I can't talk about Love of Reading month without talking about Bookmans! Before I started working here, at Bookmans, I read some but definitely not as much as I do now. As a kid I didn't really read at all, most of my book reports were written by reading the back of the book. I was a slower reader then most kids, which was embarrassing, so I just stopped. In 2004 I read this book I borrowed from the library called "Lamia: A Witch by Georgia Taylor," it was amazing and I enjoyed it more than I had ever enjoyed any book before.

BOOKMAN (the word-loving superhero of all things Bookmans) was out in the Tucson community recently to share with students the source of his superpowers - BOOKS!! The kids gathered around BOOKMAN to enjoy a special story time and then received a fabulous Bookmans t-shirt. Students each took a turn hugging and high-fiving the superhero before settling into a morning of reading. BOOKMAN will continue to make special appearances at schools throughout February in celebration of Love of Reading month. So keep an eye to the sky - he might be visiting your school next! Check out our Flickr page for more photos!

The Annual Winter Visitors Expo greeted the city of Mesa and visitors from across the country (and some from Canada!) on Wednesday morning. Exhibitors of all types and services were set up at the Arizona Wing of the Commemorative Air Force Museum to show off what our beautiful city has to offer. Bookmans was on hand providing attendees with free Bookmans Cafe House Blend coffee samples and delectable pastries, just a small sample of what we offer at our new Cafe at our Mesa store! Not only did attendees have a quick pick me up and breakfast, but everyone was able to take home a free book and brand new Bookmans tote bag. Who could resist free coffee, pastries, and a book? I know I couldn't!

Being a self-professed Book Nerd, I thought I’d get our Flagstaff Bookmans employees to compile a favorite books list for 2009.  I asked the staff to each list a few of the books they read this year and loved.  Here are some stand-outs: The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon made several lists, as did The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and Fool by Christopher Moore.  Anyone who has shopped our store in the past nine months knows that Linda’s favorite was The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Some favorites are by authors close to home: T.Greenwood was in the store to read and sign her lovely novel Nearer than the Sky and local Gary Paul Nabhan’s Coming Home to Eat was also a hit. Others are classics by Jane Austen and Vladimir Nabokov, or rising literary stars like Alice Munro. As it turns out, we Bookmans employees are as passionate and diverse about the books we read as the books we buy and sell!

Do you have a favorite Christmas tradition you refuse to vary?  When I was a kid, and even after we’d left home, my brother and I insisted that our family be very ritualistic about Christmas.  We had to eat dinner as a family on Christmas Eve, and then we turned-out all the lights but the tree, and sat listening to Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper” on the record player while drinking eggnog with nutmeg.  We would open one present apiece, unless, of course, there were an uneven number of presents, in which case the person with the most presents would open more until we had an even number for Christmas morning!

Best-selling novelist Gregory Maguire, whose Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West has been adapted into Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, will speak and sign at the Loft Cinema this Wednesday, June 17th, at 7 p.m. This annual GLBT literary event is presented and funded by Friends of the Pima County Library and PCL's GLBT Committee, and is absolutely FREE and open to the public.

This is my third year taking part in the award assemblies for winners of Bookmans' Reading Challenge; after three years you'd think I'd be just the teensiest bit jaded. But when the paper is ripped off the giant $5,000 check and the room explodes with screaming kids and teary-eyed teachers, it's like reliving that very first assembly. Thanks to Village Vista in Phoenix and the Peak School in Flagstaff for helping to recapture that magic again this year.

Follow the Reader, a blog for those who "read and recommend books," held an impromptu discussion on Twitter last Friday about how booksellers viewed Twitter in the workplace. Many members of the Bookmans staff are active on Twitter and a few chimed in on how the service has integrated into our everyday work routine.

Daniel M. Davis is the unique mind behind Steam Crow, "a Phoenix, Arizona company that creates quirky, imaginative characters and strange stories for people with a monster imagination." Davis will bring his cast of colorful robots and monsters to the Bookmans Youth Tent at the Tucson Festival of Books on Sunday, March 15th, from 10-11 a.m. and 1:30-2 p.m. Steam Crow will also take part in the Local Author Event in the Bookmans Main Tent on Sunday from 11 a.m. - 1 p.m.

The AVN Entertainment Expo, also known as the Porn Show, was held in two halls in the Sands Convention center next to the CES show, and the co-mingling of geeks and porn people in the lobby was priceless. As one would expect, much of the talent was dressed in very revealing outfits, and if I had a nickel for every CES attendee in uncomfortable shoes shooting sidelong glances (or outright staring) at the copious amounts of flesh on display, I’d be yada yada…  Comedy gold.

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the bestselling Outlander series, which includes Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, and A Breath of Snow and Ashes, as well as the spin-off series of Lord John Grey novels. She will be reading at the 11th annual Arizona Highland Celtic Festival in Flagstaff on Saturday, July 19th at 3 p.m., and will sign at the Bookmans booth immediately following. Here she discusses her writing method, research, why she isn't surprised Lord John Grey is such a popular character, the upcoming Outlander graphic novel, Dr. Who, and An Echo in the Bone, the follow-up to A Breath of Snow and Ashes.

Two-thirty in the afternoon on Bookmans’ trade counter has the potential for being either a rare and magical moment or a total crap fest. For a couple months I had been in the middle of a bad string of crap fests. Tantrums and communication breakdowns had been plaguing my book-buying shifts. Some days I would blame the coffee. Other days I would determine that it was just human nature in general that was at fault. Looking back, I think it might have had something to do with the price of gas.

Drawn into the ever-more mysterious world of the Baudelaire orphans, Lemony Snicket (aka author Daniel Handler) crafts his most self-aware and implication-riddled work yet in The Penultimate Peril.

Number 12 of A Series of Unfortunate Events refers to all its previous installments to such an absurd fault that the returning reader will find it comfortingly familiar, but leave new arrivals lost at sea. Snicket's verbal dexterity is still tempered with a Victorian voice which imparts a classical and timeless quality to the setting.

I arose from my short three hours of sleep on Friday morning to get prepared for an even longer day at the show. My friend Albert and I headed over to the bus stop by our hotel to get the shuttle to the Convention Center. Among the people waiting for the bus was a guy wearing a baseball cap with an Arizona flag on it. I began talking to him and found out he was an artist from Tucson. After a little more small talk he slowly revealed to me his area of interest and expertise, Furries or anthropomorphic characters.

In remembering the 1979 cartoon and 1988 BBC versions of The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe a viewer might wonder how necessary offering this story for a third time is when there's dearth of other just-as-good literary sources waiting out there. Is the remaking of movies our visual recital of stories, like the oral retelling of folktales? The persistence of culture, or just safe commercialism? Ultimately the proof's in the work, and if it's managed to keep with and fill out the mythos more. This latest version of C.S. Lewis' Lion does just that.