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Undercurrents
A couple of weeks ago, two booksellers from different parts of the country contacted us independently to rave about two different Unbridled books — one that’s in bookstores now; another that’s due out this Spring. And then, separately, they began to champion the books, sending e-mails to their friends and customers, to other booksellers in their regions, and even to the trades, just to wave those two beautiful novels in the ether and call their praises out to the four e-winds.
All unbidden by us. Each effort rising from an impassioned reader’s sheer love of a book.
And those two parallel enthusiasms came to us at the cold moment when we were being snowed in here in Colorado. The moment when Unbridled Books was becalmed between publishing seasons. The moment when we were processing all those end-of-the-year returns and pondering again the vagaries of publishing.
A couple of the messages the booksellers sent our way were downright moving to this editor — I’d be more explicit than that, but as a middle-aged man I fear looking emotional and foolish. (Although, if the older men in my family are any indication, in a few years I’ll be perfectly comfortable to look so.)
These days, it seems my thinking constantly turns to the changing bases of the community of readers. And the enthusiasm of those two booksellers fell right in with my thoughts: I happen to be trepidatiously hopeful* about the changes we all can see coming.
It’s the diehard revolutionary in me who continues to believe that the People gather to cause. To that fellow, the rise of the Litblogs, the building of online Reading Group networks, the movement of strong reviewers like Jerome Weeks to the Internet, the launch of HabitualReader, even the authorial community’s apparent damping of the Sobol Award, all indicate that the Internet is the channel by which the sometimes solitary folks who are drawn to literature as to truth are now finding each other. It’s the place where they have clearly already started talking.
Fred Ramey
- “Trepidatiously hopeful” is, I suppose, a shadow version of the old Reaganism: “cautiously optimistic.”
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Fred, I wish you had mentiond which of unbridleds two books were being lauded, one in advnce of publication! How had the author or publisher of the unreleased book created this advance brouhaha? Are you implying an excerpt published online?
— destiny kinal · 02/11/2007 01:06 PM · #