpt of a write-up from the LA Times:

Four different R. Crumb shoes are due to hit store shelves on Oct. 1; two in the Vans Classics collections -- including the Mr. Natural deconstructed SK8-Hi pictured above ($60) and a classic slip-on featuring Fritz the Cat ($52) -- will be available through regular Vans vendors.

Two additional higher-end styles (using suede and leather) will be sold through Vans Vault accounts; a "Modern America" Chukka boot ($95) and a "Keep on Truckin' " Authentic ($90).

Hoo boy, you'll look great stomping around in your R. Crumb leather shoes. I'm holding out for the Shel Silverstein flip-flops.

Book of the Month II

In our monthly attempt to tempt you into trying a worthy new book, may we present our latest "commercial" for the Book of the Month:



See below for more info on the book... you will love it or your money back!!

Book of the Month: The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen

Each month, Green Apple presents a “Book of the Month.” This is a newly published book that we are really excited to share. We like these books so much that we guarantee that you will like it or your money back.

This month, we most strongly encourage you to read The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larsen. This is his first novel, and it is a remarkable adventure...

For a change, the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data says it best; this book is about:
1. Child Cartographers - Montana - Fiction.
2. Voyages and Travels - Fiction.

But Also:
3. Continental Divides - Fiction.
4. Sparrows - Fiction.
5. Beetles - Tiger Monk Beetles - Fiction.
6. Girls - Girls Who Like Pop Music - Fiction.

And Also: 7. Whiskey Drinking - Fiction. 8. Rifles - 1886 Winchester Short Rifle .40-82 cal. - Fiction. 9. The Smithsonian Institution - Fiction. 10. The Megatherium Club - Fiction. 11. Hobos - Fiction. 12. Hobo Signs - Fiction. 13. The Resilience of Memory - Fiction. 14. The Oregon Trail Video Game for the Apple IIGS - Fiction. 15. Many Worlds Theory - Fiction. 16. Honey Nut Cheerios - Fiction. 17. Smiles - Duchenne Smiles - Fiction. 18. Lanyards - Fiction. 19. Food Pouches - Fiction. 20. The Inheritance of History - Fiction. 21. Inertia - Fiction. 22. Wormholes - Midwestern Wormholes - Fiction. 23. Mustaches - Fiction. 24. Parallel Longing - Fiction. 25. Moby-Dick - Fiction. 26. Mediocrity - Fiction. 27. Rules - The Three-Second Rule.

Those are just a few of the many aspects that make this book work so well. Plus, there's the appeal of watching a genius kid hopping a freight train and seeing the world for the first time. And there are the wonderful illustrations by Ben Gibson & Reif Larson lining the margins of this book. Our heartiest recommendation awaits those in search of a fun, creative novel.

Still don't believe us? Prefer a professionally made book commercial? Here's the publisher's ad:

May flowers

After doing our best to keep the display tables well-stocked through an unnervingly sparse winter book season, May springs upon us (no pun intended?) with dozens of new releases. Here's a concise guide to some of my favorite novels and short story collections of the spring.

Guillermo Rosales' compulsively readable novella, Halfway House, is a not for the faint-of-heart. It tells the story of a (self-proclaimed) crazy Cuban emigre in Miami who is abandoned by his family to the sadistic and infernal powers of a government home for the insane and forgotten. Publisher's Weekly called it a "frightening, nihilistic cousin of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. For more on the book, including an excerpt, check the New Directions page here.


Charles Bukowski called Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, "The best novel of the last 2,000 years". Now, in a true literary event, comes the last of Celine's apocalyptic novels to be translated into English, Normance. The book relates the story of a mad, bleakly uproarious air attack on Paris during WW2, after which the polite veneer of civilization has been stripped away, leaving only chaos - hilarious chaos for those like prefer their humor black. A quotation from Life magazine will give you an idea of his style: "Céline was the black humorist to his age three decades before the term was invented . . . Alongside this apocalyptically-minded Paris doctor our local batch of black comics are pretty gray cats."


Basic Books has released curious volume: on one side, That Mad Ache, a forgotten 1960s novel by Francoise Sagan (best known for her precocious Bonjour Tristesse); on the other, Translator, Trader, an assessment of the art of translation by Douglas Hofstadter. I'll admit I was more interested in Hofstadter's essay than the novel itself, so it was somewhat despite myself that I began the novel - and even more surprising when I found that I was affected by it. It's a very French take on love and may surprise you as well as it did me. And for those of you more stony-hearted than I am, the Hofstadter piece is worth the price of admission alone.


Finally, San Francisco resident Damion Searls is already widely-regarded as a translator (of Proust, Rilke, Rober Walser and others) and editor (of the forthcoming Journals of Henry Thoreau), and this, his debut story collection, is certain to garner acclaim as well. The stories comprising What We Were Doing & Where We Were Going are based on a conceit appropriate for a translator - a conceit I won't spoil here - but they don't rely on gimmickry to convey a sense of casual brilliance. Start with my sentimental favorite of the bunch, "A Guide to San Francisco," in which the narrator takes a stroll down Balboa St. to the beach and ends up at a familiar bar in the Mission.