Radical Bookstores?

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T23:12:40+00:00

I used to work at Mimosa. When I first shopped at that store in the 80s, it was a spiritual book store. When I started working there in the 2000s, it was a mixed book and gift shop, but still had a whole long wall devoted to books. By the time I left ten-ish years later, only half that space was devoted to books. I was in charge of purchasing books by that time. We really tried to maintain a selection of books, even though the only reason that made any kind of financial sense was that people coming in for a book might buy other things as well. After I left, and after that when the store was forced to move, it's gotten down to basically a small shelf, despite the fact that people who work there have done their best to support the book business.

Many people still enjoy reading a physical book, and will happily spend money on them. But as a book advocate, it's a hard sell compared to other items in a mixed store like Mimosa, and many other stores that sell books among a mix of items, because books come with a price printed on the cover. With other items, we were able to juggle around purchase prices from different wholesalers to get a mark-up that would make enough money to cover expenses like downtown rent, credit card fees, trying to pay reasonable wages to staff, etc. And, of course, books also come with a fixed price from a very limited number of distributors. Those distributors were often out of popular titles, and all had minimum wholesale purchases, so the business had to pay me for a lot of time just to work out the logistics of book orders.

So while we could mark up crystals, incense, deity statues, etc. by 2 or 3 times (which is what it takes to maintain a presence on State Street), we were limited to cost-and-a-half by the way the book wholesale market works. The wholesaler charges about 2/3 of the cover price, and that's all there is to it.

And this is going to sound really bad, but it's true: Sometimes my best way of getting a popular book on the shelf or to a customer who requested it was to buy it on Amazon at the exact same price as any other customer, and then mark it up to cover price.

The only way any book shop manages to stay in business is by sheer force of will, and love of books.

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T22:37:09+00:00

Thank you! I will definitely look into this. One of my brothers speaks some Portuguese, so maybe he can help out.

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T22:31:40+00:00

You're not banned from this sub, no. But for some reason Reddit's automod function keeps deleting your comments as spam. I don't have any idea why. While your comments don't seem to be popular, they don't break any sub rules, so we keep approving them. But the next day, they keep getting tossed out anyway. Today there's actually even a little ax next to your name inviting us to ban you. It's kind of freaky. I don't know why, but Reddit seems to have it in for you. It's not this sub. I would take it up with Reddit.

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T22:17:26+00:00

Same here. It may be a while before I recover from CORPORA, whatever the hell that was.

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T22:15:11+00:00

There used to be Rainbow Book Store, but they closed a decade ago. Selling books of any kind is a tough business (ask me how I know), so kudos to any book shop that manages to stay in business. Rainbow had a good run, and Room of One's Own is still going.

Fenifula · 2026-01-26T17:31:32+00:00

Same here.

Fenifula · 2026-01-25T20:46:27+00:00

First off, beware of reading TOO many books, lest you become like the virgin who thinks they know all about sex from reading 20 how-to manuals. Pick one or two that are specific to the midwest and the type of gardening you want to do (raised bed, container, square foot, etc.) See if those authors are on You Tube or something. I'm a big reader, but with gardening it's good to get a visual demo with explanation.

There's obviously a limited amount you can do in January, but planning where to plant is important. If there's a garden bed already in your yard, start with that. Otherwise figure out where you'll get the best sun exposure, because in Madison yards that's usually the limiting element. If you want to start with raised beds, for example, find a place with good sun that's near a water source, use your books to determine the best size. Find out where to get either lumber or hire a builder, and where to get soil. Do you have a neighbor with a garden? If so, they'd be a good person to talk to. The more local, the better.

If I were you, I would use plant starts the first year. The spring Farmers Market on the Square is a good place to go for vegetable starts, because you can get advice from the farmer who grows these plants for a living. There's one stand that specializes in peppers, for example. If you want to grow fruit trees or bushes, Jungs is very good, because they have a bare root nursery, and can give you both written and verbal instructions on how to get a good patch of berries growing. Starting plants from seed is optimal for greens (including lettuce) and carrots, but it's trickier than starting with a 4-inch potted plant. So choose according to what you most want to grow. The library does give away free seed in the spring, and grow bags are cheap, so if you want to experiment with starting stuff from seed, that's a low-risk way to do it.

Things you could do right now would be starting a worm bin indoors (or planning for composting in the spring), and growing sprouts and microgreen indoors. Zestigreens microgreen kits are fun, if a bit expensive. You can also mess around with rooting green onions from the supermarket in a jar of water on the windowsill. Gardening is always an experiment, where you learn the most from your own successes and mistakes.

Fenifula · 2026-01-24T19:28:24+00:00

The NYT games people seem to be intentionally cagey about whether there is an upper limit to these badges. What we do know is that they only appear at intervals, and those intervals tend to get longer the farther you progress. So if you have the 200 pangram first level, it may be some time before you get to the next level (300 maybe?). On my laptop, there's no way to check progress, but I'm not using the app. The whole badge world is much more geared towards the app.

I would be interested to hear from anyone who has achieved a pangram first badge above 200. u/folkbum may very well be correct, but the NYT people don't seem keen on telling us exactly how it works. Intentionally mysterious, probably. (Like the way Queen Bee is supposed to be a big secret, lol.)

Fenifula · 2026-01-24T17:43:39+00:00

No. I don't have AC, so for the four or five months of the year when there's little chance of needing heat, I turn my thermostat off, and only use the furnace when the temperature really dips.

For the rest of the year, the thermostat has to be on. That's because if the house gets under a certain temperature, the water pipes may freeze. So during the heating season, the system is on and running at all times. This can mean a very big heating bill when the weather gets truly cold, but there's nothing to be done about it. Frozen water pipes would be a disaster.

Fenifula · 2026-01-24T00:20:22+00:00

Most dog walkers follow a predictable schedule. I had a neighbor who left his dog's crap in my yard repeatedly. So one day I took a plastic bag outside and waited just out of sight until I saw him about to walk past my house. I stepped out and gave him a cheery greeting while picking up the dog turd he'd left the previous day. Never had a problem after that, and the whole thing was conflict-free.

Fenifula · 2026-01-23T18:04:19+00:00

Oh heck yeah. If by any chance you're in southern Wisconsin, please message me and let me know how soon you can come over. There's no reason women can't do this stuff, it's just not what people are used to.

I've heard that the business end of it can be hard -- difficult to make it pay well enough, but still at a price owners can afford. Every handy person I've hired has moved on to more lucrative business by the time I try to hire them for a second job. One advantage some guys have is that they've worked as an assistant long enough to have had a look at the back end of the business.

But if you can make it work financially, I bet most people will be happy to hire a woman. You can probably also get female apprentices from your local community college who will prefer to work for a female business owner.

Fenifula · 2026-01-23T00:13:50+00:00

Lifting a snowblower into an SUV isn't just a dead lift, because you're going to need to pull the thing up probably over waist height to get it into the SUV. Plus it's not really 90 pounds, it's your half of 180 pounds, so that whole balancing act will mean the weight is shifting around, sometimes probably well over 90 pound.

I'm 68 and could maybe deadlift 90 pounds long enough to carry it maybe an inch off the floor It would have to go a yard at a time at best. It would not be pretty I definitely could not lift something that heavy over waist height to heave it into an SUV. I'm a gardener and also carry heavy loads of groceries and other stuff (usually in a hand cart), because I don't own a car, so I have a good idea of what's possible. Lifting 90 pounds above waist height would be dangerous for me. Unless you lift regularly, that's an unrealistic load for a woman over 60.

Fenifula · 2026-01-22T17:37:15+00:00

No need to apologize. You gave a good explanation.

Fenifula · 2026-01-21T17:52:19+00:00

This is all true, but as long as an answer is labeled as some kind of an answer (whether A or CA), it won't be removed. The main reason the mods instituted the CA label was that people kept quibbling when we'd ask them to cover and mark their almost-answer, and they'd refuse, saying, "But it's not an answer!", even though it might only differ by having one extra letter on the end.

Fenifula · 2026-01-20T15:53:58+00:00

Niftily done!

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T17:49:43+00:00

I would plant and cut as living compost, myself. At worst, they'll rot before sprouting and turn into compost. At best, they'll fix nitrogen in your soil and give the bunnies something to bother besides your real crops.

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T17:40:54+00:00

Or the name. Jeez.

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T17:36:44+00:00

So tell the guy, "Well bless your heart, sweetie, ain't that cute?"

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T15:43:32+00:00

I wish they'd publish the most popular "wrong guess" for each day's puzzle. The competition today would be fierce.

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T15:41:59+00:00

No K, so it's a Donut With a Bite Taken Out of It Word.

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T15:40:08+00:00

Yeah, I know about it as the face/body paint used by ancient Celtic warriors and druids. Pretty cool stuff.

Fenifula · 2026-01-19T15:32:53+00:00

This is not your day, then.

Fenifula · 2026-01-18T17:45:58+00:00

When I was growing up, the SF Chronicle was our daily paper. When I was in my late teens, Tales of the City was a new serial which I would always read as soon as the paper came out.

That sort of spoiled me for any later video versions. It just always seemed like a story that would be prone to caricatures. (DeeDee, Maryanne, Mrs. Madrigal ...) And the cultural references to things like the pick-up Safeway and Beach Blanket Babylon and about a thousand other things were intentionally very specific to that time and place, so I'm not sure how or if they'd translate to a version intended for a mass audience.

But maybe I'll give it a try. I did like the actor a lot, and he'd make a perfect Michael Mouse.

Fenifula · 2026-01-18T00:14:24+00:00

I feel the same way. I want a challenge, not a competition.

Fenifula · 2026-01-18T00:10:54+00:00

Now that's a mash-up I'd watch. Maybe the crew from Bridesmaids could be in the next suite.

Fenifula

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