(Matt Patterson)
Bookshop success story
Sometimes the counterintuitive works brilliantly. That appears to be the case with Raven Used Books on Newbury Street. Used bookstores typically are musty affairs in shabby environs. Raven has gleaming wood floors, recessed lighting, handmade bookcases, and books in impeccable condition.Owner John Petrovato, a bookseller for 20 years, sold a record 600 books on his first day of business in March, and sales are almost on par with the profitable five-year-old Raven Used Books he owns in Harvard Square.
“No other shop in the neighborhood is doing what we do,” is the way Petrovato explains his success. “And Boston is a big book town.”
What’s more, he’s getting calls from people in the tony neighborhood who are interested in selling their libraries. That will help ensure the quality of his inventory, he figures.
The store is at 263 Newbury St. near Mass. Ave, and its well-cultivated collection is particularly strong in art, architecture, photography, classical music, and philosophy. The selection of fiction, children’s books, biography, and history is noteworthy as well.
Petrovato, who owned bookstores in Montague, Amherst, and Northampton before expanding to Cambridge, is still learning the local eccentricities. He’s noticed that people tend to stay on their side of the river, so few of his Boston customers have ventured to his Harvard Square store. Fortunately for him, book lovers, like the Brookline resident who recently spent $300 on philosophy books at the Boston Raven, are everywhere.
New and used
Another used bookstore opened in Newton last week. Mary Cotton and Jaime Clarke, co-owners of Newtonville Books, have established a used books annex in an adjacent space they own that formerly housed the Lizard’s Tale children’s bookstore. (The children’s books have been moved to the main bookstore.) Clarke views the new mix of stock as the best of both worlds.Agni marks 71st issue
Agni literary magazine, founded in 1972 and now based at Boston University, provides a forum within its pages and at its readings for important new writers. To celebrate the publication of its 71st issue, the magazine is hosting a reading on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 949 Commonwealth Ave.Headlining the affair will be Michelle Hoover, whose debut novel, The Quickening,” about the demands and deprivations of two farm wives in the early 1900s, will be published by Other Press next month. Hoover, born in Ames, Iowa, drew on her great-grandmother’s reminiscences for a story that has been praised for its authenticity by former US poet laureate Ted Kooser, who himself grew up among Iowa farm women.
Guide to Northeast fish
Father and son fishing buddies David A. Patterson, a retired high school biology teacher in Billerica, and Matt, a professional illustrator, have produced “Freshwater Fish of the Northeast” (University Press of New England), a guidebook to more than 60 species. Matt based most of his illustrations on photographs taken of live catches he or his father made before they set the fish free.Coming out
■“Duke Ellington’s America’’ by Harvey G. Cohen (University of Chicago)■“Illyria’’ by Elizabeth Hand (Viking)
■“The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates’’ by Wes Moore (Spiegel & Grau)
Pick of the week
Pat Coussa of Island Books in Middletown, R.I., recommends “The Red Thread” by Ann Hood (Norton): “Is it chance or an invisible red thread that connects parents to the children they were meant to have? In her new novel, Hood weaves together the lives of five Rhode Island couples who yearn for children and the Chinese babies who are abandoned half a world away.’’Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com. 
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