Open Door Bookstore: celebrating 50 years

If you've been following along with my posts, you won't be surprised that the third most challenged book of 2023 is another about q***r sexuality/gender: "This Book Is Gay" by Juno Dawson.

Le***an. Gay. Bisexual. Transgender. Q***r. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for YOU.

This candid, funny, and uncensored exploration of sexuality and what it's like to grow up LGBTQ also includes real stories from people across the gender and sexual spectrums, not to mention hilarious illustrations.
https://www.opendoor-bookstore.com/book/9781728254326

Tonight! Poet Bunkong Tuon will be joining SCPL to celebrate his first novel "Koan Khmer" in the McChesney Room in the Central Library (99 Clinton St, Schenectady) at 6pm. We will be providing books for purchase at the event!

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor at Union College in Schenectady. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, Verse Daily, among others. He is the author of several poetry collections. In 2024, he published WHAT IS LEFT, a Greatest Hits chapbook from Jacar Press, and KOAN KHMER, his debut novel from Northwestern UP/Curbstone Books. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily.

Have no fear, lovely followers of The Open Door Bookstore page, I did not forget about paperbacks this week! Here they are:
"The Night House" by Jo Nesbo
"Land of Milk and Honey" by C Pam Zhang
"Out There Screaming" by Jordan Peele
"Julia" by Sandra Newman
"The Armor of Light" by Ken Follett

Hey, everyone! Kay Stryker Ackerman recommends "The God of the Woods" by Liz Moore, so I thought I'd feature it today!

When a teenager vanishes from her Adirondack summer camp, two worlds collide

Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.

As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.

Haaaaaaaaaardcoooooooooooooover books!
"Counting Miracles" by Nicolas Sparks
"The Butcher Game" by Alaina Urquhart
"The Hitchcock Hotel" by Stephanie Wrobel (featured in our latest newsletter!)
"The Barn" by Wright Thompson
"The Naming Song" by Jedediah Berry
"Monet" by Jackie Wullschläger

Here's a book that we are so excited to talk to you about today, and it dovetails nicely with our discussions about banned books: "Flamboyants: The Q***r Harlem Renaissance I Wish I'd Known" signed by George M. Johnson and Charly Palmer!

While many iconic figures of 1920s Black America may not have been public about their sexuality at the time, they still found ways to express their identities in essays, songs, poetry, and other art forms. And it wasn’t always pretty or polite! From high-society weddings to raunchy music and friendship feuds, George M. Johnson delivers all the juicy details in twelve short biographies of these iconic flamboyants—like Langston Hughes, Ma Rainey, Zora Neale Hurston, or Josephine Baker—whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history.

Interspersed with Johnson’s personal narrative and their own poetry, Flamboyants illuminates how American culture has always been shaped by people who are both Black and Q***r. Award-winning author and illustrator Charly Palmer brings these flamboyant writers, artists, and activists to life on the page through gorgeous full-color portraits.

In their contributions to American thought and culture, these figures left a roadmap for the future. A future where people like George M. Johnson and others can not only live publicly as a q***r person, but can create art fully immersed in a q***r experience. And lead a flamboyant life!

The second most challenged book of 2023 is "All Boys Aren't Blue" by George M. Johnson; another memoir of growing up q***r.

In a series of personal essays, the prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting their teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to going to flea markets with their loving grandmother, to George's first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black q***r children.

Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young q***r people of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults.
https://www.opendoor-bookstore.com/book/9781250895561

NEW PERCY JACKSON!
"Wrath of the Triple Goddess" by Rick Riordan is available now!

Percy Jackson, now a high school senior, needs three recommendation letters from the Greek gods in order to get into New Rome University. He earned his first one by retrieving Ganymede’s chalice. Now the goddess Hecate has offered Percy another “opportunity”—all he has to do is pet sit her polecat, Gale, and hellhound, Hecuba, over Halloween week while she is away. Piece of cake, right?

Percy, Annabeth, and Grover settle into Hecate’s seemingly endless mansion and start getting acquainted with the fussy, terrifying animals. The trio has been warned not to touch anything, but while Percy and Annabeth are out at school, Grover can’t resist drinking a strawberry-flavored potion in the laboratory. It turns him into a giant frenzied goat, and after he rampages through the house, damaging everything in sight, Gale and Hecuba escape. Now the friends have to find Hecate’s pets and somehow restore the house, all before Hecate gets back. It’s going to take luck, demigod wiles, and some old and new friends to hunt down the animals and set things right again.

We have signed copies of Sally Rooney's brand new book "Intermezzo" in stock right now!

Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common.

Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke.

Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined.

For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.

Priceless information from Sandra Boynton!!

New today! From the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "The Overstory," Richard Powers, "Playground" is on our shelves now!

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while Todd Keane’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough.

They meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, whose deposits of phosphorus once helped to feed the world. Now the tiny atoll has been chosen for humanity’s next adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out onto the open sea. But first, the island’s residents must vote to greenlight the project or turn the seasteaders away.

Set in the world’s largest ocean, this awe-filled book explores that last wild place we have yet to colonize in a still-unfolding oceanic game, and interweaves beautiful writing, rich characterization, profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity in a way only Richard Powers can.

The number one most challenged book of 2023? "Gender Q***r" by Maia Kobabe. As I post about the current list of the most banned books, you might notice a theme-- many of the books are by and about q***r people. These are books by living, breathing authors who need your support now more than ever.

About "Gender Q***r":
In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Q***r is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Q***r is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.
https://www.opendoor-bookstore.com/book/9781549304002

***r

Spooky Season is almost here-- you could whet your appetite for chills, thrills, and scares with "Hereafter Lies: RIP" by local author Elijah B. Wilder!

It's urban fantasy, it's horror, it's a detective story about ghosts, possessions, and a ghost hunting agent trying to recover his missing memories.

It is Banned Books Week! We'll be celebrating all week with the books that *certain people* don't want you and, more importantly, your children to have access to. To start, you can visit https://bannedbooksweek.org/let-freedom-read-day/ for ideas and resources on how to fight back against book bans in our communities.

Today's Staff recommendation comes from Janet: "The Lion Women of Tehran" by Marjan Kamali.

In 1950s Tehran, seven-year-old Ellie lives in grand comfort until the untimely death of her father, forcing Ellie and her mother to move to a tiny home downtown. Lonely and bearing the brunt of her mother’s endless grievances, Ellie dreams of a friend to alleviate her isolation.

Luckily, on the first day of school, she meets Homa, a kind, passionate girl with a brave and irrepressible spirit. Together, the two girls play games, learn to cook in the stone kitchen of Homa’s warm home, wander through the colorful stalls of the Grand Bazaar, and share their ambitions for becoming “lion women.”

But their happiness is disrupted when Ellie and her mother are afforded the opportunity to return to their previous bourgeois life. Now a popular student at the best girls’ high school in Iran, Ellie’s memories of Homa begin to fade. Years later, however, her sudden reappearance in Ellie’s privileged world alters the course of both of their lives.

Together, the two young women come of age and pursue their own goals for meaningful futures. But as the political turmoil in Iran builds to a breaking point, one earth-shattering betrayal will have enormous consequences.

Hands up: who else would face a world ending cataclysm with "but I'm almost done with my book!"?

As the nights turn cooler and we find ourselves indoors, it is the perfect time to invite some friends over, warm up some beverages, and play a a hilarious new game! (These are all a riot, but Karen particularly recommends Stupid Deaths.)

Next Thursday, September 26th at 6pm SCPL will be hosting Bunkong Tuon in celebration of his novel "Koan Khmer" in the McChesney Room in the Central Library (99 Clinton St, Schenectady).

Bunkong Tuon is a Cambodian American writer, Pushcart Prize–winning poet, and professor at Union College in Schenectady. His work has appeared in World Literature Today, Copper Nickel, New York Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, diode poetry, Verse Daily, among others. He is the author of several poetry collections. In 2024, he published WHAT IS LEFT, a Greatest Hits chapbook from Jacar Press, and KOAN KHMER, his debut novel from Northwestern UP/Curbstone Books. He is poetry editor of Cultural Daily.

Our annual Children's Art Contest is on! From now until October 11, kids from first through eighth grade can submit a book cover design for their favorite book. Artwork will be judged for originality, creativity, and interpretation of the book’s theme. Winners from each grade will receive an Open Door gift certificate!

You can find the full rules and a printable entry form right here:https://files.constantcontact.com/2a9009d3101/06ff4d79-9316-48b5-8ea9-9d81846cf42f.pdf

Hey, guess what? New paperbacks, heck yeah!
"Astor" by Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe
"Prophet Song" by Paul Lynch
"The Witch of Maracoor" by Gregory Maguire
"Nineteen Steps" by Millie Bobby Brown
"Leslie F*cking Jones" by Leslie "f*cking" Jones
"The Fragile Threads of Power" by V.E. Schwab
"A Dark and Drowning Tide" by Allison Saft

Yar and yo ho and ahoy there, maties! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day a we have a fine assortment of pirate themed tales for even the driest land lubber. Yaaaaaar!

New fiction for this week!
"Entitlement" by Rumaan Alam (limited amount of signed copies available!)
"The Wildes" by Louis Bayaed
"We Solve Murders" by Richard Osman

We have a wonderful selection of new nonfiction hardcovers this week!
"Want" collected by Gillian Anderson
"Lost: Back to the Island" by Emily St. James and Noel Murray
"Connie: A Memoir" by Connie Chung
"The Third Gilmore Girl" by Kelly Bishop
"On Freedom" by Timothy Snyder
"John Lewis" by David Greenberg

We're starting Banned Books Week a few days early this year-- come on in and support the authors who have had their books banned from libraries, school districts, and more.

Resisting book bans is about liberation. It’s about liberation for schools and libraries from the rash of book challenges that has exploded since 2021. It means liberating the more than 4,240 titles that have been challenged since 2021. It entails liberation for literary institutions who carry books that represent marginalized groups, especially books by people of color and LGBTQ+ people that have been disproportionately censored by book bans. And of course, it’s about liberation for independent bookstores, who offer their communities access to diverse literature and for that have been targeted in book ban legislation. Literature and liberation are inseparable.

We have an incredible new middle grade book to talk about today: "When We Flew Away" by Alice Hoffman is in stock now.

Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" has captivated and inspired readers for decades. Published posthumously by her bereaved father, Anne's journal, written while she and her family were in hiding during World War II, has become one of the central texts of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust, as well as a work of literary genius.

With the N**i occupation of the Netherlands, the Frank family's life is turned inside out, blow by blow, restriction by restriction. Prejudice, loss, and terror run rampant, and Anne is forced to bear witness as ordinary people become monsters, and children and families are caught up in the inescapable tide of violence.

In the midst of impossible danger, Anne, audacious and creative and fearless, discovers who she truly is. With a wisdom far beyond her years, she will become a writer who will go on to change the world as we know it.

Critically acclaimed author Alice Hoffman weaves a lyrical and heart-wrenching story of the way the world closes in on the Frank family from the moment the N**is invade the Netherlands until they are forced into hiding, bringing Anne to bold, vivid life. Based on extensive research and published in cooperation with the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, When We Flew Away is an extraordinary and moving tour de force.