Author, indie bookseller, professor, foodie, great cook, you name the genre, she’s got the recommendations!
So. How do you go about choosing books for The Letterbox?
I’m the book buyer at M. Judson Booksellers in Greenville, SC— which is a dream job for a lifetime reader like me. There’s something like 50,000 new books in print every year, so I’m always looking at catalogs from different publishers about what’s coming next. It’s like building a fantasy library that gets bigger every week.
How do you narrow it down?
I’m personally a fan of strong male and female literary fiction, old school hard boiled crime writing, good memoirs, weird biographies and weirder social science. I’m an avid cook, and I’ve raised two kids. I also write books and teach writing— so I’m always reading something different. Good books come in all the categories: from romance to sci-fi to children’s picture books. I love finding the ones that give the fullest picture of a genre, and lining them up for The Letterbox.
“My Letterbox” is even more curated.
Yep– when you sign up for My Letterbox, we send you a questionnaire. For me, it’s like the conversations I have with customers in the bookstore. Not just what you like to read, but what you like to do, where you come from, how you think about things. I pick a book I think you’ll like, and then I write you a little note about why I think you’ll like it.