Literary fiction, essays, and poetry are usually several hurdles away from the mainstream. A significant portion is produced and published through universities (although this does not necessarily mean that the writing has no mass appeal). Television has consumed much of the cultural space that once belonged to reading. But one important hurdle keeping literature from the masses, and perhaps the easiest cleared, is price.

Hardback books usually cost around $25, paperbacks around $15. But even $15 can be a lot for working class readers (or students) to risk on the recommendation of a friend or review—what if you hate the book? …

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The English language has been historically forgiving of nouns becoming verbs, friending and unfriending being the latest additions, but an increasingly common verbification is dumpstering. People who prefer free to cheap can, with a little digging (literally), find everything from food to furniture to electronics to books. Dumpstering doesn’t necessarily mean trolling the student neighborhoods around move-out day or raccooning your way to week-old burritos and moth-eaten lampshades in the back alley trash cans. Most grocery stores and coops throw out food, usually just past the expiration date, and while many have been clamping down on scavengers looking for a …

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Everyone wants to write a book. It’s a glorified prospect – you write a book, you must be bright. And in the digital age it couldn’t be simpler (to be bright). At this very moment, if I wanted, I could upload a text document containing any of my own writings, submit it to a self-publishing company such as iUniverse, LuLu Enterprises, CreateSpace or Xlibris and hold a hardcopy of it – sans editing – in a few days time.

The attraction to publish through one of these companies is clear: it’s cheap and quick (like couscous). Little to no upfront …

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Does your food come from farmer’s markets and co-ops? Do you listen to public radio? Are your favorite movies directed by Wes Anderson and Michel Gondry?

If the answer is yes, you’re probably a white person.*

So says Christian Lander, creator of the Web site Stuff White People Like and author of the book it spawned, Stuff White People Like: The Definitive Guide to the Unique Taste of Millions. I saw Lander speak on January 26, when he appeared at the student bookstore in Coffman to tout the book and to expound on the ideas behind it. “White people” is the shorthand, …

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Photo by Alex Amend

There is much to lament – and praise – in the fusion of social networking with online social networking. Like a newspaper in a bathroom stall, or a simple handshake, however, the conquest of digital technology has its limits, and small niches considered “ways of the old” remain, at least for now, stubbornly irreplaceable.

Enter Mayday Bookstore. Founded in 1975 on the corner of Selby and Western in St. Paul, Mayday was originally a Maoist collective. Today, many ideological splits and …

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Mayday Bookstore