First off, a few section changes at ABC The Hague! Penguin has decided to discontinue their Penguin Popular Classics series. *sniff*
As a result, ABC The Hague’s remaining popular classics stock has been redistributed to the Fiction, Drama, and Poetry sections. You will now find our Digital Age books where the popular classics used to be (near the beginning of the SciFi/Fantasy section), and the Nature/Animals section finally has some breathing room again, where the Digital Age books used to be (near the Information Desk). Hooray!
Lynn loved this article about Sarah McNally, bookstore owner / purveyor of the life of the mind. Who loves her EBM like we love ours. 
Marten has a new bargain for you: Footprints by Co Rentmeester. “This World-renowned Dutch photojournalist’s book, spanning his entire career is now available for the bargain price of 29.99 euro! This book is bound to become a classic, don’t leave till it’s too late! Buy it now and you won’t regret it!”
Sign up for our irregular bargains mailing if you want to keep up-to-date.
And finally, a proper version of the Parool article celebrating our Rick’s 25th ABC Anniversary! The article is by Lorianne van Gelder for Het Parool, translated by Alexander Moust and edited by Bryna Hellmann-Gillson. March 12, 2013. Below is the first part, after the break you can read the rest!
That Canadian with one sweater.
Rick Lightstone, the enthusiastic PR-person at the American Book Center, has close to 5,000 Facebook friends. He remembers anyone who’s been in the shop longer than merely dropping in to find and pay for a book. Without his presence and efforts, many international stars, like Stephen Fry, Dionne Warwick, Ziggy Marley, Spike Lee and David Sedaris, would not have come to the bookshop on the Spui.
ABC’s PR-man is a real networker, so his friends and colleagues say, but not in the tedious ‘good-for-business’ sense of the word. “He’s the man through and with whom people come together,” says Gary Goldschneider, writer and dear friend to Lightstone for years. “He often says, ‘This is someone you need to meet,’ and he’s always right.”
Recently Lightstone celebrated his 25 years’ jubilee at ABC. “It was a beautiful party,” director Lynn Kaplanian-Buller says. “We sang for him and gave him a Holtkamp pie and a blank-paged book in which we spur him on to finally write his autobiography.”
Born in Montreal in 1954, Lightstone is a man with a story to tell. Even the way he came to work at ABC is a narrative worth sharing. In 1987, his Dutch wife Yvonne walked into the shop and asked if they had a vacancy for her husband. Kaplanian-Buller hired him after one phone conversation. Lightstone was still employed at a bookstore in Vancouver, Canada. “He sent in a fantastic resumè in which he described his extensive experience in the book trade. Getting a work permit was no problem, as he was married to a Dutch woman.” With so many good references, she simply couldn’t refuse him.
