"Every book that's here is here for a reason. It's been personally selected... and in this economy they are even more carefully selected and managed.... The way I think we compete is by making friends and hopefully influencing people to want to come here. We do need to make the personal connections with people so that they feel this is their store and they want to come to their store... in the same way they want to go to their aunt's house."

 

General retailers reported mixed results for June, part of a trend that "bodes poorly for the kind of snapback in spending many stores anticipated only a few months ago," the Wall Street Journal reported. Thomson Reuters estimated sales at stores open at least a year rose 3.1% in June, and even though the number compares favorably "with a 4.9% drop last year, it wasn't as solid as hoped. Some 56% of retailers missed sales targets of the analysts who follow them," the Journal wrote.
 
Amy Noblin, a retail analyst with Weeden & Co., said, "Companies are selectively going back and trying to cut orders for the back half of the year."

Stephen Hoch, marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told Reuters: "What it really says is we're just treading water. There's no evidence that somehow the consumer is going to step up to the plate and spend us out of the economic doldrums."

"Lower- and middle-income consumers have really taken a pause here," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics. He cited the jobless rate, stagnant home prices and declining stock markets as factors still weighing on shoppers' minds.

 

Testifying yesterday at a civil trial in Delaware Chancery Court (Shelf Awareness, May 7, 2010), investor Ronald Burkle said the poison-pill plan that Barnes & Noble enacted to stop him from taking a larger share in the company "has imposed draconian restrictions on his ability to wage a potential proxy fight against the Riggio family which controls the bookseller," the Wall Street Journal reported.

Burkle also called the shareholder-rights plan's rules "so confusing and far reaching that he hasn't even been returning the calls of other Barnes & Noble shareholders for fear of tripping certain regulations. He said his investment firm, Yucaipa Cos., may wage a proxy battle to replace three Barnes & Noble board members, but the rules have made it nearly impossible to determine if the proxy would pass," the Journal wrote.

"It appears that rules were written to be vague," Burkle said. "If you step into anything that is a gray area, which in our opinion is almost everything, then the penalties are very, very draconian."

B&N adopted the rights plan last November to halt Burkle's rapid accumulation of shares. Yucaipa currently holds about 18.7% of B&N's outstanding shares.

Reuters reported that in his testimony, "Burkle said Yucaipa has never made an unsolicited bid for a company or waged a proxy contest, but may propose a slate of three directors for election to Barnes & Noble's board. He also said Yucaipa in October 2009 considered, but then decided against, pursuing a $25 per share buyout bid."

"I always thought it was a waste of time," Burkle said. "You have somebody who owns 38% of it. Unless they want to sell the company, you're not going to do anything. So I thought, it was an interesting exercise, but it had no value."

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Borders Group is holding a special shareholder meeting September 29, at which shareholders will vote on whether to approve the company's issuance of special stock to an entity controlled by Bennett S. LeBow, who became chairman of the company after making an $25 million investment in Borders in May.

LeBow's company is LeBow Gamma Limited Partnership, and under the proposal it will receive a stock purchase warrant exercisable to acquire 35.1 million shares of the company's common stock at a price of $2.25 per share. The proposal also calls for the issuance of the underlying 35.1 million warrant shares.

Shareholders will also vote on a proposal to require the company to obtain the consent of LeBow Gamma before it appoints, terminates or transfers the CEO or CFO or any executive officer or makes significant changes in their employment.

When LeBow made his $25-million investment, he received exactly 11,111,111 shares of common stock.

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Booksellers nationwide celebrated the ninth annual Independents Week along with their customers, who demonstrated support for indie businesses on shirts, bags, and receipts. Bookselling This Week reported that a little confusion had to be cleared up here and there, including a clarifying tweet from Sam Droke-Dickinson--co-owner of Aaron's Books, Lititz, Pa.--who responded "after several people complained about the 'misspelling' on the store's sign" by tweeting: "Yes, we can spell 'independence.' "  

Cathy Allard, owner of BayShore Books, Oconto, Wis., said, "We have a front display with information about other participating businesses and books that tie in. For instance, we have The Perfect Wisconsin Lawn displayed with the address and phone number of Lawn Mower Layne, a local business that repairs small motors."

At the Open Book, Westhampton Beach, N.Y., "customers wearing the store's T-shirts got 20% off their purchases. At Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego, the discount was 17%, in honor of the store's 17th year in business," BTW noted.

"We passed out a coupon with each qualifying purchase," said Emily Pullen of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif. "It said 'Shop Indie Online: Get 20% off your web order when you enter this code in the comments field.' It seemed like a lot of people didn't realize that they could order online and pick up books in the store. This coupon not only told them they could do it, it gave them an incentive to try it out."

Since neighboring businesses did not have plans for Independents Week, "We made a flier of our favorite local businesses, a list of staff picks, if you will," Pullen added. "We tried to think of types of stores where consumers' mental default is a chain, and then we came up with alternatives--hardware stores, grocery stores, clothing stores, coffee shops, etc. We had the fliers around the store for people to pick up, and we passed them out with purchases."

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Monadnock Buy Local in Keene, N.H., has been awarded a $1,250 NEIBA Shop Local Grant by the New England Independent Booksellers Association. The Monadnock group, which now has 130 members, was formed in June 2009 and includes Willard Williams, owner of the Toadstool Bookstores in Keene, Milford and Peterborough. Since the program began three years ago, NEIBA has awarded 14 grants, totaling $27,250, to 11 organizations.

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Obituary note: Kelly Marie Wells, a bookseller at the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah, died July 5 due to heart failure. She was 29. A tribute on the bookshop's blog observed that "Kelly was brilliant, kind, and utterly besotted by books. Many of you will remember her beauty and her sweetness, but those of you who love books will remember the wide range of her knowledge as well as her absolute passion for good novels--and for anything that was well written.

"During the time she worked for us Kelly had made a splash in the book business nationally, known for her fierce love of fiction and children’s literature and for her enthusiasm for the business of books. We at The King’s English mourn her passing. We miss Kelly and always will."

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Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, Ga., celebrated its fifth birthday July 1, and Bookselling This Week showcased the Pannell Award-winning children's bookshop, which will host a birthday party at the end of July with live music.

"We also want to have an open mic where customers can tell their favorite Little Shop memories," said co-owner Dave Shallenberger, who opened the shop with Diane Capriola in 2005 in a space shared with an ice cream store. "After a couple of years our business grew to the point where we began looking for our own location. We moved in April 2008 to our new space."

Shallenberger added that Decatur has always been a welcoming community. "We work closely with many local schools in terms of bringing in authors and doing book fairs. People here seem to understand that there are few children's bookstores that have survived the past couple of decades and have gone out of their way to support us."

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Advising readers to "set their literary calendars anew," the Millions featured its "Most Anticipated Summer Reading 2010 and Beyond" list.

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"This spring, in ripe midlife, after years of thinking and talking about it, I finally rented a summer house of my own," wrote author Daphne Merkin in the New York Times Home & Garden section, noting that she "hung a portrait of Virginia Woolf by Barbara Nahmad that I had acquired in Italy on my bedroom wall. This last was to remind myself that in between kitting out my house and making like Martha Stewart, I shouldn't forget that my real plan for the summer was to sequester myself with 'the lonely sea and the sky' in--hallelujah!--a rental of my own, and write."

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A recent study that found test subjects read printed books faster than digital formats (Shelf Awareness, July 7, 2010) also discovered that participants said "the book was 'more relaxing' to use than the electronic devices. 'And they felt uncomfortable with the PC because it reminded them of work,'" the Guardian wrote.

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Richard Francis, author most recently of The Old Spring, which "tells the story of a day in the life of an English pub," chose his top 10 pubs in literature for the Guardian.

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Effective this Monday, July 12, Steve Ross is joining Abrams Artists Agency as director of the newly formed book division. He will expand the agency's involvement in book agenting and publishing and head Abrams Author Services, a new entity for Abrams that will expand the consulting services Ross has been providing clients on his own.

Ross is former president and group publisher of the Collins division of HarperCollins and publisher of Random House's Crown division.

Ross commented: "While some authors and their work remain best suited for an established publishing company, others may benefit from a more personal, hands-on approach with a different financial structure, an approach only now possible thanks to the rapid proliferation of accessible options in such areas as self-publishing, digitization, and distribution. We see these as two distinct businesses, separate but inextricably intertwined, with the collective goal of maximizing the potential for each individual author."

Abrams has offices in Los Angeles and New York and represents clients in most parts of the entertainment industry. Its literary division represents writers, directors, composers, lyricists and designers in theater, film and TV.

As of Monday, Ross may be reached at steve.ross@abramsartny.com; 646-486-4600.

This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. USA Today offered an interesting dual calculation of the value of this classic novel: "One gauge: A rare signed and inscribed first edition of the book, in the original dust jacket, will cost you $35,000 at Baumann's, a major book dealer. Another gauge: Mockingbird remains one of the most frequently challenged books, repeatedly banned from schools and libraries since it was published, though the reasons have changed."

But for booksellers, there's also the incalculable value in recommending and discussing the book with longtime fans and newcomers alike. Many bookstores are honoring the anniversary with special events. Here's just a sampling:

Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck, N.Y., is hosting a party Saturday "with trivia, refreshments, and prizes. Our party will also be a fundraiser for the Starr Library." Oblong's event garnered a mention in USA Today, which noted that "the locals are planning a party featuring trivia, 'mocktails' and music on the stereo by the indie band Boo Radleys."

Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, Colo., and the Denver Center Theatre Company teamed up last night when members of the acting company presented a reading from To Kill a Mockingbird.

On July 12, Malaprop's Bookstore, Asheville, N.C., hosts a 50th Anniversary Read A Thon: "Starting at 4 p.m., a host of fabulous regional authors (Sara Addision Allen, Wayne Caldwell, Brian Lee Knopp, and many more) will each read for 15 minutes before passing the microphone."

Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., is hosting an event Sunday featuring biographer Kerry Madden, author of Harper Lee.

Next Wednesday, Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Mass., and the Brattle Theatre join forces to present a panel discussion about the book, followed by a screening of the 1962 film adaptation starring Gregory Peck.

For a Mockingbird party on Sunday, BookPeople, Austin Tex., has invited "some of Austin's literary minds to read passages from the book and talk about what it has meant to them."

Bookseller Morgan K. at Next Chapter Bookshop, Mequon, Wis., shared her longtime devotion to Lee's novel on the shop's blog: "When I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in 6th grade, I knew immediately that there was something special and different about it. It quickly became my all-time favorite book.... I love that the book has been inspiring readers for 50 years, and I hope it continues to inspire them for at least 50 more."

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If you're in a musical literary mood, Larry Hughes noted the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird at his blog, Classics Rock! Books Shelved in Songs, by examining popular songs inspired by the novel from performers like Bruce Hornsby, Ra Ra Riot and the Noisettes; as well as bands named after characters.

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Mary McDonagh Murphy, author of Scout, Atticus and Boo: A Celebration of Fifty Years of To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper), is making the national media rounds to discuss all things Mockingbird. She will be interviewed tonight on ABC's World News; Sunday on CBS Sunday Morning and CBS Evening News; and next Friday, July 16, on NPR's Diane Rehm Show. 

 

Last Wednesday Emily St. John Mandel read to a full house from The
Singer's Gun (Unbridled Books) at McLean & Eakin, Petoskey, Mich.,
part of her tour of Michigan independents.

On CBS Sunday Morning: Jere Van Dyk, author of Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban (Times Books, $25, 9780805088274/080508827X).

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Sunday on NPR's Weekend Edition: Mickey Rapkin, author of Theater Geek: The Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor, the Famous Performing Arts Camp (Free Press, $25, 9781439145760/1439145768).

 

Ralph Fiennes, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman and Michael Fassbender will star in the the remake of John Le Carre's novel Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Variety reported. Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) is directing the film, which will begin shooting this October in London. Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon) wrote the adaptation.

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Director Joe Wright will develop a live-action movie version of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Little Mermaid for Working Title Films. "The script--for what will be the first English-language live-action adaptation of the tale--has been penned by Abi Morgan (Brick Lane)," the Hollywood Reporter wrote.  

 

Laurence Gonzales's first book was Jambeaux (1979), which Rolling Stone called "the best rock-and-roll novel since Harlan Ellison's Spider's Kiss, which is to say it's the best in almost twenty years." Since 1970, Gonzales's essays have appeared in such periodicals as Harper's, Rolling Stone, Men's Journal, National Geographic Adventure and many others. He has published a dozen books, including two collections of essays, three novels and the book-length essay One Zero Charlie, a classic of aviation literature. He won the 2001 and 2002 National Magazine Awards, and those articles went on to become part of Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. Entertainment Weekly called his new novel, Lucy (Knopf, July 13, 2010), "a fast-paced Crichtonesque thriller about a half-human, half-ape girl."

On your nightstand now:

I read half of Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith and had to put it down. It was too disturbing. There is a quality to the book that is so sinister that I couldn't sit still with it. In the meantime, I have The Collected Poems of Derek Walcott, which I read little by little. The same is true of Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games by László Polgár. Of course, that's not really reading, since you simply look at the image of a chess board and solve the problem in your head. I'm also reading the new translation of The Odyssey by Robert Fagles and rereading The Plague by Albert Camus, Ulysses by James Joyce and The Orchard Keeper, the first novel by Cormac McCarthy. And, of course, I'm always reading dictionaries.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:

archy & mehitabel by don marquis. My mother used to read it to me, and I was amazed and fascinated by the fact that he could write an entire book with no punctuation or capital letters, as well as by the fact that my mother was permitted to say the word "hell" because it was printed in a book. I think that idea of freedom was what first made me want to become a writer.

Your top five authors:

I'll stick to writers in the English language here. George Orwell because everything in the novel 1984 had already happened by 1966. And because of his fine essays. Shirley Hazzard for The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire. When I read her novels, I feel as if I'm watching a fascinating and completely incomprehensible natural process unfold before my eyes. Cormac McCarthy because every time I read his work, I learn something about the language. Herman Melville because I never tire of reading Moby-Dick. James Salter, because Burning the Days is one of the finest pieces of nonfiction I've read, and I very much like to see nonfiction raised to a high art.

Book you've faked reading:

Everything I was assigned to read in high school and about half of the books in college. I didn't take well to school.
 
Book you're an evangelist for:

The Falcon: A Narrative of the Captivity & Adventures of John Tanner During Thirty Years Residence Among the Indians of the Interior of North America. Tanner was nine years old when he was kidnapped by Shawnee Indians in 1789. His book is a rare glimpse into a prehistoric world and a unique reflection of who we are beneath the thin veneer we call civilization.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:

Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape by Frans de Waal and Frans Lanting. When I saw the thoughtful face of the bonobo, I immediately felt that I had to get to know that creature. Besides my face-to-face experience with bonobos, that book was the greatest help when I was writing the novel Lucy.
 
Book that changed your life:

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I was a miserable senior in a high school run by sadistic Jesuits when a girl handed me this book. For days on end, I did nothing in class but conceal my copy inside other books and read, fascinated by the outrageous freedom embodied in that book. Around that time, the same girl gave me Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which also blew my mind. In those books I saw for the first time an example of the sort of life I wanted (I mean that of the authors, not the characters).
 
Favorite line from a book:

"Man knows so little about his fellows. In his eyes all men or women act upon what he believes would motivate him if he were mad enough to do what that other man or woman is doing."--William Faulkner, Light in August.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. This is one of those books that I had to put down as I read it, as if it were burning my hands.

Author photo: J. Dovydenas

 

The jacket copy for Carey Wallace's lovely novel describes it as, among other things, "an enchanting confection," which is true enough, but just part of the story. At barely 200 pages (and small-format), The Blind Contessa's New Machine is as compact as it is sweet and delicately crafted; it is also surprisingly wise and surefooted for a debut novel by a young author.
 
The story takes place in early 19th-century Italy, but the landscape, full of lemon trees, white rosebushes and bramble-strewn paths, has the timeless feel of a fairytale. The titular contessa is Carolina Fantoni, a dreamy girl who loves nothing more than staring out upon the lake her father has built on his spacious grounds. As the novel opens (in scenes that have the faint tang of García Márquez and Laura Esquivel), Carolina is going blind but cannot convince anyone of it; not her doting but obtuse father, her dismissive, distant mother or even her passionate fiancé, Pietro, a dashing lothario who ignites her senses but not her imagination. The only person who does believe Carolina is Turri, the eccentric inventor who has been her friend since childhood and who shares her love of the natural world.
 
Carolina's blindness becomes complete soon after her wedding, forcing her to stay in the bedroom of her new (but already disenchanted) husband's home, dependent on her mean-spirited servant, Liza. After some months of complete darkness, Carolina begins to see--and travel--in her dreams, and Turri, who is also married and the father of a son, invents a machine (a proto-typewriter) on which she can write letters. Turri's gift sparks the latent ardor between the two and they begin a passionate love affair that will--of course--have grievous consequences.
 
Wallace's writing is truly exquisite, from her pointillist descriptions of the flora and fauna surrounding Carolina to her watercolor dreamscapes, and, most difficult to achieve, the pitch-perfect rendering of Carolina's hopes and fears. Even more impressive, however, is Wallace's ability to mine the depths of her central metaphor—blindness--for all its worth without ever becoming precious or contrived. The passages that detail Carolina's gradual loss of sight, photon by photon, are alone worth the price of the book.
 
Wallace is clearly a gifted writer and a wonderful storyteller. Her first novel, full of heart, wit and intelligence, is a remarkable accomplishment and gives us great reason to look forward to her next.--Debra Ginsberg
 
Shelf Talker: An exquisite gem of a novel that blends fairytale and real-world emotion in the story of a blind contessa, her lover and her writing machine.

 

'Hot!' said the conductor to familiar faces... 'Some weather!... Hot!... Hot!... Hot!... Is it hot enough for you? Is it hot? Is it...?'

When I noticed these lines from F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby in the New York Times Paper Cuts blog this week, I experienced a flashback that almost matched in intensity the seemingly incessant flashes of heat and lightning that have marked these Dog Days of July, 2010.

Gatsby was my first summer book. I read it in 1968, during the swelter of another July, because it was on a required pre-semester reading list sent by the college I'd be attending in the fall. Thus, Fitzgerald's novel, a summer book in some ways already, has always been one of my primary summer books (J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country is another).

But what if I had first read Gatsby in January? Would it have been my winter novel? Probably not.

Thoughts of books and summer inevitably lead my bookseller's brain to bookstores and summer: indie bookshops with A/C; used bookshops with endless aisles and shelves in cool, damp cellars; beach bookstores with offshore breezes sifting through screen doors.

That's all been on my mind during this tropical week in which I planned each day as a series of caravan journeys from one air-conditioned oasis to another. And it's what inspired me to begin considering a question I eventually decided I wanted to ask everyone in the book world.

That question is...

Ah, but first let me address rumors that this week's heat wave has inspired e-reader R&D teams to experiment with the next generation of devices, which will be equipped with micro-digital air conditioners designed to blow a refreshing breeze over your eyes as you read on blistering summer days (and be the perfect accessory for e-beach reading as well). Unnamed sources have confirmed that this feature will be available in our lifetime, though as yet it is not clear which particular devices will feature the "e-Air" (trademark pending) option.

See what a heat wave can do to your mind? This week put its own spin on the concept of hot summer books for a substantial portion of the U.S., as steamy post-Fourth of July weekend temperatures soared and sent most of us scurrying for shade, A/C and ice cube-filled glasses of... anything.

Was it too hot to read? No. Is it ever too hot to read? I suppose that depends upon where--and what--you’re reading. Another good question, and perhaps a bookish variation on the hot-beverages-make-you-cooler theory: Does reading a book set in a cold climate make you cooler, or is it better to read about even hotter places to gain the advantage of perspective?

All worthy questions, yet still not the ones I want to ask you. 

The first is for indie booksellers: What cool--literally and figuratively--events and promotions have you conjured to lure patrons into the cool--also literally and figuratively--book-lined confines of your shops during the next couple of months?

For example:

"It's cool here--so drop in and join us this summer," advised Kerry Slattery, general manager and co-owner of Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., in her shop's e-newsletter. Slattery wrote, "Some of our customers have been requesting a return of last summer's 'Hot Summer Nights,' so we've decided to do it again this summer--reborn as 'Hot Summer Saturdays!'--we'll stay open till midnight for seven Saturdays (July 17 to August 28) and present a little music and other themed evenings. Join us for libations, or just come and browse till midnight."

And at the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah: "We still have a few spots open in our Friday Fun for Kids at the King’s this week--Camp King’s English. Do you like to go camping? Do you like to hear stories, spooky or otherwise? Do you like to eat s’mores? Then we have a spot for you."

Or the simple but effective lure of this Facebook post from Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Wash.: "We've got great books, an awesome staff, and delicious cakes at the bakery. But most important, we have air conditioning."

My second question is for everyone:

What was your first summer book?

I'd love to hear from you.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)