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The Haunted Bookshop

@bookshopghost.bsky.social

8.2K followers 1.3K following 7.8K posts

Iowa City's home for 47,000 used/rare books, puzzles, games, and two famous cats. 😷 Masks required - 12-6 Central, Mon-Sat - https://www.thehauntedbookshop.com

www.thehauntedbookshop.com

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · Feb 28

Welcome! Make yourself at home!

A few things to know:

1. In this house, love wins.
2. There are no signs on our one-stall bathroom.
3. There are two trusting, loving cats here. Be worthy of their trust.
4. We wear masks here.
5. We will continue to treat our guests with kindness and respect 📚🫂❤️

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 23h

Our last picture of Logan, taken the day we lost him to an inoperable tumor in his neck, in June of this year.

We send love and empathy 💜🐾💜

A charcoal tuxedo cat in a fluffy, gently heated bed. He appears to have stolen our human toddler's favorite plush toy, a frog, and has it tucked next to himself. The carpet beneath has a map of a city on it (for the toddler's toy cars to drive around)

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 1d

I'm actually concurring precisely with you, just forgot to add the </s>

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 1d

Esky is utterly dignified and busy patrolling the front door. Dunno what the earlier post was about.

NEW ARRIVALS!

Email [email protected] or call 319-337-2996 to order. We ship! In-person shopping (masks required) 12-6 Mon-Sat.

A slightly worried orange tabby cat with a white blaze on his nose and white boots strides purposefully past the newel at the bottom of the stairs. Behind him is a glass display case and a very heavily loaded library cart.

Assorted nonfiction, including some picture books about gardening, a crit book about Haruki Murakami, some memoirs including two by Stephanie Land, some history including Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly, and more

Lots of suspense fiction and a little True Crime. Nialle really enjoyed Tana French's The Searcher; we also have some Lucy Foley, Mary Higgins Clark, Dorothy Sayers, Walter Mosley, and more recent books, too

Reckless is already gone. These other Young Adult books, including the absolutely stunning "The Book Thief" by Marcus Zusak, won't last long!

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 1d

Sophie hides when Esky gets the zoomies.

NEW ARRIVALS!

Email [email protected] or call 319-337-2996 to order. We ship! In-person shopping (masks required) 12-6 Mon-Sat.

Under the raised edge of a wooden counter, partially hidden by a stack of plastic shopping baskets, a long-haired tortoiseshell cat pokes her head out with a vaguely worried expression, ears pointing forward.

So many memoirs - Ivan Doig, Helene Hanff, Li-Young Lee, Frank Conroy of course, and more; also an activism handbook, a Greek dictionary, you know we are a bit eclectic

Some poetry, a lot of fiction. Donald Hall, Robert Lowell, Tennyson, Chekhov, Wassmo, Lustig, Robinson, also a row of classic children's fiction like Little Women, but also including House of the Scorpion, which feels more on the nose than ever

Middle grade and early teen books from the likes of Linda Sue Parks, Gary Soto, Laurence Yep, Pam Munoz Ryan, Kate DiCamillo, and more

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 1d

🍷🍷

Whatever, mate. This IS my pumpkin spicy-fied user name.

🎃

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 1d

Google Lens really isn't terrible at optical character recognition. I don't trust its translation, particularly not of title pages, but I do let it translate the internal flaps or back of book text if I'm not sure what the book is about. ...then I verify the heck out of anything I use 🙄😆

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 2d

I don't mind a little casual cryptography, but if I had only a title page or two to consider (and that's often the case)... I'd be very, very glad of this visual key.

The caption on this figure reads "The Gothic Typeface used in Meyers is different from other Gothic alphabets." Below, there are six columns showing the upper- and lower-case forms of the letters in the Gothic typeface used in Meyers Orts, followed by their modern Latin equivalents in a nice, highly legible serif typeface. That upper-case Q would have driven me bonkers.

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 2d

Interesting. And weird. Like, some of us are reasonably successful, but it makes you wonder what their qualifications are for businesses to offer to buy. There's not a lot of conventional value to strip at this place, though I guess I have a pretty good credit score? Who knows.

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 2d

Hahahahahahaha no.

We are not interested in selling to a private equity firm.

Someday, when I'm legit 'old', I'll think about selling. Ideally, a seller-financed sale to someone who observes sharply, loves readers, and has insatiable curiosity. (And retail resilience).

🎶It ain't me, babe🎶

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 2d

Linking our staff picks thread... because not only do we love telling people about these books, we're still excited to add more to the list!

bsky.app/profile/book...

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · Jul 25

Let's do this. One like, one book we love.

Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · Jul 25

One like, one thing I hate

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 2d

Over 350 lifelong favorite books, with every one in print linked to its @bookshop.org page.

Why do we mention this?

Because it's FREE SHIPPING O'CLOCK, bibliophiles!

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · Jul 25

Let's do this. One like, one book we love.

Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · Jul 25

One like, one thing I hate

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 3d

NEW ARRIVALS with Sleepy Esk!

Email [email protected] or call 319-337-2996 to order. We ship! In-person shopping (masks required) 12-6 Mon-Sat.

An orange tabby cat with a white blaze on his nose squeezes his eyes shut while snuggling on a fluffy wool blanket. One ear is up - he's awake - but he's definitely ready for a snooze

A group of about 40 books, including "Killers of the Flower Moon", a book of Roman ruins with clear overlays that show what they originally looked like, Jamaica Kincaid's gardening memoir, more memoirs by Michael Perry and Debra Marquardt and others, a smattering of history, and more

More nonfiction, including a book about a massive court settlement for Black farmers, John McPhee's Rising From the Plains, Tobias Wolff's Vietnam memoir, a Russian idiom dictionary, and a row of 20 more memoirs

And still more nonfiction! Lives of mathematicians and scientists, a few books on orchestral music and instruments, a book about the children's book publishing industry, some folklore, some psychology - very miscellaneous

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Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

Fantômas, Le contrebandier de DEI @theefantomas.bsky.social · 3d

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 3d

Shaming people for not hustling 24/7 is a very successful literacy deterrent.

Why deter people from reading? Because people who don't read are lonelier and less likely to experience empathy. So much easier to control!

And why control them? So that shareholders can extract more value from labor!

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 4d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 4d

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 4d

I see much more similarity between now and the days after the Kent State Massacre than I do the weeks after Harpers Ferry, let alone late March 1861.

The dehumanizing is underway, and the anger is real, but creating a political entity, calling up troops and cutting off supply routes hasn't started.

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 5d

Gizmo and the Ewoks

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 5d

Good evening, and welcome to NEW ARRIVALS!

Email [email protected] or call 319-337-2996 to order. We ship! In-person shopping (masks required) 12-6 Mon-Sat.

A long-haired tortoiseshell cat reclines on an old quilt covering a wingback chair. One of her eyes is half-closed, as though she has just awakened, yet she also looks remarkably dignified, something about the angle of her chin and ears and the intelligence in her expression.

A group of fiction books, ranging from a graphic novel called "Martin Pebble" to a stack of classic novels by Henry James, Emily Bronte, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, etc, and then a British edition of Vonnegut's Hocus Pocus, several novels by Nawal El Saddawi, a bunch of Roald Dahl's short fiction for grownups, a few mystery novels, a book of Dickinson poems - about 40 books altogether

A dozen children's books, including the house favorite "There's a Monster in the Alphabet" and a Richard Scarry picture dictionary as well as classics like Owl Moon, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Star Fisher, Little Women, and more.

A typically weird selection of nonfiction, including a book of Diane Arbus photography, a history of the Transatlantic cable, the Oxford Companion to Chess, Eminent Victorians, a mushroom guide, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and more

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 6d

Real. I'm probably giving most of them too much credit.

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 6d

They'll also need a workforce to replace all the people they're arresting. Take away my ability to insure my family in any way other than working for Azon or whatever, and... Tag! I'm it!

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 7d

Taking aim at the ACA targets America's small businesses.

That's not an accident.

Eliminating the conditions that allow small businesses to thrive pushes more people out of work and, from there, into the debt of the biggest businesses. It also, conveniently, cuts off potential competition.

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Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

The Society of Authors @societyofauthors.bsky.social · 8d

A searchable works list has been released to identify the authors’ works that were stolen by US Corporation Anthropic, to train its AI models. It includes UK authors whose works were copied without their permission or payment.

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The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 7d

I had forgotten that was Willem Dafoe. I'm a bit too young to remember the war, so it was films like this that helped me put what adults said into context, but also... whew. The emotional content in the usual summer blockbusters is so pale by comparison.

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 8d

And we (bookseller and adjunct) have far less job security than has existed for people in union-represented jobs for many decades.

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 8d

This would be an excellent skill to list on your resume for a season on the sideshow circuit.

The Haunted Bookshop @bookshopghost.bsky.social · 8d

The one on the left should be a touch Shirley Jackson and have four-pointed stars ✨ in the cover design. The one on the right is deffo updated Jamaica Inn, and the cover must include a damsel fleeing a sinister building

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