"Watch the best-seller lists this week, kids," noted the New York Times Jacket Copy blog, predicting an aftereffect from President Obama's admission in this Sunday's Times Magazine that "he had become sick enough of briefing books to begin reading a novel in the evenings--Netherland by Joseph O’Neill." Jacket Copy speculated that perhaps "The Open Veins of Latin America wasn't the relaxing read he was looking for?"
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Rebound starting? We hear that Barnes & Noble recently had company-wide sales one day that topped sales on the same day a year ago.
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Sadly we've learned that Simon & Schuster has laid off several people in the sales department, "let go in response to the changing retail environment," as one executive put it.
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The Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn Center, Minn., isn't the only B&N closing because of a declining shopping center (Shelf Awareness, April 29, 2009). The company is also closing its store in the Montgomery Towne Center in Montgomery, Ala., a shopping center that had lost most of its major tenants in the past few years, according to the Montgomery Advertiser.
The store will close at the end of June.
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"Silicon Valley is still home to a decent selection of old-fashioned independent bookstores, some of which have been around more than 50 years," Metroactive reported in a cautionary piece that warned "these local literary gems, and their accompanying cultural and authors' events, could disappear without sustained community support."
Citing indie booksellers' adaptive skills in the face of challenges from the troubled economy, technology and increased consumer options, Metroactive showcased a number of bookstores that are "changing in order to survive" with new strategies like the shop local movement.
Government assistance, needless to say, isn't in the offing. "Independent businesses are bailed out last, if ever," said Clark Kepler, owner of Kepler's Books, Menlo Park.
"We are down right now," noted Cinda Meister, co-owner of BookSmart, Morgan Hill. "Customers that would come in and buy 10 books will now come in and buy one or two. . . . They know they can only spend a little bit of money, but they're going to choose where to spend that money. They're not going to spend it at a big box store--they're going to spend it local paint store, a local bookstore."
Valerie Lewis, owner of Hicklebee's, San Jose, stressed the importance of community: "Whenever we've called for the community to do anything, they're there."
This was not the case for Cathy Adkins, whose Willow Glen Books is scheduled to close since no buyer has been found. "If this were another year, I think there would be people more ready to take this kind of chance. But I think people rightfully are being kind of cautious and careful, more in recovery mode than adventure mode."
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Congratulations to Margot Sage-EL, owner of Watchung Booksellers, Montclair, N.J., who is being honored as a Muse of Montclair this Saturday and being recognized, with her staff, for "introducing their readers to new books, supporting local authors with readings, and working with the educational, religious and civic institutions in Montclair to further the cause of literacy and the exploration of new ideas."
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Yvonne vanCort's longtime "romantic fantasy about owning a small bookstore" came true in 2003 when she and husband Roy Solomon purchased the Village Bookstore, Pleasantville, N.Y., according to LoHud.com. The couple were recently honored with a Business Person of the Year award by the local Chamber of Commerce.
"You are surrounded by books all day; you are meeting and greeting customers, chatting with them, maybe reading a book or two on the job," said vanCort, who told LoHud.com that her life as a bookseller "has more or less lived up to her fantasy."
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Cool theatrical bookseller idea of the day: David Hsieh, who works for Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle, Wash., is directing and producing the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay Abaire for the Repertory Actors Theatre (ReAct), "Seattle's multi-ethnic philanthropic theatre company." The play premieres tonight and will run through May 31.
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NBC17-TV reported on today's closing of Market Street Books, Chapel Hill, N.C., a nonprofit bookstore that only a few months ago was honored by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce as its 2008 Business of the Year.
"We thought it might be a temporary thing and condfidence would come back but confidence has not returned," said executive director Michael Lyle.
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Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow recommended the Art of Penguin Science Fiction, "a beautiful thumbnail gallery of the covers of every (?) science fiction novel published by Penguin UK, starting with the 1935 edition of Butler's Erewhon. I grew up on these, and just seeing them there makes me want to tile my bathroom with them."
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Muggles can finally visit the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which has magically appeared at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, where, USA Today reported, "more than 200 props and costumes from the blockbuster movies re-create Hogwarts in an exhibition that . . . takes visitors from the Hogwarts Express train platform through the Gryffindor common room, classrooms, the Great Hall, the Forbidden Forest and Hagrid's hut. The tour is populated with creatures from the seven novels by J.K. Rowling and six Potter movies."
"Museums recognize that if popular culture can get kids excited to come to the museum and then we can expose them to 14 acres of science, that's a really good thing," said Anne Rashford, the museum's director of temporary exhibits. The article also offers a video tour of the exhibit.
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The Swedes did it. The Guardian reported that "Swedish crime fiction dominated book charts across Europe last year with the late Stieg Larsson joined by fellow novelists including Henning Mankell, Liza Marklund and Jens Lapidus in an impressive assault on the bestseller lists."
An analysis of the seven major European book markets "showed a remarkably diverse reading culture across Europe, with just 13 of the top 40 authors writing in English and 27 writing in other languages."
The lack of English-language bestsellers "was a very big surprise," said consultant Rüdiger Wischenbart, who compiled the data. "You would have expected it to be as high as 80%."
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David Levithan, a champion of YA literature, has been promoted to v-p and editorial director of Scholastic Trade Publishing. He was formerly executive editorial director, Scholastic Press Fiction. He is also the author of such titles as Boy Meets Boy and co-wrote with Rachel Cohn Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, which was made into a major motion picture. Levithan started at Scholastic as an intern 16 years ago.
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We always knew Joe Drabyak was a great guy. But now we know he's also a great, um, babe. (See above, left.)
Jacqueline Kelly, in this impressive debut, creates an 11-year-old narrator, Calpurnia Virginia ("Callie Vee") Tate, who meets with obstacles to her instinctive curiosity about the natural world. Through Callie Vee's eyes, the author deftly explores attitudes toward science and gender roles at the turn of the 20th century. Repulsed by cooking and knitting and other traditional female pursuits, Callie Vee thrives by the river bank, observing flora and fauna. But this will not prepare her to come out in society or find a husband suitable to her family's wealth. In the sweltering summer of 1899 in Fentress, Tex., Callie Vee ("spliced midway" between three older brothers and three younger ones) figures out that she can attract earthworms from deep within the parched earth if she dumps a bucket of water in the same spot twice a day for five days. She sells a dozen of them to her 13-year-old brother Lamar for a penny, and confesses her "method" to her oldest brother, Harry (age 17), her favorite. Harry encourages Callie Vee by giving her a pocket-size red leather notebook for recording her scientific observations. "You're a regular naturalist in the making," he tells her.