Business

New Canaan Holiday Shopping: Elm Street Books [Q&A]

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For today’s installment in our local holiday shopping series, we spoke to Manda Riggs of Elm Street Books at 35 Elm St. Here’s a transcription of our conversation. 

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New Canaanite: How’s it going so far this holiday shopping season? Manda Riggs: I would say it’s been soft, actually. I’m not entirely sure if it was the shorter shopping season—‘longer November, shorter December,’ as we say—not sure if it was an election result. I looked at our numbers from 2020 and 2016. It looks like our Decembers in those years were also a tiny bit soft, so we’ll see.

Who Knew: A Very New Canaan Gift Guide

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‘Who Knew?’ is sponsored by Walter Stewart’s Market. 

The fun thing about getting older (besides knowing where all the candy is hidden) is that you start to enjoy giving gifts more than receiving them. There’s a midlife shift toward benevolence, whether brought on by parenthood, maturity, or working with a therapist to develop a more sensible attitude toward hoarding Legos. Turns out, ‘tis actually better to give than to receive. 

And when the holiday season rears its $960 billion head in mid-October, we all start to get the Gift Sweats. Not that we won’t find anything; that’s impossible when consumer culture confronts each of us with 4,000 to 10,000 advertising messages per day. But we fear that it won’t be the right thing.

Business

Podcast: Manda Riggs of Elm Street Books

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Manda Riggs, co-manager at Elm Street Books, about how the locally owned bookshop is faring amid the pandemic and what sort of in-store activity it’s seeing now, as well as some good fiction and nonfiction recommendations this spring

Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

Business

Local Businesses and COVID-19: Elm Street Books

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For today’s Q&A, we reached out to Elm Street Books owner Susan Rein and co-managers Manda Riggs and Melissa Thorkilsen. The store is open 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. for curbside pickup. (Those seeking to order books can do that through the Elm Street Books website or by calling 203-966-4545 or emailing children@elmstreetbooks.com or frontlist@elmstreetbooks.com.)

Here’s our exchange. New Canaanite: How are you faring at Elm Street Books? Susan Rein: We are closed to people coming into the store but we are answering the phones, responding to messages, taking orders on our website and through our emails and able to put books outside the door for people to pick up and we are mailing orders as well. Our sales are certainly not what they usually are but we are gratified that our customers seem to be anxious to keep reading and putting puzzles together and celebrated the arrival of the Easter Bunny, such that they are choosing to support the store in this unsettling time. We are hoping that, like us, our customers feel like our products are “essential” to their wellbeing and continued stimulation.