Secret bookstores

I found this video on author Spencer Seidel's site.  Reminds me of a great used bookstore in Dinkytown I spent so much time in while I was at the University of Minnesota.  Sigh.  Bookstores. 
There's No Place Like Here: Brazenhead Books from Etsy on Vimeo.

2Minnesota Writers this week

Danielle Sosin's novel "The Long-Shining Waters" won the Milkweed National Fiction prize this year.  Publisher's Weekly said, "Sosin writes sensuously detailed prose and distills the emotions of her characters into a profound and universal need for acceptance and love." 

Danielle will be our guest this week and we'll talk about the draw of Lake Superior, for her personally and as a writer.

Also happening this week - Minnesota writer Amie Klempnauer Miller will join us to talk about "She Looks Just Like You - A Memoir of (Nonbiological Lesbian) Motherhood".  In it Amie searches for a way to describe her role.  She's like any first time parent with anxieties and challenges.  But she also faces things that not every parent does - as a nonbiological mom she had to stand before a judge to adopt her own daughter. 

This week on Realgoodwords

What kind of books do you look for in the summertime?  This week on Realgoodwords we've got some new books, fiction and non-fiction, that might be right up your alley. 

"Wild Bill Donovan:  The Spymaster Who Created the OSS and Modern American Espionage" by Douglas Waller.  Waller is a former Newsweek and Time magazine reporter who has put together the story of Wild Bill Donovan.  Donovan was the man Franklin Roosevelt tapped to be his spymaster in WWII - who created the first national intelligence agency in the U.S.  Donovan is descrived as an exciting and secretive general who introduced this nation to the dark arts of covert warfare on a scale never seen before.

Diane Chamberlain's latest novel is more of a summer beach read, "The Midwife's Confession".  The 'story of friendship and the corrosive power of secrets'.  Booklist wrote "The frankness of each scene and character should grab readers and keep them eagerly turning pages right up to the startling climax."

Dr. David Anderegg is the author of the newly updated book "Nerds:  How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies and Trekkies Can Save America *And Why they Might Be Our Last Hope".  Here's a cool Nerd quiz you can take:

The Last Nerd Self-Test You’ll Ever Need!

1. Are you sometimes so enthusiastic about your interests that you get carried away, and lose your self-consciousness in your passion for your subject?

2. Do you believe that people can be beautiful and smart at the same time?

3. Do you sometimes get interested in a book or a hobby that’s really difficult to get into, but you do it anyway because it seems like such a cool thing to learn?

4. Do you like precision or exactitude, maybe even so much that a right answer is an aesthetically pleasing experience?

5. Do you find tracking what’s fashionable just a teensy bit boring?

6. Do you admire people who are very knowledgeable even if their topic is a little arcane?

7. Don't you just love the word “arcane”?

8. Do you enjoy vivid imaginative accounts of alternatives to mundane reality?

9. Are you comfortable with the fact that Harry Potter wears big spectacles and is also a big athletic hero?

10. Do you find anti-intellectualism just a little bit….stupid?

If you answered yes to all of the above, award yourself 100 points. You win! You are a big fat cool American post-nerd. You are totally comfortable with yourself because you have finally moved beyond the ridiculous social categories of middle school! If you scored less than 100, however, or even if you did score 100 but have friends who are still living in the Dark Ages, you need to read my new book, NERDS: How Dorks, Dweebs, Techies, and Trekkies Can Save America...and Why They Might Be Our Last Hope.