Where great words and great works meet

I think it's pretty obvious that everyone on our staff has a life-long, borderline-dysfunctional love of books. But what I love even more are books by great authors. When I say great, I don't just mean great at writing. I mean genuinely great individuals, the kind of people we can admire as authors and as human beings. Let me give you some examples:

1. Dave Boling, author of Guernica. When I read Dave's book I laughed and cried so much that I actually had to stop reading it in public because I was disturbing people. When he came to Boise to do a signing with us down on the Basque block I told him how much I loved his book, and he hugged me! In fact he hugged almost anyone who said something nice about his book. He was sincere and passionate about every aspect of this lovingly rendered story. I could not have been more pleased when he won the Pacific Northwest Book Award, he absolutely deserves the recognition.

2. Joe Gores, author of Spade & Archer: The Prequel to Dashiell Hammet's The Maltese Falcon. Gores was scheduled to make a book tour for this brand new book including a stop here with us. However, upon finding out that his wife was very ill, he made the decision to stay home with her instead. That's a man with his priorities straight, if you ask me! I'm not much a mystery reader, but I wanted to buy his book just to support someone with that kind of integrity.

3. Dave Eggers, author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and others. Eggers is an amazing author, he has a few books and is a frequent contributor to McSweeney's and many other publications. I recently stumbled on this video where Eggers is explaining a tutoring program that he spearheaded. Inner-city kids can come to the McSweeney's office after school to get help on writing assignments from professional authors. Did I mention this happens behind a pirate supply store front? How cool is that? To hear him talk about it follow this link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/233



-Wally