Red Room Has Gone Dark (Sigh) / Ye Very Olde "My Favorite Bookstore? C.M. Mayo Celebrates a Batch of Bookstores"

Redroom.com was the Author Facebook wannabe for a while there… then it seems they tried to be the self-publisher's Etsy (sort of... I just glanced what they were charging to sell books and I thought, nope). Now it seems they've been bought out by Wattpad. Huh. I never could figure out what Redroom's angle was, precisely. But I wished them well. I did a few blog posts for Red Room when I was touring for my novel, The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire,  and then when I realized how easy it was to use their blogging platform, I would copy-paste from this blog, Madam Mayo, whenever I had a spare three minutes. The one original post I wrote for Red Room, back in 2009, now seems to me an ode to Times of Yore. That link has gone dead, but ha, I dug it out of the Wayback Machine Internet Archive:

MY FAVORITE BOOKSTORE?

C.M. Mayo Celebrates a Batch of Bookstores

November 4, 2009

But why choose? Herewith a few favorite things about many favorite bookstores:

The mammoth selection of Vroman's (Pasadena CA)

The coziness and curated neuroscience section of the Book Works (Del Mar CA)

The elegant just-walk-in-open ambiance of Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley CA)

The breezy feeling and uber-cool but on-their-toes staff (and excellent cafe next door) of Kepler's (Menlo Park CA)

The convenient parking and quirky children's section of Books, Inc. (Palo Alto CA)

The travel selection and travel paraphernalia of Book Passages (Corte Madera CA)

and... moving on east...

The sunny gemutlichkeit and southwest section at the Bookworks (Albuquerque NM)

Endless nooks crammed with surprises (including possibly tripping over someone's Bernese Mountain dog) and music book selections at Explore Booksellers (Aspen CO)

The sunless labyrinthical experience, university press selection, and superb economics section of The Seminary Coop (Chicago IL)

The Washingtoniana and (free!) afternoon tea and cookies of Riverby Books (Capitol Hill, Washington DC)

The politics section and T-shirts that quote Groucho Marx ("Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read") at Politics & Prose (Washington DC)

and south...

The thoughtfully theatrical set-up for author readings of Book People (Austin TX)

The owners's very nurturing care for book groups of Blue Willow (Houston TX)

and seriously south...

The Baja California and Chicano book selection at El Tecolote (Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico)

Bodacious author readings (and selection of Moleskines!) at the Librería del Fondo Rosario Castellanos, Centro Cultural Bella Época (Mexico City, Mexico)

The lush garden, the capuccinos, sunbathing cats, and thunderous views of the Tepozteco of La Sombra del Sabino (Tepoztlan, near Cuernavaca, Mexico).

Red Room Blog Post: My Favorite Bookstore?

Photo: Yours Truly doing a reading and booksigning at the Bookworks in Albuquerque NM. Today over at the Red Room Authors Blog: "C.M. Mayo Celebrates a Batch of Bookstores": Vroman's, Kelper's, the Book Works, Bookworks (yes, they are two different bookstores), Blue Willow, Seminary Coop, Riverby Books, La Sombra del Sabino, and more.

The Book Works in Del Mar and the Bookworks in Albuquerque

That's me blogging--- taking a break in La Posada, Winslow Arizona, surrounded by the stunning artwork of Tina Mion (in the background is her masterwork "A New Years Party in Purgatory for Suicides"), after the book tour's swing through Southern California: Vroman's in Pasadena, Center for U.S.-Mexico Studies at University of California San Diego, Book Works in Del Mar, and then the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles.

In the photo below: my amigo, the King of the Baja Buffs, Graham Mackintosh, who graced my event at Del Mar's Book Works with his always smiling presence. (If there's a joke to life, I'm sure Graham gets it. Check out his latest rollicking memoir about Isla Angel de la Guarda: Marooned with Very Little Beer.) Then, c'est moi in the
Mexican pink jacket; the sales rep for Unbridled Books' (Frank, Bless Your Heart!); and owner of the Book Works, Lisa Stefanacci. If you're anywhere within a 100 mile radius of Del Mar, do not miss this cozy bookstore famed, by the way, for its thoughtful selection on books about the brain. The photograph in the photograph? That's the carte-de-visite of the last prince of Mexico, Agustin de Iturbide y Green. I so wish this group photo included Richard Feinberg, professor of International Political Economy at UCSD, who gave the very generous introduction to my presentation--- pictured below.


This Wednesday June 3 at 7 pm I'll be reading at the Bookworks (this one spelled as one word) in Albuquerque. Click here for more information about that. More anon.