Hi Everyone-

The holiday season is now in full swing, and Olsson's is commemorating it in our usual fashion: with our annual Holiday Gift Guide, now in stores. It features notable books, CDs, DVDs, and gifts for the season, with recommendations and descriptions written by our very own employees.

A preview of the books: the buyers and I sat down in early September to start culling through the hundreds of potential titles. As I've mentioned before, the selection process this year was the most difficult ever; I can safely say that this is about the strongest overall publishing season I've seen in my eleven years of buying.

Let me just give you a taste: the Buyer's Choices in this year's catalogue. This is the very small handful of titles we've picked as the creme de la creme. So here they are: the Buyer's Choices from the 2006 Olsson's Holiday Gift Guide:

The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred Shaopiro. The other buyers and I were instantly taken with this huge, highly unique book of quotations when our Yale sales representative first presented it to us. It has a wonderfully eclectic selection of quotes and contributors, from great authors to historical and political figures to movie stars. Pick up a copy a you'll get a real appreciation of it.

The Aeneid by Virgil, translated by Robert Fagles. In the early to mid nineties, Robert Fagles published what became the definitive translations of the two great Ancient Greek epic poems: The Iliad and The Odyssey. The two became bestsellers and have been considered the best editions available of these key works. So when we saw that Fagles had also translated the founding myth of Rome in this gorgeous edition, we knew it would be a terrific Buyer's Choice for the holiday season.

A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005, by Annie Leibovitz. The photography event of the year, let alone the season: the most celebrated photographer of our time presents this incredibly expressive look at her own life, work, and family. Be aware; this is going to be one of the biggest books of the season, and photography books make for notoriously slow reprints, so buy your copy early! Also: we have a limited number of signed copies, so again, I say, hurry!

Happy in the Kitchen, by Michel Richard. One of DC's greatest celebrity chefs, Michel Richard of Citronelle, is responsible for this gorgeous collection of his most delectable recipes. Great both for browsing and culinary experimenting, it's an intriguing look inside the mind and kitchen of the creator of one of the city's hottest restaurants.

All Aunt Hagar's Children, by Edward P. Jones. DC's favorite son Jones' last book, The Known World, won the Pulitzer Prize, and this glorious follow-up collection of stories has received incredibly glowing reviews. The city of DC itself features prominently in this fabulous work.

So there they are, and the Gift Guide is filled with dozens and dozens more terrific books for your delectation. So stop by the stores and pick up a copy (or note that the Gift Guide is posted in its entirety on our website, www.olssons.com), and use it to shop today!

See You in the Stores,

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer

Hi Everyone-

Hope all is well with you and that your Thanksgiving preparations are going well. I just wanted to take this chance to mention a major literary event happening this very week: the publication on Tuesday of Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against the Day.

I have already sung the praises of that other great, hyper-challenging author William Gaddis in this space, and I'd have to say that he and Pynchon form the twin pillars of avant-garde post-war fiction. Pynchon's previous works, V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason and Dixon, have all already reached canonical status, and this new novel--his longest, at a whopping 1,085 pages--is already receiving amazing reviews, including one in this Sunday's Washington Post Book World, by Steven Moore, a leading Pynchon scholar.

I'd love to tell you I'd read it already, but I just got my first look at it today (eleven hundred page galleys are rather expensive to produce, so previews of this novel were in short supply). But I can't wait to start: it's an epic covering dozens of settings during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with many cameos from historical figures, delivered, I'm sure, in Pynchon's signature baroque-slapstick style. A new Pynchon book is always of note, and whether you start it today or put it aside for your next vacation (or broken leg), it's the must-have literary item of the season. It's also on sale, since it's featured in our Holiday Gift Guide (of which more next week!)

Also bear in mind Penguin's new paperback of Gravity's Rainbow, long considered Pynchon's masterpiece. It features a snazzy new cover by comics icon Frank Miller--and French end flaps!

Happy Thanksgiving!
And see you in the stores!

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer

Hi Everyone-

Well, the fall season is certainly rolling along; if you've dropped by our stores lately (and if for some reason you haven't, I trust that's an oversight you'll soon remedy), you've seen that I wasn't kidding when I referred to this season's titles as an embarrassment of riches. It's one of the most exciting seasons in publishing I've seen in my nearly seventeen years at Olsson's, and you really have to see all these great titles on the shelves to get a sense of the scope of it.

But to single out two books: the new biographies Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw and Mellon by David Cannandine are not to be missed. The two Andrews were among the most powerful men of their day: Carnegie, the railroad and steel magnate who became a master of public relations and later became a great philanthropist, and Mellon, the less beloved but no less powerful character who became Secretary of the Treasury--until the Great Depression--and one of the world's foremost art collectors, eventually letting dealer Joseph Duveen flatter his ego into creating the National Gallery. These are two gigantic American stories, told by two of the best nonfiction writers working today. Nasaw wrote a wonderful William Randolph Hearst biography named The Chief, while Cannadine authored the definitive Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy.

Both biographies showcase these amazingly complex characters at their most brilliant, malicious, benevolent, and calculating. And both are, of course, featured as Buyer's Choices, at 20% off.

Drop by and pick them up soon! And keep an eye out for two major events: our annual Holiday Gift Guide--due right around Thanksgiving, and our new Crystal City store, due shortly after!

See you in the stores,

Joe Murphy
Head Book Buyer