30.6.12

Ready, Set, WALDO !

Are you ready? Vancouver's great WALDO hunt starts tomorrow.
From Beacock's to Runyan's to Video Connection to Orchards Feed Mill, Pizza Italiana to I Like Comics, Garside Florist to Bead City--
21 Local businesses for you to explore and collect your WALDO
tickets. Join us this July!

If you missed our great WALDO video (Thanks to Tom), check it
out on our homepage at:  www.Vintage-Books.net

29.6.12



Where's Waldo?  (In Vancouver, and across the USA !)
Indie Bookstores Launch a Massive Cross Country Campaign to Promote Shop Local Message in July  

  This July, 250 independent booksellers are joining together in a coast-to-coast celebration of Shop Local and the iconic children’s book character, Waldo’s twenty-fifth birthday. From Mendocino to Minneapolis, San Diego to Schenectady, Tampa to Telluride, and Oshkosh to Omaha, indie bookstores in all fifty states (and Washington, D.C.) will be hosting Waldo scavenger hunts while spreading the "Buy Local" message in their cities and towns.

As pressure increases for brick and mortar bookstores to innovate and acclimate to a new retail frontier, Candlewick Press, the Somerville, MA based children’s book publisher,has partnered with the American Booksellers Association in an impressive month-long  consumer promotion that seeks to drive in-store traffic, strengthen local business alliances, and engage community members to spread the buy local message.

"Find Waldo Local" first originated with Eight Cousins Bookstore in Falmouth, Massachusetts in 2011, when staff brainstormed about how to capitalize on the increased summer foot traffic in their vacation community and create an interactive event that would literally bring tourists off the sidewalks of the scenic main street and through the doors of their store and neighboring businesses. Mini Waldos were hidden in nearby storefronts, and prizes were awarded to participants who found them all. The Waldo hunt was on. . Word quickly spread to the other indie bookstores around the country.
 
Upon announcing the nationwide initiative in January 2012 in conjunction with Waldo's 25th anniversary, Candlewick was flooded with inquiries from stores interested in participating in "Find Waldo Local" and quickly filled slots for 250 bookstores before a waiting list grew.
 
"Candlewick is thrilled to be able to partner with the ABA and hundreds of independent bookstores on a brilliant bookseller-created initiative that promises to increase foot traffic and sales during the summer travel season — mobilizing some of the smartest, most creative minds in small business to spotlight their local business alliances through the lenses of our beloved Waldo," says Karen Lotz, President & Publisher of Candlewick Press.

  What is Find Waldo Local?
It’s a month-long scavenger hunt for Waldo hosted by indie bookstores in all fifty states across the nation in July 2012.
 
How does Find Waldo Local work?
On July 1, 2012, Waldo-spotters will set off on a hunt to find the elusive character hidden around dozens of
shops in towns across America.  Anyone who wishes to participate can pick up a Find Waldo search list at a participating business and collect an "I Found Waldo" card for each Waldo they spot. Hundreds of eagle-eyed Waldo spotters will be eligible for prizes culminating on July 31 with a grand ceremony held at the organizing bookstores.

About Waldo: Waldo is the creation of Martin Handford.  There are now over 56 million Waldo books in print worldwide and they’ve been translated into eighteen languages. An entire generation has grown up searching for Waldo and his cast of wandering companions. His official 25th birthday will be celebrated in the U.S. in September 2012.

In Vancouver---

You might start at Orchards Feed Mill, Beacock's Music, Video Connections,  . . .
there are 21 of us!  Please ask when you stop in one of your favorite shops and see Waldo.
You'll be off on the Great Waldo Search.  We hope to see you soon!

(This piece modified from a Candlewick original.)










 

  

 

26.6.12

Here is a copy of our latest email newsletter.

Greetings!



School is out and now it's time for Summer fun! Places to go, things to do, how are you going to keep those kids occupied for the next couple of months? Don't worry, we've got you covered!

We have coloring books, activity books, stickers, lots of great chapter books. And if you are looking for a suggested read, check out the Kids' Next list.


Independent booksellers from across the country have suggested their favorite reads for the Summer. I'm thrilled to have my nomination included on the list("Silly Doggy" a very cute picture book).

Need ideas for places to go? Be sure to check out our new and used travel books. Mushroom hunting, bird watching, camping, what do you want to do?




COMMUNITY OUTREACH
Becky attended a meeting at Martin Luther King Elementary School to discuss different ways organizations in the county could help students and their families.


One way that we can help is stock up their "pantry" for their backpack meals program. So, we are having a food drive next Friday and Saturday(June 29th and 30th). How can you help? Bring in canned goods.


For each can of food, you will receive 1% off your cash or credit card purchase. You may donate up to 10 cans of food for a 10% discount. We will be doing this a couple of times during the summer. It is one small way we can all make a big difference.


FIND WALDO LOCAL!



Are you ready to have some fun? 21 Clark County local businesses are participating in a Find Local hunt. "Where's Waldo" is celebrating his 25th Anniversary. 250 bookstores across the country have partnered up with r local businesses in their communities for a "Where's Waldo" event, sponsored by Candlewick, Waldo's publisher.


Starting July 1st, you can stop in here at Vintage and pick up a list at the participating businesses. For every business that you go into and locate the Waldo standee, you will be given a card that says "I found Waldo at...". After you have found Waldo at 8 stores, bring your cards into Vintage, and you will receive a Waldo button. (first 100 families). If you collect 16 of the possible 21 cards, you will be entered in a drawing for the grand prize of a set Waldo books along with some other great prizes, including a gift card from Spanky's.

We are really excited about this event, as are the other businesses participating. Be sure to keep an eye out for our "commercial" featuring Waldo, it will be available for viewing this week on our Facebook page.




FUN KIDS' BOOK





In the spirit of of Summer fun, here is a book that you and your family will enjoy.

"Oink-A-Doodle-Moo" by Jef Czekaj Harper Collins $16.99

Have you ever played the telephone game? You know, the one where someone whispers a phrase into someone else's ear and then he or she whispers it into the next person's ear and so on and so forth?

The whole object of the game is to see if the phrase is the same after it goes through several people. Now imagine that game being played by barnyard animals. These animals have a pretty limited vocabulary, the pig says oink, the cow says moo, etc. What starts off as an ordinary word in an ordinary game becomes a silly phrase and a silly game.

All I can say is, poor doggy who had to repeat the phrase. This is a great read aloud book, and the pictures remind me of the "singing horses" that I've seen online. .



GENERAL HOUSEKEEPING

A couple of reminders-


Need e-books? Be sure to check out our www.vintage-books.net site. Specials are added each month!



Facebook-once again thanks to all of you who have become fans. Please tell your friends about us. This is the quickest way for you to know what is going on in the store, new arrivals, giveaways, general happenings. And of course all of the great saying that we repost from Bob's Beach Books and NW Book Lovers.



Coupons-Now available on the front counter, a basket full of coupons from other local businesses. Please choose one, and "Buy Vancouver" You may discover a new favorite place to go.



Debbie

















Bring in canned/non-perishable food


Friday June 29th, and Saturday June 30th.

Each can of food= 1% discount, up to 10% discount on cash/credit card purchases

All food will be donated to MLK Elementary’s backpack meals program.  Thank you!

18.6.12

One of our small regional suppliers shared this post, about the loss of her dog.
Any of us who have been blessed with the best of animal companions will agree, Sugar
was the most generous of dogs. 

A Dog's Gentle Death

Our family will always remember this holiday season as the time Sugar died. Sugar was a mixed breed, mostly lab/border-collie type. She exhibited the best character traits of every gene she carried and seemed to bear none of any breed's drawbacks. She was a real credit to her species.
A member of my daughter's household, Sugar was one of my "grand dogs," for whom it was my privilege to dog-sit if her parents went somewhere she was not welcome. Those unwelcome places were few and far between because Sugar met love and enthusiasm everywhere she went. Friends would vie for the chance to keep her when her parents left town. But, I'm proud to say, my daughter believed I was her favorite sitter, so I always got first dibs on her company.
She lived a long time -- almost 16 years -- as her humans' constant companion. Sugar was an enthusiastic participant in daily life, hikes, camping excursions and road trips. She accompanied my daughter to work at a neighborhood art gallery, hanging out on her bed and greeting patrons with gentle good will. She never forgot a face, and offered a smile and nudge of the nose to those she knew. She waited patiently outside restaurants and stores until her people reappeared, came to church and dozed in the corner during choir practice. Of course she attended social and family gatherings, and her birthday celebration was not to be missed as the highlight of the barbecue season.
During her long life Sugar taught us about living well. She taught us about playing and having fun. She taught us the importance of relationships and acknowledging our loved ones in small ways, each day. She taught loyalty and how to abide, steadfast during hard times. In the end, she taught about dying well, too.
Over the past few years deafness, poor vision and a variety of ailments slowed Sugar down and took their toll. Hip degeneration, leg weakness, recurrent bladder infections, a variety of benign tumors, stomach ailments -- all these and more called forth the best in veterinary medicine. When her appetite diminished and she lost 15 percent of her body weight, we hoped the prescribed steroids would perk her up and renew her zest for life.
It was not to be. Sugar took to her bed, stopped eating and drinking, and withdrew from communal interaction. My daughter sent out word that Sugar was dying and the time had come, for those who wished, to stop by and say goodbye. Many, many did. For two days a steady stream of visitors came to Sugar's bedside, told her how they loved her and shed a tear. Sugar acknowledged them with a weak tail wag, but continued her separation from this world.
One last time they brought her to the Oregon coast, her favorite place and what would be her burial ground. In the same cabin where she rested after so many joyful afternoons chasing balls and sticks in the surf, she spent a quiet night and drew her last breath.
As intentional and gracious as she was in living, so she was in dying. Instead of going off to a hiding place in the woods, Sugar let us witness, share and learn from the natural ending to a life complete. That's how generous was her big, big heart.

16.6.12

What a great idea!  Anyone or group want to sponsor this in Vancouver this Fall?

First Graders Who Shop

Josie Leavitt Last Friday morning we had the pleasure of being visited by the Lincoln, Vt., elementary school’s first-grade class. Someone’s grandmother had donated $200 to the classroom for building up the library for the incoming first-grade class.
Kids look at the non-fiction selection.
At 10 a.m. they arrived, polite, shy, and eager to shop. We had taken a great variety of levels one through four I Can Read books and spread them in small stacks on every available surface in the two picture book sections. We thought that system would cause far less chaos than kids trying to look at the books from the spinner where we keep all the early readers and chapter books.
The teacher suggested I go over how to handle the books so the books stayed looking new. I was in a silly mood so I said to the kids,”These books are new, so you have to look at them carefully. Be gentle turning the pages and don’t bite the books.” I didn’t really think anything of it at the time, but when the teacher asked a student to repeat back the rules and she said, “We can’t eat the books.”
A happy reader.
These kids were so well-behaved it was stunning. Quietly they sought out their favorites and were decisive young shoppers. One young man came to the counter and said about his Henry and Mudge, “I liked these a lot when I was younger.”
The kids spent all the money in less than 20 minutes and then they were gone, in a blur of giggles and even a few hugs.


"We are a business, yes, but our larger goal is something more intangible: the age-old promotion of the book as a tool that can open minds and bring communities together."  Quoting from the Blog of Village Books.:


Work Hard. Have Fun. Take Advil.

  Rem
The price is $27.95 and I can hold it under your name at our front counter,” I say to the customer on the phone.
There’s an awkward pause on the other end of the line. I know she’s looking at the Amazon screen, where the price is $16.05, sometimes even less. She knows that I know. The silence lengthens. She wants to buy local, but how can she justify paying almost twice as much?
In the past I’ve tried to win customers over by playing Amazon’s game. I tell them about our discounts, sales, bargain books, etc. But a series of articles written in the last year have shown me that I’m really missing the point. Amazon and other internet discounters can afford to offer lower prices because they’ve created a new kind of American sweatshop.
The world of internet shipping that Mac McClelland (Mother Jones, March/April 2012), Vanessa Veselka (The Atlantic, December 2012), and Hal Benton and Susan Kelleher (Seattle Times, April 4, 2012) describe in their articles is one of vast, airless warehouses where workers are expected to speed walk 10 to 15 miles a day on concrete floors to meet goals that are set right at the limits of human “productivity.” Temperatures vary wildly in summer and winter.  In a now famous incident Amazon actually had ambulances parked outside a Pennsylvania warehouse waiting for workers to drop from heat exhaustion. As one older lady succinctly put it: “You need to take 800 milligrams of Advil a day to work here.”     
Most of these companies rely on “temp” workers, who have not rights or benefits and who can be fired on the spot for such offenses as, I kid you not, speaking to a fellow co-worker. Amazon appears “progressive” in this environment because they offer some full-time employment and more than one bathroom break a shift. More importantly, Jeff Bezos long ago mastered the motivational language of business textbooks. “Work Hard, Have Fun, Make History” is painted in giant letters in every warehouse. Workers are “associates,” supervisors are “team leaders,” and distribution warehouses are “fulfillment centers.” In the age of Dilbert it’s hard to believe that anyone would believe this con; but Veselka, who tried to organize a union at Amazon in 2000, says that Bezos figured out that what people really wanted is a sense of belonging, of being part of something new. With their sense of “belonging” the moonlighting artists didn’t seem to notice they were handing over their labor rights.
Meanwhile, in the background, the real driving force in these warehouses was a much more enduring American value: profit. By 2000 Bezos had stated his ambition to become “the Walmart of the Internet.” He fired those in his inner circle arguing for better working conditions and closed the one Seattle call center nearing unionization. It was all about production numbers. Here’s what the “fulfilling” version of the Amazon assembly line looks like in 2012: With computerized devices in their hands each picker’s movements are tracked “to the step,” the number of items picked “per minute” is logged on the supervisor’s computer, and any dip in these numbers causes him or her to magically appear at the picker’s side for some “coaching.” The top “producers” are announced over the loudspeakers at midday like the popular kids in class, mistakes of all kinds are recorded and employees “written up,” and the slower or injured workers are picked off (fired) like the proverbial weaker members of the herd. As one former manager explained, “They would have meetings about how to fire people who were hurt.”
The shrinking of wages and unions over the last 30 years is well documented, and not all of it can be laid at Amazon’s feet (as much as I’d like to). But even within this new downwardly-mobile economy there are two kinds of business models.  I, like some of my compatriots at Amazon, have benefits, but my employers will not threaten me if I use them. More importantly, my employers love what they sell and love the community that they sell it in. It’s at least as important to them that I love books and can share that with customers, as it is that I perform “x” amount of keystrokes on the cash register per hour. We are a business, yes, but our larger goal is something more intangible: the age-old promotion of the book as a tool that can open minds and bring communities together.
Amazon provides its employees – at least the half of its workforce that work in warehouses – with none of this, for the simple fact that when you sell a hardcover book for $16.05 and a paperback for $11.15 you can’t afford it. All those indefinable qualities like employee satisfaction go out the window. I always think of that I Love Lucy episode with Lucy being overwhelmed by pieces of chocolate in the candy factory – only minus the comedy. The lower the price the more brutal the assembly line has to be. It’s not rocket science.
So the next time you shop with us think of it as not only supporting local business, but not supporting a system that devalues everything in its path. And this goes for everything on the internet that is sold cheaply. There’s no getting around the simple truth that quality and fairness cost money (although as consumers we keep on trying!). All the way long the wonderful chain of the book business – from authors and editors to your local bookseller – Amazon’s pricing policies are hurting quality and putting artisans out of business. Even in the e-book realm, where the warehouse is not an issue, cheap pricing relies on the sacrifice of traditional arts like editing, not to mention the many environmental and labor issues swirling around the manufacture of e-readers. (But that’s another article.)
A physical book is a work of art that can last literally hundreds of years. $27.95 -- it’s worth every penny.
--Rem
http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/shelftalker/?p=7942&utm_source=Publishers+Weekly%27s+PW+Daily&utm_campaign=f89490e338-UA-15906914-1&utm_medium=email

7.6.12

Bonsai Book - Just In!


BONSAI MASTERPIECES - NIPPON BONSAI TAIKAN: GRAND VIEW OF JAPANESE BONSAI AND NATURE IN FOUR SEASONS

Translated by Yuji Yoshimura
Compiled by the JAPAN BONSAI SOCIETY
Published 1972 by Seibundo Shinkosha Publishing Ltd.

This oversize volume features lovely color photographs bound in green cloth with gilt lettering, in a brightly decorated clothbound slipcase.
The text is entirely in Japanese, explaining the history of bonsai with captions to the individual photos. Accompanying this is a booklet of
complete English text which translates each part.

The book and slipcase are both in excellent condition with little signs of wear.  There are a few name stamps from the previous owner on the endpapers, and a gift inscription from Katei Terada.  THe spine is faintly sunned.  Otherwise, all pages are unmarked, without creases or tears.  The binding is tight.

A gorgeous edition for any bonsai lover.   $265.00 






This is a picture of the laid in stapled text in English.


This is a picture of the slipcase.

Japanese Garden Book

This is a beautiful oversize volume of photographs of Japanese gardens. Since the entire text is in Japanese, we are not sure if these are taken from one large garden, or from several.

Hardcover, with dust jacket and slipcase, all in excellent condition. No soiling, creases or tears.  No signs of wear at all.
124 pages, mostly photographs.  Published 1982, in Japan.   $125.00







5.6.12

Coming in July:  'Where's Waldo in Vancouver?"

Twenty one intensely Local businesses will host a family-friendly search for Waldo next month,
celebrating both the 25th anniversary of Where's Waldo and July as the month of Independents.
There will be prizes, and, best of all, a chance to discover some pretty amazing Vancouver-centric
shopping choices.  We're pretty excited about this!

Books can do many things for us.   When "Sandra" was in today,
she mentioned how her reading has changed, and how "cozies" had
carried her through the illness and death of her partner.

Her current reading list is full of challenges and a spectrum of
ideas.  At that time, comfortable fiction and cozy mysteries were
read and reread.  No challenges, no threats, no deep thinkings.
Survival mode was assisted by friendly reads, just like slipping
into well worn denims and a flannel shirt.

How many different purposes our reading serves.  How we,
as booksellers, appreciate that books & people connection.
Thanks for sharing.

4.6.12

Just finished "The Light Between Oceans", an August title you may want to recommend
 for your Reading Group.

Setting:  A remote island, off the Australian Coast, post World War I.
A veteran finds working as the lighthouse keeper gives him little time for reliving
memories of the war.   His bride loves their life, but after losing three babes in
miscarriage or stillbirth, she begins to unravel.

Conundrum:  A small craft washes ashore, with a baby and the body of a man.
What do they do?  The decision shapes the rest of their lives.  Full of love,
memories, anguish and filtered through the lens of a post war Coastal village,
this is a remarkable read.  Take a chance on this first time novel.