The Globe Corner Bookstore, which closed its last bricks-and-mortar store, in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass., in July, will reopen in February in a new Harvard University building a few blocks from its former site, according to the Boston Globe. The 1,200-sq.-ft. store will stock "the largest map selection in New England," according to president Pat Carrier.

The company also has a busy Web site that opened in 1995.

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Merry Christmas. Yesterday the National Retail Federation raised its estimate for holiday sales growth to 6%, up from 5%, the first time it has officially upgraded its forecast during the season, according to the Wall Street Journal. The organization expects retail sales in November and December of $439.53 billion. The Federation cited lower gasoline costs and higher-than-expected October sales among the factors leading to the revision.

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Google is donating $3 million to help the Library of Congress begin its World Digital Library project, which aims to digitize print and multimedia works from national libraries and other sources worldwide. One of the first agreements for the World Digital Library project is with the National Library of Egypt to digitize documents on Islamic science from the 10th century, the New York Times said. The World Digital Library project is not connected with Google's Book Search projects.

Since 1994, the Library of Congress has been scanning materials from the U.S. for its American Memory project. Some 10 million works have been digitized; all are either in the public domain or works whose copyright owners have given the Library permission to digitize them.

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A labor dispute at Renaud-Bray, which has 26 bookstores in Quebec, has gotten uglier, according to CBC. After stalled contract talks led employees to stage rotating strikes, the last of which took place this past weekend, management locked employees out of 11 stores yesterday.

Average wages are $8.40 an hour (US$7.10), a figure employees want to boost by $1.50 (US$1.27), one employee told CBC. The company said that it pays more than the competition.

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Here's a different kind of approach to management-labor relations: no management.

The Daily Texan profiles MonkeyWrench Books, a nonprofit four-year-old anarchist bookstore in Austin, Tex. Run by volunteers, the store hosts meetings of many groups, including the Austin chapter of the IWW, has a movie program and stages a queer arts and crafts night. Decisions require unanimous consent of the collective members.

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Garrison Keillor's "publishers' blessing":

God is great,/ God is good,/ Thank you God/ For this food./

His loving kindness never fails,/ His birthday is so good for sales.

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The Mystery Writers of America has announced more winners of awards that will be presented at the 60th annual Edgar Awards banquet, which will be held April 27 in New York City.

The organization is presenting two Raven Awards, for outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside creative writing. The winners are:

Joan Hansen, who six years ago started "Men of Mystery" for the Literary Guild of Orange County (Calif.), an all-day gathering that this year presented 60 authors to an audience of more than 600.
Bonnie Claeson and Joe Guglielmelli, co-owners of the Black Orchid Bookshop in New York City, which has specialized in crime fiction since opening almost 12 years ago.

The MWA's Ellery Queen Award honoring outstanding people in mystery publishing goes to Brian Skupin and Kate Stine, co-publishers of Mystery Scene Magazine. Stine also edits the publication.

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The Association of American University Presses has updated two of its Books for Understanding bibliographies on current event topics:

Israel & Palestine, originally compiled in June 2002, has added such works as:

• Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography by Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin (Oxford University Press).
• Reports of the RAND Palestinian State Study Team (RAND).
• Grasping the Nettle: Analyzing Cases of Intractable Conflict edited by Chester A. Crocker et al. (U.S. Institute of Peace Press).

Marriage, which has added, among other titles:

• Blessing Same-Sex Unions: The Perils of Queer Romance and the Confusions of Christian Marriage by Mark D. Jordan (University of Chicago Press).
• Divorcing Marriage: Unveiling the Dangers in Canada's New Social Experiment by Daniel Cere and Douglas Farrow (McGill-Queen's).

When her second child went off to college, Karen Emmerling "needed to do something not to miss her too much." She also has always loved books and wanted to "get a little closer" to her journalism and English degrees. The result: Beach Books, the Seaside, Ore., bookstore that opened last week.

With some 7,000 titles, the 1,000-sq.-ft. store offers general fiction, children's, gardening, skiing, home books and more. In addition, "because we're called Beach Books, we have the kind of light read for when you go to the coast and expect sun but get rain," Emmerling told Shelf Awareness.

Emmerling is new to bookselling and so far is "really enjoying it." She and her husband, a blacksmith, have a company that makes custom iron furniture. He didn't make any fixtures for the store but did contribute a display table and lamps in the window.

Beach Books is the only new bookstore in the town of about 6,000 people about "an hour and twenty minutes" west of Portland. There are also a used bookstore and new and used bookstore; Emmerling said, "I think there's room for all of us."

Beach Books is located a half block from the main street downtown, which attracts many tourists although the town is "growing to be much more of a yearround place," Emmerling said. Still, summer is the busiest season, and the store will have longer hours then.

Beach Books is located at P.O. Box 71, 37 North Edgewood, Seaside, Ore. 97138; 503-738-3500; Karenemmerling@iinet.com. The store doesn't have a Web site yet but will.

Hastings Entertainment had a difficult third quarter ended October 31: net sales dropped 4.2% to $114.6 million and the net loss grew to $2.7 million compared to $1.6 million in the same period a year ago. Revenues were $12 million below internal forecasts.

A major drop in a formerly hot category--video games--accounted for much of the big sales decline. While a year ago video games sales at stores open at least a year rose 51.2% compared to the same period the year earlier, this year video games sales slid 9.4%. A year ago, sales had jumped because of the popularity of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Fable; this year games makers were low on new titles because new gaming systems are coming to market soon.

In addition, like Blockbuster and other bricks-and-mortar movie rental businesses, Hastings's rental business has been hurt, dropping 10.1%.

Comp-store book sales fell 2.7% "as a result of a weaker hardback release schedule," the company said.

Hastings said it expects the downturn in rental business and in "certain other categories" to continue in the fourth quarter. The company is maintaining its earnings predictions for the fourth quarter but slightly lowered the full year earnings predictions. Wall Street was not pleased: on a day the Dow Jones Industrials rose 0.5%, Hastings closed at $4.96 a share, down 9.8%, on three times the usual trading volume. The stock hit a 52-week low during the day.

During the quarter, Hastings expanded its Stillwater, Tex., store and relocated its Victoria, Tex., and Yuma, Ariz., stores.

Ingram Publisher Services, which began business in March, has added five new publishers, bringing the total to 15:

Kogan Page, London, a publisher of business titles for more than 35 years, has more than 1,500 titles in print and publishes about 130 new books a year.

Michael Wiese Productions (MWP), with offices in California, Seattle and the U.K., focuses on filmmaking titles by authors who are industry professionals. The company is 25 years old.

Severn House, which has operations in both the U.S. and U.K., began in 1974 and publishes crime, mystery, romance and SF. It also sell libraries reinforced editions of new fiction as well as rare and previously unpublished works.

Imprint Academic, which began in the U.K. in 1980 as a scholarly journals publisher, now publishes books, too, in politics, education, culture, philosophy, psychology, ethics and religious studies.

NETCOMICS, a New Jersey manga publisher affiliated with Korea's Ecomix, publishes Korean graphic novels here. Beginning in January, NETCOMICS will release 3-4 titles each month; by the end of next year it will put out 7-8 titles a month.

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday 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 Web site.

Saturday, November 26

7 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 1999, Mark Pendergast talks about his book The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World.

8 p.m. After Words. Edward Lengel, a professor of history at the University of Virginia, associate editor of the Papers of George Washington series and author of General George Washington: A Military Life (Random House, $29.95, 1400060818), interviews Bruce Chadwick about his latest book, The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom (Sourcebooks, $24.95, 1402205066), based on journals and letters of soldiers who served in the army under Washington. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

Tomorrow the Today Show's menu features the Scottos, author of Scotto Sunday Suppers (HarperCollins, $39.95, 0060815639).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Ray Kurzweil, the human author of The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, $29.95, 0670033847).

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Tomorrow on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

• CNN reporter Walter Rodgers, author of Sleeping with Custer and the 7th Calvary: An Embedded Reporter in Iraq (Southern Illinois University Press, $29.50, 0809326728), talks about his changing views about the war in Iraq.
• Hella Winston, author of Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels (Beacon, $23.95, 0807036269).
• Alan Kaufman, an American expatriate serving in the Israeli Defense Force, on his new novel, Matches (Back Bay, $13.95, 031610664X).
• Alan Lightman, author of The Discoveries: Great Breakthroughs in 20th-Century Science, Including the Original Papers (Pantheon, $32.50, 0375421688).

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Tomorrow Oprah's main course is Food Network host Rachael Ray, author of the 30 Minute Meals series.

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On KCRW's Bookworm, which airs on Thursday: Mary Caponegro, author of The Complexities of Intimacy (Coffee House, $14.95, 1566891205). As the program describes it: "The very contrary Mary Caponegro doesn't write or think like anyone else. She is a complete original. In the course of this interview, the snowballing perplexities of fusing logic and madness emerge with great force. Each of her stories is a triumph against nearly insuperable odds--but what a triumph!"

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On WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show on Thursday:

• Man of many talents John Updike offers a glimpse at his new book, Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Knopf, $40, 1400044189).
• George Taber, who offers a taste of his Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting that Revolutionized Wine (Scribner, $26, 0743247515).
• MacKenzie Bezos talks about her first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright (Fourth Estate, $23.95, 006075141X), probably most easily available at Amazon.com, founded by the author's husband.
• Filmmaker Norman Jewison looks back on his life in the movies, as recounted in his autobiography, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me (Thomas Dunne, $25.95, 0312328680).

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On Thursday on Fresh Air: John Dominic Crossan, author of In Search of Paul: How Jesus' Apostle Opposed Rome's Empire with God's Kingdom (HarperSanFrancisco, $19.95, 0060816163).

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On Friday on the Early Show: Teri Garr, whose new book, Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood (Penguin, $23.95, 1594630070), is about her life and dealing with MS.

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On WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show on Friday:

• Garry Wills, author of Henry Adams and the Making of America (Houghton Mifflin, $30, 0618134301).
• Photographer Nathan Farb, whose images fill Adirondack: Wilderness (Rizzoli, $50, 0847826384).
• Australian novelist Tim Winton, whose latest book is The Turning: New Stories (Scribner, $25, 0743276930).
• Jane Goodall, best known for her work with chimpanzees and baboons, whose new book, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating (Warner, $24.95, 0446533629), pays more attention to humans.

is an easy hand sell--a marvelous book, accessible and absorbing. I began reading it while visiting friends, and could not stop sharing passages with them. When a book causes me to read aloud and skip a beach walk on a sunny day, I know it is a true find.
 
Coming Out of War combines historical and social commentary with observations on the visual arts and music by Charles Ives, Irving Berlin, Paul Simon and Benjamin Britten, among others. Stout finds most poetry emerging from the two world wars to be antimilitary, and of that poetry, most is predominantly antiwar. Rarely does twentieth-century poetry celebrate the heroic.
 
World War I changed the thinking of a generation, which became characterized by disillusionment and irony. World War II poetry differed with the new experience of vast civilian casualties, and often had "a sense of guilt for actions performed in the course of duty." Stout extensively discusses 20th century war poems by non-combatants, primarily women, like Vera Brittain, Margaret Sackville, Amy Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop and Gwendolyn Brooks.
 
A common theme of poetry from both wars is the abundant folly of the military, and the distance from danger of the politicians and statesmen who send young men off to war. In this, the poems are timeless. Wilfred Owen wrote "Parable" in 1918, using the story of Abraham and Isaac, turning the familiar ending around and revealing the "malice of the old against the young--the evil that Owen, Sassoon and other poets saw behind the sacrifice of a generation":
 
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
 
Theodore Roethke, in his only poem that comments on current events, says in "Lull (November, 1939)", "The arbitrators wait; / The newsmen suck their thumbs."
 
Stout also writes about more recent poets, for whom "the war remained a compelling and torturous preoccupation decades afterward for people too young to have witnessed the events they wrote about."
 
In conclusion she asks why all these poets (and other artists) have failed to bring about an end to war. After exploring a number of reasons, she declares that, nonetheless, artists can help us feel the pity of it all. "Pity does educate the heart. . . . Poets and artists compel us to mourn." And if the first casualty of war is truth, as Senator Hiram Johnson said in 1917, we must remember that "Honest language is the poet's reason for being." Wilfred Owen, in his visionary poem "At a Calvary Near the Ancre," declared that "we don't need any more 'scribes' who 'bawl allegiance to the state,' but rather writers who make it their mission to utter the most truthful words they can, even if it means the ugliest words they can, in allegiance to humankind."
 
One of the pleasures of Coming Out of War is the exposure to poets who are not as well known as Sassoon, Eliot, cummings or Jarrell, like Edmund Blunden and Sterling Brown. Fans of the Inspector Rutledge or Maisie Dobbs mysteries would be especially interested in Stout's wise and learned book. Rich with expressive prose (on Wallace Stevens: "His poems are like freshly washed windows with no streaks") and absorbing history, it opens up new terrain for the reader and encourages one to read further, to listen to unfamiliar music. In a word, it is compelling.--Marilyn Dahl