Shelf Awareness for Monday, December 12, 2005


William Morrow & Company: Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay

Del Rey Books: Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid

Peachtree Teen: Romantic YA Novels Coming Soon From Peachtree Teen!

Watkins Publishing: She Fights Back: Using Self-Defence Psychology to Reclaim Your Power by Joanna Ziobronowicz

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

News

Notes: New, Resurrected and Damaged Stores

Linda Cox, a former employee of Copperfield and Co., Macomb, Ill., which closed earlier this year (Shelf Awareness, August 3), has joined up with Richard Hunsley, a friend with retail experience, to form New Copperfield's Book Service, which opened last month, the Peoria Journal Star reported.

One way the pair plan to compete: by offering "Web-based searching and [a] guarantee that customers can pick up their books within a day or two, without paying shipping costs."

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The Kansas City Star profiles Vivian Jennings, owner of Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan., which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year and is best known for putting on author events, about 300 a year.

Saying she felt pressure from publishers whose tour costs are rising, this summer Jennings "adopted a new policy for any author's appearance sponsored by her store. She began requiring patrons to buy a book as admission. No other local bookstore charges for appearances."

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A car hit by another car going through a stop light drove into the Bookstack, Staunton, Va., according to the Staunton News Leader. No one was injured and the building appears structurally sound. People from other businesses helped clean up the mess, which surprised and touched owner Suzi Armstrong, who said, "It's one of the things that shows us the value of our community." The store may reopen today.

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The Guardian tries to decipher the sudoku phenomenon, noting that P.D. James has suggested that puzzles fulfill "a need we have for 'restoration of order.' "

The paper continues: "When the day's sudoku puzzle has been completed, we have reasserted control over our environment. One part of the world is complete. Tim Preston of Puzzler Media, which supplies much of the press with its sudoku puzzles, sees the appeal in the essentials of the game itself.

" 'People could understand what to do,' he says, 'and were surprised to find that they could do the puzzle even though it was number-based.' (Though, of course, sudoku--unlike kakuro--is not about numbers, but repeating symbols. It can be done using nine letters or pictograms.)"

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One of the people arrested last week for ecoterrorism has a bookstore connection. According to the Arizona Daily Sun, William C. Rodgers, charged with one count of arson, runs an "informational, leftist" bookstore called the Catalyst InfoShop in Prescott, Ariz. Shockingly his girlfriend told the paper that the store operates at a loss.

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In a story about the theft of two 1840s editions of the Book of Mormon from the LDS Salt Lake City University Institute of Religion, Salt Lake City bookseller Ken Sanders, past chairman of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America's Security Committee, told the Salt Lake City Tribune that book theft and fraud has risen in past few years. The culprits: the Internet and TV programs like Antique Roadshow, which have made the public more aware of the value of antiquarian items.

Six years ago, when Sanders began his term as chairman, he issued "a couple of dozen book-theft and fraud alerts each year. In April, when he stepped down, he was issuing more than 100 alerts a year."

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Borders Group has raised its quarterly dividend by a penny to 10 cents per share, payable January 25.

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Friends of the struggling Brighter Day Bookstore, which has sold gospel music and Christian titles geared to black churches and Christians since 1982, are holding a benefit concert for the College Hill, Ohio, store, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Called "A Shining Light for Brighter Day," the concert will be held this coming Friday.

"There's a lot more competition now, and this landmark institution that was there for the community is struggling," LaShaunda Ewing told the paper. "When there was nobody else, Brighter Day stuck its neck out for the community. Now, it's our turn to pay them back."

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LAist.com offers this tidbit: "A new bookstore, Sandpaper Books in Highland Park [in Los Angeles], is having a pre-opening sale all day, from 10-5pm. It's got used books in the strong-lefty tradition (so we hear). It's also got a pile of silk saris from India, just for fun & fashion. There should be coffee and snacks too."

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James E. Adkins has opened three businesses in one building in St. Petersburg, Fla.: Bayside Christian Bookstore, Bayside Travel Agency and Bayside Art & Music Center, the St. Petersburg Times reported.

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Book Traders, which features new and used books, puzzles, plush toys and finger puppets, opened on December 2 at 2181 W. Wisconsin Ave., in Grand Chute, Wis., according to the Appleton Post Crescent. Owner Debbie Luebke told the paper that she is a voracious reader so that "I can say with certainty, 'This is a good book.' "


Now Streaming on Paramount+ with SHOWTIME: A Gentleman in Moscow


Grand New Store in Grand Rapids

River Bank Books & Music, Grand Rapids, Mich., opened last week, the Grand Rapids Press reported. As noted several times this fall, Debra Lambers, who also owns the Book Nook & Java Shop in Montague, won a $50,000 Downtown Development Authority grant to help her open the business, which is a $1 million investment. Besides books and music, the 8,200-sq.-ft. store sells gifts and cards and has a café. Lambers hopes to use another 10,000 square feet of space on a lower floor for a student bookstore she would like to open sometime next year.

"There are 30,000 students and 50,000 workers in Grand Rapids," Lambers told the paper. "There are also 19,000 people living downtown, and this city is vibrant and booming."

Located in the former Steketee's department store, the store has murals of the store and city scenes from the past. "It was very important to me to keep the Steketee presence here and we wanted a warm comfortable look and feel," Lambers said.


GLOW: Greystone Books: brother. do. you. love. me. by Manni Coe, illustrated by Reuben Coe


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Opus Dei Opus

This morning on the Today Show: John L. Allen, Jr., author of Opus Dei: An Objective Look Behind the Myths and Reality of the Most Controversial Force in the Catholic Church (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385514492).

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Today Dr. Phil makes the rounds of the Today Show, the Early Show and the View, helping people find his new book, Love Smart: Find the One You Want--Fix the One You Got (Free Press, $26, 0743272099).

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Today on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

  • William Loren Katz, author of The Black West: A Documentary and Pictoral History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States (Harlem Moon, $17.95, 0767912314).
  • Brent Runyon on why he set himself on fire when he was 14 as recounted in his The Burn Journals (Vintage, $12.95, 1400096421).
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Today WAMU's Diane Rehm Show seeks clarity from Larry Beinhart, author of Fog Facts: Searching for the Truth in the Land of Spin (Nation Books, $22, 1560257679).

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On Saturday NPR's Only a Game, featured Jennifer Woodlief, author of Ski to Die: The Bill Johnson Story (Emmis Books, $22.95, 1578602483, $22.95).


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Chronicle Chronicle; Brokeback Mountain's Height

This past weekend was sterling for movies based on books.

Disney's The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, adapted from C.S. Lewis's work, which opened on Friday, grossed $67.1 million, the AP estimated.

Brokeback Mountain, based on an Annie Proulx short story, took in $544,000 at just five theaters, and Memoirs of a Geisha, based on the Arthur Golden novel, grossed $674,000 at eight theaters. In addition, Brokeback Mountain was named the year's best movie by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

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Chronicles of Narnia fever seemed to intensify, as spot checks around the country showed.

Although he wouldn't discuss numbers, Doug Lockhart, president and CEO of Zondervan, which has been selling Narnia items to Christian bookstores and gift shops, told the Clarion Ledger, Jackson, Miss., that the "very stable franchise" has had a "dramatic increase" in sales, "multiple times."

"We've stocked and restocked and restocked, and they keep buying," Rocky Henriques, an assistant manager at Lifeway Christian Stores in Jackson, told the Clarion Ledger. Audiobooks and the Narnia set particularly have been good sellers, he added.

Phyllis Thompson, manager of St. Andrew's Bookstore in Jackson, told the paper that sales began increasing a month ago. In addition to the book, customers have bought study guides, jewelry and other times.

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"There are some people who have shown up and don't know anything about the Chronicles of Narnia and they come to us and ask us about it," Joel Ruse, manager at the Tree of Life Bookstore and Cafe, Marion, Ind., told the Marion Chronicle-Tribune. "That gives us a chance to tell them the story and tell them to go see the movie. We've seen several people who had never heard of it before, and they'd either walk away with the book or the whole box set of the books."

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All 22 copies of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at the Wichita Public Library were out as of the movie opening, and a waiting list had formed, according to the Wichita Eagle. "Because of the movie, we have noticed a spike in popularity, just as we do whenever there is a Harry Potter movie," Jennifer Heinicke, special projects librarian, said.

Also in Wichita, Watermark Books and Café has been trying to keep Chronicles titles in stock. "It has always been a good seller, but not as much as this year. The movie obviously is introducing the Chronicles to new readers," said marketing manager Beth Golay.


Books & Authors

The Times Book Review's Top Ten of the Year

The New York Times Book Review yesterday listed its top 10 titles for 2005:

  • Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami (Knopf, $25.95, 1400043662). "This graceful and dreamily cerebral novel, translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel, tells two stories--that of a boy fleeing an Oedipal prophecy, and that of a witless old man who can talk to cats."
  • On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Penguin Press, $25.95, 1594200637). Smith shows "a crisp intellect, a lovely wit and enormous sympathy for the men, women and children who populate her story. "
  • Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, $13.95, 081297235X). "This calm and memorably incisive first novel, about a scholarship girl who heads east to attend an elite prep school, casts an unshakable spell and has plenty to say about class, sex and character."
  • Saturday by Ian McEwan (Talese/Doubleday, $26, 0385511809). "As bracing and as carefully constructed as anything McEwan has written."
  • Veronica by Mary Gaitskill (Pantheon, $23, 0375421459). A "mesmerizingly dark novel . . . narrated by a former Paris model."
  • The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer (FSG, $26, 0374299633). "A comprehensive look at the largest foreign policy gamble in a generation."
  • de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (Knopf, $35, 1400041759). "A sweeping biography, impressively researched and absorbingly written."
  • The Lost Painting by Jonathan Harr (Random House, $24.95, 0375508015). A "gripping narrative, populated by a beguiling cast of scholars, historians, art restorers and aging nobles, records the search for Caravaggio's Taking of Christ, painted in 1602 and rediscovered in 1990."
  • Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt (Penguin Press, $39.95, 1594200653). "Massive, learned, beautifully detailed."
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (Knopf, $23.95, 140004314X). "A prose master's harrowing yet exhilarating memoir."



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