BOOKCELLAR NOTES (3/25/03 Tues):

CDs played today:
- Mekons OOOH! (Xgau: A)
- Stan Getz THE COMPLETE ROOST RECORDINGS (3-CD)

---Received new CD from guitar-whiz Roger Lasley:
Lasley, Roger WALKING BACKWARDS, 03, (more solos and duets for platpick guitar; a fourth CD by the man who sure can pick ‘em!), music CD, new 15.00
---I haven’t listened to it yet, but the previous three were fine listening. So I am looking forward to hearing it.

---I thought about dispensing with the email updates I send, but I think that pushing information into in-boxes is one thing and having people seek it out for themselves is something else. This blog is something I am trying to have some fun and informality with instead of having be an outright crass business website. I figure a proper website is still to come perhaps someday, but for now this easy and costless blogsite is what I seem to be able to do. I don't want to promote it heavily, just casually mention it here and there; because a lot of it will probably end up being unself-edited drivel that will be extraneous to what book-buyers are interested in finding out. So I will continue with the updates, even trying to be a bit less sporadic in their emissions.

---Word from Tartarus Press is that COLLECTED MACABRE OF L.P. HARTLEY is almost gone, and UNCLE STEPHEN, THE LOST STRADIVARIUS and THE SALUTATION are now out of print.

---I forgot to mention that the McFarland books posted yesterday get a 20% discount for members of the discount plan. I notice that my practice now of adding two months to subscriptions with each invoice written means that people who buy on a bi-monthly basis effectively now get their subscriptions for free.
---If my paper catalogs become so infrequent that only wired customers have the information to be able to continue ordering regularly, then a significant sector of my constituency will be lost. I do not think that would be desirable; but printing and mailing costs, not to mention the time spent printing, reducing, laying out pages--and the 40-mile round trip to my printer in Ames, taken twice for each printing--to leave off and pick up catalogs--has become something I seem to have become increasingly unenamored of.

---Received word of the latest Consumer Guide by Robert Christgau (“As Long as I Still Can”)