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Brad Johnson

@ahablives.bsky.social
1.2K followers 184 following 4.7K posts

A part of the Twitter Diaspora. Also run East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, CA - @ebbooksellers.bsky.social

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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 8h
This is so good. Anyone with any proximity to cults and/or fundamentalism recognize AI culture for what it is.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 17h
At a time where you can only & repeatedly wonder “Why?!” we figured, “Why not.”
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I'm constitutionally ill-suited to "chase backorders" for a title purportedly so hot that major publishers choose to not print enough.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Bucket list achieved tonight: I successfully (if accidentally) crashed a bookseller dinner for a bestselling author tonight. No matter what you lot think of me, she said I was charming enough to stay.
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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 27/09/2026
You don't have an inalienable right to be an antisocial dipshit because you're doomscrolling all day and it makes you feel terrible. There are no qualifiers to this. You are not released from the obligation to try to be decent just because Elon Musk is lighting the world on fire.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
"Are you Diesel?" "You're nine years and a fire late, bro."
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I have a draft in Bluesky that just says “I love telling customers”.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Was pleased to see this is arriving in a couple of days. Really keen to see it. Didn't think to look if they had it at the fall trade show. ebbooksellers.com/item/6CvPe_C...
ebbooksellers.com
Worlds Unfolding by Jennifer A Watts | East Bay Booksellers
A breathtaking visual history of humanity’s quest for knowledge, from the dawn of print to the Space AgeHumans are seekers, forever striving to make sense of the multiple worlds in which they live: th...
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Glad I'm not the only one on the Jean Echenoz train of late! ebbooksellers.com/item/jxxbdRJ...
ebbooksellers.com
Plan of Occupancy by Guy Delisle | East Bay Booksellers
An awardwinning cartoonist adapts the well-regarded French novella by Jean Echenoz in this taut and moving study on grief.A Parisian woman dies in a fire leaving her husband and son behind, bereft.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Multiple strands of philosophy have long treated lived experience, human and otherwise, as abstractions. This is great so far as it goes — which ideally means the page and/or thought experiment, not foundational truth.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The bait & switch of late-capitalist technology is a sneaky thing. Nearly everything it's actually offered -- and then compelled us to take -- has diminished the actual value & sustainability of what was offered.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
One hour of sleep last night is really catching up with me right about now.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
For a store that doesn't do events (us), we co-host a lot next door. And I'm very excited for this one.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I'm intrigued by this new arrival from Polity. ebbooksellers.com/item/ZNKvTC8...
ebbooksellers.com
School of the South by Onur Erdur | East Bay Booksellers
Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Jean-François Lyotard, Étienne Balibar, Jacques Rancière: these were among the luminaries of France's golden age of th...
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Unable to sleep at all last night and my only take away is this: my neighbors’ dryer ran five hours without stopping.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What Jensen Huang is saying is we all need a staff of personal assistants willing and able to spoon feed us & tie our shoes.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Very little tastes as good as the post-concert tacos you inhale while racing to get to the final weekday train home.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Got a cocktail to see if it would inspire me to write this month’s newsletter. But thus far all it’s managed is this.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Whether you’re ambivalent or not, this alone seems good enough reason to support the tax. www.sfchronicle.com/politics/art...
sfchronicle.com
Billionaire-led California PAC has raised a staggering $91 million since August
The political action committee set up by billionaires angry about the proposed wealth tax in California has raised $91 million in the last seven weeks from wealthy individuals.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I love these awards. Last year we were “the best,” and apparently this year weren’t even in “top five.” Lol www.rockridgevoice.com/rockridge-wi...
rockridgevoice.com
Rockridge Wins Big in “Best of Oakland 2026”
Congratulations to the many Rockridge favorites who won, or placed in the top 5, in Oakland Magazine’s annual Best of Oakland Readers’ Choice Awards. All of the winners, announced in July and August 2...
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
I haven’t looked at the true numbers, but it pleases me to see how much of a flop Gavin Newsom’s book was. Also, somebody in Bookmanager world has this in their system.
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East Bay Booksellers @ebbooksellers.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
&, yes, this is as much an admonition for me, and my bookstore peers. We have to be up to be for this challenge. There is simply no other choice, beyond having others make them for you.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Still plowing my way through the works of Jean Echenoz. What a delightful narrative voice. Is it the same in each of his novels? Yes, yes it seems that it is. Do I care one whit? Not even a one.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"We don't have of conventionally or commercially funny novels, I'm afraid. The ones we do have tend to be *literarily* funny. Which is to say, sometimes not actually so at all."
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Customer seemed a little disappointed we didn’t have a flavor of the month anti-Trump book, but ended up buying Bataille’s Sacred Conspiracy. That’s a solid, “instead of that, how about this.”
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Xander Lenc @xlenc.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
San Franciscans are always like "omg I loooove to travel," like okay Rick Steves let's see you get on BART and travel to Oakland more than once a YEAR.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Sort of like how they’re the ones investing all the money in each other, creating the illusion of growth to begin with.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Was told by two people at the bookselling thing this weekend I should do a podcast. Chalk up another two people who never listened to the phenomenon that was “The Faced Out Podcast.”
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I’ve been told I’ve come off to some as elitist, due to (checks notes) telling people soliciting for events that we don’t really do them.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
San Diego, you’re lovely, but Christ you need a shade tree or two.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
“There’s no reason you should care about my opinion, but it is mine, so here goes: your bookstore’s cool.” “Thanks. I heard you didn’t like much, so this means something.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
AI journalism ftw again!
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Going down to San Diego to eat dinner with a large ass publisher and talk on a panel about small ass ones. It’s me, I’m all the asses.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Some of the weekend’s reading. ebbooksellers.com/item/IjHEXdR...
ebbooksellers.com
Inhuman Resources by Evan Calder Williams | East Bay Booksellers
On the forms of sabotage, insubordination, and invisible activity that evade the terrain of politics.What gets stranded outside the borders of the political? Inhuman Resources develops an account of s...
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Firestorm Books @firestorm.coop · 12/09/2026
On Thursday, eight bookstores sent an open letter to the ABA & ABFE raising urgent concerns about the threat posed by NSPM-7 to booksellers and publishers. @pilsencommbooks.bsky.social @burningbooks.bsky.social @moonpalacebooks.bsky.social @boneshakerbooks.bsky.social @wordupbooks.bsky.social
A title slide containing a photo of Donald Trump signing NSPM-7. The title reads "Booksellers & NSPM-7: An open letter to the American Booksellers Association."
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
This is great.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Maximilian Kasy's book remains the one I return to whenever AI is given agency to the point of murderous intent. In nearly ever instance, the real danger is the all-too-human agents (guided by profit) pursing multiple layers of power - via weaponry, sabotage, etc. ebbooksellers.com/item/9ZxRdsP...
ebbooksellers.com
The Means of Prediction by Maximilian Kasy | East Bay Booksellers
An eye-opening examination of how power—not technology—will define life with AI. AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, job in...
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Who’s writing the foodie essay detailing the ascent of burrata pizza slices?
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I tell myself that people love my enigmatic responses to the (repeated) question about the store’s future location plans. Yesterday’s was especially fun: “I loved that old space.” “Yeah. It’ll never be that space again.” “You’re not going back, then?” “I didn’t say that.”
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The consolidation of distribution — related to but different from publishing — is akin to the promises that the Internet would make information more accessible; where in fact it mostly just made us (as a whole) dumber.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Apparently effective Oct 1 Macmillan will no longer permit manual overrides requested by Bloomsbury Academic reps for short discounted titles — one notable example is PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED. Really pathetic.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Little brings out my inner Larry David like waiting behind grown ass adults in a line for ice cream.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This is expensive as hell, but damn it looks interesting. ebbooksellers.com/item/7u0AIzf...
ebbooksellers.com
The Player and the Played by Max Haiven | East Bay Booksellers
A provocative examination of the ways our economy has been rigged by financialization, and the importance of games to our dangerous political moment.In an age when capitalism feels like an unwinnable ...
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We in the Bay Area definitely weather wimps. However … it’s close to 90 degrees (says the thermostat in staring at) in this restaurant I’ve chosen to eat lunch. Lord knows what’s it’s been at the store the past two days.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Hannah Arendt on Marx’s post-labor utopia feels even more relevant today. The important shift is at the end: where the problem is not strictly *our* consumption, though there is that; but more so, I’d say, that our very consumption is itself consumed by another.
“for all. A hundred years after Marx we know the fallacy of this reasoning; the spare time of the animal laborans is never spent in anything but consumption, and the more time left to him, the greedier and more craving his appetites. That these appetites become more sophisticated, so that consumption is no longer restricted to the necessities but, on the contrary, mainly concentrates on the superfluities of life, does not change the character of this society, but harbors the grave danger that eventually no object of the world will be safe from consumption and annihilation through consumption.”
(THE HUMAN CONDITION, p.133)
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
For probably obvious reasons, this is appealing to me a great deal. ebbooksellers.com/item/44euZQq...
ebbooksellers.com
Against Convenience by Gabe Bullard | East Bay Booksellers
A provocative exploration of modern “convenience culture”—and how we can resist and reclaim our time, resilience, and happiness, for fans of How to Do Nothing and The Courage to Be Disliked.
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East Bay Booksellers @ebbooksellers.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We have absolutely no idea where we're going to put these wickedly cool books + LPs from the Flee Project that just arrived today. But, by god, we're up for the challenge. ebbooksellers.com/lists/LaY5BP...
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mave @mave.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
No one is coming to save you. However, someone is coming to stand in front of what you want to look at in the grocery store
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Niche post, but ... there re 450+ Harper titles in the Sept promo catalog. And not one of my reorders for the past week+ has been one of them. That says at least something about Harper and EBB, I think.
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Brad Johnson @ahablives.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This Texas Democrat twerp who's decided to throw trans people under the bus either doesn't realize or doesn't care that he's lost so much more support (financial and otherwise) than he ever could possibly gain from doing so.
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