"If you look back to 1954, Bloomsday was seen to be the preserve of a group of loons and drinkers, people like Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien, who weren't considered very respectable people in Ireland by any standard of that time. Joyce fitted perfectly with them, and they fitted perfectly with Joyce.... Joyce would have loved it. Bloomsday isn't high-falutin', it isn't academic, it isn't reserved for a certain class of person. Ulysses is about ordinary people, ordinary lives, ordinary days. But those ordinary days make up lives that are lived, and lived through storytelling in the ways we create our own stories around us all the time."

An investor group led by private equity firm Kohlberg & Company has acquired a majority of publisher Thomas Nelson's stock. In connection with the move, Thomas Nelson added several new directors to its board, including senior executives of Kohlberg & Company as well as other media and publishing executives. One of the new board members is Jane Friedman, CEO and co-founder of Open Road Integrated Media and former CEO of HarperCollins Worldwide.

The Kohlberg ascension will, the companies said, improve Thomas Nelson's capital structure and eliminate most of its long-term debt.

"We are very excited about what this means for Thomas Nelson's future in the rapidly evolving publishing industry," said Thomas Nelson's CEO Michael Hyatt, who will also become chairman of the board of directors. "We are eager to start working with Kohlberg and our other new board members as we build upon our success bringing some of the most talented Christian authors and speakers to millions of people around the globe."

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Neil Gaiman welcomes you to Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., in this video from the bookshop that was one of the first-prize winners in last year's Graveyard Book Halloween Party Contest.

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Brown University Bookstore, Providence, R.I., which is now run by Event Network, has laid off most of its staff, including Peter Sevenair, 64, long-time head of the general book department. Buying at the store reportedly will be handled by a part-time employee. Suzy Staubach of the UConn Co-op and former NEIBA president and ABA director, will host a "transition" party for Peter and his colleagues at her farm July 10.

Event Network, which has headquarters in San Diego, Calif., was founded 12 years ago, has annual sales of more than $100 million and runs stores at and has licensing agreements with some 50 museums, zoos, aquariums, science centers and other cultural institutions, including Mystic Seaport, Old Sturbridge Village, the Boston Children's Museum, Ford's Theater, the Griffith Observatory, the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and the Shedd Aquarium.

Earlier this year Event Network took over management and licensing for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

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Normal's Books and Records, Baltimore, Md., is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The City Paper wrote that the store is thriving in part because it "sells things you can't find elsewhere. The store's vast and varied book collection includes a carefully cultivated stock of classics in philosophy, Greek and Roman literature, religion, art, and history. The extensive vinyl collection covers all the major genres and most of the minor ones. But it's the unusual, esoteric finds--what [co-owner Rupert] Wondolowski has called 'pockets of sweet subversion'--that make the place unique: the Japanese issue of a Joy Division album, the out-of-print Trotsky biography, the illustrated guide to cannibal culture."

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Independent Booksellers Week continues in the U.K. The Yorkshire Post observed that "Terry Pratchett once likened a good book shop to a genteel black hole. He was right. It's the smell which gets you first and, with lingering positively encouraged, hours can be lost amid the shelves absent-mindedly flicking through the pages which took someone else years to write. These are places where the assistants never seem too worried about making a sale and where forgotten authors are given a home. They're the kind of shops the country should treasure, not least because there's a lot fewer of them that there used to be."

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What it means to be a writer. On Facebook, author Masha Hamilton noted that "Tabasom walks four hours in Afghanistan to send her poetry to the Afghan Women's Writing Project."

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The Washington Post's Celibritology blog featured the "Five buzziest summer beach reads," with helpful beach advice: "Start toning your arm muscles: the 766-page, hardback The Passage is the buzziest novel of the summer." The other buzzmakers that "have bubbled up on this season's short list of 'it' books, the tomes most likely to peek out from the tote bags of literary-minded beach-goers," are The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer, Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis and Lucy by Laurence Gonzales.

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Good books are tasty enough without condiments, thank you. The Associated Press reported that the woman arrested "after pouring mayonnaise in the Ada County library's book drop box is a person of interest in a yearlong spree of condiment-related crimes of the same sort."

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Book trailer of the day: Frankenstein: Lost Souls by Dean Koontz (Bantam).

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Forget vampires. The Onion predicted that minotaurs will be the next big trend in publishing: "In a desperate effort to find a trendy new fantasy subgenre to succeed the ebbing vampire craze, Razorbill Books executive Graham Childress decided this week to throw all his professional weight behind a new series of novels featuring minotaurs, the bull-headed, human-bodied creatures of ancient Greek mythology."

Earlier this month at the British Comedy Invasion at Webster Hall in New York City, (from l.) Steve Steen, Andy Smart, Mike Myers, Eddie Izzard and Stephen Frost joined Neil Mullarkey, aka L. Vaughan Spencer (r.), author of Don't Be Needy Be Succeedy: The A to Zee of Motivitality (Profile Books). Frost, Steen, Smart and Mullarkey are members of the Comedy Store Players.

Michael Perry, author of Coop, reports from his road trip:

It is a fact--not a complaint--that a book tour unfolds through serial dislocations of place and time. As a result, one must do what one can to maintain some semblance of mental and physical coherence, and nothing knocks the wobble from my gyroscope like a good run. When I say "good run," I do not mean to create the impression that I am moving with grace or speed. In high school, I once ran the mile in 4:48.  That was 25 years and 25 pounds ago. Two years ago, I was thrilled to come lurching and fibrillating across the finish line of a local one-mile race in 5:58. I tend to go thudding along. Still, it was a fine thing to do today's thudding along the grassy edge of Lake Ontario with a warm wind blowing. I am in Oswego, N.Y., and after using the Google Maps satellite function to scout out available green spaces, I had run to the grounds of historic Fort Ontario. After a lap around the earthworks--with pauses to read the explanatory placards--I found myself in a small cemetery.

Forts are rarely constructed to hold garden parties, and according to the signs I'd just read, this particular pentagonal bulwark had hosted conflicts dating clear back to 1755. British built it. French destroyed it. British rebuilt it. Destroyed in 1778 by American troops. British rebuilt it. British decided to give it to the Americans. Then decided to destroy it again in 1814. Rebuilt by the Americans one more time. Closed by politicians in 2010 due to budget conundrums.

The cemetery contains civilian remains (one tiny marble marker reads "BABY"), but is mostly populated by soldiers who died defending, attacking or maintaining Fort Ontario. I slowed to walk through the headstones, trying to equate this place with battle and the wounded and the dying in their moment of dying. Above me a breeze bobbled the aspen leaves in such a way that the sun broke through in a trembling dapple, and I was temporarily wobbled again by a hazy hint of a thought related to the prodigious distance between each soldier's violent end and the sound of breeze in leaves on a sunny day. All the mighty plans of men--as if sunshine on our shoulders wasn't enough.

One can sustain this line of garden-variety existential sentimentalism only so long, and then it is back to the business of books, which tonight was a real entry-level salt mine of a chore requiring me to join a roomful of convivial book-loving conversationalists for a hand-crafted multi-course dinner composed by the staff of Oswego's own La Parilla. One suffers for one's art.

The event was set up by Mindy and Bill of the River's End Bookstore. Guests had made their reservations in advance, with two books included in the price of admission. I don't recall all the details, but I know Mindy and Bill chose La Parilla at least in part because the restaurant uses locally grown food (the basil on the tomato-mozzarella salad plate was plucked from right outside La Parilla's door) (this was a fine, uplifting basil, with licorice overtones) (or possibly undertones) (it had tones). Although I don't think of Coop as making any sort of overt contribution to the local foods movement, the theme is certainly implied, and my wife and I do patronize a local foods co-op back home. So the restaurant was a nice choice and worth it for that sprig of basil alone.

HarperCollins sales guru Carl Lennertz was in attendance, and he had very graciously arranged to provide the wine for the evening. Carl knows I don't drink, but he was eager to show me the wine bottles nonetheless, as he had painstakingly replaced all of the labels with a full-color miniature reproduction of the Coop paperback cover, which features an image of my youngest daughter. I told Carl I didn't doubt his heart was in the right place, but in effect what he had done is pasted my darling daughter to a bottle of booze, thus turning her into a St. Pauli Girl for the Playskool set.

After dinner, Bill introduced me at the podium, and I responded by disappearing into the bathroom, forcing him to riff a bit. But then I emerged to read, tell stories, take questions, then sign books (I may also have Held Forth) (after all, I had a podium). Before I concluded, I said my thank-yous like Mom taught me, but really, the thankfulness comes easy because I am aware of the effort and gumption required to pull together an off-location event like this. I'm sure Bill and Mindy may have second-guessed themselves at some point. But the event transpired seamlessly, and surely the upshot of all the convivial gustation and neighborly conversation was a new--or renewed--bond between readers and their local bookstore.

The Irish Times suggested that "one of the most intriguing options on the four-day program for this year’s Bloomsday celebrations is a gathering of Spanish writers who call themselves The Order of the Finnegans. This group has, apparently, been visiting Dublin around Bloomsday to pay homage for the past few years and doing it their way. A book of the same title, La Orden del Finnegans, will be launched and a round-table discussion will take place in the Cervantes institute in Lincoln Place--almost adjacent to that Joycean landmark, Sweny’s chemist."

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Author Frank Delaney has launched an ambitious series, Re:Joyce! A Podcast Exploring the World of James Joyce's Ulysses: "Every week, here on the website, you'll find a five-minute mini-essay from me designed to take you through the novel that's on every list of the greatest books ever written. And as Ulysses runs to some 375,000 words, and I mean to go through it sentence by sentence if I have to, in order to convey the full brilliance of this novel--and the enjoyment to be had from it--I'll be podcasting for some time to come!"

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Ellen Kanner made her case for a vegetarian Bloomsday in the Huffington Post, quoting Ulysses--"Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity"--and noting, "Beer's vegetarian. Corned beef and cabbage is not. Nor is it Joycean.... Great literature can inspire. Let Ulysses inspire you to go meatless."

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"A Gotham Bloomsday" was served up by the New York Times, which featured a roundup of events as well as some justification for the city's claim to be "the capital of American Bloomsdays":

"Why New York? Aside from the obvious--a preponderance of Irish and Irish-American writers and actors and publicans--New York makes a cameo in the book. While Joyce himself never set foot in the city, the Gen. Slocum disaster, wherein 1,000 people were drowned or burned to death in the East River on June 15, 1904, is mentioned early and often in Ulysses. The novel was first published in 1918, in serialized form, in The Little Review, based on West 8th Street. And it was a New York attorney, John Quinn, who subsequently defended it from obscenity charges, arguing unsuccessfully that the book was disgusting rather than erotic, as well as (to Joyce’s chagrin) incomprehensible."

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Apple reversed its earlier decision that several images from a Web comic version of Ulysses were too obscene for the App Store, and "asked that the panels be resubmitted, said Chad Rutkowski, the business manager for Throwaway Horse, the publisher of the comic Ulysses Seen," the New York Times reported. The initial installments of Ulysses Seen are available in the App Store and at ulyssesseen.com.

"They basically apologized," Rutkowski said. "They said they gave it a second look and realized that it wasn’t obscene or anything like that. They’re clearly drawing a distinction now and they understand what we’re doing."

Today on Fresh Air: Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter's Bone (Back Bay, $13.99, 9780316131612/031613161X), and Debra Granik, director of the movie based on the book, which is just out in limited release.

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Today on Talk of the Nation: Anthony Bourdain, author of Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook (Ecco, $26.99, 9780061718946/0061718947).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Brad Meltzer, author of Heroes for My Son (Harper, $19.99, 9780061905285/0061905283).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Jean-Philippe Toussaint, author of Self-Portrait Abroad (Dalkey Archive, $12.95, 9781564785862/1564785866) and Running Away (Dalkey Archive, $12.95, 9781564785671/156478567X). As the show put it: "French fiction had become austere and theoretical until Jean-Philippe Toussaint took it in the direction of the wacky, even goony. His earlier stories focused on characters retreating from contemporary life, but that has given way to work with a light, lyrical approach. The Toussaint narrator views the world through a melancholy lens, while his characters move at speed on their inter-continental jaunts."

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Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Donald Miller, author of Father Fiction: Chapters for a Fatherless Generation (Howard Books, $19.99, 9781439169162/1439169160).

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Tomorrow on the Tavis Smiley Show: Brando Skyhorse, author of The Madonnas of Echo Park (Free Press, $23, 9781439170809/1439170800).

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Tomorrow night on the Daily Show: Fred Thompson, author of Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir of Growing Up and Second Chances (Crown Forum, $25, 9780307460288/0307460282).

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: David Mamet, author of Theatre (Faber & Faber, $22, 9780865479289/0865479283).

Warner Premiere is developing a web series adapted from Lisi Harrison's The Clique series for young adult readers. Variety reported that the project "will feature new characters and adventures." Justine Bateman and Jill Kushner are writing the scripts, and Peter Murrieta will be executive producer. Alloy Entertainment is co-producing. The company's Leslie Morgenstein and Bob Levy, who will be executive producers, produced last year's The Clique movie "that went straight to DVD and was also produced by Warner Premiere," Variety wrote.

"We see a world that doesn't just begin where the books left off; it enhances, enriches and brings the characters, the story and the references into 2010," Murrieta said. "By doing this, we'll not only introduce a whole new audience to The Clique, we'll appeal to the original fans too."

Sam Raimi (Spiderman) is "in early talks" with Disney to direct Oz, the Great and Powerful, a prequel to the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. According to Variety, "Joe Roth (Alice in Wonderland) will produce.... Iron Man thesp Robert Downey Jr. has long been rumored as a possible star, though no casting decisions have been made yet."

Alex Bellos is the author of Here's Looking at Euclid: A Surprising Excursion Through the Astonishing World of Math (June 2010, Free Press). He also wrote a book on Brazilian soccer called Futebol and ghost-wrote Pelé's autobiography. Born in Oxford, England, he lives in London.

On your nightstand now:

Fordlandia by Greg Grandin, about Henry Ford's doomed attempt to build a rubber plantation in the Amazon. It's an incredible story, and one which has many lessons (still unlearnt) about how the northern hemisphere misunderstands South America. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano, because I feel that I should read any book with the words "prime numbers" in the title, even though it's a novel and has almost nothing to do with math.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:

The one I remember most vividly is I Am David by Anne Holm, although I was more addicted to the Three Investigators series by Robert Arthur.

Your top five authors:

Vladimir Nabokov, Haruki Murakami, Nikolai Gogol, P.G. Wodehouse, Martin Gardner.

Book you've faked reading:

Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead's Principia Mathematica. I was supposed to read it for my degree in math and philosophy, but it is so absurdly complicated that I understood nothing. In the library I made a point of having it opened by my papers, though, so as not to appear stupid.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Logicomix by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, a remarkable graphic novel about Bertrand Russell. It contains almost everything I learnt in my university degree (including all you ever need to know about Principia Mathematica)--and it's funny, moving and thought-provoking, too.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Hitchcock/Truffaut, hardback edition, unopened, straight-to-coffee-table, in order to come over as Left Bank sophisticate and impress girls. Optional adornment: a pack of Gauloises. (Come on, I was in my early 20s.)

Book that changed your life:

Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell. It was the first adult book I read. It was in 1982, when I was 12, and I had assumed from the title it was science fiction. I didn't get any of the references to Stalin, but it blew my mind anyway.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. Or maybe I don't. I'm worried I won't like it as much as I did the first time, since when I did, I declared (for the only time) that "this is my favourite book."

This biography of a consummate showman seems a fitting swan song for Sid Fleischman, the self-proclaimed Abracadabra Kid who died in March. Fleischman's background as a magician and screenwriter places him in a unique position to capture Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), a comic genius with impeccable timing and "a master of pantomime and physical comedy," according to the author.

Chaplin's rags-to-riches story shares much in common with Harry Houdini and Samuel Clemens, Fleischman's other recent biography subjects. (The author makes the comparison: "Like Houdini freeing himself from a straitjacket, [Chaplin] escaped his ordained captivity in the London slums.") Because Chaplin's mother struggled with insanity, Charlie and his brother, Sydney, were sent to the Hanwell Schools for Orphans and Destitute Children. But, as the author states, Chaplin "would never forget how quickly laughter and tears changed places.... As if privy to a great secret, he built his greatest comedies on it." In Chaplin's first feature-length hit, The Kid, a child is shipped off to an orphanage. "What's so funny about that?" writes Fleischman, "Trust him." We also gain insight into the economics of silent films of that era; the Keystone Studio's "clam-tight economies," in which "the first shot became the last shot" in front of the camera; and Chaplin's subsequent decision to go out on his own. His ability to mine the most sinister of topics (such as the backyard ovens of his 1946 film Monsieur Verdoux) and lace them with humor won him critical acclaim, while his Little Tramp's struggles allowed him inside the hearts of the Everyman. Fleischman's deft turns of phrase conjure all the wit of his onscreen hero: "At age twenty-seven, the penniless tramp had made Chaplin a millionaire." The author chronicles the controversy surrounding Chaplin's marriages to "such young women" and suspicions raised during the House Un-American Activities investigations, and his eventual deportation. Generous film stills and copious endnotes make this an invaluable resource for those of all ages interested in Chaplin, history or filmmaking. From his pauper beginnings to his grave-robbed end, this portrait of Chaplin emerges as colorfully and captivatingly as only Fleischman could render him.--Jennifer M. Brown