Ep 15: Javier Ramirez, The Book Table Drunk Booksellers: The Podcast

Epigraph We are thrilled to welcome our new BFF to Drunk Booksellers: Javier Ramirez, manager of The Book Table in Oak Park, IL and co-host of industry get-together Publishing Cocktails.

Listen on iTunes, Stitcher, our website, or subscribe using your podcatcher of choice.
If you want to get our show notes delivered directly to your inbox—with all the books mentioned on the podcast and links back to the bookstore we’re interviewing PLUS GIFs—sign up for our email newsletter.
This episode is sponsored by Books & Whatnot, the newsletter dedicated to books, bookselling, and bookish folk; check out their newsletter archive here. Follow Books & Whatnot on Twitter at @booksandwhatnot.
Introduction In which we apologize profusely for the delay in our episode posting, bond over Kelly Link, and get excited about books that are... already out
We had the pleasure of chatting with Javier nearly every week for a month while trying to record this episode (#techfail), then ran into a few other delays (#lifefail), but WE HAVE PREVAILED. That said, we talk about books that are already out as if they're forthcoming and we're drinking a nice "summer" drink because it was, you know, still summer when we first started this wild ride of an episode. Just pretend you're a time traveler visiting the halcyon days of late August 2017. 
 
We’re Drinking Vodka & Tonics with NO FRUIT

Javier's Reading a bunch of nonfiction for the Kirkus Nonfiction Prize
The Sun in Your Eyes by Deborah Shapiro
Heartbreaker by Maryse Meijer
The Seventh Function of Language by Laurent Binet
Ranger Games by Ben Blum
Kim's Reading Mother of All Questions by Rebecca Solnit
(and check out the Huffington Post article about being mansplained to while reading about Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me)
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie
The Store by James Patterson... 'cause Patterson is awesome, gives booksellers (including your grateful hosts) money for fancy things like student loan debt and ridiculous urban rent, trolls Amazon for funsies, and rocks a photoshopped Santa hat like a boss:

Kim's reading aloud: My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
Emma's Reading MIS(H)Adra by Iasmin Omar
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado... Emma's favorite story from the collection is “Inventory”
Lumberjanes: Unicorn Power! by Mariko Tamaki
Spinster by Kate Bolick
 
Forthcoming Titles We're Excited For Kim's Epic List of Titles that Are Already Out
The Golden House by Salman Rushdie
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
Miss Kopp’s Midnight Confessions by Amy Stewart
What Happened by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
Afterglow by Eileen Myles
Never Stop by Simba Sana
The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison
Javier's Excited About The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne
Release by Patrick Ness (if you haven't read Ness before, Javier recommends you start with The Chaos Walking series, which beginning with The Knife of Never Letting Go)
Dinner at the Center of the Earth by Nathan Englander (also mentioned The Ministry of Special Cases and What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank)
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch (pubs 2/6/18)
The Grip of It by Jac Jemc

Emma's Excited About The Glass Town Game by Catherynne M Valente
In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan
We Were Witches by Ariel Gore (How to Become a Famous Writer Before You’re Dead)
A Loving, Faithful Animal by Josephine Rowe
Chapter I [26:50] In which Javier conquers the Chicago bookselling scene
Javier started at Tower Records (RIP)
He currently manages the Fiercely Independent Chicago-area bookstore, The Book Table.

Javier has worked at pretty much every bookstore in Chicago. Other than the OG Powell's. Unless you're talking time travel.
Javier's epic Tour de Bookselling (chronologically):
Tower Books --> Crow