Our most recent newsletter is available online here.  Check it out for book reviews, store news, and an interview with author Aryn Kyle!

After months of researching all the options, we are now able to offer an online alternative to the retail giants. This is a service we’ve been wanting to offer ever since we opened and everything has finally come together. We’ve been blessed with wonderful, fiercely loyal customers who find joy in supporting independent businesses of all kinds and are delighted to give you more options.

Books are our first love, of course, but we also love movies and music. Our online store carries thousands of titles of not just books, but audiobooks, music, DVD’s and Blu-Ray discs as well. So, go ahead. Start shopping!

The next time you wake up in the middle of the night because you’ve finally remembered the title of a book you heard reviewed on the radio or read about in a waiting room magazine, hop online and order it from us before you forget it again!

Did you hear us? Amy and I did our first on-air book review today on Jeremy and Holly Spencer’s new show, “The Local Gourmet,” which airs on WDKN 1260. Jeremy and Holly are the owners of House Blend, the coffee shop right next door to us. If you heard the show and want the recipe Jeremy and Holly discussed, you can find it on their blog.

The books we highlighted in our segment were all cookbooks that feature ingredients that are common to the everyday garden:

The All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook
by Mel Bartholomew

The perfect companion to Bartholomew’s The All New Square Foot Gardening, our bestselling gardening book, and its “chocolate box” approach to your garden. As Amy mentioned, the Zucchini Parmesan Pancakes on page 144 look simply amazing.

Tomatoes Garlic Basil
by Doug Oster

Recipes and tips for growing three of the most versatile vegetables. With a section for each plant, Oster covers planting basics, common ailments and pests, and ingredient-specific recipes.

Cooking from the Garden: Best Recipes from Kitchen Gardener
edited by Ruth Lively

A beautiful book packed with mouth-watering, straight-from-the-garden meals. Also has tips and tricks, such as the proper way to peel a tomato (page 179).

Be sure to tune into “The Local Gourmet” every 1st and 3rd Saturday at 1pm on Dickson’s own WDKN to hear great recipes and food-related book reviews.

Book Club

Last night our book club met to discuss Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart. We had a fun time talking about not just the book, but also Southern culture. Through our voting, we inadvertantly chose several books by Southern writers or about Southern themes, including our March book Cold Sassy Tree. Here’s our full list of books for the year:

If you’re interested in joining our book club, we’d love to have you! Meetings, as listed above, are the last Tuesday of the month (except during the busy holiday season) at 6:30pm in our gallery room. The book club book is 15% off during its month.

Intuit Small Business Grants

If you have a free minute, please nominate us for this small business grant. We have high hopes for our store. We daydream about shelves overflowing with books and bringing in new lines, like high-quality toys, stationery, and new styles of journals. A small business grant would help us realize some of these dreams. Thank you to all those that have already nominated us. Your words mean so very much!

Yes, Halloween is over, but the Quirk Classics display contest results won’t be announced until Friday. In the meantime, check out the photos on their website of displays from independent bookstores around the country here. We’re thrilled to have been included! We have more pictures of our display here and a here’s a video:

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The displays are all inspired by the books Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters.

Also, we’re having a Fall Clearance Sale! Selected hardcovers are now 35% off! Come by soon and help us make room for new stock (and save some money, too)!

The Reading Rock Books art gallery is featuring several artists this month whose works include painting, block prints, digital art, and other visual arts. The artists featured this month are Barbara Herrick, Miranda Herrick, John Hill, Anne F. Kiernan, and Richard J. Rudden. These pieces will only be up for the month of July and they’re all for sale, so come by the store and see them while they’re here!