Welcome!

To our blog.

We'll be posting news, semi-coherent observations, and probably pointless rants from the operations of a tiny independent bookstore known as Atomic Books, as it struggles to get by in the 21st century.

Yes, it has begun.

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Atomic Reading Club 2024: The End

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  We thought 2024 might be an appropriate year to explore the way things end. Careers, relationships, our emotional state, the world. All things end. Maybe even American democracy. But on the bright side, often the end of one thing is the beginning of something new. We're not sure how we'll be feeling by this time in 2025, so let's get ahead of things and look at The End. OUR 2024 THE END READING LIST January - Monica by Daniel Clowes February - The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa March - Tender Is The Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica April - My Year Of Rest And Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh May - Out by Natsuo Kirino June - This Is The End Of Something But It's Not The End Of You by Adam Gnade July - Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin August - The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert September - Slow Horses by Mick Herron October - Toad by Katherine Dunn November - Human Target (complete, Vol. 1 & Vol. 2) by Tom King / Greg Smallwood December
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Atomic Reading Club 2023 - Outer Limits

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Our theme this year is Outer Limits (as in "the outer limits of human belief"). It's like an X-files year! Or an In Search Of year. It's not about the supernatural but more like the paranormal, or the cultural history of investigations into the nature of such things. UFOs but not sci-fi. Not ghost stories but ghost hunting. Cryptids, not mythological creatures. What is real? What is nature? What is in the wild out there? In the universe? Why do we think there's something more out there? Things that exist at the very outer limits of human belief. OUR 2023 OUTER LIMITS READING LIST January - Desert Oracle: Volume 1: Strange True Tales from the American Southwest by Ken Layne February - I Hate This Place Volume 1 by Kyle Starks / Artyom Topilin / Lee Loughridge March - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead: A Novel by Olga Tokarczuk April - Communion: A True Story by Whitley Stieber May - Swamplandia! by Karen Russell June - Demon-Haunted World: Science as
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Baltimore Record Shops - 40 Years Ago

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Baltimore has had a long, rich history of record shops.   40 years ago, the city region had over 15 stores selling records. Here's how they were described in a city guide called Bawlamer: An Informal Guide To A Livelier Baltimore from 1974, published by the Citizens Planning and Housing Association. Athenaikon Music Center (4717 Eastern Ave.) Greek records, periodicals, and cookbooks. A must for budding belly dancers. Downtown Sounds (529 N. Howard St.) In the heart of downtown shopping district. Records and tapes. The sounds were from Broadway to soul. For The Record, Inc. (Howard & Fayette St., 217 E. Baltimore St., Reisterstown Road Plaza) Baltimore's discount record shop. Sales weekly, largest collection of contemporary records. Excellent stock of standards, folk, classical, and "old rock". The staff was knowledgeable and helpful in all areas. Italia Kanta (3512 E. Lombard St. ) A converted rowhouse in the heart of Highlandtown, this
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