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Category: books
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Take the #MyChicagoBookstore Challenge on Independent Bookstore Day 4/29
On Saturday, April 29th Quimby’s Bookstore, along with two dozen independent bookstores all over the Chicago area, are collaborating to make this year’s Independent Bookstore Day (IBD) an event that celebrates the vibrancy of Chicagoland as a dream destination for book lovers. Each store creates its own unique events and Quimby’s is no exception.
Quimby’s is celebrating IBD in two ways. First, we welcome co-authors Steven Nodine and Eric Beaumont will celebrate the release of Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave & Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984, celebrating our midwest sister city Milwaukee (because hey, let’s show some major metropolises the love on this one-day party). More info on that event at 7pm here.
Secondly, Quimby’s will collaborate with at least 24 stores, jointly sponsoring the #MyChicagoBookstore Challenge, which encourages book lovers to indulge in bookstore tourism by visiting 10 or more stores on that one day.
To begin their trip, readers can pick up a #MyChicagoBookstore carabiner and their first “luggage tag” from the store of their choice (from any of the independent bookstores listed below) with an initial purchase of $25 or more. Get it? “Luggage Tag,” as in Chicago being a dream destination for book lovers? As in, where books take you, somewhere?! SO CLEVER.
Bookstore visits throughout the day (no purchase required) enable them to collect an additional tag at each subsequent bookstore. The payoff comes for visits at the following levels:
- Visit TEN stores and get 10% off at all bookstores listed below for the ENTIRE YEAR!
- Visit FIFTEEN stores and get 15% off at all bookstores listed below for the ENTIRE YEAR!
Also, readers are encouraged to post a snapshot of themselves and their Independent Bookstore Day haul, and enter to win more prizes!
On Twitter: Use #CHIBD17 or @chibookstore
The #MyChicagoBookstore Challenge is being sponsored by the Chicagoland Independent Bookstore Allliance (ChIBA), an association formed last year to raise awareness about the vitality of the area’s indie stores. ChIBA also maintains a Facebook page–#MyChicagoBookstore—where all member stores can post readings and other literary events to create one central “billboard” for literary culture in the greater Chicago area.
#MyChicagoBookstore Luggage Tag Challenge Participating Stores:Quimby’s Bookstore 1854 W. North Ave, Chicago
57th Street Books 1301 E. 57th St., Chicago
Anderson’s Bookshop (three stores): 5112 Main St., Downers Grove, 26 S. La Grange Rd., La Grange, 123 W. Jefferson Ave., Naperville
The Book Bin 151 Church St., Northbrook
The Book Cellar 4736-38 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago
The Book Stall Chestnut Court, 811 Elm St., Winnetka
The Book Table 1045 Lake St., Oak Park
Bookends & Beginnings 1712 Sherman Ave., Alley #1, Evanston
Bookie’s 2419 W. 103rd St., Chicago
Centuries and Sleuths 7419 Madison St., Forest Park
Magic Tree Bookstore 141 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park
Newberry Library Bookshop 60 W. Walton St., Chicago
Open Books (two stores): 905 W. 19th St., Chicago (Pilsen), 651 W. Lake St., Chicago (West Loop)
Powell’s Books Chicago 1501 E. 57th St., Chicago
Read It & Eat 2142 N. Halsted St., Chicago
RoscoeBooks 2142 W. Roscoe St., Chicago
Sandmeyer’s Bookstore 714 S. Dearborn St., Chicago
Seminary Co-op Bookstore 5751 S. Woodlawn Ave., Chicago
Volumes Bookcafe 1474 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co./826CHI 1276 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago
Women & Children First 5233 N. Clark St., Chicago
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Allen Callaci Reads From Heart Like a Starfish at Quimby’s 6/29
Heart transplant recipient and lead singer of lo-fi pioneers Refrigerator Allen Callaci will make his first ever appearance in Chicago to sing a few songs and read from his memoir Heart Like a Starfish (Pelekinesis Press).Heart Like a Starfish is Callaci’s account of that death-defying journey on which he had been given a 20% chance of survival. Callaci’s wonderfully chaotic tale is filled with music and pop cultural references and is told in a Kurt Vonnegut-esque style that captures the horror, humor and healing of his experience.
Callaci has written for The Huffington Post, BK Nation, Inland Weekly and was selected as Inlandia Institute’s author of the week. Heart Like a Starfish was selected as a recommendation by Small Press Distribution for December 2016.
“An inherent and consistently engaging read from beginning to end, “Heart Like A Starfish” is highly recommended for community library American Biography collections.” – Midwest Book Review, November 2016
“Allen shares his amazing story by locating his personal experience in the midst of a network of relationships that sustain and define his life.” –John Davis (Folk Implosion)
“For any generation… An astonishing story about how close life is to death.” – Claudia Lennear, featured singer in the Oscar-winning documentary “20 FEET FROM STARDOM”
Thurs, June 29th, 7pm – Free Event
Here’s the Facebook Event for you to SHARE with all of the people in the world.
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DOUBLE BOOK LAUNCH at Quimby’s! Keiler Roberts Releases SUNBURNING & Jay Ryan Releases NO ONE TOLD ME NOT TO DO THIS, 5/20
Keiler Roberts writes autobiographical comics. Sunburning, published by Koyama Press, is her fourth book in the Ignatz winning series Powdered Milk. keilerroberts.com
“Keiler Roberts’ autobiographical graphic memoir captures the feeling of being a parent as well as an artist and writer better than any book I’ve ever read. There are no cliff-hangers or life lessons. It’s more about the texture of being alive: the melancholy, the unexpected small delights, and its unavoidable sense of aloneness. This book is written with insight, intelligence, and a deadpan sense of humor. I loved it.” — Roz Chast
Jay Ryan has been making screenprints and concert posters in and around Chicago since 1995. No One Told Me Not To Do This (Akashic) is his third book collecting his favorite work, featuring prints made between 2009 and 2015, including posters for bands such as Andrew Bird, Shellac, My Morning Jacket, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., Hum, St. Vincent, and others, as well as posters featuring Lil BUB, Cards Against Humanity, various bicycle races, film screenings, and pictures of sloths, walruses, and other mammals in states of troubled sleep. With a foreword by master illustrator Aaron Horkey, this volume comprises two hundred screenprints with commentary and original drawings used in the screenprinting process. thebirdmachine.com
Jay and Keiler are friends who live in Evanston and both have daughters in kindergarten.
Sat May 20th, 7pm – Free Event
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PHD Comics’ Jorge Cham & Particle Physicist Daniel Whiteson talk what we don’t know about the universe at Quimby’s 5/18
PHD Comics’ Jorge Cham and particle physicist Daniel Whiteson are experts at explaining things. Together they bring that expertise to a book about all the things we don’t know about the universe: WE HAVE NO IDEA: A GUIDE TO THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSE (Riverhead Books). You can think of WE HAVE NO IDEA as a handy guide the universe’s biggest unknowns. Cham and Whiteson have teamed up to spelunk through the enormous gaps in our cosmic knowledge armed with their popular infographics, cartoons, and highly entertaining and lucid explanations of science to explore some of the biggest unknowns in the universe. Why does the universe have a speed limit? What (or who) is attacking earth with tiny, super-fast particles? What exactly is Dark Matter? And for that matter…what is matter?A delightful combination of comedy and cosmology that is as charming as it is informative.
—Zach Weinersmith, creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal“Accessible and hilarious (the two best things it is possible for a book to be), We Have No Idea not only explores WHAT we don’t know, but WHY we don’t know it. You’d think that’d be plenty, but Cham and Whiteson also provide the most credible and up-to-date scientific explanations as to what some of the answers to these huge (and hugely important) questions might possibly be, PLUS puns.”
—Ryan North, author of Romeo and/or Juliet and To Be or Not To BeIn WE HAVE NO IDEA, Cham & Whiteson explore why a vast portion of our universe is still a mystery, and what a lot of smart people are doing to understand it. Along the way, and with over 400 incredible, original illustrations, they illuminate everything from quarks and neutrinos to gravitational waves and exploding black holes.
You may recognize Cham and Whiteson from their video about gravitational waves that went viral earlier this year, or from their individual careers. Jorge Cham is the creator of the popular online comic Piled Higher and Deeper, popularly known as PHD Comics and earned his PhD in robotics at Stanford. Daniel Whiteson is a professor of experimental particle physics at the University of California, Irvine, and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He conducts research using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Thurs, May 18th, 7pm – Free Event
For more info:
phdcomics.com
To interview Jorge & Daniel, contact: Al Guillen at aguillen(at)penguinrandomhouse(dot)com
Invite your friends with the Facebook event invite here!
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Quimby's Welcomes the Authors of Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave & Noise In Milwaukee 4/29
In late-1970s Milwaukee, a compact circle of locals drew from their city’s cultural heritage, as well as the examples of New York, London and Los Angeles, to embrace the new in the form of a dynamic punk rock scene. Drawing on influences from 1960s garage rock and early ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll, Milwaukee punks created a formidable body of work. A new book published by Brickboys/Splunge Communications, Inc., tells the story in the words of the pioneers and participants.
Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave & Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984 chronicles a small number of people who made history in a setting that produced internationally recognized bands such as the Violent Femmes, Die Kreuzen, Plasticland and Oil Tasters. Original interviews with such visionaries as the late Mark Shurilla and Richard LaValliere tell stories of imagination, creativity, resourcefulness and sacrifice. Compiled from hundreds of hours of interviews, Brick Through the Window brings vividly to life a short-lived period of creativity and excitement in a heartland American town that was home to a musical subculture more prolific and diverse than that of many larger cities.
And guess what? The last Saturday in April is Independent Bookstore Day (IBD), so enjoy it here with this extraordinary book! Click here for more info about taking the #MyChicagoBookstore challenge for an opportunity to get discounts on books!
“For the men and women who created the world of music in Milwaukee, the most American of cities, this book is not just an important historical document; it’s critical. Their story is told, and told well. In interviews with the players, and fantastic photos, the adventures and misadventures are chronicled with more gusto than the beer that made Milwaukee famous.” –Wayne Kramer, singer/guitarist/activist, founder, the MC5
Co-authors Steven Nodine and Eric Beaumont will celebrate the release of Brick Through the Window with a discussion and book signing, with recordings of music mentioned in the book.
For more info:
e_beaumont(at)yahoo(dot)com
Invite your friends with the Facebook invite for this event!
Sat, April 29th, 7pm – Free Event
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In the Big Apple? See Jenna Citrus Release Party at Quimby's Bookstore NYC 4/8
Quimby’s Bookstore NYC is at 536 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, (718) 384-1215. @quimbysnyc
Jenna Citrus is traveling to Quimby’s in Brooklyn, New York to release two new books: The Hand Painting Series and An Opened Book End on Sat, April 8th at 2pm.
According to the artist:
“The Hand Painting Series showcases a selection of the best images from my hand paintings. I worked with a variety of individuals to create three finished pieces: a photograph of their hand, a completed 11×14 canvas painting, then a digitally created pattern for use on clothing or other surface design pieces. These images are exhibited in this full color book with over 40 images from the series.”
An Opened Book End weaves a fabric of dreamlike streams into fragmented realities. Pursuing memories from the past and turning experience into verse, Jenna Citrus recounts her years from 15 to 22. Allusive references are made to relationships, trust, heartbreak, family, technology, women, art, culture, creativity, society, inner being, sexuality, and culture’s influence on current existence through internal thought and reflection.Jenna Citrus has always been a hands-on type of painter. When she first started creating her painted designs in 2007, she rarely used brushes. Instead she used her fingers, palms, and sometimes pallet knives. As her work progressed, she found herself pulled toward splattering paint from the paint that pooled in the palm of her hands, creating mixes of colors that were pure and bold. Citrus has worked in a variety of media including graphic art, photography, and portraiture. Jenna wanted to find a way to incorporate the process of how the hands could sometimes be more of a masterpiece than the canvas they were working on. She created a series of images utilizing hands as her canvas. From the age of 10, Jenna enjoyed writing short stories, around 14 her interests shifted to poetry and painting, in a few years she added photography to her craft. She graduated from the University of Southern Indiana in 2015 then was awarded the Efroymson Bridge Year Fellowship in 2016. She is currently working as a full time creator.
To see a preview of the books, check out her Kickstarter.Here’s the link for the Facebook invite for this event!
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Jillian Tamaki Launches Boundless at Quimby’s, In Conversation With Jessica Campbell 6/23
In Jillian Tamaki’s new book Boundless (Drawn & Quarterly), Jenny becomes obsessed with a strange “mirror Facebook,” which presents an alternate, possibly better, version of herself. Helen finds her clothes growing baggy, her shoes looser, and as she drinks away to nothingness, the world around her recedes as well. The animals of the city briefly open their minds to us, and we see the world as they do. A mysterious music file surfaces on the internet and forms the basis of a utopian society—or is it a cult? Boundless is at once fantastical and realist, playfully hinting at possible transcendence: from one’s culture, one’s relationship, oneself. This collection of short stories is a showcase for the masterful blend of emotion and humor of award-winning cartoonist Jillian Tamaki.
“Jillian Tamaki seems capable of drawing anything, in any style, and making it appear effortless. Her writing could be described in the same way, and it’s thrilling to see those twin skills of hers united in service of these daring, unpredictable, and quietly strange stories.”—Adrian Tomine, cartoonist of Killing and Dying
Jillian Tamaki is an illustrator and cartoonist based in Toronto. She is the co-creator along with her cousin Mariko Tamaki of the graphic novel Skim, a New York Times Best Illustrated Book and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Their second graphic novel This One Summer earned a Governor General’s Award and a Caldecott Honor. Tamaki’s first collection of her own comics was the critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller and Eisner Award-winning, SuperMutant Magic Academy.
This event will feature Jillian Tamaki in conversation with Jessica Campbell, the artist of Hot or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists!
Jessica Campbell is from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and is an enthusiast of jokes, painting and comics. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship, and also a comics instructor. She has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Greece, and was selected as one of NewCity’s 2015 breakout artists. She is a member of the Chicago-based comics collective Trubble Club and has published comics with micro press Oily Comics, and contributed to Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels.
Invite your friends with the Facebook invite here!
For more info:
jilliantamaki.com/illustration
Contact JULIA POHL-MIRANDA and SRUTI ISLAM
publicity(at)drawnandquarterly(dot)com / 514.279.2221 ext 225Friday, June 23rd, 7pm. Free event!
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Jessica Campbell reads Hot or Not: 20th Century Male Artists
The history of twentieth-century art is filled with men, but one key component has always been missing: which of these men are boneable, and which are not. Jessica Campbell has created the definitive resource on the subject in this hilarious rundown of male artist hotness and notness with her book Hot Or Not: 20th Century Male Artists, published by Koyama Press.
“Hot Or Not: 20th-Century Male Artists […] is a hilarious, slyly subversive exploration of subjectivity, and the criticisms ultimate- ly reveal more about the critic than they do the artists.” — Oliver Sava, The A.V. Club
“With the way Campbell reduces Borduas’s or Mondrian’s ab- stractions even further, or captures what’s cute about Calder’s mien, she poo-poos macho ideas of artistic greatness, at the same time she showcases her own slyly unassuming skill.” — Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail
Jessica Campbell is from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and is an enthusiast of jokes, painting and comics. She completed her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the Edward L. Ryerson Fellowship, and also a comics instructor. She has exhibited work in Canada, the United States, Australia, and Greece, and was selected as one of NewCity’s 2015 breakout artists. She is a member of the Chicago-based comics collective Trubble Club and has published comics with micro press Oily Comics, and contributed to Drawn & Quarterly: Twenty-Five Years of Contemporary Cartooning, Comics, and Graphic Novels.
For more info:
Facebook event post to invite your friends
jessicacampbellpainting.tumblr.com
Koyama Press, Ed Kanerva at ed(at)koyamapress(dot)com
Friday, November 4th, 7pm – Free Event
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Erick Lyle talks Streetopia at Quimby’s 10/20
After San Francisco’s new mayor announced imminent plans to “clean up” downtown with a new corporate “dot com corridor” and arts district–featuring the new headquarters of Twitter and Burning Man–curators Erick Lyle and Chris Johanson brought over 100 artists and activists together with residents fearing displacement to consider utopian aspirations and plot alternative futures for the city. The resulting exhibition, Streetopia, was a massive anti-gentrification art fair that took place in venues throughout the city, featuring daily free talks, performances, skillshares and a free community kitchen out of the gallery. This book brings together all of the art and ephemera from the now-legendary show, featuring work by Swoon, Barry McGee, Emory Douglas, Monica Canilao, Rigo 23, Xara Thustra, Ryder Cooley and many more. Join Lyle to consider the effectiveness of Streetopia‘s projects while offering a deeper rumination on the continuing search for community in today’s increasingly homogenous and gentrified cities.
“Streetopia’s projects were futuristic, idealistic, historically sensitive, and surprisingly practical. They offer enough ideas to keep anyone who cares about public life, culture, and art busy for the next decade.” –Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, and Where Art Belongs
“Streetopia is a squat, dense little brick of a book, loaded with colorful photographs and reproductions of documents from the exhibition…Reading Streetopia will prepare you to think about what such an exhibition would entail, and why it’s so necessary.” — Seattle Review of Books
Erick Lyle is a writer, curator, musician, and underground journalist. His work has appeared in Art in America, Vice, California Sunday Magazine, Huck, LA Weekly, Brooklyn Rail, the San Francisco Bay Guardian and on NPR’s This American Life. Since 1991, he has written, edited, and published the influential punk/activist/art/crime magazine, SCAM. More info: onthelowerfrequencies.com
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Thursday, October 20th, 7pm – Free Event
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John Olson Reads From Life Is a Rip-Off with Alan Hoffman 10/8
From American Tapes to Wolf Eyes, John Olson is one of the most influential musicians of the past two decades, the obvious bridge between free jazz and noise music. Wikipedia lists over 75 projects with which Olson worked and over 100 Wolf Eyes’ recordings. Olson is now a discerning and sharp-witted author too: LIFE IS A RIP OFF, published by Jack White’s imprint Third Man Records, is a collection of surprisingly untraditional record reviews which Olson wrote over the course of 365 days. He will read from his book on Saturday October 8, accompanied by some of his many instruments.
Local writer-performance artist Alan Hoffman will open for him and debut his novella AUDITIONS about internet-porn casting-couch videos.
LIFE IS A RIP OFF: THE COMPLETE BOOK is 12 months of record reviews—one record a day, every day, for one year. Yes, John “Inzane” Olson aka Inzane Johnny of the bandWolf Eyes aka American Tapes did that. And he reviewed everything from death metal demo cassettes to the Staples Singers’ gospel. Enter into the OLZONE and find out about music you’ve never known, bands from places that you’ve never heard, and then read his review of KANSAS. Reading LRIP will make you re-realize why blues is relevant, why every punk band in America matters, why jazz is good for the heart, and metal will always ride by your side.
“To write music op-ed this good, you have to tap the primordial sap sack, to butterfly stroke the ancient ooze of tune begatment, cave dwell with the knuckle draggers, scratch symbols into the dirt with the freaks and make it rain. He do and it did.” — Henry Rollins
“[Life is a Rip Off] is the best way [John Olson] can add another cubist layer to the sound and visuality he’s already presented for the last twenty or so years. He’s sharing something the people who don’t know him personally don’t get enough of—his textual, syntactical brain, stained as it is with dollar-store spray paint.” — Ben Hell Hall, Detroit artist.
“When John agreed to write a record review a day, back in 20xx, I wasn’t too keen on the idea. Not because I didn’t think he could do it – but that I knew he would do it, even if it became a years-long all-encompassing obsessive task.” — Tovah Olson, The Dead Machines.
“[John Olson] didn’t just introduce me to different worlds, the man introduced me to entire universes.” — Bryan Ramirez, Killertrees Records
“Wolf Eyes . . . sounds like a crumbling Velvet Underground bootleg that’s been burned to ashes.” — NPR, Sept 2015
As always, this event at Quimby’s is free.
More info:
The Facebook invite for this event. Invite your friends!