It’s been an exceptionally rough winter, so we thought we’d talk about what a big snow day looks like at the Brattle. Picture downtown Boston, quiet streets blanketed with feet of newly fallen snow. Almost everyone is staying home today—except for plow drivers and the Brattle staff. Are we having a cozy time in there? Not really. This is where selling books outdoors becomes a feat of endurance: we’re shoveling the sale lot clean, we’re shoveling the roof, we’re climbing onto a higher part of the roof and shoveling that, we’re running through cases of Hot Hands packets just to stave off frostbite. Sometimes we have to close the sale lot to protect our customers from themselves—we’ve learned that people will browse outside even in dangerously cold conditions. Join us for a chat about working in a winter wonderland on this frosty new #brattlecast.
Bonus Brattlecast - The Impact of Covid-19
On this special episode we talk about how Ken and the Brattle are coping with the Covid-19 crisis. It’s a situation now sadly familiar to most of us: uncertainty and dread, financial apprehension, the feeling that one had strayed into an episode of The Twilight Zone. But, although the shop is temporarily closed to the public, and the city of Boston feels eerily deserted, we find some cause for optimism: the Brattle has weathered many calamities over its long history. For now, all we can do is stay healthy, be patient, and, sometimes, escape into the pages of a good book.
Brattlecast #51 - The Camino Island Saga
Ken receives a popular new novel as a birthday gift. Much to his dismay he finds an evil twin lurking in its pages. The book contains a character who is nearly identical to him, but with some sinister variations. Ken is an honest, well respected bookseller and his shop is thriving; his fictional doppelgänger is the criminally unethical proprietor of a failing book shop on the very same Boston street. An edge-of-your-seat legal thriller ensues as Ken tries to solve the mystery of why best-selling author John Grisham, a total stranger, would want to hurt his feelings like this.