iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 29/09/2026

Nothing quite like making a scholar's day by having an incredibly obscure book on hand. By the way... I have a lot of fiction, cultural theory, and history auf Deutsch right now. Send me a list of authors or types of books you want; I'll watch for them while sorting these 16(!) boxes 🇩🇪

3211

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 28/09/2026

Ethnoentomology. Folklore of various fauna. Scary death poppies. The history of book illustration. I wasn't going to get out of @lornebairrarebooks.bsky.social 's current book sale without buying anything, but... if you don't see me for a week, it's because I'm researching* my purchases. *reading

1181

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 27/09/2026

Today in "compliments I have given": "If he'd told me I should be a housepainter, I'd smell like turpentine instead of lignin." Here's to you, Kirk Daddow of Ames High School 🍷

0120

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 26/09/2026

The kind of day on which I see "978015-" and think "oh thank goodness, finally"

190

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 26/09/2026

Busy day, lots of medieval history to process, but I've gotten sidetracked by a cheap paperback. "Brother Petroc's Return", by "S.M.C.", is basically a time travel romance except the romance part is monastic devotion 🤔 He goes into a trance in Henry VIII's England and wakes up in the 20th century.

A mass market paperback book published by Doubleday Image in the 1950s. The cover has a very boxy monastery perched on a cliff overlooking the sea; the land is brown and has a stone wall and a bare tree, and the sea is just several distant squiggles under a matching gray-blue sky. This book has tea droplet spots, creased corners, a felt-tip mark over the original price, scuffs along the bottom front, and more - it is what book dealers call "good", by which we generally mean you can read it just fine, but it is not gift quality - and I should absolutely not be obsessing over this, because it has negligible market value, but seriously, it was written in the 1930s and it anticipates the tropes of an entire subgenre of 'he came from an earlier time and must now learn about modern life and find a place for himself in it' stories. Like, did Jack Finney read this? Diana Gabaldon? I want to know!

2375

Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/09/2026

This just in: His name shall be Menander, and you can call him And or Andy for short. (He joined Sophocles "Sophie" and Aeschylus "Esk" on our staff a week ago Sunday and is still mostly hiding under the couch, but he gets more comfortable in his new home every day.)

A very pale orange cat with tabby stripes around his very leonine eyes. He is unselfconsciously smooshing his forehead against a human's hand. His fur looks, and in fact is, softer than a rabbit's. What's not quite clear in this picture is that he also has huge feet. Huge. Also very leonine. And did I mention that he's gorgeous?

41036

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with Menander! Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

Close-up of a pale orange cat with tabby markings around his eyes, lying on his side under a beat-up old loveseat. His eyes are slightly squinty in the way that cats show affection; one paw is raised, ready to touch your finger if you put your hand out in front of him. He likes touching your hands with his paws. Also, he's beautiful. Not that I'm biased.

About forty books, mostly soft-cover, arranged on two carpeted steps. Authors include David Lodge, Sherman Alexie, Vincente Blasco Ibanez, Gloria Naylor, Colm Toibin, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Jose Saramago, Penelope Fitzgerald, D. H. Lawrence, and a row of crime fiction by Georges Simenon, Donna Leon, Jacqueline Winspear, et al.

Not quite forty more books, again fiction for the most part, with the exception of a memoir by Yiyun Li, poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca and Homer, graphic work by Marjane Satrapi and Art Spiegelman, some classic mysteries by Wilkie Collins, R.A. Dick, Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James, but also John Copenhaver's "The Savage Kind"; in the next row, everybody from Don Delillo to Henry Miller to Thomas Pynchon to a reproduction of a Nonesuch Dickens volume (David Copperfield). A couple of these have sold; call or email for further information.

Nonfiction time! An atlas of world history in German, books from the history of ideas and philosophy, some European history - back to Byzantium and forward to the Balkan wars - and the excellent book "Germans Into Nazis" by Peter Fritzsche. Also, some narrative nonfiction about the experience of nature, a little medieval art and literature, and Patricia Hampl's book about visiting Spillville, Iowa, while researching Anton Dvorak.

1253

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 24/09/2026

41036

Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

Adam Steinbaugh @adamsteinbaugh.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

BREAKING: An Iowa state court dismisses President Donald Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer (represented by @thefireorg.bsky.social) and the Des Moines Register newspaper, a victory for First Amendment rights. Opinion here: www.fire.org/research-lea...

This case sets a President, a member of Congress, and a former state senator against a pollster and a newspaper, and it arises out of an election. A case of that kind invites the reader to look for a political result. The Court’s role is narrower. It is to sit as an impartial arbiter, to apply the law without passion or prejudice, and to rule without regard to the politics of the day. As such, the only question before the Court is whether the Petition states a claim the law recognizes. At its core, the Plaintiffs’ Petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability. After considering the parties’ arguments, the Court must conclude that the protection is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.

141128267

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/09/2026

This is such a question. Thousands of possibilities, some comic, some tragic, situated in contexts for which my best clues right now are the other books this author chose to let go. The author also happens to be a fascinating person, I am learning from these notes, because I'm that kind of snoop 😂

0212

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/09/2026

Marius the Epicurean and Forrest Gump: Discuss.

031

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 23/09/2026

Today, in my stack of books to catalogue, I find a very battered hardcover published by a university press. It has underlining, highlighting, and flocks of post-notes perched along the head- and foreedges*, each peppered with notes. This was the author's own working copy of their book.

51829

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 22/09/2026

Happy to report that the signed copy of Toni Morrison's "Home" did go to a wonderful person ❤️📚

0330

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 19/09/2026

PATRON (shy voice): Did you give me a receipt? J: It's in the top book, there - PATRON: (still quiet) Oh, okay. Thank you. (Patron and young adult open the door to exit). YOUNG ADULT: I'm telling you, that was MEANT TO BE. We were SUPPOSED TO COME HERE. 😮 🥰 📚❤️

0452

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 19/09/2026

Yet another reason to shop locally owned, independent stores: we charge one price per product. We do not change prices to see how much we can get out of people in need, and we don't use personal information about you to decide how much you will spend.

15211

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 17/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with New Cat! We have not yet settled on a new professional name for New Cat, so your suggestions are welcome! Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A golden tabby cat with very leonine features and a big, fluffy tail looks up from a food dish in a room with a squishy couch and a lot of mystery novels

A roll of discount stickers and three piles of Babysitter's Club paperbacks from the 1980s, except with an adorable golden tabby cat flopped over in the middle of everything, allowing store employee Felix to rub his forehead

Golden tabby cat looks off-camera like a movie starlet while accidentally wearing a discount price sticker on his chest. Let me stress, urgently, that the cat is not for sale. We love him.

Oh right, books. Here are some nonfiction titles, including a couple versions of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Analects of Confucius, C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, books about Montaigne and Emerson and the Inklings, a little criticism, some war history of both recent and long distant varieties, some classical history, and a bit of Western philosophy

8455

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 16/09/2026

Them: I want XXL Me: That's incorrect. That would just be XXX Them: *looks scandalized in Midwestern American* Me: 😳 Were you not talking about Roman numerals? #bookshoplife

1271

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 15/09/2026

A friend of mine had been working on a truly startling project when he passed. A Walt Whitman Tarot 🤯 So I broke out an abridgement of "Leaves of Grass" (I have the complete one for sale, but I wanted a Dover that I could write in), and I'm brainstorming. What do you think, friends?

5343

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 10/09/2026

Days since last covidsplaining: 0 No, you will not convince me that we were under literal house arrest, nor will I forget that new parents waited two *years* for the first vaccine for under-5s. Also: no, I wasn't closed, except for the month covid knocked me out completely, in 2022

3664

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 10/09/2026

Sep 9 2026 Dear journal: Went to Kitty Corner Social Club after work tonight. Love it. Very chill, homelike but unique, full of good company of both human and kitty persuasions. Might need to become a regular.

A beautiful, leonine orange cat washes his massive paws behind a cute little chair. Evening sun comes through the windows and falls on a plaid blanket and various love-and-cats themed wall hangings.

0294

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

22 years ago today, a weird kid bought The Haunted Bookshop. Thank you to Eastern Iowa, to our regulars and friends, for all your support over these years. I still feel like I'm getting away with something when I pull out *my* key to a *bookshop*. You are all my coconspirators, and I love you 📚❤️

A charcoal tuxedo cat sits in front of a very short flight of steps and a very full bookcase. He is turned just slightly, so that he seems to be looking just a bit over his shoulder. Logan knew he was very pretty, and he is definitely giving the camera bedroom eyes. Those who knew him (he's been gone a year now) will tell you that he used to pose for the camera when he heard the shutter sound. Usually he just looked distinguished; but this is definitely a come hither look.

A dilute tortoiseshell cat, primarily gray in this light (but peach-colored in other light), sits on a shabby rug, one front paw slightly forward, eyes watchful. Nierme was the smartest cat we have ever known and a very, very dear friend. She passed away some years ago, after a spectacular 17 years as the queen of the bookshop.

The former location of The Haunted Bookshop, a different old house with a porch on the main level and dormer windows on the second level; there is a large sign with the shop's name in Garamond hanging under the edge of the porch roof, and a second, sandwich-board style sign with the name of the shop and the word OPEN. Both signs are gone, but we have a new one made in the same style and colors on our current old house, which is about five blocks away from this place (it's now a service office of some sort; I don't get out much, so I'm not sure what).

A person wearing a v-necked sweater and a large, floppy cap sits in front of a pair of bookshelves crammed with CD cases, various book repair and shipping tools, and also books. There is a copy of "The Haunted Bookshop" by Christopher Morley on display, the view partially blocked by a coconut with a postage label on it (long story); there is a coffee mug with Marvin the Martian on the side, and there is a stack of quite old looking, smallish books (a sextodecimo edition of Addison and Steele, long since sold, sorry). The bookseller is looking over the rims of her glasses.

1683

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 09/09/2026

In my hand is book about medieval history, and in the book are a series of margin marks. Most are just short, straight lines in the outer margin, drawing the eye to one particular sentence. #marginalia

A printed book open to a page that includes a paragraph about Hincmar of Laon and his court case. There is a short, straight line in the left margin drawing attention to the last sentence in the first paragraph.

2274

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 08/09/2026

ART It's pure holy ART No love for Centaur in this reel but that's all right, everything else about this is perfect and hilarious and art

3194

Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

Joanne Harris @joannechocolat.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

How to be a Writer: Look into void Become increasingly convinced that void is not only looking back at you, but that it hates your novel Tea

24607104

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 08/09/2026

NEW ARRIVALS with a pensive Sophie Place your order via 319-337-2996 or infodesk@thehauntedbookshop.com - We ship! Or stop by 219 N Gilbert Street, Iowa City, 11-6 Central Mon-Sat.

A tortoiseshell cat with a spectacular white mane looks off to the left, considering whether the sound of kibble promises something better than being admired and petted. This is a tough call, folks

A group of fortyish books, all fiction, including work by Karen Joy Fowler, Paul Auster, Colum McCann, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kazuo Ishiguro, James Baldwin, Nella Larsen, Don DeLillo, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, Jane Smiley, Michael Chabon, Jeanette Winterson, Anthony Doerr, Elena Ferrante, and Kurt Vonnegut, among others.

A shelf full of poetry on a half-sized shelving cart. Includes work by Diane Seuss, Adrienne Rich, Anne Waldman, Louis Simpson, Tess Gallagher, Robert Kelly, Al Young, Jack Marshall, Tristan Tzara, and more

More poetry! Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Tom Clark, Robert Bly, Don Mee Choi, Melvin B. Tolson, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen... this must be an older photo because I'm pretty sure a few of these have sold. Forgive my disorganization and, if you haven't, look up our website www thehauntedbookshop com , where you can see our most recent 100 books in the New Arrivals page, linked at the bottom of the main page. We are currently shelving (especially nonfiction) books too quickly to take pictures of all of them

1262

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 07/09/2026

The Dumbening has now entirely hijacked one of my principal uses of Google, which was to search for reviews of out-of-print books I'm waffling about stocking or repairing. All I get are snide FB comments, narcissistic Goodreads blurbs, Azon product complaints.... Come on, I need informed opinions!

5391

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 07/09/2026

In short, yes. This or reading Wendell Berry while lying draped across two branches of a pin oak beside a small, cattail-fringed pond in the middle of a restored prairie with the early evening sun slanting eastward and cabbage butterflies flopping along, throwing hilarious shadows

3396

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 07/09/2026

Very slightly belated happy 30th birthday to this receipt for Watson's "The Double Helix" that I found in a stack of agriculture textbooks. __________________ Hello, Coincidences-R-Us, how may I direct your call?

A blank course slip from Iowa State University's Department of Animal Science, together with a faded printed receipt from the University book store showing a purchase of three items. The prices are $1.25, $0.35, and $0.05, and the store's department codes are Roman numerals, which is kind of funny and classy at the same time. The date on the receipt is 6 September 1976.

3172

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 07/09/2026

Someone with whom I work indirectly has been saying things like (his chosen AI) "knows" that he doesn't want it to hallucinate. First off, no it doesn't, and second, don't reframe your prompt writing to make it sound like you're disciplining a 7yo child, because that's creepy on multiple levels

3273

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 06/09/2026

Last week, I celebrated 29 years in the book trade, and this week will be my 22nd anniversary with The Haunted. The first ten years each felt like individual accomplishments, but the years from 20-30 just feel like... the middle of things. Long road behind, hopefully long road ahead 🤔

2502

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 05/09/2026

The bookshop. Yes it's a character. If it's not, there's something wrong with your movie/book

2363

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 05/09/2026

Patron looking through a box of books from a recently acquired library. He asks "Who is [previous owner]?" and I give him as clear a picture as I can, while maintaining my high standard of confidentiality. "[They're] moving away?" I nod. "I wish I'd known [them]!" Buddy, if only you knew.

3835

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 04/09/2026

Things booksellers say in a chat window at late o'clock, #32 of 5356778544678

Two comments made in a phone chat by the same person. The first says, "Yeah, technically it's fantasy, there's a guy doing slightly impossible stuff while coming of age". The second comment is "I guess by that definition, I'm a fantasy novel too. Will have to rethink that"

1230

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 03/09/2026

Some blue wavers need to read Dorothy Thompson, and it shows. "In the next decade, there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here --if not today, then tomorrow."

The text reads: "which arises out of a vague feeling that there is nothing in the world worth heroic sacrifice; the interpretation of self-government as a universal Gallup Poll, in which neither wisdom, experience, nor intelligence is the criterion, but only numbers; the elevation of leisure over creative work; the tendency to measure these are the standard of living wholly in terms of money trends which Plato described as infallible signs of decay in societies of free and self-governing men.

And Plato laid it down, almost as a scientific rule, that the worst end of decaying democracy was invariably tyranny of all possible governments.

It is too late to answer the slogans of Fascism with the slogans of Democracy. It is too late to hope that we shall preserve Democracy without effort, intelligence, responsibility, character, and great sacrifice. In the next decade there will be no free rides to freedom; it will not be preserved by geography or by the"

On the next page, that sentence ends: "insistent chant, that no matter where else it is raining, it is bound to be sunny here --if not today, then tomorrow " ... Like. Damn. Lady smiles while she slices and dices your platitudes.

2232

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 03/09/2026

First book on my stack this morning determined to make me cry. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." (Shakespeare, Hamlet)

The back of a paperback book, with the usual summary and blurbs, except the first blurb is from Gloria Steinem and says "The book that completed the human circle by bringing women's lives into it." The book is Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice"

0253

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 02/09/2026

GENTLEMAN REGULAR: I have one more box for you. ME: Oh, how delightful! GR: This one has some poetry in it ME: My favorite 🙂 GR: (exits sans box) ME: (opens box) ... ME: 🥹🥹😭

One volume of a small pair of books is open; the other stands behind it. They're leather bound, needing some dressing but with good joints. The open one is open to the title page, which identifies the work as The Odyssey, the Pope translation. Myers and Smith, booksellers, New York, 1822.

3351

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 01/09/2026

Wendell Berry. Of all the people we so desperately need right now

4291

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 01/09/2026

A response to the story about David and Soren.

A reply to a post on Facebook. The other party says: "This makes me want to write... in books that I give to people or loan to them... more often" (followed by a heart emoji). I responded: "There are some who would point out that book dealers can pay more and charge more for "clean" books (with no marks)... but you know what? We only get today and maybe tomorrow. We only get so many words to read, or write, or say. Do what matters. The right people will be glad you did."

5331

Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

Jennifer Crispin || Dancing Star Press @greeniezona.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Once again I have waited for the very end of #WITmonth to drop some women in translation content. I kept wanting an easy place to send people to make it easy for them to buy the books I am yelling about, so I spent hours curating a list on bookshop.

bookshop.org

Women in Translation

recs for #WomenInTranslationMonth (also #WITmonth) and beyond!

32414

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 31/08/2026

Oh so it's going to be one of THOSE days again

Five spiral bound cookbooks from 1972 - even if I hadn't checked the year, I'd have guessed early 1970s from the yellows and browns in the deeply unattractive foods depicted on the front covers - and they're each a type of "international" cuisine - and they're in German. Now I'm going to have the gefilte song stuck in my head all day. In case you wanted an earworm, here is the first verse: "Who would take a fish / dip it in lye / use it for food? / Not the Japanese / Not even Brits / but Norwegians would"

6231

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 30/08/2026

"If this were not a free country this book would be banned."

The cover of a mass market paperback edition of The Ugly American by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. The illustration shows a white man peering around a corner at a woman in a pink dress with a long slit in the skirt. There is also a one word blurb from The New York Times: "Devastating".

4222

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 30/08/2026

One more sentimental comment, then I need to clean the carpet 🙄 _______________________________ The older I get, the clearer it seems to me that all I can do, to provide the past to the future, is to offer what I can as stories. Only our children will know what use they can make of our history.

0382

Reposted by The Haunted Bookshop

Skip Bolden 💙🎬🎞️ @skipbolden.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

"Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." ~ James Baldwin

11805193

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 29/08/2026

Dad to kid as they exit the shop: "When I die, you can bring them my books." Kid (age ~10): "I want to work someplace like this." Me: (quietly sniffling behind my desk for the next few minutes)

1645

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 29/08/2026

It's late. In the collection that came in today--let's call the owner David-- I found a book with a different name on the half-title. This different name is that of a fellow, let's call him Soren, who passed away a few years ago and whom I only came to know from his books after his passing.

2413

The Haunted Bookshop @thehauntedbookshop.com · 28/08/2026

So that's three large academic collections we've brought in this month. Wait, no, four. Moving through the phases on collection 2 of 4: Influx ✅ Condition sort 🕜 Recycle damaged Prioritize & clean/repair Rationalize keeping a few Price / catalogue No really, I don't need that one Shelve Cleanup

1201