Bookings - The King's Co-op Bookstore Podcast Bookings - The King's Co-op Bookstore Podcast

While the pandemic is great for listening to podcasts, running the bookstore right now has made it pretty tough to actually make episodes! We hosted the bookstore's first official Zoom event last night with Danny Caine, owner of Raven bookstore in Lawrence Kansas, and this episode is the recording from that live Zoom event!

When a company's workers are literally dying on the job, when their business model relies on preying on local businesses and even their own vendors, when their CEO is literally the richest person in the world while their workers make low wages with impossible quotas... wouldn't you want to resist?

Danny Caine, owner of Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas has been an outspoken critic of the seemingly unstoppable Goliath of the bookselling world: Amazon. In this book, he lays out the case for shifting our personal money and civic investment away from global corporate behemoths and to small, local, independent businesses. Well-researched and lively, his tale covers the history of big box stores, the big political drama of delivery, and the perils of warehouse work. He shows how Amazon's ruthless discount strategies mean authors, publishers, and even Amazon themselves can lose money on every book sold. And he spells out a clear path to resistance, in a world where consumers are struggling to get by. In-depth research is interspersed with charming personal anecdotes from bookstore life, making this a readable, fascinating, essential book for the 2020s.

Pick up a copy of the book at www.kingsbookstore.ca

Bookings is back during the pandemic! Paul is virtually joined by Peter Counter to talk about all things horrific and his new book Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays. They talk about specific horror books, films, and video games along with larger discussions on the nature of horror itself.

Peter Counter is a prolific television and video game critic who writes about culture and technology in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Counter started his writing career as a playwright, graduating from York University’s Theatre Studies program in 2010, with a specialization in collective creation. His essay “Saint Tornado-Kick” was published in the 2019 Eos Award-winning anthology Empty the Pews. Peter writes about horror on his website www.everythingisscary.com. You can also find him every Friday night on Instagram where he hosts a regular segment, “Friday Night Fright Club,” in which he leads an audience through a choose-your-own-adventure live event.

Please be advised this episode contains a content warning for discussions of trauma, violence, PTSD, and suicide.

Order your copy of Peter's book from the King's Co-op Bookstore here: https://tinyurl.com/PeterCounter

Paul is joined by Amy Shira Teitel, a spaceflight historian, author, and public speaker who, much like her subjects, is one of the few academically trained young women in her field. Amy came to talk about her new book Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight.

Amy has written for more than two dozen websites including the BBC and Time Magazine online, earned a Group Achievement Award from NASA as part of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto team, and appears frequently as an expert interviewee on a number of TV shows and documentaries. She also maintains her blog, The Vintage Space, and its companion YouTube channel.