CHOP SUEY BOOKS & RIVER CITY READS present RICHMOND NOIR at GALLERY FIVE!

Chop Suey Books is partnering with River City Reads to present Richmond Noir at Gallery Five! Come help us celebrate the selection of Richmond Noir, from Akashic Books, as the first entry in River City Reads, Richmond's new citywide book club!

WEDS, MAY 12, 7:00 PM
Gallery Five, 200 W Marshall, RVA

Readers will include Richmond Noir contributors Mina Beverly ("Gaia"), Tom De Haven ("Playing with DaBlonde"), Conrad Ashley Persons ("Marco's Broken English"), David L. Robbins ("Homework") and Meagan J. Saunders ("Untitled")!

ALSO: editors Andrew Blossom, Brian Castleberry and Tom De Haven, and contributors X.C. Atkins ("A Late-Night Fishing Trip"), Laura Browder ("The Heart is a Strange Muscle") and Anne Thomas Soffee ("Midnight at the Oasis"), on hand to answer questions and sign copies of the book! PLUS music and a cash bar, courtesy of our kind hosts at Gallery Five! We hope to see you there!

For more information about Richmond Noir, River City Reads, Chop Suey Books, and Gallery Five, please visit the links aboce. The River City Reads program is a creation of the Frontier Project. The River City Reads/Richmond Noir poster is designed by Spencer Hansen of Team 8.

Michele Young-Stone's Book Launch

Please join us tomorrow (Sunday, April 18th) as we celebrate the publication of The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, the break-out debut novel by Richmonder Michele Young-Stone. The reading will take place between 5 and 7 at Gallery 5 (200 W. Marshall St.) and will be accompanied by live music, great food, and plenty of libations. This is a free event, and we welcome you all to attend.

Daniel Courdriet, Joshua Poteat, and Tarfia Faizullah Read On Saturday!

Richmond poets Daniel Coudriet, Tarfia Faizullah, and Joshua Poteat will read from their work at 1708 Gallery on Saturday April 3 at 6pm. The event also will be a book launch for Coudriet’s and Poteat’s new books. Yours truly, Chop Suey Books, will be there selling Josh's and Daniel's books.

Daniel Coudriet’s first book of poetry, Say Sand, recently appeared from Carnegie Mellon University Press. His poems have appeared in Blackbird, The Iowa Review, Boston Review, and other magazines, and his translations of the Argentinean poets Reynaldo Sietecase and Oliverio Girondo have appeared widely. Coudriet teaches at the University of Richmond.

Tarfia Faizullah is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s MFA program and former associate editor of Blackbird. Her honors include an AWP Intro Journals Project Award, an Academy of American Poets Award, the Ploughshares Cohen Award. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere.

Joshua Poteat’s second book, Illustrating the Machine that Makes the World, recently appeared from the University of Georgia Press. He has received numerous fellowships and awards for his poetry, including an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the 2004 Anhinga Prize, and the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Award. His poems have appeared in such magazines as Virginia Quarterly Review, Blackbird, and Ninth Letter. A light- and text-based installation made in collaboration with Roberto Ventura won Best in Show for InLight 2009. Poteat works at the Martin Agency and teaches poetry workshops at Virginia Commonwealth University.


For more information, contact 1708 Gallery at (804) 643-7829.

Gina Welch Hits the New Yorker!

More great news for Friend of Suey Gina Welch, whose new book In the Land of Believers just received a nice notice from the New Yorker! You can see the piece here. Interested in learning more? Chop Suey Books has In the Land of Believers on the shelf, so come by and take a look!

Gina recently wrote a piece for Richmond's own The Book Lady's Blog. You can see that here.

Our congratulations to Gina!

Lightning Strikes Twice for Richmond Author!

On Sunday, April 18th from 5-7 pm, Michele Young-Stone will celebrate the publication of her first novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, at Gallery 5. This event is free and open to the public, and will feature live music and great food. Oh, and Michele will be reading from and signing copies of her new novel!

This book has already been picked by Publisher's Weekly as one of 10 debut novels of 2010 to look out for, and is a great read for fans of Alice Hoffman and Wally Lamb. The novel follows two lost souls separated by time and place, from the moment lightning changes their lives until the day it ceases to define them. Intercut with sections from a handbook written by one of the characters, this book is as charged as the lightning that appears throughout.

Michele, herself a lightning strike survivor, is already working on her second novel, though I expect she will be kept pretty busy with all of the attention she will be receiving surrounding this novel.

The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors will be released on April 13th, but is available for pre-order from Chop Suey Books for a 20% discount. Call now!

Richmond Noir at New York Deli!

CHOP SUEY BOOKS & NEW YORK DELI celebrate the release of RICHMOND NOIR

THURS, MARCH 4
8:00 PM
@ NEW YORK DELI (2920 W Cary St)

featuring readings from contributors X.C. Atkins, Clay McLeod Chapman (The Pumpkin Pie Show, Rest Area), Dennis Danvers (The Watch, Wilderness), Dean King (Skeletons on the Zahara, Unbound), and Howard Owen (Littlejohn, Rock of Ages)

w/ editors Andrew Blossom (Makeout Creek), Brian Castleberry, and Tom De Haven (It's Superman, Our Hero)

PLUS a SPECIAL PERFORMANCE by the SCOTT BURTON TRIO

The latest volume in Akashic Books' award-winning Urban Noir Series, RICHMOND NOIR features fifteen tales of desperate characters set in diverse locations around the River City! Tonight's readings will touch down in Oregon Hill, Belle Isle, Texas Beach, Shockoe Slip, and Monroe Park! Plus music from the Scott Burton Trio, and the always excellent bar of New York Deli!

Book sales will begin at 8:00. Come early to meet the authors! The readings will start around 8:45, with the performance from the Scott Burton Trio following immediately thereafter. Meanwhile, of course the editors and authors will sign books, so be sure to stay around, have a drink, enjoy the music, and help us celebrate the release of Richmond Noir!

Richmond Noir: Now On Sale!

Richmond Noir, a new anthology of Richmond-based stories published by Akashic Books and co-edited by our very own Andrew Blossom (with Brian Castleberry and Tom De Haven), is now on sale at Chop Suey Books on our Akashic Books shelf! And guess what? All copies of Richmond Noir are ON SALE. Buy Richmond Noir from us, get 10% off the cover price, every day!

Chop Suey Hours, 2010 Edition

SUNDAY: 12 pm - 6 pm
MON-THUR: 10 am - 6 pm
FRI & SAT: 10 am - 8 pm

Y'all come back now, ya hear?

New Year's at Chop Suey

Coming by Chop Suey Books this week? Please do! We're here! New Year's hours are as follows:

Dec 29: 10 am - 6 pm
Dec 30: 10 am - 4 PM
Dec 31: 10 am - 4 PM
Jan 1, 2010: CLOSED, BABY
Jan 2: 10 am - 8 pm (i.e., regular hours)

We've Been Distracted

Why? Well, THOSE CRAZY HOLIDAYS, for one.

Here's another: Chop Suey Books has a Facebook page! We've caught up to... 2008? About time. Come check it out!

Oh, Really?

Who Does This?

Who pushes all the books against the backs of the shelves?

Seriously, we want to know. We went upstairs on Friday to discover that all the books in the front room had received this treatment. And this is certainly not the first time. You know how long it takes us to reposition that many books on our shelves? Two hours. No joke. Two wasted hours, all because someone is either: 1. a complete jerk, 2. obsessive compulsive, or 3. some combination of the above.

Customers of Chop Suey: we need your help. We position our books with their spines at the edge of the shelf so you may find what you're looking for quickly and conveniently. If you ever see someone rearranging whole rows of books, please come downstairs and alert Ward, Ryan or Andrew. We need to know who's doing this, and we appreciate your help in looking after the store.

Dear "Tooth"

Ha ha ha, very good, you've certainly gotten the better of us! You are clever and, what's more, now everyone can see how clever you are due to your careful placement of your graffito signature. On top of clever, you are also famous. Or, infamous. If you come back in here, we will destroy you.

Talk That Deal

This week on the $2 Deal shelf it's Talk That Talk, an anthology of African-American storytelling compiled by Linda Goss and Marian Barnes and introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The book contains over 500 pages of oral folklore, cultural wisdom, and contemporary writing -- a true literary treasury! And it can all be yours -- this week, for only $2, and only at Chop Suey Books.

Zak Galifianakis movie at Gallery 5!

Our friend Johnny Hugel of Fortnightly has arranged for Visioneers, a dark comedy featuring Zak Galifianakis, to be screened at Gallery 5 on Tuesday, November 17th at 7 pm. It is only $3 to see the film (proceeds go directly to Gallery 5, which is a perfect non-profit for you to donate funds).

Check out a trailer here: Visioneers!

BIG SALE ON BOOKS!

We've been buying back hundreds of great books over the past few months, and now there is no place to shelve them. So to help clear space and give you a special savings on your early holiday shopping, we are running a sale through Friday, November 13th, 2009. All Used Books in the store are 30% off, and All New Books are 20% off. This includes the great selection of Velocity Comics' graphic novels in the back of the store. Come in now to get fantastic books for a crazy low price. And check us out next week to see all of the amazing new books we will be putting out!

Books On Wheels is your DESTINY!

On Saturday, Books On Wheels set up outside of the Richmond Zine Fest to accept donations for our new Thrift Store: Books, Bikes, and Beyond and to give away great books. It was a warm and fun afternoon, a time for Shelley and I to catch up with each other and with great friends and supporters.

One of the people we got to see was Shel, a Charlottesville native who has set us up with some great events in her city. She made it by the thrift store after the zine fest, and immediately found a great old typewriter. As she was paying for her purchases, she was telling Shelley that she had her fortune read at the zine fest, and was really confused and a little worried by one prediction: at some point that day, she was going to find a bag of fingers! She and Shelley were laughing about this odd fate, until they looked down at the typewriter she was buying and realized that this mechanism, though not a bag, was full of fingers! Her prediction was right! Fate, now just another free thing offered by Books On Wheels!

Here's a prediction: you will have an amazing time at the official grand opening celebration for Thrift Store: Books, Bikes, and Beyond (302 W. Brookland Park Ave.) this Friday, November 13th from 6-9 pm. Food will be provided by Joe's Inn! Bring cash or your credit card and plans to buy your destiny!

Truss Us, It's a Deal!

Jhumpa Lahiri was such a hit that The Namesake held out on the $2 deal shelf an extra few days. Alas, its reign has finally ended. Fortunately, we've found a worthy successor: The Lynne Truss Treasury, a collection of columns and comic novels from the grammarian behind the bestselling Eats, Shoots & Leaves. BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. For a limited time, all copies of Eats, Shoots & Leaves and the follow-up smash Talk to the Hand are also JUST $2. Find them downstairs at the front desk -- this week only -- only at Chop Suey Books.

You'll Jhumpa This Deal!

Now in the $2 Book of the Week spot, Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. Find it at the front counter at Chop Suey Books.

Chop Suey Books Will Save Your Life

A good customer of ours just came in to purchase some books on martial arts and chess. Over the past few years, he has come in every couple of weeks to buy random, specialized books on different martial arts. Though he is a very gentle, soft spoken man, it became clear that he is quite the badass. And as he honed his badassness with the great, inexpensive books at Chop Suey, he grew in street cred. Last week, while walking home at night, he was accosted by 3 dudes who hit him hard enough in the back of the head to give him a concussion. He turned around, dropped his wallet and phone, and said "I mean, if you have a gun, just take it." Unfortunately for them, they did not have a gun. A quick punch to the wind pipe (Karate-Do: My Way of Life, page 47), thumb gouge to the eye (The Essence of Okinawan Karate-Do, page 89), and a flurry of kicks and punches (Kodokan Judo: The Essential Guide, page 35) sent the 3 running away.

Shop at Chop Suey Books today! The next life you save may be your own!