Thanks Dave! (at least I think it's a good thing)

There's no doubt that Green Apple Books gets a fair share of the love.

Michael Ondaatje called us, "One of the best bookstores I've ever been in." The recent Frommer's guide said of The Apple, "Its extended sections...are superseded only by the staff's superlative service." We've been called The Winchester Mystery House of bookstores. We are a perennial winner of various Best of The Bay awards, and just a couple of days ago a Yelper posted, "Where does the green apple books support group meet? I've blown countless dollars and hours on this habit. Love this place" Well, we love this praise! Always music to our ears...

However, I think that if we were to use just one quote to sum us up, it may be the one from Dave Eggers that I got this morning. About an hour after the store opened, I received a nondescript tube in the mail, and was thrilled to find some original artwork from Dave inside; this was quickly framed and placed in the front window. His newest release from McSweeney's is a collection of his animal renderings called, "It Is Right to Draw Their Fur" and the prints it contains look an awful lot like the one above. Except that one is OURS!!!

I can almost see the tee-shirts now, "Green Apple Books: Better than an ennui-stricken goat!"

Thanks Dave, Michael, Frommer's and "She-Ra" - it's kind words like yours' that keep us strong enough to fight the good fight!

THE LATEST THING

Below we have Anders Nilsen's design for the Penguin U.K.'s new edition of The Great Gatsby. It looks excellent, wouldn't you agree?


"I suppose the latest thing is to sit back and let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere make love to your wife."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 7

Memory lane: our catalogs

Many years ago, Green Apple had a mailing list.  Not an email list (which you should be on if you're reading this; join here).  And we produced a (quarterly?) catalog of new books.  I stumbled on a batch of them recently.  They're from the late 1980s and early 1990s, judging from the books featured therein.

Within I found some timelessness, both in the irreverent attitude of the production (see cover #1 below) and in the content: there's Philip Roth with a new book, and Martin Amis, and Alice Munro and a Jack London biography.

Key differences?  Sales tax (according to the order form on the back) was 6.5%. Hardcovers averaged $18.95.  How quaint, huh?

Here are scanned covers of four newsletters from years passed.  I kind of think that last one would make a nice Green Apple t-shirt, huh?