Only two pages into this book, I remember thinking “This woman is a firecracker!” I’ve never read one of Sylvia Browne’s books or seen one of her sessions, but Psychic: My Life in Two Worlds kept me fascinated the whole way through. Browne lives an extraordinary life, and has overcome difficulties that many of us can relate to — multiple marriages, financial difficulties, family dysfunction, you name it and Browne has been there. She has also brought the supernatural to the public’s attention, written many books, founded a church, and read and channeled for decades.

Her directness and honesty about her life, both the good and the bad, is refreshing. But probably most endearing is her wry and active sense of humor. Asides to the reader abound, as she reminds us over and over again that no psychic is ever psychic about themselves. Her incredibly strong faith shines through as well, and those familiar with her spirituality will clearly recognize the source of her public work. Behind-the-scenes looks at some of her television appearances, projects, and readings were not only intriguing but often hilarious — I don’t know if I will ever think of her again without picturing her wrestling an imaginary snake around a room!

Fans of Sylvia’s will find much of interest; those of us who know her by reputation alone may be surprised at what they find. You can check out her book trailer below!

Hi All — the following is a letter I posted on Facebook recently. I send it with an open heart to all our wonderful supporters and customers:

Dear breathe books customer,

I need your help.

Throughout the almost six years since I opened breathe books we’ve been quite successful. We attract authors and presenters from around the world, we have turned a profit every year since we opened, and we hired Jenn Northington as full-time manager late last year.  It is a good business. Classes are often full and people show a great interest in our programs, but the truth of the matter is that people are simply not buying as much as they used to.

Still we have had such wonderful success, but I am not immune to the current economic situation. It’s become increasingly difficult to keep cash flow at a level to cover operating costs. That money allows us to pay presenters to come to breathe, and to stock the great variety of books, music, gifts and other items on our shelves, drawing a diverse group of customers. Inventory is a major investment.

To address this we’re doing something that may sound counter-intuitive: we’re going to expand. I believe that I need to bring you more of what you want.  In order to adapt to this new reality, breathe books is launching an expansion program.

The expansion plans include diversification of products, the addition of new classes, and ultimately the purchase a beautiful space to hold more classes, workshops, concerts, cooking classes and more. Here is where we need your help.  In order to finance the new business plan, we are starting a community investment program, modeled after a successful program in Brooklyn where the community recently supported the creation of a new bookstore in their neighborhood.

So I’m asking you today to help breathe books thrive as a center of community and learning. You can either donate money, invest in the store and receive interest on your principal (2% – 4% – you choose your interest), or purchase gift cards that never expire but have a start date one-year from purchase. Rather than having money sit in a CD in a bank, every time you come to breathe you will actually see your money at work. This is not only an investment in breathe books, it’s an investment in our community.

Please let me know if you are interested in learning more.  I’d be happy to send you the promissory note, investor’s agreement, and a business disclosure form, per Maryland State law. And of course I’d be happy to talk to you about how we will use the money raised in order to create a deeper foundation for the bookstore and continue to offer classes, books, products and experiences that enrich us all.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this letter and for considering becoming a breathe books community investor!

With much love and gratitude,

Susan L. Weis

proprietress, breathe books, LLC

What if you could become a different person? Shifts in identity happen, in small ways, all the time: the lawyer who becomes a yoga instructor, the sedentary office worker who becomes a triathlete, the atheist who begins going to church or the churchgoer who becomes an atheist.

I think sometimes of the driftwood statues on the island where I’m from. I grew up on Denman Island, which is on the west coast of Canada—it’s the size and shape of the island of Manhattan, but there are only a thousand or so people there. Here and there around the island are magnificent large-scale sculptures made of driftwood; sometimes recognizably human (I’m thinking particularly of the joyous-looking freeform driftwood people dancing in a circle that I used to ride my bike past as a kid), sometimes more mysterious and abstract.

The sculptor, Michael Dennis, holds a Ph.D. in neuropsychology from Stanford. I read somewhere recently that he left his teaching post at UC San Francisco in 1980, moved to this remote island and built a house. I remember marveling at his sculptures as a young child. “I heard he used to be a neurosurgeon,” I remember adults murmuring. I found myself thinking even as a child about what a colossal shift this must have been, what a spectacular reinvention.

I’ve thought a lot about questions of identity and reinvention, and I find that it comes up fairly frequently in my work. In my first novel, Last Night in Montreal, it’s quite literal: Lilia, abducted as a child by her non-custodial parent, spends her childhood moving from city to city, always just a step ahead of the authorities, changing her name so frequently that she sometimes forgets what it is. In The Singer’s Gun, which just came out this week, the question of identity is more nuanced: the book is largely concerned with a man named Anton Waker, who was raised in an atmosphere of corruption—his parents were dealers in stolen goods—but longs to find a more honorable way of living in the world.

How are you going to live in the world? I think this question lies at the heart of most of reinventions, most of the shifts in identity that we experience in our lifetimes.

Note: Mandel will be breathe’s first ever guest blogger! Her post coming soon — stay tuned!

Emily St. John Mandel has a way with characters — after reading one of her books, they are so real that you’d swear you saw them on the street the other day, or passed them in line at the coffee shop. The Singer’s Gun has great pacing and a shocker of a plot, but it’s the engaging, conflicted, sweat-blood-and-tears cast that steal the show.

This book has been described by some as a thriller, and that’s definitely one way to look at it. But as suspenseful as the storyline is, what kept me turning pages was the humanity at the heart of the intrigue. Who are we? What does it take to become who we want to be? And what happens when who we want to be and who we were are polar opposites? Mandel tackles all of these questions, and while there are no answers, there is much food for thought.

This quote from Library Journal sums it up well: “In this intricate novel, her second after Last Night in Montreal, Mandel underscores the notion that everything in life comes with a price tag, and sometimes that cost is remarkably high.”

P.S. I read (and loved!) Last Night in Montreal as well! Feel free to ask me about it (and then good luck getting me to shut up).

So I just learned about Meatless Mondays from my friend Sheron Foster in Arizona. It’s a movement sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Is this already happening in Baltimore? If so, I haven’t heard about it!  See info here: http://www.meatlessmonday.com/join-the-movement/

Truth be told, I’ve had meatless Mondays for over 30 years now, but I want to encourage you! You know the health benefits. You know the benefits to the animals. You know the benefits to the Earth (and if not, please see Food, Inc.). To learn more about more about meatless cooking you can take one of my Ayurvedic vegetarian cooking classes or look into other classes being offered around town. You can learn about raw food from Daniela Troia at Zia’s in Towson. Emily’s, in Cold Spring, has vegan goodies. My friends Don and Renne Gorman have been dishing up vegan delights both savory and sweet at the Waverly market on Saturdays for years!  Lots to choose from now in Baltimore — easy enough to go meatless this Monday and maybe Tuesday and Wednesday as well!

If you find yourself interested or curious about going Veg please come by the store and we’ll show you some books that can help the transition.

Go VEG!

susan

Hi All,

The paragraphs below were included in the email newsletter I sent out on March 3. I wanted to post it here to share it with as many people as possible. We are all in this together! All for one, one for all, after all, we are all one!

read on…and thank you!

February was been a tough month. I know it was for all retailers and many self-employed people. We lost at least a week of business — and in the case of Hampden — more like 10 days because of the parking situation or lack there of. Most of us agree that it’s pretty much impossible to make up for the loss of income. But I’m no quitter! So I’m asking you to please think twice (and think of us!) when you need a book, gift or gift card. Every dollar you spend locally, and with us, supports the community and keeps your favorite shops in business. We really need you this month.

Please help us make up for snowy February and help us see the light of spring in March! The blizzards, while beautiful in some ways, were truly devastating to local businesses. We are always trying to bring new and exciting things to you and we would love it if you could make an extra trip or two to breathe this month to see what’s in store.

Despite the snow, breathe books’ expansion plans are moving forward! In a few weeks I will send out notices to friends and family who have expressed their interest in the future of breathe books and have offered their financial support. With your new and continued support, we will not only be here, but we will be able to offer new programs, retreats, and oh so many other things! If you are interested in participating in our exciting new plans, please let me know and I’ll send you some information.

I’m am so proud to be a part of this amazing community and intend to be for years to come. The sky is the limit and I hope to partner with you to create it.

Thank you!! Sending much love to all,

Susan

Ok, so I know it’s my February pick, but the books are in NOW and I just can’t wait! So, with no further interruptions, here it is: The Girl with Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw.

As someone who never grew out of fairytales, books like Shaw’s debut novel are a true pleasure. Meet Midas Crook, photographer and recluse extraordinaire, and Ida Maclaird, who is slowly but surely turning into glass. In the remote landscape of St. Hauda’s Land — a place so realistically portrayed you’ll forget it doesn’t exist in real life — stranger things can (and do) happen.

I knew from the beginning that I would love the story, but I had no idea how much I’d come to love the characters. It’s an ensemble cast beautifully rendered, each with surprising dimensions and hidden quirks. I hate to use the much-repeated “I laughed, I cried,” but I really did (ok, I didn’t ACTUALLY cry, but I almost did, and I absolutely laughed out loud). Midas’s young and spunky friend Denver and the pompous and blustering Carl Maulsen, whose strange relationship with both Ida and Midas drives the story in new directions, are two of the stand-out minor characters that still bump around in my head.

I was caught by the simplicity of Shaw’s style, as well. The novel is descriptive, full of small details and gorgeous panoramas, but his prose never becomes flowery or ornate.

For anyone who loves to meet new characters, is open to the stranger and more delicate sides of life, or just loves a good yarn. Let me know what you think!

As those of you know who read my weekly newsletter, I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions. I make gentle “suggestions” to myself. That way I don’t feel like I’ve ever failed! It’s just a suggestion…nice and easy.

So I’m going to suggest that I write a blog at least once a month and I’m really going to try and stick to it! Here it goes…

2009 brought extraordinary clarity to my life. I settled into a sort of new way of being. My Ayurvedic routines, cooking, clearing out and getting used to my weight loss all offered me great satisfaction.  A period of calmness and space. I didn’t know what would fill up the space, but I cleared out and got used to it. Sort of a wait and see but be happy here and now kind of thing.

The recession had me look at the shop in a new way. After five years in business that was a good thing. I hired an extraordinary manager, Jenn Northington, to help me put into action all sorts of new ideas (and to offer new ideas!), and I took a good, hard look at what people want and how I can best serve the community.

It took quite a bit for me to hand over the keys, so to speak. Like giving up the baby to a nanny. But by letting go I opened up so many new pathways. It’s the loosening of the grip. Once the fist is open, so many new things can fall into your hands and that’s exactly what happened.

So that’s what’s happening now. New ideas are flowing and you will soon see a new and improved breathe books! We are more carefully curating the books we buy in order to bring you the very best. We will be delving more deeply into the subjects that you love to read – books on alternative health and healing modalities, yoga, meditation, Buddhism, nutrition and Ayurveda. We are also adding carefully chosen fiction and poetry books – books we love and can’t wait to share with you!

You will also notice more gifts items in the shop as well as more tools to help you with your practices. You’ll find more yoga-related items, Ayurvedic remedies, natural and organic body-care products, essential oils, Flower therapies and more. We’ll also have more seating (!) and coffee and tea! Oh – and wi-fi as well.

We are so excited to introduce these changes and improvements to breathe books. I look forward to hearing your feedback and would love to hear what you want to see out of your bookstore.

Come by to visit soon!

much love,

susan

Just found this on YouTube, and wanted to share it with you all. Probably some of you were there!

Part 1 of a 7 part video series:

I recently started writing a column for Shelf Awareness, a book-industry newsletter, and I thought I’d share it with you all. I’ve talked with a couple of you about e-books and e-readers in the store, and it’s a conversation I’d love to have with anyone and everyone who is interested! Let me say right now that selling e-books is something we’re working on here at breathe, and as soon as we have it all figured out, you’ll be the first to know.

The Nitty Gritty E-Reader

Shelf Awareness welcomes Jenn Northington, general manager at breathe books, Baltimore, Md., who will write a regular column about her e-reader experiences. Here’s the first installment:

I’ve been a bookseller for five years, four of those at the independents Changing Hands, the King’s English and, currently, breathe books, and I’d like to remain a bookseller for the next 50. This requires, of course, that there still be bookstores 50 years from now–an uncertain future I am heavily invested in. Simultaneously, I am excited about the possibilities that I see digital publishing bringing to booksellers and bookstores (physical ones, I should note). While I’ve expressed this enthusiasm at two panels for the ABA this year (BEA and NAIBA), I’ve also heard (and sometimes agreed with) the, shall we say, less enthusiastic views.

Because digital publishing is still developing, most of the reviews, articles, blogs, etc., are commentary or speculation, feature lists or (frequently) wish-lists. This has made me wonder: What is it like to own and use an e-reader? How does e-reading compare with reading, something I’ve been enjoying for practically my entire life? With help from Shelf Awareness, I decided to join the ranks of the estimated five million e-reader consumers. My goal is to uncover and report on all the nitty gritty details of e-reading that get lost in the pro and con rhetoric.

My aim is not to put digital publishing on a pedestal nor to grind it into the dust. Rather I hope to give booksellers a platform of hard knowledge about e-readers that will enable us to talk to our customers thoughtfully and accurately, without judgment.

The first order of business was to pick my weapon of choice. Lord knows, there are umpteen million e-readers. However, I tend to ignore reviews in favor of my “poke it before you buy it” policy–if a piece of software or hardware doesn’t do what I want or expect it to do, I move right along (unless I am absolutely forced to use it for some reason). This puts 90% of e-readers out of the running; the only ones you can try before you buy are the Sony Touch and Pocket Editions, and Barnes & Noble’s nook. (The Kindle was out of the running automatically because–need I say it?–if it doesn’t support the ePub format, it doesn’t support independent bookstores. Plus, you can’t get your hands on it without purchasing it.) The time I spent at Best Buy and B&N was fascinating, and not at all what I expected. I encourage every bookseller to do the same–even 20 minutes playing with an e-reader is an investment in your job, in your ability to talk knowledgeably to customers about books in all their many forms.

I spent about an hour at Best Buy playing with the Sony floor models, and was shockingly underwhelmed. For second-generation devices, I found the Sony Readers disappointing at best.

The Pocket Edition is attractively small and very basic. It does the minimum of what you’d expect an e-reader to do: it holds books and turns pages (and when I say turns pages, I mean that the screen goes gray and wiggly for a second. This was true for all the e-readers I played with). The buttons are pretty obvious, and work as you’d expect them to (which is actually something of a feat, in this day and age), and aren’t in obnoxious locations. For $200 though (did I mention I’m cheap?), I expect a little more function.

The Touch Edition was especially disappointing, since I had read reviews that got me excited. Yes, it has a touch screen, which means fewer buttons, which in theory is a good thing. It also has a stylus. You can write with it, right on the screen, and highlight passages–which is pretty neat. However, I soon found that the controls are less than precise. I’d try to highlight something and get the auto-dictionary instead–the stylus would select a word and up would pop the definition. This was fun at first, but ended up being more annoying than anything, because it happened at the drop of a hat. You can also make notes, annotate, bookmark and play certain types of audio files. But even with all that function, the experience was so bland and clunky that I reconsidered this column. If you went by the Sony models, you’d think that e-readers had a very long way to go before they were worth it.

The nook, to my immense surprise, rekindled my faith. At first sight, it’s much better-looking than either of the Sony editions. The reading screen is somehow crisper (they could be exactly the same, but the nook’s looked better, I swear), and the navigation screen (a separate touch-screen beneath the reading screen) is functional and beautiful. It takes a little getting used to, since you want to poke both the reading and nav screens, but only one of them will respond to touch. Once I got going, though, the more I wanted it. Bookmark a page? Yes. Highlight a paragraph? Yes. Dictionary? Yes (in theory–the actual definitions weren’t uploaded on the floor model). Play music? Yes. Get more books? Absolutely; it can connect to a wireless hotspot–which, I should note, neither the cheaper Sony Pocket or the more expensive Touch can do. All of these other features may be standard, but the actual user experience was engaging and easy, miles away from the blah feel of Sony. Many reviewers have commented on the slow page turning, which was, initially, very slow indeed, but a minute or so after the book was loaded, the lag matched the Sony models. And because the nook is running the Android operating system, you’ll be able to upgrade the software and download apps, similar to the iPod Touch. Which means your nook will be only sort-of obsolete in three months. Add to that an interchangeable battery (which no one else has), and you’ve sold me.

I spent some time speculating with the sales guy (if you’re in the Johns Hopkins B&N, tell Michael that Jenn says hi!) about why the nook felt so much better than the Sony models. His theory is that it’s because book people are behind the nook, and I have to wonder if he’s right. Sony’s had a lot of time to get this stuff right, and just ends up looking… behind. The nook, on the first go-round, is very impressive–at least for the 40 minutes I played with it in the store.

One thing I found odd: none of these e-readers has a light (as far as I could tell). I assume this is because e-Ink is, by definition, not backlit. Basically, you’re trading reading in bed for reading in direct sunlight. I do more of the former than the latter, so this disappoints me to no end. Apparently B&N already has special nook lights for you to buy. Which should go nicely with your Kate Spade cover… (you think I’m kidding? Visit nook.com).

Here’s the kicker: because of the high demand for e-readers, the only one available immediately (when I went looking; things may have changed in the past week) was the Sony Pocket. So I’ll be waiting until February for my nook to arrive. But not to worry! The next of the installment of the Nitty Gritty: what to do while you’re waiting for your e-reader.

~ Jenn