Multiversity
@multiversitybooks.com
Science Fiction & Fantasy
New & Used Books, Comics, and Games
Fall 2026
Posts by owner Daniel M. Clark
New & Used Books, Comics, and Games
Fall 2026
Posts by owner Daniel M. Clark
A new book is blank. A used one comes pre-haunted. Somebody bought it, read it, and let it go, and now you get all of that too. An inscription from a hand that might be long gone. An underline showing what a stranger needed that year. This copy has been around the block, and now it's yours.
October 1, 2026 at 4:00 PM
A new book is blank. A used one comes pre-haunted. Somebody bought it, read it, and let it go, and now you get all of that too. An inscription from a hand that might be long gone. An underline showing what a stranger needed that year. This copy has been around the block, and now it's yours.
We sell collectibles, and trust me, most books (especially most comics) aren't one. They're made to be read, lent out, dropped in the bath, read again years later by maybe someone who isn't you. That's the point of the thing, not some lesser fate. The value is purely personal, not financial.
September 28, 2026 at 4:00 PM
We sell collectibles, and trust me, most books (especially most comics) aren't one. They're made to be read, lent out, dropped in the bath, read again years later by maybe someone who isn't you. That's the point of the thing, not some lesser fate. The value is purely personal, not financial.
"I don't like reading" is almost never true. Usually, it’s that nobody's handed that person the right book yet. It's not a flaw. Anyone who'll lose a weekend to a game or a show already likes story. They just haven't met it on the page. Find the right book, and the reader was there all along.
September 24, 2026 at 4:00 PM
"I don't like reading" is almost never true. Usually, it’s that nobody's handed that person the right book yet. It's not a flaw. Anyone who'll lose a weekend to a game or a show already likes story. They just haven't met it on the page. Find the right book, and the reader was there all along.
We decided somewhere that a clean book is respected and a marked-up one is vandalized. Backwards. Writing in a book you own is a time-honored tradition. Coleridge's margin notes were published as their own books. Mark yours up! You're not ruining it.
September 21, 2026 at 4:00 PM
We decided somewhere that a clean book is respected and a marked-up one is vandalized. Backwards. Writing in a book you own is a time-honored tradition. Coleridge's margin notes were published as their own books. Mark yours up! You're not ruining it.
Life is short, and the to-be-read list is long. Putting a book down that isn't working for you isn't quitting, and you win no points for finishing. This is officially your permission to move on to something you'll enjoy. It's okay.
September 14, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Life is short, and the to-be-read list is long. Putting a book down that isn't working for you isn't quitting, and you win no points for finishing. This is officially your permission to move on to something you'll enjoy. It's okay.
This might seem weird for a bookseller to say, but bookstores aren’t really in conflict with libraries. The public library is one of the oldest and most radical ideas in civic life, and nobody notices it's radical anymore because it seems like it's always been there. Support your local library.
September 10, 2026 at 4:00 PM
This might seem weird for a bookseller to say, but bookstores aren’t really in conflict with libraries. The public library is one of the oldest and most radical ideas in civic life, and nobody notices it's radical anymore because it seems like it's always been there. Support your local library.
Every time a child follows a story through a new problem, weighs characters' motives, or works out how they feel about an ending, they're doing the same cognitive work that they’ll reckon with in their adult lives. A good story teaches kids sideways, without the kid noticing.
September 7, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Every time a child follows a story through a new problem, weighs characters' motives, or works out how they feel about an ending, they're doing the same cognitive work that they’ll reckon with in their adult lives. A good story teaches kids sideways, without the kid noticing.
Nobody comes into the world already loving Ursula K. Le Guin, J. R. R. Tolkien, or James S. A. Corey. Someone gave them the right book at the right moment. We can be that person for someone. We should offer grace when encountering someone unfamiliar with our favorite work, not negativity.
September 3, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Nobody comes into the world already loving Ursula K. Le Guin, J. R. R. Tolkien, or James S. A. Corey. Someone gave them the right book at the right moment. We can be that person for someone. We should offer grace when encountering someone unfamiliar with our favorite work, not negativity.
The book you read at twenty and the book you read at thirty-five aren't the same book, even though the words are identical. You catch different things. You sympathize with different characters. The parts that bored you the first time through might be the parts that really catch your attention now.
August 31, 2026 at 4:00 PM
The book you read at twenty and the book you read at thirty-five aren't the same book, even though the words are identical. You catch different things. You sympathize with different characters. The parts that bored you the first time through might be the parts that really catch your attention now.
Sometimes reading is purely comfortable, where books set in worlds that ask nothing of you confirm what you already think. That's fine, and there’s a place for those books, but it's not what the best stories are actually for. Books can, and often should, challenge as much as entertain.
August 27, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Sometimes reading is purely comfortable, where books set in worlds that ask nothing of you confirm what you already think. That's fine, and there’s a place for those books, but it's not what the best stories are actually for. Books can, and often should, challenge as much as entertain.
There are people who dog-ear pages and people who would sooner lose their place entirely than fold a corner, and I'm not going to referee that. Do what you like. Folding a page corner doesn't make you a bad person.
August 24, 2026 at 4:00 PM
There are people who dog-ear pages and people who would sooner lose their place entirely than fold a corner, and I'm not going to referee that. Do what you like. Folding a page corner doesn't make you a bad person.
Guilt implies you've done something wrong, and reading a book, regardless of genre or what the literary establishment thinks of it, doesn't qualify. If you’re into romantasy and books about sexy faeries, that’s not a guilty pleasure. Nobody owes anyone an embarrassed disclaimer for what they read.
August 20, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Guilt implies you've done something wrong, and reading a book, regardless of genre or what the literary establishment thinks of it, doesn't qualify. If you’re into romantasy and books about sexy faeries, that’s not a guilty pleasure. Nobody owes anyone an embarrassed disclaimer for what they read.
The audiobooks-don't-count argument shows up on socials every now and then like it's a fresh take, and it isn't. It’s reading. You're taking in the same story, the same ideas, the *exact same words*, but through your ears instead of your eyes.
August 17, 2026 at 4:00 PM
The audiobooks-don't-count argument shows up on socials every now and then like it's a fresh take, and it isn't. It’s reading. You're taking in the same story, the same ideas, the *exact same words*, but through your ears instead of your eyes.
We file books under “kids” that grown adults reread their entire lives and never really outgrow. Charlotte's Web is on it. The Hobbit. Narnia, obviously. That shelf is the point Lewis was making. A book that works only for kids misses big opportunities, and the great ones have no age limit.
August 13, 2026 at 4:00 PM
We file books under “kids” that grown adults reread their entire lives and never really outgrow. Charlotte's Web is on it. The Hobbit. Narnia, obviously. That shelf is the point Lewis was making. A book that works only for kids misses big opportunities, and the great ones have no age limit.
Not reading is the colder option. It takes no match and no nerve. We live in an era of nearly limitless written content and the ability to access it with a click. We need only to let the most extraordinary stuff human beings have ever made sit there, often free, and scroll past.
August 10, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Not reading is the colder option. It takes no match and no nerve. We live in an era of nearly limitless written content and the ability to access it with a click. We need only to let the most extraordinary stuff human beings have ever made sit there, often free, and scroll past.
Range is the key. Read enough, and you'll follow people through circumstances you may never face. Then, when your own life hands you something hard, it’ll tend to rhyme with something you've seen. Align those lessons with your goals, and you have a recipe for success wherever you want to go.
August 6, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Range is the key. Read enough, and you'll follow people through circumstances you may never face. Then, when your own life hands you something hard, it’ll tend to rhyme with something you've seen. Align those lessons with your goals, and you have a recipe for success wherever you want to go.
Walking into a room full of books relaxes me before I've opened a single one. Smiley clearly felt it too, and so do many people who might never say it out loud (or even realize what’s happening). The sight alone does something. On a bad day, it can change your whole disposition.
August 3, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Walking into a room full of books relaxes me before I've opened a single one. Smiley clearly felt it too, and so do many people who might never say it out loud (or even realize what’s happening). The sight alone does something. On a bad day, it can change your whole disposition.
At some point in school, kids learn that reading is a thing you get graded on, and many stop as soon as nobody’s making them do it. Dahl knew better. He made books gleeful and faintly criminal, as if readers were getting away with something. A kid who finds books fun reads for decades to come.
July 30, 2026 at 4:00 PM
At some point in school, kids learn that reading is a thing you get graded on, and many stop as soon as nobody’s making them do it. Dahl knew better. He made books gleeful and faintly criminal, as if readers were getting away with something. A kid who finds books fun reads for decades to come.
Television is about 80 years old, give or take. Radio and movies, about a century. Writing goes back thousands of years. Reading is the closest thing we've ever built to a working time machine.
July 27, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Television is about 80 years old, give or take. Radio and movies, about a century. Writing goes back thousands of years. Reading is the closest thing we've ever built to a working time machine.
Blackman's Noughts and Crosses flips Britain's racial order. A reader who never thought about that line spends the book feeling it from the other side. Somewhere, a few chapters in, they notice they’ve been made to care about a life governed by rules they never had to live under.
July 23, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Blackman's Noughts and Crosses flips Britain's racial order. A reader who never thought about that line spends the book feeling it from the other side. Somewhere, a few chapters in, they notice they’ve been made to care about a life governed by rules they never had to live under.
Bradbury wrote the book on book-burning, then insisted people had the wrong villain. A burned book becomes symbolic, while an unread book just vanishes. The scariest version of cultural decline is a generation that had access to everything ever written and decided none of it was worth the time.
July 20, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Bradbury wrote the book on book-burning, then insisted people had the wrong villain. A burned book becomes symbolic, while an unread book just vanishes. The scariest version of cultural decline is a generation that had access to everything ever written and decided none of it was worth the time.
This almost reads like a motivational poster, which makes me wince a little. But the message makes sense, and I’m firmly behind it. Reading is the best, cheapest way to borrow someone else's hard-won thinking. It makes you a better person and offers advantages that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
July 16, 2026 at 4:00 PM
This almost reads like a motivational poster, which makes me wince a little. But the message makes sense, and I’m firmly behind it. Reading is the best, cheapest way to borrow someone else's hard-won thinking. It makes you a better person and offers advantages that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
Mitch said it as a joke, and it is one. It's also, perhaps accidentally, completely correct. Kids are remarkably good at self-censorship. A kid who can handle the words can handle the world inside them.
I mean, within reason. Please don’t hand A Game of Thrones to an 8-year-old.
I mean, within reason. Please don’t hand A Game of Thrones to an 8-year-old.
July 13, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Mitch said it as a joke, and it is one. It's also, perhaps accidentally, completely correct. Kids are remarkably good at self-censorship. A kid who can handle the words can handle the world inside them.
I mean, within reason. Please don’t hand A Game of Thrones to an 8-year-old.
I mean, within reason. Please don’t hand A Game of Thrones to an 8-year-old.
Recommending a book you love is risky. You're exposing a piece of yourself. Glowing responses are incredibly validating, while indifference can be devastating. When someone presses a book into your hands and won’t stop talking about it, they’re trusting you with a piece of themselves.
July 9, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Recommending a book you love is risky. You're exposing a piece of yourself. Glowing responses are incredibly validating, while indifference can be devastating. When someone presses a book into your hands and won’t stop talking about it, they’re trusting you with a piece of themselves.
An update for July.
I'm so bad at social media, you guys.
I think I need to put a social media person into my budget.
I'm so bad at social media, you guys.
I think I need to put a social media person into my budget.
July 2026 Shop Update: Small Wins - Multiversity
My desk is messy. Don't trust people with clean desks.
multiversitybooks.com
July 8, 2026 at 3:52 PM
An update for July.
I'm so bad at social media, you guys.
I think I need to put a social media person into my budget.
I'm so bad at social media, you guys.
I think I need to put a social media person into my budget.