Shelf Awareness for Thursday, July 1, 2010


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

Quotation of the Day

World Cup Update: Americans, Soccer & Literary Fiction

"The thing that bothers me most about the Americans-not-accepting-soccer story is the underlying notion that if the majority of Americans have no interest in soccer, then Americans have no interest in soccer. By the same logic, Americans have no interest in reading novels, as survey upon survey shows that the majority of Americans prefer television to reading. I don't know the numbers, but I would venture to guess that the number of Americans reading literary fiction is in the neighborhood of the number of Americans interested in soccer. That would make the novel as fundamentally un-American as soccer. Someone should break the news to Philip Roth."--Aleksandar Hemon in the New Republic (via archipelago books in its e-mail newsletter).

 


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


News

Image of the Day: Happily Ever After

To celebrate the wedding of the two lead characters in her Dead-End Job mysteries, which took place in Half-Price Homicide (NAL), author Elaine Viets held a "Happily Ever After" contest. First prize: Viets, a minister in the Universal Life Church, promised to fly anywhere in the continental U.S. to officiate at a wedding. The winning couple were Lia Hutton and Carl Nigro; Viets presided at their marriage June 19 in the garden of the Owen Brown Interfaith Center in Columbia, Md. Viets commented: "Most authors love their readers. I'm privileged to marry two of mine."

 

 


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


Notes: Lower Price, Higher Clarity for Kindle DX

E-reader price cutting continues. Amazon is introducing an updated version of its Kindle DX and lowering the price $110 to $379. The new version of the Kindle DX, which has a larger screen than the Kindle, has better contrast and darker fonts and will ship on July 7. The company is offering it with free 3G wireless.

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Baker & Taylor, which already supplies music to Shopko stores in 13 states, will become the retailer's sole supplier of books and will provide the company with field merchandising and vendor-managed inventory services.

With headquarters in Green Bay, Wis., Shopko has 135 Shopko stores that sell general merchandise, pharmacy and optical services in small and mid-sized cities and five Shopko Express Rx stores. It will soon open two Shopko Hometown stores.

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The Hub City Writers Project opened its nonprofit bookstore in downtown Spartanburg, S.C., yesterday, the Spartanburg Herald Journal wrote. The 2,000-sq.-ft. Hub City Bookshop stocks mostly new and some used titles.

A coffee bar and bakery are also opening soon in the Masonic Temple Building, where the store is located. The store will use a 275-seat auditorium on the upper floor for special events.

"As far as we know, nowhere else in the country is there anything like this," Betsy Teter, executive director of the Hub City Writers Project, told the Herald Journal. "We think this could be a model for a new trend in the way to keep independent booksellers alive."

The store's focus will be on "keeping our inventory fresh," she added. "We want customers to see something new every time they come in. There's probably no more visible sign that your downtown is alive and well than a thriving bookstore."

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Sadly Bay Books in Concord, Calif., which stocks new and used books, will close on or about August 15 although there is still a chance it will move, according to a store announcement. Diane Van Tassell, whose family has owned the store for half of its 22-year history, said that Bay Books's other store, in San Ramon, "remains vibrant."

The Concord store, the largest indie in Contra Costa County, is "in a center increasingly frequented by people who do not read in the English language, and those whose family income is insufficient to buy very many books in any language," the announcement said.

It also cited "the lure of cheap book prices at Amazon and Costco. If Bay Books at any given time had half as many customers as are browsing the book dumps at Costco, we would be a roaring success."

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Congratulations to the Seattle Mystery Bookshop, which celebrates its 20th anniversary today. Throughout the day, the store will serve birthday cake, coffee and tea and give advanced readers copies to those who buy a new book as well as a offer commemorative puzzle.

The store was opened by Bill Farley, who was working at Whodunnit in Philadelphia, Pa., when author Aaron Elkins remarked that Seattle needed a mystery bookshop. He and his wife, B Jo, talked later that day--and the rest is mystery history.

The store is a favorite of many mystery authors--J.A. Jance helped make change for the first sale--and aficionados. Farley said he aimed "to be a resource, to bring authors and readers together, and to provide as comprehensive a selection of mysteries as possible." The store's tagline is "For mystery lovers who know what they want and for those who haven't a clue."

Five years ago the store moved about 30 yards from "a dark and mysterious corner" of the Broderick Building to its current space, which is larger and has more light and visibility.

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W.S. Merwin will be named U.S. poet laureate today, the New York Times reported. Merwin, who is 82 and lives in Hawaii, told the paper: "I do like a very quiet life. I can't keep popping back and forth between here and Washington," adding that he does like "being part of something much more public and talking too much."

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Flo Chapa opened her Books-N-Things used paperback store, McAllen, Tex., a year ago, and the Monitor observed that when she "talks about books, characters and stories she loves, her eyes light up. She wants to share the joy of reading with everyone."

"I've had people tell me, 'I'm not a reader, Flo.' I tell them, 'No, you just haven't picked up the right book,'" she said. "I am an avid reader. I love books, and if you love books, this is a great store . . . and value."

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Fiji-Indian Shobhna Kumar has established Queer Ink, which the Hindustan Times calls "India’s first online store selling gay literature."

"I had a selfish reason for starting this, as I could not get access to these books," said Kumar. "And Amazon would not deliver them. I think they wouldn't get through customs as they offend Indian sensibilities. There are a few Indian online bookstores, but they take weeks to deliver. I figured other people must be in the same position."

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Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip, who write under the pseudonym Michael Stanley, selected their top-10 African crime novels for the Guardian and noted that the books "all capture some aspect of African culture or location. All but one relate to sub-Saharan Africa--the lands of colonies and colonial masters; of newly democratic countries and post-independence struggles. Reading these books will introduce you to areas with which you may be unfamiliar and perhaps give you new insights into some of the oldest cultures in the world."

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In what might well qualify as the perfect summer beach reads list, particularly if your vacation plans include being marooned on an island somewhere in the South Pacific, Entertainment Weekly showcased "books, authors, and literary references that found a place in the Lost world."

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The Huffington Post featured a slideshow of author memorabilia offered at auction--including a lock of Jane Austen's hair and a gold and ivory toothpick that once belonged to Charles Dickens--that "produced surprising results over the last year. You won't believe what fans have wanted and what they left behind."

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On Salon.com, Laura Miller offered an ode to the audiobook, especially for summer reading. "Listening is less work than reading from a page; it feels like a treat rather than an assignment, and treats are what vacations are all about."

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Penguin Group's Riverhead Trade Paperbacks is launching the Picture a Book Changing Lives campaign to raise money for the Khaled Hosseini Foundation, which was founded by the author to aid the people of Afghanistan. The Foundation supports projects that provide shelter to refugee families and economic and educational opportunities for women and children. The Foundation also awards scholarships to students who have migrated to the U.S. under refugee status and women pursuing higher education in Afghanistan.

Under the Picture a Book Changing Lives campaign, people may submit one or two still photos of themselves reading or holding a copy of Hosseini's The Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns. For each such photo uploaded to the Hosseini group page of Penguin, Riverhead is donating $2 to the Foundation, up to $25,000. The campaign runs through August 31.

Geoffrey Kloske, v-p and publisher of Riverhead, commented, "Khaled Hosseini's books have changed the way many around the world picture Afghanistan, so it's a great opportunity to give his readers a way to help raise money that will benefit the people of that country."

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Ruby, the bookshop dog at the Learned Owl, Hudson, Ohio, filled in for her person, Liz, in the July newsletter, offering a dog's eye view of some new titles. For example, "Looking for some detective fiction? I like the Chet and Bernie series by Spencer Quinn (Dog On It, Thereby Hangs a Tail), or you could try Martha Grimes' latest, The Black Cat. I'm reserving judgment, but the two cats who share my house are excited about it."

Ruby signed off, "Enjoy the Dog Days of Summer! Woof!"

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Ingram Publisher Services is now distributing the following presses:

Pineapple Press, founded in 1982, which publishes regional titles about Florida, including the state's history, folklore, art, gardening, nature and travel. Other specialties include books on lighthouses and books on Georgia and the Carolinas.

Dark Coast Press, which was founded last year by former Wiley editor Aaron Talwar and Jarrett Middleton. The press specializes in literary fiction, poetry, essays and avant-garde works by both established and new authors.

Australian Academic Press, Brisbane, which was founded in 1987 by Stephen May, current president of the Australian Publishers Association. The press works with academics, researchers and scholarly and professional societies to publish professional and popular books, e-books, monographs and print and electronic journals in the behavioral and social sciences.

 


BINC: Apply Now to The Susan Kamil Scholarship for Emerging Writers!


Europa Editions' Novel Marketing Campaign

The owners of the Good Novel bookstore, founded in Paris in 2004, have a singular goal: to deal only in good novels. "We have no time to waste on insignificant books, hollow books, books that are here to please," they say on the store's website, TheGoodNovel.com.

As the name hints, the Good Novel actually exists only in the pages of Laurence Cossé's A Novel Bookstore, coming from Europa Editions in September. TheGoodNovel.com is the first website the publisher has created for a specific title, and it's inviting booksellers to take part. Each week a different real-life independent bookstore is being highlighted on the home page, along with a staffer's response to the questions "How would you describe the ideal bookstore?" and "What makes your bookstore unique?"

Among the stores showcased on the site are Changing Hands in Tempe, Ariz., Nicola's Books in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore, Md. (According to the Ivy's author event coordinator Greg Szczeszek, "The best bookstores are just wide enough and deep enough to get lost in thought but not in aisles.")

In A Novel Bookstore, proprietors Ivan and Francesca have opened the shop of their dreams. They've stocked it with a selection of literary masterpieces chosen by a top-secret committee. The Good Novel proves to be a hit, but with success comes trouble. Its owners receive anonymous threats, and vicious commentary about the store begins circulating on the Internet. When three members of the committee are attacked and the police called in, the pieces of an ominous puzzle fall into place.

"It's such a great premise that it seemed natural to develop a venue where these issues could be discussed," said Michael Reynolds, editor-in-chief at Europa Editions. "We hope the website is a place where people can, in a very real way, exchange ideas on this question of what does a bookstore do, what is its function, and if you did set up a bookstore like this, would it work and what would be the problems."

The website features a blend of fiction and fact--Ivan and Francesca's staff picks; links to "Novel Ideas" sites like Penguin Classics and Knopf's Everyman's Library; and a list of books stocked at the Good Novel, ranging from Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Gustave Flaubert's Memoirs of a Madman to Jorge Luis Borges's The Aleph and Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.--Shannon McKenna Schmidt

Booksellers interested in having their store featured on TheGoodNovel.com can contact Karin Wessel at karinwessel@europaeditions.com.




Media and Movies

Media Heat: Prisoner of the Taliban

This morning on the Today Show for his Book Club for Kids, Al Roker interviews Jon and Pamela Voelkel, authors of Middleworld (Egmont USA, $8.99, 9781606840719/1606840711), the first book in the Jaguar Stones trilogy.

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Today on Talk of the Nation: Jere Van Dyk, author of Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban (Times Books, $25, 9780805088274/080508827X).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Manny Howard, author of My Empire of Dirt (Simon & Schuster, $25, 9781416585169/1416585168)

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Tomorrow morning on Fox & Friends: John Hagee, author of Can America Survive?: 10 Prophetic Signs That We Are the Terminal Generation (Howard Books, $22.99, 9781439189856/1439189854).

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Tomorrow on the Rachael Ray Show: Jennifer Weiner, author of Fly Away Home (Atria, $26.99, 9780743294270/0743294270) and Best Friends Forever (Washington Square Press, $15, 9780743294300/0743294300).

Also on Rachael Ray tomorrow: Pat Benatar, author of Between a Heart and a Rock Place: A Memoir (Morrow, $25.99, 9780061953774/0061953776).

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Tomorrow night on Larry King Live: Jerry Weintraub, author of When I Stop Talking, You'll Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories from a Persuasive Man (Twelve, $25.99, 9780446548151/0446548154).

 


Movies: Hugo Cabret

Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths have been added to the cast of the live-action 3D movie Hugo Cabret, directed by Martin Scorsese and adapted from Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the Hollywood Reporter wrote. They join Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Asa Butterfield, Chloe Moretz and Helen McCrory in the film, which started production in London this week and is expected to be released in December 2011.

 

 


Television: BBC Adapting Poetry for TV

A BBC2 movie based upon Christopher Reid's poem, The Song of Lunch, will be produced to celebrate the U.K.'s National Poetry Day October 7, the Bookseller.com reported, adding that Alan Rickman and Emma Thomson will star in the dramatization of a "narrative poem about a book editor who, 15 years after their break-up, meets up with his ex-lover in a Soho restaurant."
 
"To mark National Poetry Day, BBC2 will be bringing this art form to life with a truly ambitious project and a stellar cast," said Janice Hadlow, BBC2 controller. "We hope that audiences will enjoy this dramatization of Christopher Reid's touching and witty poem and maybe feel inspired to indulge in a little more poetry themselves."

 


This Weekend on Book TV: Walk in My Shoes

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this week from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Tuesday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, July 3

8:45 a.m. Bill Barnhart and Gene Schlickman, co-authors of John Paul Stevens: An Independent Life (Northern Illinois University Press, $26.95, 9780875804194/0875804195), talk about the Supreme Court Justice who recently retired. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m.)

12 p.m. William Rosen, author of The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention (Random House, $28, 9781400067053/1400067057), explains why the invention of the steam engine in Britain was one of the greatest events in history. (Re-airs Monday at 3 p.m.)

4:45 p.m. Nick Bunker, author of Making Haste From Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World--A New History (Knopf, $30, 9780307266828/0307266826), recounts the the story of the Pilgrims. (Re-airs Sunday at 1 a.m.)

7:45 p.m. Scott Turow, author of Innocent (Grand Central, $27.99, 9780446562423/0446562424), spoke with Book TV during the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest about his latest novel and his role as the head of the Authors Guild. (Re-airs Sunday at 3:30 a.m. and Tuesday at 6 a.m.)

10 p.m. After Words. In a double interview, Arthur Brooks, author of The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future (Basic Books, $23.95, 9780465019380/0465019382), debates Strobe Talbott, author of Fast Forward: Ethics and Politics in the Age of Global Warming (Simon & Schuster, $18, 9780743294096/0743294092). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and 11 p.m., and Monday at 3 a.m.)

Sunday, July 4

6 a.m. Kabir Sehgal and Andrew Young, co-authors of Walk in My Shoes: Conversations Between a Civil Rights Legend and His Godson on the Journey Ahead (Palgrave Macmillan, $24, 9780230623606/0230623603), discuss their correspondence on civil rights and race relations. (Re-airs Sunday at 3 p.m. and Monday at 5:30 p.m.)

7:30 a.m. For an event hosted by Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, Colo., National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick talks about his book The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of Little Bighorn (Viking, $30, 9780670021727/0670021725). (Re-airs Sunday at 4:30 p.m. and Monday at 10 p.m.)

12 p.m. In Depth. William Bennett, author most recently of A Century Turns: New Hopes, New Fears (Thomas Nelson, $24.99, 9781595551696/1595551697), joins Book TV for a live interview. Viewers can participate in the discussion by calling in during the program or submitting questions to booktv@c-span.org or via Twitter (@BookTV). (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

 



Books & Authors

Awards: Australian Book Industry Awards; Bulwer-Lytton

Craig Silvey's novel Jasper Jones won two major categories--book of the year and literary fiction book of the year--at the Australian Book Industry Awards. Thomas Keneally's Australians: Origins to Eureka received the general nonfiction book of the year prize. A complete list of winners is available in the Herald Sun.

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The winner of this year's Bulwer-Lytton prize for bad writing is Molly Ringle of Seattle, Wash., who penned the following prize-winning entry: "For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

 


Book Review

Mandahla: Water Ghosts



Locke is a real place on the Sacramento River, founded in 1915 after a fire broke out in the Chinese section of nearby Walnut Grove--the Chinese left and brokered a deal to build a town in the delta and work in the pear orchards and asparagus fields. From this piece of almost-forgotten history, Shawna Yang Ryan has written a mystical, lyrical, gritty novel that is absolutely mesmerizing. In 1928, Richard Fong is a gambling house manager, who had left his wife Ming Wei 10 years earlier to seek his fortune in America. His lover, Chloe, is a "whitegirl" prostitute in Poppy See's brothel. Sofia, daughter of a Chinese minister and a whitewoman, is in love with Chloe, as much as a young teenager can be. One day, during a river festival, in the middle of unusual weather, three women appear on a boat out of a bank of fog and dark skies, three women who soon upset the town. One of them is Richard's wife, Ming Wei; the other two quickly become the object of overwhelming and sadly comical male attentions. While this may sound like a soap opera, it is anything but; instead, it's a story of longing and deprivation, of water ghosts and lonely men, of marriage promises and dashed dreams.

The novel moves from America to China and back, between 1928 and 1865, entwining memory, myth and reality. Ryan is adept with details that define character--Richard keeps his hair longer than fashion because it shows the luxury to wash and brush it. Sofia and Chloe, when they cross paths during the day, perform a delicate dance of brushed sleeves and public indifference. Poppy not only sees the future but discovers she can smell the dead stealing life from the living. When Corlissa, the preacher's wife, teaches the two new women penmanship, "[her] alphabet is nearly all lines and angles, while they manage to soften the letters, make them glide like arched bird bodies." The reality of a Chinese immigrant's life is summed up in Uncle Happy: "He has been thinking of opium, the occasional ball of it pressed into the bowl of his pipe. The intense desire followed by guilt and an impassioned letter home, yet another for his wife [he has] not seen since 1866."

Water Ghosts is, simply, exquisite writing--"the startled egrets stretch their wings and lift up like incandescent sheets being shaken to dry"--ethereal and rough, mysterious and earthy. This is a book to seek out and to treasure.--Marilyn Dahl

 

 


Deeper Understanding

The Nitty Gritty: When Is a Book No Longer a Book?

We get our movies increasingly from digital sources: Netflix instant streaming, Hulu, on-demand, etc. And we get our music much the same way: we have digitized our CD collections, download songs/albums online and rarely go into bricks-and-mortar record stores except for nostalgia's sake or as a protest against technology. Many believe that in an increasingly digital world, books are headed in the same direction and are next on the list of endangered physical species.

Discussion has focused on the industry as a whole, as opposed to parallels and differences in product. A movie, whether you watch it on Blu-ray, on-demand, Netflix instant or YouTube on your phone, is fundamentally the same. Maybe it's smaller or larger, sharper or fuzzier, maybe the audio is better or worse, but you see the same information in the same order, regardless of the medium. Music is the same way. A song can be louder or softer, hi-def or scratchy, on your CD player or on your iPod, but it's still the same song. The internal structure of the content is preserved. And when that structure is changed, we call it a remake, a remix, a mash-up; we acknowledge that the content has changed in important ways along with our experience of that content. When is a book no longer a book? Is a book fundamentally the same book in every format, print or digital?

The content of the music and entertainment industries have labels separate from their medium. A movie can be digital, on DVD or even (if you're very old-school) on VHS, but "movie" itself is media-neutral. Same for song and album (in its current usage). Movie and song denote the content itself and not the format.

Can we do the same thing for books? Not yet. This is where that clunky term p-book has come into play. When I say book, do I mean e-book? Maybe I said e-book earlier, and maybe I'm still referring to the digital version, but maybe not. Maybe I am talking about the physical format. In its physical manifestations, "book" can refer to both hardcover and paperback--it is physically neutral. But enter the digital, and it gets much more complicated. Is there a way to refer to the content inside without assuming the medium?

"Content" and "codex" are being bandied around (I could have started a drinking game around them at BEA). But "content" could mean anything--a blog post, tweets, an author bio, an interview. "Story," while appealing, has its own issues. One could argue (and one would be right) that a movie, show or song is also a story. Maybe "narrative?" But that implies a host of other things, largely bound up with literary criticism and genre distinctions.

For the sake of brevity and prosody, I'm going to use "story" for the rest of this piece to indicate the content inside a book, but I hope to see, sooner rather than later, a better format-neutral term. If language defines experience, some of the struggle that our industry is having with the digital-physical conundrum can be linked to our lack of effective vocabulary.

Back to the main point. Is a story media-neutral? I would argue, no. Anyone in marketing or bookselling will tell you that covers and format affect sales--and any reader will tell you that covers and format affect the reading experience. So while the story itself remains the same, the way in which it is packaged can shift the experience of it. A hardcover and paperback version of a book, assuming they have the same cover, will most likely give the reader a similar experience. But a hardcover with one cover and a paperback with another? Or a re-issued, updated version? I think we can agree that these changes can and do change reader reactions, albeit sometimes in minute ways.

So if trading one cover for another can shift the way a story is processed by a reader, how would the change from print to digital not do the same--or more? Others (like Emily Pullen in a guest column here on Monday) have noted that they have been "fooled" or misled by e-reading in ways that they never would have been with a print version. Yet others have discussed, in reviewing various e-reading programs, how differences in the way that pages turn, covers are displayed and text is formatted can shift their experiences with e-books.

What happens to the story itself? While the words may remain the same, the way they are displayed is changed. Their relationship to each other shifts, in a way that scenes from a movie or notes in a song do not. Which words are on what page? Which pages are visible at the same time? Where are the section breaks? Even the word "page" is losing meaning in the digital world--when you can change screen orientation, layout and font size, a page is no longer a static thing but instead is customizable to each individual reader.

Let's say that the story has been digitized and enhanced. It has hyperlinks, clickable footnotes, a search feature, video. It has social features like group highlighting, notes and reviews. Suddenly, the story is not the same story--it has layers and levels that it did not have, could not have, in its printed form. Is it the same story? The words have not changed, but their relationship to each other, and to the reader, has shifted in ways that cannot help but impact the reading experience.

For movies, TV shows, and music, the way that we are given the content itself is the same--we watch and hear a fixed progression of information. For stories, this is just not true. A story is processed by the brain in a way that these other forms of content are not, and is uniquely dependent on its medium.

Is this a bad thing or a good thing? You can (and people do) argue convincingly both ways. What happens when a story shifts format? What do we want to accomplish when we move a story from one format to the next? And what impact will that have on the reader? I believe we must address these kinds of questions better as the range of media available to our industry expands and evolves.--Jenn Northington, manager of breathe books, Baltimore, Md.



The Bestsellers

Top-Selling Titles in Chicagoland Last Week

The following were the bestselling titles at independent bookstores in and near Chicago during the week ended Sunday, June 27:

Hardcover Fiction

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson
2. Sizzling 16 by Janet Evanovich
3. The Last Time I Saw You by Elizabeth Berg
4. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
5. The Passage by Justin Cronin
 
Hardcover Nonfiction

1. Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern
2. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
3. Fiesta at Rick's by Rick Bayless
4. Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s by Dan Epstein
5. The Battle by Arthur Brooks
 
Paperback Fiction

1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
2. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson
3. Little Bee by Chris Cleave
4. Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann
5. A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
 
Paperback Nonfiction

1. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
2. Hawkeytown: Chicago Blackhawks by Chicago Tribune
3. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
4. Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford
5. Awkward Family Photos by Mike Bender
 
Children's

1. The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
2. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer
3. Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper
4. The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone
5. Big Nate by Lincoln Peirce

Reporting bookstores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; the Book Table, Oak Park; the Book Cellar, Lincoln Square; Lake Forest Books, Lake Forest; the Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka; and 57th St. Books; Seminary Co-op; Women and Children First, Chicago.

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]

 


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