Firefly's Blog

“Hello, my name is Rebecca and I am a book hoarder.” My husband and I own Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown, PA and we consider the store an extension of our own collection. I am also a huge fan of Marie Kondo, also known as KonMari, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and host of the new Netflix reality show based around her tidying system. Because of the response to the show you've probably seen the articles and memes, you've gasped at the headlines, and now you are convin …

We've said many times before that we're not worried about the future of books. In the history of the bookstore, businesses have experienced many occasions of new products predicted to be the "death of bookstores". Some of our favorite examples include the Mass Market (pocketbook) edition, and the audio book.We've discussed before about where the book store has come from and where it's going. We concluded that even though the industry has seen upheaval and store closings, in general book store …

Customers are always surprised by some of the book titles that appear in our displays for Banned Books Week. One of the most common questions we get is, "Why would anyone try to ban Captain Underpants?" The Captain Underpants series by Dav Pilkey appears as the number one challenged book for 2012, according to the American Library Association (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. Captain Underpants is a very popular series with beginning readers, but it is often requested to be pulled fro …

There's been some recent news that has made some waves in the book world. Namely, the CEO of Barnes & Nobel suddenly resigning this past July. This of course has made the news sources explode with articles about the death of bookstores and the potential end for the last remaining national chain. So the news continues to look grim for book lovers right? One can throw an internet rock and hit dozens of articles obliquely or overtly predicting the death of all bookstores everyw …