The Bookish Ball: A Community Celebration of the Bookstores of Harvard Square
Saturday, September 12th from 1:00 pm until 8:00 pm
Highlights of the 2nd Annual Bookish Ball include
1:00 until 7:00 p.m. - The “Passport to Wisdom” Book Stroll – Wander through the bookstores and printed word shops of Harvard Square and gain “Stamps of Wisdom” on your Bookish Ball Passport! Wisdom Stamps will allow you to be entered to WIN TWO FREE ROUNDTRIP VIRGIN AMERICA TICKETS with a drawing at 8:00 p.m. Enjoy special in-store events, refreshments, entertainment and shopping discounts at participating stores all afternoon and evening.
From 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. - A Grand Public Bookish Ball on Palmer Street!
Join us for a party to honor and celebrate Harvard Square’s Book Stores spanning the decades from 1882 through 2009! This year, we invite the public to help us toast the 35th anniversary of The Million Year Picnic and the 30th anniversary of Revolution Books with cake and awards!
Dance to bookish beats! EAT CAKE with literary themes designed by Harvard Square restaurants! Hear Guest Authors and Local Dignitaries! Bring the kids to a Literary Themed Costume party and parade at 1:00 p.m. with special prizes! All events are free and families are encouraged to attend.
Pick up a “Passport to Wisdom” between 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. at the HSBA Kiosk (Corner of Palmer and Brattle Street) or at one of the participating bookstores the day of the Bookish Ball. Get your “Passport” stamped at any of our participating bookstores and be entered to win TWO FREE ROUNDTRIP VIRGIN AMERICA AIRLINE TICKETS! Stamped passports must be returned to the HSBA Kiosk by 6:00 pm to be entered to win the Grand Prize of free airline tickets. The “Passport to Wisdom” features a map of Harvard Square bookstores, newsstands, comic book stores, restaurants and shops participating in the Bookish Ball. The “Passport” features special offers and a schedule of special Bookish Ball events.
We hope that you will join us for this celebration of Harvard Square as a place of books and bookstores, public learning, public discourse and a community that treasures the printed word.
BOOKSTORES PARTICIPATING IN THE PASSPORT TO WISDOM STROLL!
Get your “Passport to Wisdom” stamped at any of the following locations:
Curious George Books and Toys
The Globe Corner Bookstore
The Grolier Poetry Bookstore
Harvard Book Store
Harvard Book & Binding
The Harvard Coop
Raven Used Books
Revolution Books
Schoenhof’s Foreign Books
Tokyo Kid
and just outside of Harvard Square: Bryn Mawr Books
SPECIAL IN-STORE EVENTS & DISCOUNTS (Check back often for complete details).
Curious George Books and Toys, 1 JFK Street, 617-498-0062, established in Harvard Square in 1995 www.curiousg.com
Musician Charlie Hope will play two acoustic sets, one early and one later in the afternoon.
Local New England artists/authors Matt Tavares (Lady Liberty, Zachary's Ball), Jo Knowles (Lessons from a Dead Girl, Jumping Off Swings), and Steve Kluger (Last Days of Summer, My Most Excellent Year) will be reading, signing books, and leading art and writing activities.
There will also be an assortment of activities led by our staff, including book-making, belly-dancing, and cupcake decorating.
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Lame Duck Books, 12 Arrow Street, 617-868-2022
Year established in business: 1983. Year established in Harvard Square: 2005 www.lameduckbooks.com
Lame Duck specializes in Used and Rare Books including American & European Literary First Editions, Latin American Literature, Philosophy, Intellectual History, Autographs, Manuscripts, and Illustrated Books. Art, Appraisals, Archives We are always interested in purchasing individual volumes and collections of books, letters and manuscripts of literary, philosophical, artistic and historical significance. We provide consultation and appraisal services and serve as agents in the institutional placement of archives of importance.
Visitors can pick up a passport and get it stamped and enjoy something good to eat!
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The Globe Corner Bookstore, 90 Mt. Auburn Street, 617-497-6277
Year Established in business in Harvard Square: 1982. Formerly located at 28 Church Street, www.globecorner.com
The Globe Corner Bookstores, an independent bookstore located in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA, carries one of North America's largest selections of books and maps for the traveler. We provide a full range of travel and outdoor recreation reference materials for a destination: guidebooks, maps, atlases, recreation guides, travel literature, nature guides, photography books, cookbooks, and language products.
Bookish Ball Passport holders will receive a free Boston Pop-Up Map or 9" Inflatable World Globe with any purchase on September 12th!
AND throughout the month of September – A Wall Map Sale
All wall maps are 15% off list price through September month-end.
AND The Destination of the Month: Africa! All books, maps and language aids for Africa are 15% off list price through September month-end.
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Grolier Poetry Book Shop, 6 Plympton Street 617-547-4648
1:00 - 4:00 - Poetry Reading & Book Signing with Patricia Fargnoli and Diana Der-Hovanessian.
Hours of Operation: Tue. & Wed.: 11:00AM-7:00PM, Thu.-Sat.: 11:00AM-6:00PM Sun. & Mon.: Closed
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Harvard Book & Binding Service, 5 JFK Street, 617-233-6756
Established in Harvard Square in 1970 – 39 years!
On display a book about the 12 Caesars printed in Italy in 1475!
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Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave., 617-661-1515
Year Established in business and in Harvard Square: 1932 www.harvard.com
Over it's 77 year history, Harvard Book Store has opened several bookstores in the greater Boston area, including the famous Harvard Book Store Cafe (1980-1994), located on Newbury Street. In Harvard Square, Harvard Book Store originally opened in 1932 at 19 Boylston Street (what is now JFK St.). The Harvard Book Store Law Annex once stood at 12 Plympton Street, from approximately 1965 - 1991.
Harvard Book Store, Harvard Square's literary landmark, is a privately-owned, independent bookstore serving the university and neighborhood community since 1932.
Harvard Book Store Events:
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Special Events:
4:00 p.m. Werner Sollors investigates A New Literary History of America
The Harvard Book Store is honored to welcome distinguished Harvard professor Werner Sollors to discuss the new collection of essays, A New Literary History of America.
America is a nation making itself up as it goes along—a story of discovery and invention unfolding in speeches and images, letters and poetry, unprecedented feats of scholarship and imagination. In more than two hundred original essays, A New Literary History of America brings together the nation’s many voices. With entries ranging from The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick to Jackson Pollock and Alfred Hitchcock, and with contributors like Gish Jen, Sarah Vowell and Camille Paglia, this new collection breaks open the world of American literary and cultural history and demonstrates how connected our cultural creations are to one another and to the world that surrounds them and gives them shape.
“This is an astounding achievement in multiculturalism and American studies, which in the age of Google and the Internet lights the way toward serious interpretive reference publishing.”—Publishers Weekly
This event is free; no tickets are required. Werner Sollors is Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. His research focuses on American and Comparative Literature, with a special emphasis on issues of ethnicity. His previous works include Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture, Neither Black Nor White and Yet Both: Thematic Explorations of Interracial Literature, and most recently Ethnic Modernism. He has also edited volumes of multilingual and interracial American literature.
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The Harvard Coop, 1400 Massachusetts Avenue, 617 499-2000
Year Established in business and in Harvard Square: 1882 www.thecoop.com
First Location, March 1882: 13 Harvard Row- College House on Mass. Ave – a few shelves in a fruit stand. Second Location, April 1882: Drury’s Tobacco Shop in Holyoke House. Third Location, October 1883: Dane Hall, Old Law School Building – replaced by Lehman Hall. Fourth Location, 1903: Lyceum Hall, replaced by present store in1924-1925.
Special Events:
11:00 am & 1:00 pm - Children’s Story Time, Crafts & a Special Visit from Madeline (costume character).
3:00 pm - Reading/Signing: David Updike Old Girlfriends
Full of sparkling wonder and poignant melancholy alike, Old Girlfriends is a clear-eyed vision of the world we live in. Drifting from the unrequited to the secretive, the familial to the first poetic moments, this soulful collection leaves no avenue of expression untouched.
David Updike, son of prolific American writer John Updike, is author of several books for young readers as well as the collection, Out on the Marsh. He currently lives Boston, Massachusetts.
5:00 pm - Discussion/Signing: Mo Lotman, Harvard Square: An Illustrated History Since 1950
From the square’s tweedy aspect in the 1950s through its many transformations in the ’60s,’70s, and beyond, author Mo Lotman gives a decade-by-decade account of Harvard Square’s history, traditions, and lore. The bookstores, the billiard parlors, the barbershops, the booze and burger joints: they’re all here. Based on interviews with more than a hundred of the square’s denizens, illustrated with archival photographs, and graced with texts by John Updike, Bill McKibben, Governor Bill Weld, and others, Harvard Square brings “the smartest urban space in America” to vivid life.
Mo Lotman is a freelance writer and graphic designer. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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James & Devon Gray booksellers
12 Arrow Street, 617-868-0752 www.graybooksellers.com
Established in Harvard Square in 1993.
Antiquarian booksellers who have specialized for fifteen years, in procuring and selling books printed form the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries!
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Newbury Comics 36 JFK Street, 617-491-0337 www.newbury.com
Established in Harvard Square in 1978. Newbury Comics is an independently owned retailer specializing in music, movies, books and comic books, and pop culture goods. Owned and operated by its original founders, Newbury Comics is run with a consistent guiding force that has always championed new ideas, experimentation and alternative vision over monolithic corporate structure.
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Raven Used Books, 52-B John F. Kennedy Street, 617-441-6999,
www.ravencambridge.com Year Established in Harvard Square: 2005
Raven Used Books specializes in carefully selected scholarly used books. Adding over 1,000 books a week, Raven always has fresh stock on the shelves. Particularly strong categories include philosophy, art, architecture, history, political theory, anthropology, religion, literature, and poetry. Raven Used Books are always buying good paperback and hardcover books. Please make an appointment to sell books. Feel free to contact us for more information or questions about stock.
Raven is pleased to offer 20% off any one single book, per customer, for one purchase on the day of the event! Refreshments will be served!
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Revolution Books, 1158 Massachusetts Avenue, 2nd Floor, 617-492-5443
Year Established in business: 1979. Year Established in Harvard Square: 1986 www.revolutionbookscamb.org
More than a store, Revolution Books is a center of revolutionary ferment – a crucible in which the most liberating science, revolutionary communism, interacts and mixes it up with all the streams of progressive, radical, and revolutionary intellectual life — a place to engage the whole world.
At the core of Revolution Books is the path breaking work of Bob Avakian which goes beyond even the best of the previous socialist societies and re-envisions a socialism that is both visionary and viable, on the road to the truly liberating future of Communism. With its communist foundation, Revolution Books features a broad and diverse cutting edge collection of revolutionary and political theory, literature and poetry, history and science, and a selection of periodicals. Revolution Books will continue featuring author readings, revolutionary programs and discussions, poetry readings, films and other events.
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Schoenhof’s Foreign Books, 76 A Mount Auburn Street, 617.547.8855
Year established in business: 1856. Year established in Harvard Square: 1948 www.schoenhofs.com. Shoenhof’s was originally on Mass Ave originally where Bob Slate Stationary is now located.
Founded in 1856, Schoenhof’s is the oldest foreign language book dealer and the one of the oldest bookstores in the United States. Established in Harvard Square, in 1948, the oldest foreign-language bookseller in the country stocks volumes for adults and children in more than 50 languages. They also carry dictionaries and language-learning materials for 700-plus languages and dialects, plus quirky gift items and translations of children's classics. They also offer comprehensive distribution, mail order, and special order services and are the best source for JOYCEANA - a selection of titles in a variety of languages for the Joyce aficionado.
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Tokyo Kid, 36 JFK Street, 617-661-9277 www.tokyokid.com
Year established in business and in Harvard Square 1993
The Bookstores and Printed Word Shops of Harvard Square:
Harvard Coop est. 1882
Grolier Poetry Book Shop est. 1927
Harvard Book Store est. 1932
Schoenhof’s Foreign Books est. 1945
Bentley Publishers est. 1950
Out of Town News est. 1955
The Crimson Corner est. 1962
Harvard Book & Binding Service est. 1970
Million Year Picnic est. 1974
Newbury Comics est 1978
Revolution Bookstore est.1979
The Globe Corner Book Store est. 1982
New England Comics est.1988
James and Devon Gray Books est.1992
Tokyo Kid est.1993
Curious George Books and Toys est. 1995
Lame Duck Books est. 2005
Raven Used Books est. 2005