Book Beat

We were honored to have Patti Smith visit and sign Bread of Angels before her Detroit fundraiser at Ideation Orange.

Photo by Lisa Marie Smith.

💙🦋 📚🪽 #pattismith

Signed copies available in store or online at www.thebookbeat.com/bookshop/cat...

Scorpions looks especially interesting— hopefully a future TB review. #surrealism 📚💙🦋 we love #wakefieldpress

The Book Beat A new post was just added to the Book Beat website and newsletter.

Happy New Year Blue Sky Booklovers! 💙📚 💙📚💙

“Gratitude for gifts,
Even Snow on my bedspread
A gift from the Pure Land.”
–Kobayashi Issa, from Spring of My Life #booksky

A New Year’s newsletter, happy browsing!

Available just in time for the Destroy All Monsters retro-spectacle Mythic Chaos opening at the Cranbrook Museum November 1st… “Like a Vampire, you’re gonna be one too!!!”

#destroyallmonsters #artistbook #zine #noisemusic #stickers

The Book Beat A new post was just added to the Book Beat website and newsletter.

Our October newsletter is packed with literary delights. Happy Readings! www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/202...

“What fresh hell is this?”
—Dorothy Parker

Wonderful seeing graphic novelist and educator Nick Sousanis back in his town —his book Unflattening is an absolute mind-bending gem!

Thanks Nick! We ❤️ Unflattening—genius book!

Candy Darling, Hanuman books, VF, first printing 1992
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“You must always be yourself, no matter what the price. It is the highest form of morality.”
― Candy Darling

Available in store , at Book Beat gallery online, or DM for more info. $150/📚💙#candydarling #hanumanbooks

The Book Beat A new post was just added to the Book Beat website and newsletter.

A compilation on the foundation, dreamers and revolutionaries of the Surrealist movement in its 100 year anniversary. www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/202... 💙📚 #booksky #surrealism

Tom Robbins, Whose Comic Novels Drew a Cult Following, Dies at 92 He blended pop philosophy and absurdist comedy in best-selling books like “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” and “Skinny Legs and All.”

“Art exists to make sense of the chaos within us and around us.”
Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker #tomrobbins

Alice Coltrane fan club alert! The facsimile reproduction of Monument Eternal and the lavish oversized devotional Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal have landed. Essential accoutrements for your shrine. Om, Shanti, Shanti Om. #alicecoltrane #booksky #spiritualjazz #freejazz @akashicbooks.bsky.social

Surrealism’s Legacy of Antifascist Activism A show at Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum is an urgent study in the meaningful art-political networks that stressed solidarity and unity over isolation.

German exhibition on the Surrealist response to Anti-fascism. hyperallergic.com/984916/surre...

Some favorite reading that survived the wreckage of 2024📚💙 #booksky

“The ideal or the dream would be to arrive at a language that heals as much as it separates.”
― Susan Sontag

#bookstores are magic

Thanks Lisa!💙📚

Happy Winter Solstice everyone.
❄️🌬️☃️
“In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”
—William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
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Illustration from Wintercake by Lynne Rae Perkins

Happy Holidays!
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"Books may well be the only true magic."
~Alice Hoffman

Illustration: a Christmas card by Edward Gorey 💙📚 “A Future Unremembered Poet of the Seventeenth Century Accepts a Christmas Cookie From the Great Veiled Bear” #booksky #edwardgorey #indiebookstore

Profile portrait of Toni Morrison in black and white. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

Toni Morrison's words from 2015, as timely as ever:

“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

#art #writing #courage #booksky

“Forgiveness is the only way to reverse the irreversible flow of history.”
—Hannah Arendt, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism 💙📚#books 🌶️ #booksky #hannaharendt

Bowie's Bookshelf: The Hundred Books that Changed David Bowie's Life | Bookreporter.com Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyeb...

“Bowie, who refused to fly and was often subjected to long train rides to get around the various countries he toured, would carry with him a series of trunks that contained up to 1,500 books that he regularly read.” tinyurl.com/4c5tvt4d

In Memoriam: David Bowie's Top 100 Favorite Books | The New York Public Library Though one of his songs is titled "I Can't Read", David Bowie was actually quite the voracious reader.

Vanity Fair: “What is your idea of perfect Happiness?”
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David Bowie: “Reading”.
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Bowie was known to always travel with a trunk filled with books. A collection of his top 100 books is at the NYPL. Are any of these a favorite? #booksky, #bookchallenge #davidbowie #books www.nypl.org/blog/2016/01...

Thank you for all you do in support of reading and indie books. 💙📚

December 1: Gesu School Library Fundraiser - The Backroom Sunday, December 1st, from 12-5 p.m. will be our Tenth Annual Bookraiser for the Library of Gesu School at Book Beat (26010 Greenfield Dr., Oak Park, MI 48237). 20% of purchases can be donated to the ...

Today, Dec 1st from 12-5 PM is our 10th annual fundraiser for the Gesu school in Detroit. 20% of your purchase may be donated to buy new books for the library. 💙📚 #booksky www.thebookbeat.com/backroom/202...

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“The genius of Ezra Jack Keats was in capturing all of the force, fury and power of a revolution within the quiet beauty of his art.” —Floyd Cooper

Just a Snowy Day (1962) by Ezra Jack Keats was a Caldecott Award winning picture book in 1963.
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The beloved, innovative, award-winning children’s story—was the most checked out book in The New York Public Library’s 125-year history. ☃️ #booksky #bookchallenge #ezrajackkeats 💙📚

“Don't show me frogs and snakes
And listen for my scream,
If I'm afraid at all
It's only in my dreams.”
—Maya Angelou
💙📚 #booksky #mayaangelou

YouTube video by YouTube Movies The Booksellers

A great documentary on NYC bookstores and book culture. #bookstores #books #booksky #bookculture

Illustration by Maurice Sendak from A Hole Is to Dig by Ruth Krauss, 1952 #mauricesendak #ruthkrauss #booksky 💙📚