Shelf Awareness for Friday, June 26, 2009


Del Rey Books: The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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

Overlook Press: How It Works Out by Myriam LaCroix

Charlesbridge Publishing: If Lin Can: How Jeremy Lin Inspired Asian Americans to Shoot for the Stars by Richard Ho, illustrated by Huynh Kim Liên and Phùng Nguyên Quang

Shadow Mountain: The Orchids of Ashthorne Hall (Proper Romance Victorian) by Rebecca Anderson

News

Notes: Bar Code Turns 35; A Different Kind of Inventory Shrinkage

Today's New York Times offered an ode to the bar code, which was introduced 35 years ago. The story focused on the UPC, used mainly in general retail, and not as sophisticated as the book industry's own 13-digit standard. The bar code inventor, a former IBM engineer, recalled that a review committee approved the idea but was "absolutely sure" that the bar code wouldn't last. The first clerk to swipe a product with a bar code, on June 26, 1974, remembered her 15 minutes of binary fame.

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In a sign of how the lousy economy is affecting inventory control, many general retailers are cutting back on what used to be "an ever-expanding array of products in different brands, sizes, colors, flavors, fragrances and prices," the Wall Street Journal reported. Among examples: "Walgreen Co. is cutting the types of superglues it carries to 11 from 25. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has decided that 24 different tape measures is 20 too many. Kroger Co. has tested stripping out about 30% of its cereal varieties." In all, the assortment of products in general retail stores is expected to fall 15%.

Among the reasons for the change: retailers "are trying to cater to budget-conscious shoppers who want to simplify shopping trips and stick to familiar products. Retailers have found that eliminating certain products can lift sales and profits, in part by cutting excess inventory and making more room for house brands."

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In a story about Prairie Home Companion's 35th anniversary, in Express Night Out, Garrison Keillor commented that Common Good Books, St. Paul, Minn., which he opened in 2006, "is sort of slowly making its way. I don't know. It's not making money. Nobody makes money with bookstores."

He continued: "I love bookstores. I love to hold books in my hand. And to give that up is painful. It's like if Minnesota passed a law against fishing, it wouldn't affect the food supply that much. You know, if we passed a law against guys going out in a boat with a rod and a reel and bait and fishing for sunfish and crappies, people would still eat, nobody would go hungry who hadn't before. But it'd be painful. It's a part of our culture."

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Earlier this week, when former Vermont Governor Howard Dean was preparing for an appearance on the Colbert Report to talk about his new title, Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform, the book wasn't ready yet. So his publisher, Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vt., asked Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, Vt., to brew three copies on its Espresso Book Machine. As a result, Dean had his book to carry onto the set. Chelsea Green president Margo Baldwin commented, "Northshire did a terrific job of expediting the books and getting them shipped to Howard . . . the quality was quite good!"

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A Valentine's Day visit to Maine from Minnesota in 2004 changed the lives of Trish and Gary Koch forever. "Within four hours, we were talking to a realtor," said Trish, though it would take time before they moved east and even longer to become booksellers.

Seacoastonline.com profiled the owners of the Kennebunk bookshop Kennebooks, which opened May 25, and noted that the setup is "all part of a plan [Trish] has for keeping the store open year-round and a vibrant part of the community. She also plans to start book clubs for everyone from pre-teens to adults, as well as offer her meeting space for other area book clubs."

"I'm a dreamer," she said. "I think we're going in the right direction."

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RIP Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.

 


HarperOne: Amphibious Soul: Finding the Wild in a Tame World by Craig Foster


Sam Weller Remembered

More on the death of Sam Weller, founder of Sam Weller's Books, Salt Lake City, Utah.

The Salt Lake Tribune has a detailed obituary and a photo gallery.

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Publisher Gibbs Smith has written about Weller's influence on him in his forthcoming book, The Art of the Bookstore, which appears in October and contains 40 paintings of independent bookstores and words of booksellers.

He wrote: "When I was about ten years old, my family moved to Utah and I gradually became aware of my own preferences and interests apart from my parents', such as which writers I personally liked, some of whom were Ernest Hemingway and Jack London. My father, a dentist who also loved literature, took me to Salt Lake City to Sam Weller's Book Store and purchased for me copies of For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Sun Also Rises, along with a collection of Jack London stories. I remember this very clearly, especially how Sam Weller himself took a personal interest in me as a young customer and helped me find the right books…

"At Sam Weller's, I made a lifelong friend in both Sam and the store. Through my college years at the University of Utah I would frequently visit Sam's store and have many discussions with him about the book world. He was on the board of the American Booksellers Association and knew many in the business. I liked to ask him about publishers, and he said that over the years most publishers had come into his store and visited, some on a regular basis. Alfred Knopf would come fairly often. Bennett Cerf had been there, and many more. I began to get the feeling that the book business was a community of people who knew each other and whose main goal in life was to create and sell books. This way of life appealed to me. Over the years, I've reflected on the nature of this industry, and I think it truly was, and to some degree still is, a cottage industry. It's unlike any other business."

 


Park Street Press: An Autobiography of Trauma: A Healing Journey by Peter A Levine


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Getting It Through My Thick Skull

Saturday morning on Good Morning America: Mary Jo Buttafuoco, author of Getting It Through My Thick Skull: Why I Stayed, What I Learned, and What Millions of People Involved with Sociopaths Need to Know (Health Communications, $24.95, 9780757313721/0757313728).

 


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Take Me Home by Melanie Sweeney


Books & Authors

Awards: Carnegie Medal for Children's Literature; Rittenhouse Award

Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd, which was "finished three months before her death from cancer," won the Carnegie medal for children's literature, making the author the first posthumous winner of the award, the Guardian reported.

"It's infuriating that she didn't start writing earlier, that she couldn't go on. We've lost one of our great new voices, and they don't come along that often, not at Siobhan's standards," said David Fickling, her publisher and editor. "Bog Child was written with great intensity, when Siobhan was at the height of her powers, all the while being very ill . . . You get to the end and are uplifted, and that's what she was like in person, too. She buoyed you up."

Librarian and chair of the judging panel Joy Court called the book "an absolutely astonishing piece of writing. To be able to write like that when she was going through what she was going through is just astonishing--the sheer beauty of the language, the descriptions of the environment; she has such an amazing sense of place."

Illustrator Catherine Rayner won the Kate Greenaway medal for children's book illustration for Harris Finds His Feet.

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Charles (Chuck) S. Hutchinson Jr. has won the 2009 Jack D. Rittenhouse Award, which is given by Publishers Association of the West to honor "individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the book community in the West."

PubWest Board president Todd Berger said that the winner's "wide-ranging, 50-year career as a regional sales manager, editor-in-chief, founder of two publishing companies, and publishing consultant fits perfectly with the spirit of the award."

Hutchinson has worked for Geoscience Press, Harbinger House, Van Nostrand Reinhold, Ross Publishing Co., Dowden, Hutchinson & Ross, Reinhold Book Corporation and Burgess Publishing Company. PubWest said that "two of his most notable publishing programs" have been in collaboration with series editors: the Community Development/Environmental Design Series with series editor Richard. P. Dober, Belmont, Mass. (45 books published); and the Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series with series editor Dr. R. W. Fairbridge, Columbia University (16 volumes published).

The award will be presented on November 14 during PubWest's annual National Publishing Conference and Book Industry Trade Show, to be held this year in Tucson, Ariz.

 

 


Book Brahmin: Ridley Pearson

Ridley Pearson is the author of more than 25 crime fiction novels as well as a half dozen books (several co-written with Dave Barry) for young readers. His crime novels are known for their detailed forensics; his latest is Killer Summer, to be published by Putnam next Tuesday, June 30. Research conducted for his novel Undercurrents (1988) has helped investigators solve three real life homicides. At the request of authorities, Pearson also contributed to the task force attempting to catch the Washington, D.C., sniper. Peter and the Starcatchers (co-written with Dave Barry) has been adapted for the stage by Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and is being produced by Disney Theatrical. In 1990, Pearson was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Crime Fiction. He is currently a visiting professor at the College of International Language and Literature at Fudan University, Shanghai, China, where he lives with his wife, Marcelle, and their two daughters.

On your nightstand now:  

The Given Day by Dennis Lehane, Of Flesh and Blood by Dan Kalla and Leaving Mother Lake by Yang Erche Namu and Christine Mathieu.

Favorite book when you were a child:

All things Rudyard Kipling.

Your top five authors:  

Reading is not a competitive sport.  

My favorite book of all time:

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

Book you've faked reading:

I have enough time faking the writing!

Book you're an evangelist for:

I've been evangelic over the years for Val McDermid, David McCullough, Scott Turow and many others--though they've never needed it!

Book you've bought for the cover:

Maybe a book for my daughters . . . ages 11 and 10. But can't think of a title. I'm not a sucker for covers without reading inside.

Book that changed your life:

Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie (in that it inspired the writing of the Peter and the Starcatchers series, co-written with Dave Barry) and Starcatchers has certainly changed my life.

Favorite line from a book:  

"The last camel collapsed at noon."--The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett

Book you most want to read again for the first time:  

For the first time! Ah! That does change things. Right now probably The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. It struck me as a masterpiece.

Earliest book you remember:  

Harold and the Purple Crayon by Crockett Johnson.

Favorite book read to you by your parent:  

My father had a collection of Oz books, and though I never remember him reading to me from them, I remember finding them in the upstairs bookshelf (lots of books in our house when I was growing up) and reading several in a row.




Book Review

Mandahla: How Shall I Tell the Dog?

How Shall I Tell the Dog?: And Other Final Musings by Miles Kington (Newmarket Press, $19.95 Hardcover, 9781557048417, August 2009)



Miles Kington--Punch literary editor, London Times writer and jazz reviewer, one of England's most popular humorists--died in January 2008 of pancreatic cancer. His response to his diagnosis was to do what he had always done every day for decades: write. In a series of letters to his longtime friend and agent, Gill, he proposes endless ideas for a book that, well, cashes in on cancer, ending most missives with "Am I on to something?" He'd already asked his doctor how many chapter headings he has before the End, so floats ideas like "A Hundred Things to Do Before You Die" (like how to make children at adjacent tables burst into tears for no apparent reason or how to pronounce "chorizo" properly); "Weight Loss through Cancer"; "Lunch in Barcelona for One"; a self-help book about self-pity ("Tap the Inner Energy of Apathy"); a board game called Necropoly.

He also thinks he might make a good assassin, offering his services as his last useful act on earth: "People who look at my hangdog expression and my air of lingering malady would never dream that underneath it all simmers a potential killer." And he's after big game, too--Robert Mugabe or a "public nuisance" like Jeffrey Archer or Victorla Beckham ("any thoughts so far?" he asks Gill).

Kington meanders delightfully. He wonders if the British are the only people in the world who think that Germans get up at dawn to put their bathing towels on good bits at the poolside; he says that George VI died of cancer--was there a link between that and his hobby of philately? And did the king actually lick his own stamp hinges?; thinking of past famous death-bed pronouncements, he proposes a registry for final last words, since being swaddled in painkillers at the end precludes a dying utterance of value; he writes of training pekes for survival in the African bush. In one long letter, he goes on about trying to pierce new holes in his belts after losing weight, which leads to abandoned tools all over the house, which leads to buying a belt in Ireland, which leads to a cobbler with a cleft palate, which leads to deciding a cobbler's shop would be a bad place for a power struggle to break out. He effortlessly takes the reader from sadness to laughter.

Miles Kington tells Gill that he hates reading books about pain and joy-through-suffering and most definitely does not want to write a cheery book about cancer. Instead, he has written a very funny book. He asks, if you are a cheery sort who has been told you have cancer and carry on regardless, is that denial? Or reckless bravery? No denial in this book, but certainly bravery from a brilliant, funny man who lived to write.--Marilyn Dahl

Shelf Talker: An epistolary book from one of England's most popular columnists, with truly amusing observations about his cancer diagnosis and inevitable demise.


Deeper Understanding

Robert Gray: Who is Your Company's Online Voice?

One of my favorite moments at this year's BEA occurred when Wine Library TV guru Gary Vaynerchuk addressed the issue of finding precious time away from our "real jobs" to handle online duties like blogs, e-mail or social networking sites.

"When the hell is interacting with clients not your real job?" he asked in his logical, passionate and conclusively rhetorical way. Another relevant question: Who is doing that interaction? I'm going to start this discussion by focusing on bookstores and blogs, but will necessarily open it up to include anyone in the book trade who "goes public" in the numerous online venues.

First, a quick history lesson: I started a blog in 2004 called Fresh Eyes: A Bookseller's Journal while I was still working full-time for a major indie because the shop wasn't quite ready to do one in-house. There were few booksellers online then, though Megan Sullivan's Bookdwarf was an inspiration.

It seems odd to feel a little nostalgic for a past that isn't even a half-decade old, but at the time I was excited to move from the information confines of a single bricks-and-mortar bookshop into an ongoing conversation about the industry with the likes of M.J. Rose at Buzz, Balls & Hype and the then-pseudonymous editor Mad Max Perkins at Bookangst 101.

Others soon joined in this exchange of ideas. On Thursday, October 20, 2005--long before she became the Jessica Stockton Bagnulo who coordinates events at McNally Jackson Booksellers and co-owns the soon-to-be dazzling Greenlight Bookstore--an initial post appeared on Jessica's new blog, the Written Nerd:

"I am so excited about bookselling, as the place where literature hits the streets, and as a possibility for the creation of community which is grounded in tradition but looking forward to the most exciting developments of a new age, that I bore even my bookseller friends. I do so much talking about this stuff that I finally realized I'd better start talking to more people. So here's the beginning. There are a wealth of fantastic literary blogs out there--I'll link to some of my favorites. There are even some booksellers getting into the act. This will be a place to record cool experiences in the literary biz, to talk about books that I'm excited about, and to speculate and plan endlessly for my own bookstore, a goal that I'm working toward with embarrassing giddiness."

The rest, as they say, is history, and Jessica is still recording that history online as it happens, in a passionate voice that reflects her commitment to books, bookselling and this crazy industry.

Going public can also feel like a highwire act sometimes. I wasn't writing a "bookstore blog," for example, yet I was fully aware that I represented the bookstore whenever I posted something on Fresh Eyes, especially if the topic was controversial. That didn't stop me from discussing such issues, but I knew I wasn't flying solo.

Now it's an even more complex book world online and that's why I'd like to open a discussion about it with a few questions:

  • How difficult (or easy) is it for business owners to turn loose staff members as "the voice" of their companies?
  • How much freedom do staff members feel they have to "write what they know," as it were?
  • Is there a carryover effect (positive or negative) between personal blogs and company blogs by the same staff member?
  • How do we avoid Gary V.'s wrath and find the time to make blogging (and social networking) part of our "real job?"

Patrick Brown, webmaster at Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., is one of several gifted "online practitioners" we'll hear more from in upcoming columns. Like many of us, he's been thinking about this subject a lot as the tools evolve and the borderlines dissolve.

"Should an employer be able to fire you for remarks you make on your personal Facebook account, for instance?" he asks. "Is it now your responsibility to monitor your own privacy settings so that such a situation never arises? Is there such a thing as 'private' space online or only 'personal' space? It's pretty fascinating."

He cites Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody to try to "explain the dissonance" people are feeling: "In the book, he says until the Internet era began, it was easy to identify a message meant for private consumption (a phone call, a letter) and something meant for public consumption (TV, newspapers, books). The Internet has really destroyed those two categories and many people have yet to catch up."

Who's your company's voice on the virtual borderline?--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)

 


The Bestsellers

Chicagoland's Topselling Titles

The following were the bestselling titles at independent bookstores in and around Chicago during the week ending Sunday, June 21:

Hardcover Nonfiction
 
1. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
2. Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton
3. Renegade by Richard Wolffe
4. Home Game by Michael Lewis
5. Driving Like Crazy by P.J. O'Rourke
 
Hardcover Fiction
 
1. The Angel's Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafron
2. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. First Family by David Baldacci
5. The Women by T.C. Boyle
 
Paperback Nonfiction
 
1. The Naked Roommate by Harlan Cohen
2. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
3. City of Sin by Bapsi Sidhwa
4. Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut
5. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
 
Paperback Fiction
 
1. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
2. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
3. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
4. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
5. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith
 
Children's
 
1. Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen
2. Goldilicious by Victoria Kann
3. Don't Judge a Girl by her Cover by Ally Carter
4. The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan
5. L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad

Reporting stores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; 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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