Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, October 27, 2009


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Dial Press: Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood

Pantheon Books: The Volcano Daughters by Gina María Balibrera

Peachtree Publishers: Leo and the Pink Marker by Mariyka Foster

Wednesday Books: Castle of the Cursed by Romina Garber

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

Quotation of the Day

'There is Still No Substitute for a Book'

"I am sure I will use the Kindle again, the next time I travel. But for me, there is still no substitute for a book that can be passed around, passed on, discussed with friends and family and, ultimately, donated to the local library. Besides, if I don't need to conserve room and weight for travel, it is nice to give the business to our local book store--last time I looked, it was not reporting record earnings."--Marina Park, Girl Scouts of Northern California CEO, in the San Francisco Chronicle.

 


HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


News

Notes: Indigo Sales Flat; Bookstore Anniversaries

At Indigo Books & Music, revenue rose 1% to C$207 million ($197.8 million) in the second quarter ended September 26 and net earnings fell 31.2% to C$2.2 million ($2 million). Sales at Indigo and Chapters superstores open at least a year dropped 0.9% while comp-store sales at Coles and Indigo Spirit small stores fell 2.1%. Sales at the company's online site, chapters.indigo.ca, fell 5.2% to C$20 million ($18.7 million).

The Canadian retailer noted that comparisons were hurt by sales a year ago of the "phenomenally successful" Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer.

Commenting on the quarter's results, CEO Heather Reisman said, "We are satisfied with our results through what has proven to be a very turbulent time for most retailers. It is important to note that the drop in bottom line results reflects our increased operating investment in Shortcovers," Indigo's smartphone e-reader.

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In another North of the Border note, Wal-Mart Canada is not engaging in deep discounting in general because the company takes "a Canadian approach" to retailing based on "what is good for the Canadian market," according to a Wal-Mart Canada executive quoted by the Toronto Star.

"We are two different countries," Andrew Pelletier, v-p of corporate affairs, said. "The U.S. approach is based on their marketplace."

The book price wars issue is somewhat moot for Wal-Mart Canada since the company doesn't sell books in Canada.

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Congratulations to the Gathering Awareness and Book Center, Pensacola, Fla., which celebrates its 20th anniversary this Friday with "An Evening of Jazz," featuring Southern University's Jazzy Jags at Pensacola High School's Auditorium, according to the Pensacola News Journal.

The store began in owner Georgia Blackmon's home, where she invited "both friends and strangers into her living room to browse and buy books or to mingle and meet new people." Four years later, she moved the store out of the house.

The Gathering Awareness sells "an array of Afrocentric books and a variety of gift items including figurines, artwork, greeting cards, baskets, carvings, soap and candles," the paper said. "The store also sells merchandise from Africa and the Caribbean. Much of its business is from area churches and schools."

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Congratulations, too, to Womrath's Book Store of Tenafly, N.J., which is celebrating its 60th anniversary on Saturday, November 7. From noon until 3 p.m. the Philly Liars Club, the group of Philadelphia area writers who make appearances at independents (Shelf Awareness, May 12, 2009), will be the highlight of a party at Womrath's that includes munchies, trivia games, prizes and giveaways such as signed books and book bags.

Then starting at 6 p.m., a Spoken Interludes wine reception features authors Lisa Unger, David Ebershoff and Spoken Interludes host DeLaune Michel.

Bob Kutik has owned the store for eight years. Kutik's father, Harry Kutik, founded it as Womrath's Book Store of Hackensack.

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Book trailer of the day: Notes Left Behind by Keith and Brooke Desserich (Morrow), which features many of the notes Elena Desserich wrote and hid around the house for her family to find after her death.

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A bookstore in the old downtown of Amman "is more than just a place to buy books," according to the Jordan Times, which observed: "The three generations of the Maaitah family that have owned and run Al Jahiz Bookshop for more than seven decades see the business in a completely different light."

"Books are our sacred world. A solid bond has grown between books and our family throughout our history," said Hashem Maaitah, adding, "Our profession is not only selling books to the public as people think. In fact, our grandfather's craft was warraq (the old Arabic name for a librarian, calligrapher and manuscript expert). We've been working in the book industry since 1931."

 


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Jenna Jameson on Oprah

Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, authors of SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (Morrow, $29.99, 9780060889579/0060889578).

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Tomorrow on Oprah: Jenna Jameson, author of How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale (It Books, $32.99, 9780060539092/0060539097).

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Tomorrow on the Wendy Williams Show: Katie Lee, author of The Comfort Table: Recipes for Everyday Occasions (Simon Spotlight, $26, 9781439126745/1439126747).

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Tomorrow on the Bonnie Hunt Show: Mackenzie Phillips, author of High on Arrival (Simon Spotlight, $25.99, 9781439153857/143915385X).

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Tomorrow night on the Jay Leno Show: Chelsea Handler, author of Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (Simon Spotlight, $24.95, 9781416954125/1416954120).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Brian Cox, author of Why Does E=mc2?: (And Why Should We Care?) (Da Capo, $24, 9780306817588/0306817586).

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Tomorrow night on Late Night with Craig Ferguson: Madeleine Albright, author of Read My Pins: Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box (Harper, $40, 9780060899189/0060899182).

 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Movies: Missing Links; True Grit

Warner Bros. has acquired Rick Reilly's 1997 novel Missing Links, and Steve Carell is "loosely attached to star as a golfer angling for a better place to play," according to the Hollywood Reporter. "Carell will produce via his Carousel Prods banner, while the company's Vance DeGeneres and Charlie Hartsock are on board as exec producers. Bobby Cohen (Revolutionary Road) is also producing. The Break-Up scribe Jay Lavender is writing the screenplay. Greg Silverman will oversee for Warners."

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Matt Damon and Josh Brolin "are in discussions" with the Coen Brothers to join Jeff Bridges in the cast of True Grit, a remake of 1969 western adapted from the novel by Charles Portis. Variety reported that Damon would play the lawman who teams with U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn (Bridges) "and a 14-year old girl to track her father’s killer into hostile Indian territory. In a turnabout, Brolin is in talks to play the killer." 

 



Books & Authors

GBO October Pick: The Girls of Room 28

The October book pick of the German Book Office is The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt by Hannelore Brenner, translated by John E. Woods and Shelley Frisch (Schocken, $26, 9780805242447/0805242449), published last month.

In this book by German journalist Brenner, 10 survivors of the Theresienstadt internment camp, through which many thousands of people passed on their way to the Nazi death camps, tell their story. Among the few hundred survivors of the 12,000 children who lived in Theresienstadt between 1942 and 1944, the 10 were residents of the girls' dorm "Room 28" and hold reunions every year. Through their first-hand accounts, diaries, pictures and stories, they tell of a place where despite the horrible conditions, children were educated and learned the arts. (The children's opera Brundibar, recently adapted for Broadway, had its premiere in Theresienstadt.) Elie Wiesel commented about The Girls of Room 28: "This beautiful evocation of heartwarming friendship in the darkest of times is unforgettable."


Attainment: New Titles Appearing Next Week

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, November 3:

The Lacuna: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, $26.99, 9780060852573/0060852577) features a protagonist from the U.S. who while growing up in Mexico meets and becomes friends with Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky.

Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful by Bon Jovi (Collins Design, $30, 9780061864155/0061864153) includes high quality photographs and intimate band moments.

Paul McCartney: A Life by Peter Carlin (Touchstone, $26, 9781416562092/1416562095) chronicles the musician's achievements with the Beatles and as a solo artist.

A Photographer's Life: 1990-2005 by Annie Leibovitz (Random House, $50, 9780812979633/081297963X) is a photographic memoir of 15 years of the photographer's life and work.

Rainwater by Sandra Brown (Simon & Schuster, $23.99, 978-1439172773) follows the owner of a Texas boardinghouse during the Great Depression.

Fancy Nancy: Splendiferous Christmas by Jane O'Connor, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser (HarperCollins, $17.99, 9780061235900/0061235903) continues the Fancy Nancy children's series.

It's Your Time: Activate Your Faith, Achieve Your Dreams, and Increase in God's Favor
by Joel Osteen (Free Press, $25, 9781439100110/143910011X) is the latest from the popular self-help author.

Now in paperback:

Rachael Ray's Book of 10: More Than 300 Recipes to Cook Every Day by Rachael Ray (Clarkson Potter, $20, 9780307383204/0307383202).

 


Book Review

Book Review: Logicomix

Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth by Apostolos Doxiadis (Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, $22.95 Paperback, 9781596914520, September 2009)



At the heart of Logicomix stands Sir Bertrand Russell, a man determined to find a way of arriving at absolutely right answers.

It's a tale within a tale, as the two authors and two graphic artists ardently pursue their own search for truth and appear as characters in the book. As one of them assures us, this won't be "your typical, usual comic book." Their quest takes shape and revolves around a lecture given by Russell at an unnamed American university in 1939, a lecture that is really, as he himself tells us, the story of his life and of his pursuit of real logical truth.

With Proustian ambition and exhilarating artwork, Logicomix's search for truth encounters head-on the horrors of the Second World War and the agonizing question of whether war can ever be the right choice. Russell himself had to confront that question personally: he endured six months in jail for his pacifism.

Russell was determined to find the perfect logical method for solving all problems and attempted to remold human nature in his experimental school at Beacon Hill. Despite repeated failures, Russell never stopped being "a sad little boy desperately seeking ways out of the deadly vortex of uncertainty."

The book is a visual banquet chronicling Russell's lifelong pursuit of "certainty in total rationality." As Logic and Mathematics, the last bastions of certainty, fail him, and as Reason proves not absolute, Russell is forced to face the fact that there is no Royal Road to Truth.

Authors Dosiadis and Papadimitriou perfectly echo Russell's passion, with a sincere, easily grasped text amplified with breathtaking visual richness, making this the most satisfying graphic novel of 2009, a titanic artistic achievement of more than 300 pages, all of it pure reading joy.--Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A graphic novel of titanic artistic achievement about Bertrand Russell's doomed search for total rationality.


Deeper Understanding

A Celebration of SoCal Community at SCIBA

Every year the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association ends the regional trade show season. This weekend at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, with bookstore and bookseller attendance up and publisher and author attendance slightly down, SCIBA did the same--with what seemed like an even greater appreciation for the need and value of community in this digital age.

Luncheon speaker Scott Westerfield, known for his Uglies books, likened addressing independent booksellers about his new illustrated children's novel, Leviathan (Simon Spotlight), to giving a wedding toast. "Even a corny joke gets a warm reception," he told Shelf Awareness. He used his time to talk about the history of illustrated books and introduce what he called the "Victorian Manga" illustrations that help tell the story of Prince Alec, son of the slain Archduke Ferdinand and Sophia, and the fantasy fight for the future of the world between the Clankers vs. Darwinists.

SCIBA members always enjoy the glow of Hollywood, and Joe Kanon provided some in his discussion of Stardust (Atria). Set in 1945, Stardust follows some of the refugees from Nazi Germany who descended upon Hollywood at its zenith and on the cusp of McCarthyism. The protagonist aims to see beyond the stardust that is blinding an industry consumed in its own success and oblivious to the forces that will bring the studio system down as well as create the black list.

Sharon Robinson and illustrator Kadir Nelson talked about Testing the Ice: A True Story About Jackie Robinson (Scholastic). Robinson treated the booksellers to a glimpse of family snapshots juxtaposed with Nelson's illustrations of real places and events that are featured in Testing the Ice. In the story, Sharon's famous father--who can't swim and would rather sit by the fire and read his paper anyway--nonetheless steps out onto untested frozen waters to make sure it is safe for his children.

Norman Ollestad read from his memoir, Crazy for the Storm (HarperCollins), and noted that the life lessons he learned from his adventurer father--who died in a plane crash Ollestad survived--were coming back in the lessons the author was now passing on to his son.

In an afternoon session on selling to Generation Z, Kristen McLean, executive director of the Association of Booksellers for Children, urged booksellers to engage teen customers and be ready to provide all customers books in whatever format they want. She maintained that Gen Z is not illiterate--and in fact is teaching older generations about technology--but it is also hungry for dialogue and community, which independent booksellers are well-suited to provide. She echoed the message of an earlier session with American Booksellers Association COO Len Vlahos: that booksellers be open to having a seat at the e-book table.

This year the SCIBA condensed its table-top trade show to two hours directly preceding the Authors' Feast and Awards. Emcee Paul Cimusz, retail territory manager at Baker & Taylor, opened by comparing the condensed trade show to "speed dating and then dinner." Booksellers and reps seemed to like the set-up. As Terry Gillman, SCIBA board member and past president, said: "These things have to keep evolving."

For the first time, the SCIBA featured a keynote speaker at its book awards: Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian, who introduced her forthcoming novel, The Swan Thieves (Little, Brown). She said that the new novel tried to convey the brilliance of Impressionist paintings and painters. "I wanted to capture a book about paint, the way Emily Dickenson captures the truth," she explained.

The centerpiece of SCIBA is always the awards and this year's event seemed more emotional than ever, partly because it included several new awards honoring beloved Book Soup owner Glenn Goldman, who died in January.

Adrian Newell, Goldman's partner and manager of Warwick's, said there were far too many people to thank for their support but singled out the staff of Book Soup for keeping things not just going but thriving after Goldman's death. (Everyone at SCIBA seemed in favor of the pending sale of Book Soup to Vroman's.)

Along with John Evans from Diesel, Newell presented the first Glenn Goldman bookseller and scholarship awards to Judy Kruger from Once Upon a Time and Catherine Linka from Flintridge Books & Coffee House.

Later in accepting the Glenn Goldman Art & Architecture Award (which he shared with Annie Leibowitz, who was not in attendance), Paul Eccesline said: "To be coming in under [Goldman's] umbrella is very special." Eccesline won for Faces of Sunset Boulevard (Santa Monica Press).

The nonfiction award went to Susan Campoy for Celebrating with Julienne (Prospect Park Books). When her daughter accepted the award, she brought people to tears as she explained that her deceased mother finished the book in her hospital bed and that winning this award from the Southern California booksellers was a life-long dream.

Even Lisa See choked up when she thanked the booksellers who "put me where I am" for honoring Shanghai Girls (Random House), a novel that captures, among many things, See's heritage in Los Angeles's Chinatown.

As usual, the SCIBA unofficially culminated in the Biltmore bar, with Newell continuing Goldman's tradition of calling as many attendees for drinks as possible. It wasn't the same without Goldman, but in this indie community so deeply affected by the Book Soup legend, it didn't exactly go on without him either.--Bridget Kinsella

 


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