Well-Read Life™

And now for an even better offer from Levenger

If you’re reading this, you’re already one of our Preferred Customers: the first to hear about our periodic special offers because you’re on our E-list. But did you know there’s another special deal we can offer you all the time?

Really special treatment—and some free stuff—in our stores.

Remember that you always get our email deals in our stores—every offer we extend online is also in store. But then we try to go one better for you when you come into our stores.

Because we know it’s hard to come in

We know how busy you are and that it’s hard to find the time to come in. (And granted, right now we have only a handful of stores. But we've tried to put them in convenient places for our peripatetic customers—Chicago, Washington, Boston, South Florida.)  So we’re committed to giving you special treatment when you do.

Our friendly, superbly-trained retail associates will work with you whether you have half a minute or half an hour for us to listen to your needs and assist you.

Not just a free notebook, but free productivity

Step up to our Circa Bar, where our note-taking experts will make you a custom Circa notebook— just the size you need, and with the types of pages and accessories you’d like to test. It’s free, fun, and truly helpful.

Of course, it’s our rather transparent way of getting you hooked on the Circa system. But we think you’ll be delighted with how you can find the right balance of technology and paper to organize your life. (We call it productive co-existence.)

If you don’t have time for a custom sampler book, grab one of our pre-made Circas. Already have one? Take another for a friend. It’s an only-at-our-stores Levenger experience. (And all our store teams assure me that their store makes the best notebook samples of all. You be the judge.)

Pen outfitting

Nowhere else but in the Levenger store can you try so many different kinds of pens, with different points and styles, and have a writing-instruments expert evaluate your hand.

Your writing hand, that is. One of our pen experts will look at your writing, find out what you like to write by hand and what you like to write with, and then make recommendations to serve and delight your unique preferences.

You might want an extra-fine point for note-taking, and then a broad fiber tip or fountain pen for your signatures. Try a dozen different ink colors to see which ones should be your own.

There’s more, such as deskscape advice and office organization. And (we’d like to think) the best selection of gifts ever for the reading-loving people you know and love.

So the next time you get one of our email offers, come on in and get the goods from the real world of Levenger stores. Sometimes the physical still trumps the virtual—at least when you’re in the neighborhood.

P.S. Because we know it’s not fair to give Circa samples only to our store customers, we came up with the Circa Simply Irresistible Sampling Kit you can buy online.

It costs $40 but comes with a $40 gift card, so it’s virtually free. All 75 of the reviewers recommend it to customers like you and award it an overall ranking of 4.9 out of 5. Astounding!

The Word Man Who Won Oscars

In the spring of 2002 I found myself sailing solo on the Queen Elizabeth 2 from Southampton, England, to New York City, having invited Levenger customers on an author's cruise. The host of the dining room assigned me to a five-person table in the corner--a table that would be my life for six days, and also, as it turned out, change my life.

A mother and daughter were already at the table when I walked up. The unassuming older woman introduced herself as Phyllis. Trying to be polite, I asked, "Oh, are you one of the authors?"

"Yes, I write under the name P.D. James."

My embarrassment at not recognizing the famous author didn't have a chance to linger because right then a couple arrived tableside. It was Helen Gurley Brown and her husband.

Of course everyone knew Helen Gurley Brown, the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, and the author of Sex and the Single Girl, but who was her husband--this man with the ordinary name--David Brown?

That week, having all our dinners and most of our lunches together was one of the most exhilarating weeks I've had. I did have enough sense to keep my mouth shut for the most part, while soaking in the banter between the worldly Browns and P.D. James.

It didn't take long for me to repair my ignorance about this debonair man with the common name who always wore a tie: David Brown produced some of the most notable movies to come out of Hollywood.

By the time we arrived with the sunrise in New York harbor six days later, the Browns and I were promising to stay in touch, which we did over occasional meals in New York. Happily, my family got to meet them.

After one particular lunch, the Browns graciously invited us to their Central Park penthouse, where David regaled our sons with stories of his youth, including his trip by banana boat through the Panama Canal on his way to begin college at Stanford.

As David talked, I looked around the elegant space, replete with memorabilia. I was proud to see an old Levenger paperweight with a Wilson Mizner quote engraved in it: "If you steal from one author it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research." On top of the mantle stood an Oscar.

From New York stories to Hollywood blockbusters

David's first jobs were in magazine writing and editing, until he was lured from New York to Hollywood to head the story department at Twentieth Century Fox.

Even though his friend, the writer John O'Hara, told him "you are not enough of a son of a bitch" to head a Hollywood studio, this didn't stop David from producing The Sting, Driving Miss Daisy, Chocolat, MacArthur, Cocoon and A Few Good Men, among many other films.

In the 1970s David had the good sixth sense to take a chance on a young, relatively unknown director to film a script about a shark attack. The director's name was Steven Spielberg. The movie was Jaws.

The most important job of a movie producer, David said, is to pick the director, to whom he surrenders utterly. After that, it's to provide lunch.

David had his share of failures in Hollywood, too. He told how he lost so much money for Fox on Cleopatra that "never was so much money given to so few for so little," and how, to cover the loss, Twentieth Century Fox had to sell its entire 262-acre studio lot-- "one of the richest parcels of urban real estate in the world, for a piddling fifty-five million dollars."

The poet at the producer's table

David once joked that he and Helen had had their chance to retire but missed it. In his Brown's Guide to the Good Life, one of three memoirs, he wrote: "I'll keep working if they let me. Retirement is a drag. Work is the best preventative against Alzheimer's disease and premature death. (All death is premature in my opinion.)"

David did work until the very end, at the ripe young age of 93. The last time I spoke to him, his office suggested I call him at home. He was gracious, letting me know he wasn't taking on too many new projects. He died a few months later.

David was first and always a man who loved words. One evening during our trip on the QE2, he reminisced about a forgotten book of poetry that had been assigned to him back in the 1930s at Stanford. Of course, I hadn't heard of it, but I wrote it down. It was Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing by Samuel Hoffenstein.

After the crossing, I found a copy online--a 1928 book, published by Liveright. Long out of print, the old copy that arrived in the mail had been discarded from the Greenburgh Public Library in Elmsford, New York.

The last poem in the book is called "Epilogue":

And will you say the moon has not her eyes?
And will you say the trees have not their speech?
And will you call the sterile difference wise?
And will you, then, the dead subtraction teach,
And say to youth and those remembering youth,
These ashes are the one and only truth?

I dedicate these words to a forever young and gracious man, my friend David Brown (1916 - 2010).