Sandstone: An Anthology to Support This House of Books
Now available! Sandstone, An Anthology to Support This House of Books, is a stunning collection of creative writing by 30 contemporary writers in the West, edited by Precious McKenzie.
The cover art, donated by Connie Dillon, cleverly blends a shelf of books with the beloved and renowned Rimrocks t...
Montana Noir at This House of Books
As part of the Montana Noir tour, Gwen Florio joined our own Carrie La Seur to read selections from the book. An excellent discussion followed.
As a bonus, Carrie read a selection from her soon-to-be-released book, The Weight of an Infinite Sky. Her new book is not a sequel to The Home Place...
—What I Am Reading Now Department: Montana Noir
Noir is not really my preferred genre, but I picked this up because I know several of the authors and I wanted to see what they were writing. Oh, my goodness! I was hooked. This stuff is good!
Focusing just on the stories that are set in Billings: Carrie La Seur's story, set in downtown Billings...
Loren Olson at This House of Books
Dr. Loren A. Olson presented his book, Finally Out, at This House of Books.
This was a wonderful event. There was a small turnout and Dr. Olson did not actually read from his book. Instead, we turned the chairs to make a circle and shared a remarkably open discussion of the issues raised in the...
—What I Am Reading Now Department: The Case for Bethsaida
Author-Owner Dr. Elizabeth McNamer's book, The Case for Bethsaida after Twenty Years of Digging: Understanding the Historical Jesus is now out in paperback. We are hosting Dr. McNamer as she presents her book at This House of Books on November 3, at 5:30 PM.
Billings' own Dr. Elizabeth McNamer...
—What I Am Reading Now Department: The Madonna of Starbucks
When I first saw the title I was thinking that Oberhansly might be writing about food, in the way that MFK Fisher wrote about food. The Madonna of Starbucks is not about food, though, it is about life. In the book, food plays its role in affecting psychological and emotional behavior, with its...
Watercolor Done in Yellowstone Park by Welsh Painter, Thomas H. Thomas
Billings native and member-owner Janet Chapple will be talking about her book, Through Early Yellowstone, and the paintings of Welsh artist, Thomas H. Thomas. Thomas, working in the 1890s did a series of paintings that are housed now in Wales and that have never been exhibited in the United States...
Poetry Open Mic Evening
First Tuesday of every month, This House of Books and BALA co-host an open mic poetry event at This House of Books. These have been remarkably successful. We are very pleased with the size and the diversity of the audience. Ages of participants have ranged from students to retirees.
Anna Paige |
Decorating the Windows
With our October 1 soft opening coming at us like a freight train, it's time to take a little time for frivolity! Art professor James Baken brought a group of his students down from Rocky Mountain College to decorate up our windows, with incredible results!
As the artists began their work, adding...
Stocking the Shelves
With the flooring in place, we are finally able to move all of the inventory from the former Red Lodge Books & Tea into our store and start loading the shelves. That's a good thing with the soft opening less than a week away!
One of the children's racks. Mostly nature & science on this one.
One...
Build This House!
Help build our member-owner base in the bookstore cooperative! Compete with other book clubs for awards and prizes.
Each book club that registers and purchases at least one share in the cooperative will receive a free cup of tea and a 10% in-store discount on your next reading group book.
The gr...
Putting Down the Hardwood
With everything moved off to one side of the building (or downstairs to the storage room and office), we were ready to commence with putting in the floor. As I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, our goal is to build a store with a Prohibition-era Billings motif, and that meant getting rid of the carpet...
Setting Up Downstairs and Clearing the Floor
We have to get everything cleared out of the way on half the floor so that flooring installation can commence tomorrow.
Over 6,000 pounds of oak flooring waiting to be installed, starting tomorrow!
A lot of things can be shuffled off to the other side of the store, but we decided this was as good...
Staining Parties
When This House of Books acquired the assets of Red Lodge Books & Tea, we got a lot of bookshelves. I suppose that’s to be expected for a bookstore. The decór in Red Lodge was all rustic light wood, mostly with raw pine and cedar. To fit with the look of the new store, those light pine shelves...
The Blueing of the Walls
We’ve ripped out the carpet; we’ve painted the ceiling. It’s time for the walls! Time to get rid of those drab beiges and color this place up. Once again, we had a great collection of volunteers to make things happen: and many of them came back for the second coat the next day!
We chose teal for...