Outdoor Book Sale Rescheduled

The weather forecast shows a 90% chance of rain and wind tomorrow, so we're re-scheduling our annual outdoor book sale.  We think we'll have it next Saturday, Sept. 5, but will confirm closer to the date.

Books and rain go well together when the books are inside and the rain is outside!

Annual Outdoor Book Sale - Aug. 29

It's time to make room for new inventory - out with the old books, in with the new!  The Pistil Books Annual Outdoor Book Sale has been scheduled.  We'll have hundreds of great books for one and two dollars, free lemonade, and, of course, thrills!  Hope to see you there--

Pistil Penthouse Premiere Party

Pistil Books had our first literary and musical event in our upstairs space (the Airbnb apartment mentioned in the previous post) this week and it turned out to be really fun.  Our format was an hour of music, food, wine and mingling followed by three readers, then more music as the party wound up.  Since our space was limited, all the guests were invited and we had a full house at about twenty people.

Thanks go to Kamposer and Moss Willow for providing the music, and to Kat Humphrey, Russell Scheidelman, and Stacey Levine for their readings.

Russell reading "Aphoristic Alibis." (Photo by Patricia Spencer.)

Here is Russell's smart and funny piece:


APHORISTIC ALIBIS

Assonance and alliteration, applied and aggregated alphabetically, archly assist an alleged
amateur author aggrieved at assembling aphoristic alibis advertised as art.

But beware--bystanders bemoan being besieged by blatantly belabored buffooneries borrowing
bookish buzzwords.

Catcalls can commemorate curiously contrived consonant concatenations.

Dandified dilettantes derivatively declaiming dubious "Debbie Does Dallas" dialectics deservedly

Enlightening eloquence ever eludes excessively ejaculated elocution effects.

Fastidiously following frivolous formalities fans furtive fantasies favoring foot flight.

Gullible guests, gathered gleefully, go gagging.

Heroic holdovers hover haplessly, hardly hearing.

Ignominiously injured, I issue immediate instructions invalidating imminently insufferable
idiomatic iterations, initially irreversible in intent.

KAMIKAZE KITSCH KEEPS KICKING!

Let like-lettered lexicon listings long lapidate lingering listeners loudly!

Meanwhile, my maniacally monotonous method, marching mechanically, makes me mentally
map many minefields menacing my mission's mad momentum.

Namely: narrowing name numbers, not now noteworthy, nevertheless nestle noxiously nearby.

Oddball occupants of oncoming orthographic outposts offer odious options or otherwise
obliterate orally outlandish opportunities.

Panic pervades Portlandia's potentially poorest pen-pushing poseur ploddingly pickpocketing
Peter Piper's peck.

"Quit quavering!" quibblers quip--quixotically.

Russell resumes reading: "Rotgut rivers regularly rinsed Rapunzel's Rastafarian rope-like ribs."

Something sinister somehow spoiled Society's simpler speculations surrounding several
Spanish strangers spotted Sunday slyly selling Superman's so-called sacred Spandex, slightly

Totalitarian teetotallers torrentially taught transformative truths that tenacious tipplers typically

Uhura University's unearthly undergraduates ubiquitously underwent unnerving urges up until
unanimously using up uniquely unctuous underarm unguents utterly unlike Uranus's.

V veers victorious: vociferously validating Vaudevillian verbosity, voluminously vaunting
vainglorious vassals, voraciously vacuuming Valentino's vast vocabulary.

While Washington wondered warily whether war was what Warsaw wanted, wordsmiths worried
wearily whether words were worth Wordsworth's while.

Xerxes xeroxed "Xanadu".

You yawning yet?

Zulita's Zionism ziplocked Zorro's zipper.

The view from the balcony at sunset. (Photo by Patricia Spencer).

Pistil Penthouse

We have been busy the last two months starting a new business - the Pistil Penthouse Airbnb vacation rental.  We live in a 1903 built house, turned triplex, on Capitol Hill, one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in Seattle.  We live in one of the apartments, Pistil Books is in the renovated basement, and the other two apartments have been traditional rentals until our top floor tenants recently moved to Amsterdam.  We spent about three weeks getting the place ready - some maintenance, painting, and furnishing needed to be done first.  We are located pretty much on top of Capitol Hill, and this apartment has two balconies with some amazing views looking west (towards downtown Seattle and the Olympic Mountains) and south.

View from western balcony:  Space Needle, Olympic Mountains, and one of many cranes that now dot our skyline.

Although of course I was tempted to cover all available wall spaces with bookshelves and books, I restrained myself and partially filled  just one small book case with a selection of titles I thought would be fun for guests to pick up at random and leaf through:  a collection of vintage books on trees and nature, some graphic novels and comics, a book of surrealist games, some art books, and a selection of guidebooks to the city and the northwest.

Our first guests were two women in town for a comparative literature conference - what serendipity!  Comparative literature was my college major.  We received some messages from them during their stay, commenting on their enjoyment of the apartment and the conduciveness of the dining table to working on a presentation for the conference.  In their after-stay review, they said "We were in for several days, and constantly discovering creative touches around the apartment (when you find a Lynda Barry book on the shelf, you know you are in a good place)."

About a week after our first guests left, Pistil Books received an order from one of them for several graphic novels and two of my recycled blank journals.

We have the idea of using the space mid-week when there are not guests to have readings and other art events.  So far, though, the summer is getting booked quickly.

Coming up: Group Collage at Magmafest

When: Sunday, March 1, 2015 - 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM 

 

Where: Hollow Earth Radio,  2018 East Union Street,  Seattle, WA 98122
 

Cost: Free

 
Get your creative juices flowing like lava and join Pistil Books for the making of a wall-sized community collage during the Magmafest Warm Up event at Hollow Earth. The collage will be on the wall at throughout the month. Cut-up materials and supplies provided.

There will also be Magma soup, bread from http://grandcentralbakery.com/, & popcorn (donations for food gratefully accepted).

While you are creating & eating, enjoy Stand-up Showcase. Hosted by Forrest Baum, known in deep time as Hollow Earth’s OG DJ Prismatic. Toe-tapper, pun-cracker, yum-snacker, non-hacker, lunch-packer extraordinaire.

Urgent Crier

We recently came across this altered book in a box of books at a sale.  The cover of the book has a square carefully cut out, not going all the way through the boards, but a partial excision preserving the original interior pastedown endpapers when opened, thus creating a frame for the artist's assemblage. 

The small format book measures 5 1/2"w x 6", and the title is Urgent Crier by French poet Andre Benedetto, published by Robert Morel Publisher, 1966.

The text is in French and the theme of the six poems inside is the horrors perpetuated by humanity: racism, torture, war, and death.

The assemblage shows a tiny figure floating above a circuit board, bracketed by wooden half-circles, attached to the board with yellow yarn.

I often document ephemera found in books, and book owners often leave signs of themselves (signatures, inscriptions, notes, marginalia, coffee rings) but here is an example of a book deliberately physically transformed into art by a previous owner.