"Now that I've gotten used to reading on the iPad, I've ditched my Kindle entirely. I've now gone back to buying my books in dead-tree format for at-home reading, both because print is more relaxing and because it comes without DRM. I also have a few Kindle copies of some of my books on my iPad for when I travel. So in some cases I'm paying twice for the same book, but the print copy is mine--I honest-to-God own it--while the electronic copy is more of a fee that I pay to be able to read the book on my iPad when I go on a long trip."

 

 

Gulf Coast booksellers are bracing themselves for the effects and aftereffects of the massive BP oil spill, Bookselling This Week reported.

Tom Lowenberg, owner of Octavia Books, New Orleans, La., called the spill "not just a local disaster.... This is the most fertile reproductive area for the entire Gulf of Mexico. It's a stab to the womb. And when they cap the oil, it's still not over. We're talking about a long-term national disaster."

Lowenberg expects an impact on Octavia: "We don't know the full scope of the spill. It's un-circumscribed, but we know that the impact is going to be profound. Not anything as direct as Katrina, but the overall long-term consequences of this may be greater."

At Page & Palette, Fairhope, Ala., owner Karin Wilson said residents are "definitely nervous.... We were down 11% in May, and that's just from lost bookings in the area. Summer is a big tourist time for us." She is concerned that media coverage of the spill may have an effect on Gulf coast businesses. "Everyone's still open for business. It would be great if people would come down and support us, especially given what we're going through."

Kay Gough of Bay Books, Bay St. Louis, Miss., said that despite the fact that the area's beaches are still clean and her bookstore is doing well, "tourism is really important here, and people are saying their businesses are down 50 to 60%."

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The shop local movement in Durango, Colo., was the focus of a cover story in this week's edition of the Durango Telegraph, which reported that "Mom and pop are getting a big hand-up along Main Avenue. Local First--a homespun effort to support and encourage Durango-grown businesses--recently passed several milestones. Buoyed up by three years of success, the organization is steering toward a prosperous future for Durango’s locally owned, independent establishments."

Peter Schertz of Maria's Bookshop, who was part of group that founded La Plata Organizations for Cooperatively Advocating Local (LOCAL) three years ago, said, "There's a profound economic benefit to shopping local, and dollars spent with locally-owned businesses recirculate rather than leak out of the community. But it's also more than an economic issue. It's important that businesses reflect their community, and locally owned businesses are better able to do that."

Now called Local First, the group hired LeeAnn Vallejos as its first executive director in May, and Schertz observed, "We hear more and more of our local customers tell us that they are making a concerted effort to shop locally on an exclusive basis. We also consistently hear from tourists that they are so appreciative that Durango still has things like locally owned book shops and record stores. I think people are getting the message more and more all the time."

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Bookselling This Week profiled Giovanni's Room, Philadelphia, Pa., the oldest gay and lesbian bookstore in the country, which had asked customers for help last year "with a large-scale renovation. Not only did the Philadelphia bookstore get overwhelming support from both customers and authors, but their support has also been ongoing."

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The Hub City Book Shop, Spartanburg, S.C., "is primed to become one of the highest-profile businesses in the ongoing revitalization of downtown," the Spartanburg Spark noted in its podcast interview with Hub City Writers Project executive director Betsy Teter.

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In Menlo Park, Calif., fire sprinklers proved to be as big a concern as the blaze that "affected several businesses on the 800 block of Santa Cruz Avenue, including Posh Bagel, Cafe Silan and The Book Rack," the San Jose Mercury News reported. Fire crews had difficulty shutting down the sprinkler system after extinguishing the fire, and Chief Harold Schapelhouman added that "the bookstore's owners said the fire will likely put them out of business."

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A novel sort of book proposal occurred at Primrose Hill Books in London, when manager Jessica Graham colluded in a bit of romantic merchandising with Oliver Harkness, who proposed to Priyanka Chaudhuri in the shop's window display, the Camden New Journal reported.

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Is Glenn Beck the new Oprah of the book world? Mediaite explored the possibility, noting that "Beck's ability to make a book successful--almost any book, it would seem--after even a small recommendation, has proven out this year."

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Lit-crit, canine edition. In Slate, Rosecrans Baldwin posited the "Somewhere a Dog Barked" theory: "Pick up just about any novel and you'll find a throwaway reference to a dog, barking in the distance."

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For Father's Day, USA Today recommended "five new titles of interest to dads and their offspring."

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Book trailer of the day: Finny by Justin Kramon (Random House Trade Paperbacks).

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Melanie Thompson Welch has joined Trafalgar Square Publishing, a distribution arm of IPG, as marketing manager. She was formerly an associate marketing manager at Sourcebooks.

 

Muggles, media and movie stars gathered at Hogwarts Castle for the christening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando Resort, which opens to the public today.

Potter film cast members Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter), Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley), Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy), Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) and Michael Gambon (Albus Dumbledore) were in attendance for the festivities this week, and USA Today reported that Lewis summed up his impressions of the theme park succinctly and enthusiastically: "Bloody hell!"

Radcliffe said he "did actually love the Dragon Challenge. The technology they're using in this is really quite amazing."

And Grint's favorite part was "the castle. I just can't stop looking at it."

USA Today wrote that "stepping into the castle is like stepping onto a movie set--or into the actual Hogwarts. And the Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey ride, though not an actual roller coaster, feels like one. The visual effects are stunning and a little scary. (Ever been breathed on by a Dementor?)"

Bob Sehlinger, author of The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2011, told USA Today that J.K. Rowling "signed off on everything at the attraction, from the food served in the restaurants to the drinks and merchandise."

"She vetoed serving any kind of Coke product," Sehlinger said. "So Wizarding World has its own special Harry Potter-themed foods and beverages."

Tampa's WFTS-TV reported live from the scene of the wizardry

Sixteen-year-old Alex Black told CNN "it's worth waiting hours in line, it's worth the money, it's worth the long drive from Georgia, it's beyond worth it." Asked what her favorite part of the park was, she replied, "Everything was my favorite."

 

Winners of the 2010 Ambassador Book Awards, sponsored by the English-Speaking Union of the United States: (from l.) J.D. McClatchy, for Mercury Dressing (poetry); Melvin Urofsky for Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (biography); Morris Dickstein for Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (American studies); James Mann for The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (American studies); Elleza Kelley, accepting the award for her father, Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (special distinction); and Colum McCann for Let the Great World Spin (fiction).

Photo: Elena Olivo

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

I am in the motel room, having just returned from Oblong Books in Rhinebeck, N.Y. I was going to do midnight laundry, but the woman at the front desk forbade it, saying the noises associated with the rinse cycle will disturb the guests. I am dangerously low on socks.

I arrived at Oblong Books early enough to enjoy conversation with members of the staff. I especially enjoyed speaking with one of the booksellers who splits her time at the store with work on a farm. It seems the language of the earth is being spoken everywhere these days, or perhaps I am just attuned. I ruefully described to her how it rained so heavily just before I left on tour that I was able to cultivate only half of our corn. When I return after two weeks away, I wonder which will be knee-high: the corn, the quack or the pigweed.

I drove in earlier this morning, a trip of just over three hours. Several times during the journey my GPS dumped me off the main roads and sent me meandering country lanes that reminded me of a cross between England and Wisconsin. The farms and greenery are very similar to the Wisconsin I know by heart, while the metes and bounds layout of the fields, fencelines and roadways (I'm used to neat Midwestern squares) trigger my memories of shooting around the Midlands with my friend Tim, late and lamented in Coop, the book that brings me to these parts. The GPS can be set to main roads only, but why cheat myself to save seven minutes?

The nearer I drew to Rhinebeck, the more I had to admit that the topography was beginning to rival even my beloved Badger State, and when I crossed the Rip Van Winkle Bridge and beheld Frederic Edwin Church's home Olana poking from the green bluffs before me, well, I would have tipped my Leatherstocking hunting hat were I wearing one.

The reading tonight was an intimate affair, which is to say the ratio of readers to authors ran about 9:1. Sometimes booksellers are apologetic about turnout, but I have a rule: 2 or 200, everybody gets the same show. We all love a big crowd, but it is a mistake when authors pin all their hopes on the number of fannies in the folding chairs. For one thing, the group assembled at Oblong Books and I had a wonderful extended conversation after the reading concluded, and as a writer who has benefited profoundly from word-of-mouth, I know from the jovial time we shared that those nine people will read the books and they will talk about the books, and in the wake of the visit even more folks will come into Oblong looking for the titles. I don't say that cockily, I say that gratefully. I also brought a yellow legal pad upon which each person was kind enough to share their name, e-mail address and zip code. Not only will they receive an e-mail announcing my next book, but if I come within 100 miles of Rhinebeck again, they will be warned. Micro-marketing, sure, but over time it sure adds up.

Furthermore, when a bookstore promotes a reading, they are actually promoting the book--for weeks (and sometimes months) in advance. So a big thank-you to Oblong Books and Suzanna Hermans, who stayed 'til the very end. We had such a nice visit while I signed stock. I always enjoy signing stock because it's a kind of wind-down after the main event, and it also gives me a chance to talk about the business of books and the love of books with someone who has the same addictions and afflictions as I. As so often happens, through our discussions Suzanna came up with a book "you just have to read" and when I left the shop, a copy was tucked in my backpack.

And then, proving she is a full-service bookstore co-owner, Suzanna ran out into the night and caught me just before I disappeared around the corner in order to hand me my yellow legal pad with the nine new names upon it. I thanked her, and now look forward to tomorrow, when I hope to meet a few new bookish friends and add them to the list.

Tomorrow on the Today Show: Carl Gottlieb, Jaws screenwriter and author of The Jaws Log (Newmarket Press, $15, 9781557046772/1557046778).

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Sunday on NPR's Weekend Edition: Ben Bradlee and Quinn Bradlee, authors of A Life's Work: Fathers and Sons (Simon & Schuster, $19.99, 9780684808956/0684808951).

 

"Teenage girls love stories about other teenage girls behaving badly," USA Today observed, noting that ABC Family's premiere last week of a series based on Sara Shepard's Pretty Little Liars YA novels "is boosting sales in the eight-book series. Pretty Little Liars, Book 1, first published in 2006, is Number 38. Eighth in the series, Wanted, which went on sale last week, debuts at Number 33."

"We're definitely seeing an increase in sales with the increase in publicity for the show," said HarperTeen's Melissa Bruno. 

 

The Huffington Post featured a trailer for the film version of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which stars Kiera Knightley and Carey Mulligan and is scheduled for an October release.

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The cast for a film adaptation of David Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas may include Natalie Portman, Halle Berry, James McAvoy and Ian McKellen, SlashFilm.com reported, while cautioning that "these are just offers at this point, and so we don’t know who, if any, of the people on the list have accepted, nor do we know what parts they might play."

 

Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker's debut novel, The Twin (Boven is het stil), won the €100,000 (US$123,793) International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, besting a shortlist that included Marilynne Robinson's Home and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, the Guardian reported.

After hearing he had won, Bakker said, "It's wonderful. But for me it was also wonderful to read the book in English--I said to David [Colmer] the translator: 'Who wrote this book?' I didn't recognize it, I thought it was very good. It made me realize it really is a book, and I am a writer." The prize money will be divided between Bakker and Colmer, with the translator receiving €25,000.

Published in the U.S. by Archipelago Books, The Twin has also been honored as an NPR pick for Best Foreign Fiction of the Year, a Powell's Indiespensable Pick and a School Library Journal Best Adult Book for High School Students.

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Moonlight in Odessa by Janet Skeslien Charles won the 2010 Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance.

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The Society of Authors distributed more than £70,000 (US$103,642) in prize money to 22 writers at its awards reception earlier this week. A complete list of winners is available here. 

 

The publication of Leaving the World (Atria, June 15, 2010), which has been well received in the U.K. and France, reintroduces Douglas Kennedy to American readers after a 10-year absence. Kennedy is the author of eight previous novels, including  The Pursuit of Happiness. Born in Manhattan, he is the father of two children and divides his time between London, Paris and Maine.
 
On your nightstand now:

Cheever by Blake Bailey. Following on his superlative biography of Richard Yates, the very talented Blake Bailey turns his attention to the life and massive personal contradictions of the great chronicler of postwar suburban malaise. A biography with the narrative energy and density of a fine novel--and harrowing in its depiction of the many wars John Cheever waged with himself.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I would have to say the book--or, in this instance, the story--that had the most effect on me was Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Match Girl," which my third grade teacher, Mrs. Flack, read to us at Downtown Community School off St Mark's Place in Manhattan. She prefaced the story by saying, "I think you're ready for this"--and then read this tale of an impoverished child who freezes to death while trying to stave off hunger by selling matches on the street. The effect was a bit like that moment when you first see Bambi's mother getting shot... the realization that there is a malevolent and tragic dimension to life. So while "The Little Match Girl" might not be a cheerful children's tale, it changed the way I looked at things at a rather young age. And I discovered thereafter that literature can have that bracing, perspective-shifting effect.
 
Your top five authors:
 
Gustav Flaubert, especially for Madame Bovary--the first great novel about boredom and domestic despair; Ernest Hemingway, because he changed the way we write prose in the English language; Graham Greene, a writer who wrote profoundly serious novels about man's search for redemption in a pitiless universe that were also page turners; Raymond Chandler, for the way he turned the hardboiled detective novel into a brilliant portrayal of America at its most venal and for the way he found a dark-alley poetry in American patois; and Richard Yates, the great underrated postwar American writer.

Book you've faked reading:
 
Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. It has defeated me on several occasions.
 
Book you're an evangelist for:

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, which I discovered in the early 1990s (long before the now-celebrated film) and which struck me as the most honest, unsparing, yet humane portrayal of personal self-entrapment as played out in the postwar Connecticut suburbs.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:
 
The Oxford English Dictionary!
 
Book that changed your life:
 
Graham Greene's The End of the Affair--the novel that made me want to be a novelist.
 
Favorite line from a book:
 
"He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness, the sense that that is where we belong."--Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Cinema. As a great cinephile, I find this one of the most original and intelligent overviews of the cinema ever written. And even when I disagree with Thomson I am so impressed by his passion and perspicacity for the movies. It's also great fun.

Twain's Feast: Searching for America's Lost Foods in the Footsteps of Samuel Clemens by Andrew Beahrs (Penguin Press, $25.95, 9781594202599/1594202591, June 24, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

For my thirty-third birthday, I wanted breakfast with Mark Twain. I'd been preparing for more than a week--reading Twain's novels, digging through old cookbooks, shopping in half a dozen markets. Now a two-inch-thick, dry-aged porterhouse rested on my kitchen counter in a nest of brown butcher paper. Buckwheat batter and a tray of biscuits waited for the oven; dark maple syrup warmed in a small saucepan. In the living room, my wife had our three-year-old son pinned down (literally, I hoped). Beside me a deep, seasoned-to-black cast-iron fryer heated over the highest possible flame.

I owed my planned menu to Twain's painful homesickness. In the winter of 1879, he was more than a year into the European tour chronicled in A Tramp Abroad. Along the way he'd mocked the pretensions of Alpine expeditions, the absurdity of French duels, the awful German language--and the food, most of all the food. He detested the food. From watery coffee to decayed strawberries to chicken "as tasteless as paper," Twain thought European food monotonous, a hollow sham, a base counterfeit. "There is here and there an American who will say he can remember rising from a European table d'hôte perfectly satisfied," he wrote. "But we must not overlook the fact that there is also here and there an American who will lie."

So Twain dreamed of American dishes, from peach cobbler and simply dressed tomatoes to oyster soup and roast beef. But he dreamed first of breakfast.... So it seemed inevitable, after reading A Tramp Abroad, that I'd cook Twain's breakfast. I'd make the first meal he thought of, when he thought of home.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

Numerous bookstore e-mail newsletters hit my inbox this week touting Father's Day promotions and events. Since my father died nearly four decades ago at the age of 51, this is, at best, a bittersweet holiday for me, though he wasn't much of a reader and I wouldn't have browsed many bookstore displays for gifts had he lived a longer life.

But he did have a book; a book that has been passed among my four brothers and me for decades; a book that in many ways makes a statement about the "value of books" in general during an era when we seem to be trying to redefine that concept on a daily basis.

My father's book was Battle Diary: The Story of the 243rd Field Artillery Battalion in Combat by Frank Smith, first published in 1946 in what was probably a small print run. It reads like an edited compilation of after action reports as the battalion made its way from basic training to Germany by way of England and France.

Although Battle Diary has been in my possession for long stretches, I did not read it until about 10 years ago, on the 30th anniversary of my father's death. I remember approaching the book cautiously, and choosing to read it not as Smith had intended--a clear-sighted account of day-to-day life as an army grunt in wartime--but more as a fogged window with an obscure view of the past, a view that might yield shadowy hints of my father's life at this precise moment in history.

Like many soldiers of his generation, he didn't talk about his war. I knew he'd served as a Cannoneer, Heavy Artillery, and not much else. But I also knew whatever had happened to Smith during that 17-month tour of duty, wherever he'd gone from boot camp to VE Day, my father was probably somewhere nearby.

When I finally decided to read the book, I initially examined it with bookseller's eyes. The cover was frayed and weathered and the pages--with a faded typewriter font--quite brittle. I flipped to the last section, where all of the members of the 243rd were listed, and found my father's name.

I opened to the first page and began taking notes as I read, fully aware that using Battlefield Diary to find my father might be as frustrating as those Magic Eye books that were so popular years ago, the ones with pictures you stared at until you were cross-eyed--patiently, then impatiently, waiting for a promised 3D image to emerge from the camouflage.

22 June 1944: No bands played when they set sail for Europe; just one last peek at the Statue of Liberty and then nothing but the Atlantic Ocean for almost a week. Smith called this "the beginning of an adventure whose duration and result cannot be predicted," but I wondered whether it had seemed like an adventure to my father.

7 August 1944: Disembarked on Utah Beach at 2330 hours, and moved to an assembly area west of La Foyer, then to a bivouac area near Briquebec. "Everybody seems anxious to see their first day of battle," wrote Smith. A word man, I thought this an interesting choice and wondered what my father's definition of "anxious" would have been. Eager? Uneasy? Instinctively, I want to trust the words I read, but know they have their own camouflage.

14 March 1945: Smith wrote about a Private on guard duty at the number one gun position when a half-dozen rounds of 170mm hit at about 2400 hours. As the soldier dropped into a spade pit, a round landed fewer than 20 yards away and tore holes in the side of a truck. In the book's margin, my mother had scribbled "your father," with an arrow pointing to the entry. That's it. Just that brief description of my anonymous old man under fire.

On VE Day, Smith wrote the 243rd had been "miraculously lucky" as far as casualties were concerned, and that "every man who performed his duty to the best of his ability should feel a sense of satisfaction."

This means you, Dad, I was thinking when I first read that line, and wondered: How are you celebrating? How does it feel, this winning? You could get used to it, couldn't you? What will you do next? The possibilities are, if not endless, at least conceivable, on this singular day. Enjoy yourself, Dad. Enjoy it while you can.

On Sunday, I'll be thinking about the value of my father's book.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)