Notes: B&T Buys Blackwell North America, James Bennett
Baker & Taylor has acquired Blackwell Book Services North America and James Bennett, the library supplier in Australia. At the same time, Blackwell U.K. has bought B&T's Lindsay and Croft business in the U.K.
In addition, Baker & Taylor's YBP Library Services and Blackwell U.K. are entering a partnership under which YBP Library Services will make available in the U.S. all U.K.-published academic material from Blackwell U.K. and Blackwell U.K. will do the same with U.S.-published academic material from YBP Library Services.
Also, various services such as Blackwell's Table of Contents Catalog Enrichment Service and YBP Library Services's GOBI bibliographic service will be offered to all customers of both companies.
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In a sign of how popular the Swedish mystery series by the late Steig Larsson is, some U.S. bookstores are importing the U.K. edition of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the last book in the trilogy, the New York Times reported. Knopf is publishing the book here next May. [Editor's note: We can attest to the desire to read the last volume as quickly as possible: we bought several copies of the U.K. edition in Frankfurt during the book fair in October for ourselves and friends.]
The stores are selling the trade paperback for as much as $45. (The U.K. version retails for the equivalent of about $15.)
Paul Bogaards of Knopf said, the Times wrote, that the publisher wants "to allow interest to build as more and more readers discovered the first two volumes in the series."
"The sales on Book 1 and Book 2 are so strong that you wouldn't want to add Book 3 to the mix immediately," he continued.
The first book in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, has sold 764,000 copies in hardcover and paperback in the U.S., according to Nielsen BookScan. The second book, The Girl Who Played With Fire, published in July, has sold 199,000 copies in hardcover.
The Times pointed out that volume two is "the first work in translation to go to No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list in 25 years," the first since The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco.
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Copperfield's Books, which has eight stores in Sonoma and Napa counties in California, is moving its Santa Rosa store in Montgomery Village, the North Bay Business Journal reported.
The 1950 building is being demolished and will be replaced by a restaurant. Copperfield's is moving to a slightly larger space of 11,000 square feet.
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Book trailer of the day: Financial Intimacy: How to Create a Healthy Relationship with Your Money and Your Mate by Jacquette Timmons (Chicago Review Press).
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Book Stop owner Cynthia Christensen came up with the idea for the coat drive after realizing she had an abundance of jackets she never wore--she believed other people might, too. Her goal is to gather 500 coats by December 31; the winter wear is being donated to a nonprofit family health care center. The response has been so great that Christensen, who has even been stopped in the grocery store by people asking about the coat drive, plans to make it an annual endeavor.
Marathoners sat in rocking chairs by the store's front window and read aloud in 15-minute segments. Participants were asked to raise a minimum of $25 in pledges per time slot. Of the 63 readers, who selected their own material, some read for longer than 15 minutes--including one energetic person who did so for three hours straight. They read passages from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The Night Before Christmas, The Giving Tree and other children's tales, along with Hanukkah stories and classics like Moby Dick. Readers included a mother and her young daughter, a poet who shared her original verse and Santa Claus, who wrapped up the marathon. 
This lavish, slip-cased book commemorates the 40th anniversary of Gibbs Smith's publishing house and celebrates 58 bookstores and booksellers around the country, plus Paris's Shakespeare & Co. and Buenos Aires's El Ateneo Grand Splendid. The paintings are bright and joyous, accompanied by each bookstore's story. Dennis Wills, owner of D.G. Wills Books in La Jolla, Calif., was asked by Smith to characterize the feeling of his store: a "sort of nineteenth-century cracker barrel hardware store from a John Ford film, with Pabst Blue Ribbon in the refrigerator." Looking at these paintings, reading the text, one has to agree with Lewis Buzbee, who wrote in The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, "When I walk into a bookstore, any bookstore, first thing in the morning, I'm flooded with a sense of hushed excitement."
This book, as they say, needs no introduction, but here in the office we love it so much it has to be mentioned. This will be the children's book most given to adults this year. So many have read and loved this book over six decades, how could it not be the perfect gift? And the pop-ups delight--they are delicate and whimsical and quietly spectacular.
If you want something really impressive for your bookshelf, maybe to put alongside The Little Prince Pop-Up, how about the first critical study of the Tintin canon? Eighty years after the first comic, he is still wildly popular, and the author attempts to explain his appeal. He traces Hergé's political transformation after World War II--revising his right-wing stance--and Tintin's change from superman boy scout to Tintin the detective. A thoughtful and dense (almost 300 pages) critique of this enduring comic book hero.
Maybe you don't knit, but you may be tempted to learn after looking at this book. Knit tennis shoes hanging from phone wires, wrapped branches, covered stones, monster feet for the bottom of mailboxes, Andy Goldsworthy-like installations--how could you go back to mufflers after this? The authors cover building your arsenal, basic tagging, assembling your crew, and taking it to the streets.
Twain was an ardent animal-welfare advocate, with the exception of his bête noire the housefly ("The Supremacy of the House Fly" is must reading), and his wit, sentimentality and even anger are combined with his regard for animals in this collection. The volume of 65 stories, letters and recollections, some published for the first time, with 29 wood engravings by the masterful Barry Moser (plus two drawings by Twain), is a steal at the price. The book is big, beautifully designed by Moser, with--can it be?--a part-cloth binding. A very classy production for a deserving author (and illustrator).
My favorite art book of the year. Jay Ryan's posters are strange, whimsical and absurd. Most of the posters are for rock bands and fundraisers and prominently feature dinosaurs, cats, bears, Seth the greyhound and bicycles. "Marmots, Chairs and Buckets" fancifully depicts the aftermath of parties to which the artist used to never be invited; "Death Cab for Cutie" has three cats in a room watching a volcano out the window--Ryan's commentary: "Cats are usually the first ones to know when things are going wrong." Details in his posters intrigue--a mammoth slowly thawing in a block of ice is holding a guitar, and you know he's gonna wail when the ice is gone. "Stnnng/Dianogah" has a bike, an icthyosaurus and... a toaster. Enchanting.
This hefty tome is the first major survey of contemporary African artists who work either in or outside of Africa, but "whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years." Organized chronologically, it covers all major artistic mediums and includes over 300 images. The striking cover piece, a C-print on aluminum by Yinka Shonibare, is called "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (Africa)", inspired by Goya's famous work, and is startling in that it wipes away preconceptions one might have about "African" art. The rest of the book does the same.