Porter Square Books

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Fiercely independent bookstore in Cambridge and Boston, MA

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This Friday I'll be reading a few minutes of something I'm pretty sure not another living soul has read. If that's not reason enough to attend the Writers of PSB event, Alyce will be there & he is damn cute www.portersquarebooks.com/event/writer...

Writers of Porter Square Books | Porter Square Bookswww.portersquarebooks.com Celebrate 20 Years of Porter Square Books with a reading by published and publishing PSB booksellers and Cafe Zing baristas, as well as current and past Writers in Residence.

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PSB coming for all my spooky friends

New t-shirt design just dropped! The second in our 20th Anniversary series. I'm calling this one "Open Your Mind." www.bonfire.com/open-your-mi...

Open Your Mind 20th Anniversary | Bonfirewww.bonfire.com Buy Open Your Mind 20th Anniversary merchandise from Porter Square Books. Featuring Black Premium Unisex Tees, professionally printed in the USA.

Oh! We should note that the "Classic Unisex T-shirt" is only $19.99!

New t-shirt design just dropped! The second in our 20th Anniversary series. I'm calling this one "Open Your Mind." www.bonfire.com/open-your-mi...

Hey Book Nerds Who Like to Stay Up Late! We're doing a midnight release for Casey McQuiston's The Pairing! In our Boston location. Deets & to RSVP here: www.portersquarebooks.com/event/midnig...

Midnight Release Party at PSB Boston Edition: The Pairing by Casey McQuiston | Porter Square Bookswww.portersquarebooks.com PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT TAKES PLACE AT PORTER SQUARE BOOKS: BOSTON EDITION (50 LIBERTY DRIVE, BOSTON, MA 02210)!

PSA to all connoisseurs of weird shit: Josh will not be in tomorrow, so if you need anything for the weekend, make sure to stop by or reply tonight!

Had a great #BlueSklyBookClub chat about Slipping last night! See our profile for ideas about slipping, gaps & translation. 2nd Q: SLIPPING asks questions in the beginning & answers them in surprising contexts. What does that structure reveal about the plot, themes, emotions of the characters?

1st Q for #BlueSkyBookClub Things can "slip our mind" or "slip through the cracks." If we’re not at our best we’ll say we’re "slipping." How does SLIPPING use the good, bad, & other connotations of the idea of “slipping” to tell its story & explore its ideas? Quote, reply, thread, talk, yay!

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Rachel Hands

See I thought at times she was the static piece, with the world/mob/life moving around her. #BlueSkyBookclub

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Yes! There are lots of waking/sleeping transitions and often you can't tell until further into the chapter which transition it was. #BlueSkyBookclub

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I can honestly say I probably would not have picked up this book without the #BlueSkyBookClub but I'm very glad I did. It's beautiful and trippy and sad, and well worth a read.

In case you're wondering what all we're filling up the timeline with, we're discussing Slipping by Mohamed Kheir for a #BlueSkyBookClub More info here: www.portersquarebooks.com/bluesky-book...

BlueSky Book Club: Let's Give it a Try | Porter Square Bookswww.portersquarebooks.com Let's see if we can get some kind of informal BlueSky Book Club going. To participate, just read Slipping by Mohamed Kheir translated by Robin Moger. On Thursday, July 11, we'll kick off the discussio...

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for me I think the interesting place for interrogation of a translation where I have no context for the source language (and haven’t listened to the interview linked elsewhere in #BlueSkyBookClub) is: what is my awareness of this as a translation doing to my reading of the text?

For me, translation is a tricky issue when discussing a book, especially when I don't know anything of the source language. On one hand, we can only discuss the text we have, but, on the other no text is above interrogation. #BlueSkyBookClub (www.portersquarebooks.com/bluesky-book...)

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Also, the slipping through from the “other side”, the return of the dead, like Ahmed’s father or the images on the white wall. And the concerted effort not to slip to the other side by Alalayli by employing all of those doctors. The life/death boundary is definitely slippery. #BlueskyBookClub

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summervillain / a. lee welles

so far, eg. i have found the coinage "lullabying" striking, a reference to a "dive bar diva" startling, as well as an unusual transliteration of a familiar Arabic phrase. and all these choices are quite opaque!

late to #BlueSkyBookClub - still in early chapters - but already wondering how much translation shapes/reshapes a book like this

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Yes, exactly. Ali, too, slips out of consciousness (for 3 days, and on his wedding day!), and while he is unchanged, his phone dies and his bride and his family have gone on, painfully, without him. Consciousness is personal, equalizing but unequal.

In case you're wondering what all we're filling up the timeline with, we're discussing Slipping by Mohamed Kheir for a #BlueSkyBookClub More info here: www.portersquarebooks.com/bluesky-book...

The words themselves are—in the most literal way—stable, but their meaning and relationships still slips: I often needed to revise my assumption of who the speaker was, which storyline we were in, how the vignettes connected.

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“Slipping in & out of consciousness” comes to mind: a preoccupation with sleep, how easy/hard-won it is, its proximity to death (the dead slip in easily during sleep), the presence or absence of dreams, the things that happen while one is unconscious (within sleep and outside), etc. #BlueSkyBookClub

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or maybe the wall is presumed to exist just outside the frame of the text (sorryyyy the metaphors just mix themselves) - like the way the characters often talk about being outside or beholden to a set of existing power structure, which aren’t their story but have control over the story anyway

Oooooo, now we're getting into it. In order for there to be a crack, there needs to be a wall. Can we imagine the text is the wall? The words themselves don't shift or move. Or maybe, in order to have cracks, we just agree that "this is wall." Remembering a scene where the characters walk on water.

there’s also an argument to be made that the “slipping through the cracks” image doesn’t quite work because it implies that *something* in the picture is solid or static and someone or something else is moving through it… which I’m not sure is true of Slipping’s world #BlueskyBookClub

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Yeah & one pretty big thing isn't entirely clear to me that, if clarified, would/could reframe much of the context. A character "slipping through the cracks" is the catastrophe that drives much of the plot, but I don't think we know what she thinks/feels/desires about that slipping. #BlueSkyBookClub

the “slip through the cracks” connotation is the one that kept surfacing for me - there’s a lot of people seeming to disappear into the city, losing contact with each other, showing up in places that maybe shouldn’t exist …#BlueskyBookClub

One of the fun things about talking about books is you get to say things like...the idea of "slipping" can, itself, be slippery. There are these other layers Kristen mentions, but I'm now thinking of the phrase "slipped out" or "slip away" & how it relates to 1 (potential) tragedy in the book.

Ooh, I thought of it more while reading as slipping between stories, the pieces sliding together in time, but I like this interpretation too. I’ll have to think about it a bit.

Hi Friends! #BlueSkyBookClub starts in just a minute! If you're wondering what I'm talking about! Here's a link. We'll quote-post this post with our first question. Then y'all can quote, reply, thread, talk, message, & have a book club! www.portersquarebooks.com/bluesky-book...

We're kicking off our BlueSky Book Club around 5:30 this evening! More info here: www.portersquarebooks.com/bluesky-book...

It's 9:11AM on a Thursday morning. Do you ever think about at the end of Corduroy, when Corduroy says,, "I've always wanted a friend," the little girl responds, "Me too."? Because I would not recommend doing that.

If you're looking for nonfiction, Mary Roach has busted through her share of reader's blocks. Maybe Stiff: www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780393... For fiction, there's PSB Staff Pick of the Year Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers: www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9780593...

I have a major case of reader's block. Can you recommend something with short chapters that is light and fun and will suck me in?

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (Paperback) | Porter Square Bookswww.portersquarebooks.com Beloved, best-selling science writer Mary Roach’s “acutely entertaining, morbidly fascinating” (Susan Adams, Forbes) classic, now with a new epilogue.

Always fun to recommend books for fans of @kellylink.bsky.social because she can fact check us! Let's go with Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil by Ananda Lima! www.portersquarebooks.com/book/9781250...

Currently very into Kelly Link’s White Cat Black Dog and sad that I’m about to finish it. What should I read next that has similar vibes? (Already into Helen Phillips and Steven Millhauser)

Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil (Hardcover) | Porter Square Bookswww.portersquarebooks.com Strange, intimate, haunted, and hungry—Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is an intoxicating and surreal fiction debut by award-winning author Ananda Lima. “An astounding new voice.” —ERIC LaROCCA •...

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No event in Cambridge tonight, so we've got time for some book recommendations! Maybe you're still trying to find your "summer read." Maybe you're one book away from a personal pan pizza. Maybe you're thinking "Let's see if I can stump Josh." Whatever the reason, we got you tonight!