Build a coffee shop, build it strong and tall and call down many sofas to be strewn about its insides. Then bring forth a small podium with a comfortable chair on it, next arrange for local literati, amature actors, or anyone else that can be convinced to do it, get them to sit for a half an hour a day, (at the same time each day) and read a classic, in a serial sort of way.

The books chosen should be the type that everybody intends to get round to reading some day, but never does because there's a new Pratchett or Rankin or Bryson or [insert favorite author here] just out that they can't put down.

This way, you will gain loyalty from the people that have their break at the same time each day, also you could sell copies of the books being read-out.
-- Zircon, Feb 14 2003

I thought this sort of thing was quite common.
-- waugsqueke, Feb 14 2003


Do'h! sorry for deleting that last version of this (and thus annos and votes), I just realised I could have pasted the text across. I am foolish.

[waugs] never seen anything like this, though am aware of a number of bookshop/coffee shops in the US.
-- Zircon, Feb 14 2003


In Canada as well. I knew of a bookshop where I used to live that had lunch-hour readings daily, often by the authors of the works. Coffee and sandwiches were served. The shop sold a lot of work by local authors.
-- waugsqueke, Feb 14 2003


I've been to plenty of coffee shops where people read their own (crappy) writing, and sometimes someone will read an excerpt from someone elses work, but not like this at all. This would be a lot better really.
-- notme, Feb 14 2003


Ahem. Oddly enough, the links I found in Google for book- or readings-oriented coffee houses were all in Canada. However, I've seen them in New York and Connecticut, too. (Now waugs will demand to know where and I'll have to tell him I don't remember.)

You still get a + for this, a first for someone deleting my annotation.
-- DrCurry, Feb 14 2003


Well that explains why I thought they were common.
-- waugsqueke, Feb 14 2003


Damn I just did it again, sorry [DrC]! I was going to annotate and your last anno was at the bottom of the list, and I was going to reiterate my apologies for deleting all the annos in the first place, and you know thinking one thing and doing the other I managed to click delete rather than annotate. I'm getting out of here before I really put my foot in it.

P.S. in my defence I have been demonstrating Mohr's circles for strain to a 2nd year undergraduate class today. This is something I barely have a grip of my elf. When you have to say the words 'reciprocal quaderatic elongation' more than 30 times before lunch you know its going to be one of those days!
-- Zircon, Feb 14 2003


I haven't been to HB in a long while until recently. Some items appear to be missing votes referenced in the annos. Did the crash to which I've heard reference have something to do with that?

I like this idea, btw.
-- Soterios, Mar 11 2005



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