July 01, 2007

Notes from a DVD Geek

by Jeremy Lassen

As an independent bookstore, Borderlands definitely likes to support independent home video distributors, who bring us some of the weirder and more obscure films that would otherwise never find their way to home video.

I’ve talked in the past about the DVDs from Lurker Home Video, but I wanted to focus on them again, as they’ve recently released volume 4 of their consistently good H. P. Lovecraft Collection DVD series.  The mad man behind Lurker home video is Andrew Migliore, who is also one of the authors of the recent Lovecraft film encyclopedia, THE LURKER IN THE LOBBY.  He also, in copious spare time, has been running the annual H. P. Lovecraft International Film Festival for 11 years.  If there is anybody who knows obscure and quality filmic adaptations of H. P. Lovecraft, it’s Andrew.

June Bestsellers

Hardcovers
1. Kushiel's Justice by Jacqueline Carey
2. Thirteen by Richard Morgan
3. Precious Dragon by Liz Williams
4. The Spirit Stone by Katharine Kerr
5. The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod
6. The Harlequin by Laurel K. Hamilton
    tie
    Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
7. Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson
    tie
    The Last Colony by John Scalzi
8. Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman
9. Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
10. World War Z by Max Brooks

Mass Market Paperbacks
1. Kushiel's Scion by Jacqueline Carey
2. The City, Not Long After by Pat Murphy
3. The Bonehunters by Steven Erikson
4. Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds
5. Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson
6. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
7. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
8. Accelerando by Charles Stross
9. Tithe by Holly Black
10. Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey

Trade Paperbacks
1. Reaper's Gale by Steven Erikson
2. Twilight Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko
3. Snake Agent by Liz Williams
4. The Demon and the City by Liz Williams
5. Grey by Jon Armstrong
    tie
    9 Tail Fox by John Courtenay Grimwood

Origin of the Bookstore, Part the Ninth - Sidelines

For the next four months we'll be doing a special feature each month in honor of Borderlands' upcoming 10th Anniversary (November 3rd, 2007). We'll share some stories about what Borderlands is and how it got that way.

by Jude Feldman

"How hard can it be to find a stupid bike messenger bag?!"  I threw up my hands in frustration.  I'd been looking for days; sending out email queries, flipping through catalogs, staring at low-resolution pictures on-line until my eyes stung and my contact lenses felt glued in place.  I felt like the Goldilocks of bike-messenger-bag seekers, except that there was no sign of the "Just Right" one yet, and there seemed to be about 48,000 bears' beds to choose from.  This bag was too large, and that one too small.  This one was made of cheap nylon and looked flimsy, that one appeared to be made of Kevlar and, if the cost was any indication, it darn well better have stopped bullets, too.  That type would be great, except it only came in an eye-offending orange or Army green, and all 53 of those looked too much like computer bags.  And I still had to find pens, and pint glasses, and coffee mugs and stickers.

Welcome to the wonderful world of sidelines.  What's a sideline, anyway?  Other than someplace in sports where you sit when you're not in the game?  A sideline, in retail-speak, is a line of products that you sell in your store that is outside your main purview.  So Borderlands carries a handful of sidelines; essentially everything in the store that isn't a book.

So that covers greeting cards and Ripley postcards, our cool wooden boxes, all the dragon and skull tchotchke, blank books, jewelry, art prints, sculptures and our Borderlands branded gak.  Before starting my career in retail lo these many years ago, it never occurred to me to wonder where stores bought their stuff.   I never would have suspected that there were such things as "Gift Fairs," or that they could possibly fill the whole of Moscone Center.  (Google "San Francisco International Gift Fair" if you're interested.)  I just knew that Alan wanted the sideline items that Borderlands carries to fit with the feel and personality of the store.  Some of those items were no-brainers.  Cary and I both have a weakness for beautiful boxes, so those were easy, and we ended up with Ripley postcards by customer request.  Most of the other stuff we'd seen and admired elsewhere, and it fit right in to the store.