"We need to set out a clear vision of what our industry is going to be going forward.... I think people know the products of the book industry, they understand what comes out of it, but they struggle to understand what the book trade does, or how it does it or even why it succeeds. The belief 10 years ago was that as an industry, we would be swept away by the digital revolution that hasn't happened. There is a void in many people's understanding about what happens next. So it is our job to communicate the message about our future, about how our industry is going to survive."

Bright Side Bookshop, Flagstaff, Ariz., will hold a grand opening ceremony this Saturday, June 3. Events include a children's story time, craft workshops, musical guests, food and drinks, and "plenty of great books." Owners Annette Avery, Lisa Lamberson and Ben Shaffer intend to "highlight the space as a community hub and to usher in a renewed sense of togetherness, understanding, and cooperation to the downtown area."

The trio bought the Barefoot Cowgirl Bookstore in February and have spent the past three months adding inventory, rebranding, hiring staff and re-merchandising the space.

"Another bar or restaurant downtown was not something we were excited about because you need a good mix of food and retail," Avery told the Arizona Daily Sun. "An independent bookstore really rounds out the downtown area."

Lamberson said that she and the others bought the store in a moment of "temporary insanity…. We were excited about having a bookstore downtown and when we heard if Nancy [Nelson] wasn't able to sell she was going to close the business, we decided to buy her shop."

"Bookstores can be more than just bookstores," Avery added. "An independent bookstore is a community resource and a chance for people to take a moment and sit down with a book."

Christie Henry

Effective early September, Christie Henry will become the next director of the Princeton University Press, replacing current director Peter Dougherty, who is retiring in December.

An alumna of Dartmouth College, Henry is editorial director for the sciences, social sciences, and reference at the University of Chicago Press, where she has worked since 1993, mainly acquiring books in the life sciences.

Frank Deford, the sports writer and longtime commentator at Sports Illustrated and National Public Radio, died on Sunday, according to the AP (via the New York Times). He was 78.

Deford wrote numerous books, including several novels. Among his books were The Heart of a Champion: Celebrating the Spirit and Character of Great American Sports Heroes, about the careers of athletes who appeared on Wheaties cereal boxes, and Big Bill Tilden: The Triumphs and the Tragedy, about tennis star Bill Tilden.

Deford was a six-time Sports Writer of the Year and a member of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame. He was most proud, he said, of winning the National Humanities Medal, the first sports writer to do so. Presenting the award in 2013, President Obama honored Deford for "transforming how we think about sports." He added: "A dedicated writer and storyteller, Mr. Deford has offered a consistent, compelling voice in print and on radio, reaching beyond scores and statistics to reveal the humanity woven into the games we love."

Deford retired from NPR only last month after 37 years as a contributor. As the AP noted, "He wrote and spoke with a lyrical touch."

Flatiron Books kicked off BookExpo festivities last night with a party in its offices in the historic Flatiron Building. Pictured: Flatiron's Bob Miller, flanked by two New Orleans booksellers: Britton Trice of Garden District Book Shop (l.) and Tom Lowenburg of Octavia Books.

As book lovers across the nation gather for BookExpo this year, many are wondering... what exactly is there to do around the Jacob Javits Center? Located in Midtown West right next to the Hudson River, this area may seem a little removed from the pulse of the city. However, there are many hidden gems within walking distance for you to discover. Here are some of our favorite spots.

The High Line
The High Line is a public park built on a historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan's West Side. It runs from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 34th Street, between 10th and 12th Avenues.

It's the perfect place for an evening stroll after the convention. Grab an ice cream and watch the sunset in one of the many lounge chairs along the path.

Gotham West Market
New York magazine calls this food hall "Heaven on Earth," and if you're a foodie, it will not disappoint. Some of New York City's great food icons gather together in this food mecca--from Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop to Ample Hills, there is something for everyone. Plus, its hip and casual cafeteria-style setup makes it a great place for you and your friends to sample food and hang out.

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum
Are you an aviation buff? The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum is an American military and maritime history museum with a collection of museum ships in New York City.

Times Square
Named for the 25-story New York Times Tower, which opened in 1906, Times Square has been at the heart of the city's theater district since 1899, when Oscar Hammerstein built the Victoria and Republic theaters. Since the 1920s, the glowing neon of theater billboards has combined with the Times' illuminated newswire and other advertising to create a spectacular lightshow.

There is nothing more quintessential New York than taking in a Broadway show. Check out the new musical Amélie, or the play of George Orwell's classic 1984.

Hell's Kitchen Flea Market
If you're extending your stay until the weekend after BookExpo, the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market is a great place to window shop for antiques, vintage clothing, and eclectic New York City finds.

Bonus: Hell's Kitchen Flea Market gives 25% of its annual profits to Hell's Kitchen Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit sponsor of the flea market. The Foundation awards grants to Hell's Kitchen artists to help them pursue their art projects while living in an increasingly expensive city.

New French firm La Maison Qui Chemine's first build is La librairie itinérante (the traveling bookstore), which is based on a 17.7-foot-long trailer, with an interior that "is jam-packed with shelves of books" and was created "for a bookseller called Jean-Jacques. He plans to wander all over France, visiting villages and other places without a bookstore, both working from and living inside," New Atlas reported. 

You Will Pay by Lisa Jackson (Kensington).

Independent Publishers Group and its subsidiaries have added 27 publishers.

Distributed by IPG, effective earlier this year:
Albert Whitman & Company, Park Ridge, Ill., which has published children's books since 1919, including the Boxcar Children Mysteries series.

Amazing People World Wide, which publishes first-person biographies of inspirational historical figures.

BMG Books, the new publishing arm of the global BMG music label.

BQB Publishing, founded in 2010, which helps authors with every step of book publishing.

Diplomat Books, New York City, a recently founded publisher of travel books for children.

DreamTitle Publishing, which publishes the I'm a Girl! Collection of inspirational children's books.

Outlook Words & Art, publishes work by former NFL player Trevor Pryce, whose Kulipari series was adapted into an animated show by Netflix.

Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, which has been publishing Canadian writing of all genres since 1975.

Distributed by IPG's Trafalgar Square subsidiary:
Dragonfly Group, publishers of the What's So Special About series, which introduces children to various dinosaurs.

Suitcase Media International, London, the publishing arm of SUITCASE, a mulitmedia travel magazine, who will release the Cook for Syria Recipe Book, a companion to the international fundraising effort Cook for Syria.

Troika Books, Cochester, England, which publishes children's fiction, picture books and YA fantasy adventures.

Ragged Bears, Sherborne, England, which has 30 years of experience publishing children's fiction and nonfiction.

Distributed by IPG's INscribe Digital subsidiary:
JMS Books, Virginia, which specializes in gay fiction with romantic and/or erotic elements.

Pro Audio Voices, which is expanding its voice over services to include audiobook narration.

Stonesong Digital, the e-book arm of Stonesong, a publisher and literary agency founded in 1979.

Dudley Court Press, which provides publishing services for authors.

Davis Raynes Publishing Group, a publisher with two imprints: After Glows Publishing, for romance and erotica, and Opal Moon Press for YA titles.

Pressed Wafer, an independent literary publisher of poetry, fiction and memoir.

Bocconi University Press, an imprint of EGEA, the publisher of Bocconi University, Milan.

Distributed by IPG's Academic and Professional Publishing Program:
Southeast Missouri State University Press, founded in 2001, which allows university students to learn publishing skills while earning a Minor in small-press publishing. Its books include academic and literary writing.

Distributed by IPG's Art Stock Books subsidiary:
modo Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, a publisher of art books, exhibition catalogs, monographs and design books since 1997.

Distributed by IPG's Spanish Books subsidiary:
Maximo Potenci, Elche, Spain, which publishes self-help titles, including Spanish-language editions of Tony Robbins's books.

Nostra Eidciones: Panorama Editorial, Mexico, publisher of a range of titles for children and adults since 1979. Effective August 1, 2017.

Today:
Fresh Air: David Sedaris, author of Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) (Little, Brown, $28, 9780316154727).

Tomorrow:
Jimmy Kimmel Live: Kevin Hart, author of I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons (Atria/37 INK, $26.99, 9781501155567).

Daily Show: Senator Al Franken, author of Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (Twelve, $28, 9781455540419).

Late Show with Stephen Colbert repeat: Alec Baldwin, author of Nevertheless: A Memoir (Harper, $28.99, 9780062409706).

Also on the Late Show: Charlamagne Tha God, author of Black Privilege: Opportunity Comes to Those Who Create It (Touchstone, $25.99, 9781501145308).

Lionsgate released a "heartbreaking-turned-heartwarming" trailer for Wonder, based on R.J. Palacio's books Wonder, Auggie & Me, and 365 Days of Wonder, Deadline reported. Directed by Stephen Chbosky and written by Steve Conrad, the film stars Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Jacob Tremblay, Daveed Diggs, Sonia Braga and Mandy Patinkin. Wonder will be released November 17.

Deirdre N. McCloskey has won the $50,000 Hayek Book Prize for her book Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World (University of Chicago Press), the culmination of her Bourgeois Trilogy. She will receive the award and deliver the annual Hayek lecture on June 13 in New York City. The award is sponsored by the Manhattan Institute and given to authors "who best represent the principles of F.A. Hayek."

Amity Shlaes, chair of the jury, commented: "Economic growth is a mystery, like a beating heart. All our finalists study this mystery. The jury enthusiastically selected Deirdre McCloskey because Professor McCloskey discerned something the rest often fail to see: that ideas, even more than capital or institutions, power the heart and the growth that are so crucial to America's future."

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Crime Writers of Canada announced winners of this year's Arthur Ellis Awards for Excellence in Crime Writing, with Donna Morrissey taking the best novel prize for The Fortunate Brother and Elle Wild winning the best debut novel category for Strange Things Done. Quillblog featured a complete list of Arthur Ellis category winners.

photo: Owen Franken

Senator Al Franken has represented Minnesota in the United States Senate since 2009. Before entering politics, he was a comedy writer, author and radio talk show host. He's been married to his wife, Franni, for 41 years--many of them happy. Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (Twelve, May 30, 2017) is his memoir about how he became a member of Congress.

On your nightstand now:

I'm reading my colleague Sheldon Whitehouse's book, Captured, which is about the growing and pernicious influence of big corporations in American democracy, as well as Carl Reiner's book, Why & When the Dick Van Dyke Show Was Born. They're both great, although one of them is significantly funnier than the other.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I remember loving Booth Tarkington's Penrod books, although not well enough to remember which of them was my absolute favorite.

Your top five authors:

I know I'm supposed to say something like, "Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Shakespeare..." but the truth is that I'm so busy I never really have time to read anything but nonfiction. So I'll say Atul Gawande (who writes about health care), Norm Ornstein (who writes about our messed-up political climate), E.J. Dionne (same), Robert Putnam (who writes about American society) and, um, Dostoyevsky.

Book you've faked reading:

Standing Rules of the Senate by the U.S. Government Publishing Office. Just kidding. I keep a copy in my jacket pocket at all times. Which is why none of my jackets fit correctly.

Book you're an evangelist for:

How Children Succeed by Paul Tough. I read it as part of a book club I have with Mike Enzi, a Wyoming Republican with whom I've worked on education issues. It's about the role trauma plays in a child's development, and the effect of things like poverty or domestic violence on a child's ability to learn. It's become kind of a trendy read in education policy circles.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I make a practice of not judging books by their covers. Although I did spend a lot of time getting the cover of my own book just right in the hopes that other people might not hold themselves to the same standard.

Book you hid from your parents:

Uh, it was really more of a magazine thing.

Book that changed your life:

Codependent No More by Melanie Beatty. It helped me understand what I was going through at a very difficult moment in my life (buy my book to find out more!) and opened me up to a whole new way of thinking and learning about myself.

Favorite line from a book:

"It was the best of times..." from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. It was so good, I stopped reading right there.

Five books you'll never part with:

Tuesday Takes Me There by Luis Montalván, an Iraq war vet I met in 2009. He turned his life around after being paired with a service dog named Tuesday who helped him deal with his PTSD. Luis became an author and an inspiration for a bill I wrote helping to pair other vets with service dogs. He also became a friend, and Tuesday Takes Me There is one of my young grandson Joe's favorite books. Tragically, Luis passed away earlier this year. But I'll never forget his friendship, and reading this book with Joe feels more meaningful than ever.

What It Takes by Richard Ben Cramer, which is on just about every bookshelf in Washington.

A Bright Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan.

Let's see, what else? Garrison Keillor gave me an autographed copy of his first Lake Wobegon book, although, come to think of it, I'm not sure where I put it. We recently moved. Oh, and Herzog by Saul Bellow. Not because it's particularly great, but because I borrowed it from the St. Louis Park public library when I was 14, forgot to return it, and now I feel like it would be awkward.

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

Well, now that you've got me thinking about it, A Bright Shining Lie. I can't remember ever having another experience like I had the first time I read it--I was so completely absorbed, I couldn't put it down.

Book that was a guilty pleasure:

Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. I make fun of them in my book, but I couldn't have made fun of them if I hadn't read their crappy book cover to cover in one sitting.

A straightforward and lyrical meditation on existence, Life "begins small. Even for the elephants. Then it grows." Across the desert to the forest, through day and through night, for animals large and small, what it is to be alive is explored and celebrated--the hawk loves the sky, the camel loves the sand, the turtle loves the rain on its back and the snake will invariably say it loves the "grassssssssssss." Despite there being much to love, it's not always easy to be. Sometimes there will be stretches of loneliness, but "wilderness eventually ends."

Newbery Award-winner Cynthia Rylant's (Little Penguins; Missing May; A Fine White Dust) spare text reads like a secular prayer, affirming the beauty and importance of all life even as it reminds the reader (or young listener) that life can be tough: "if, one day, it seems nothing beautiful will ever come your way again, trust the rabbit in the field and the deer who crosses your path.... And it is worth waking up in the morning to see what might happen."

The illustrations by Brendan Wenzel (Caldecott honoree for They All Saw a Cat; Beastly Babies) affirm the grand ideas housed in Rylant's simple text through sweeping landscapes and bordered illustrations that overflow their boundaries into the white space of the page. Showing that life "is not always easy," a full-bleed, double-page spread swirls with black clouds and driving rain battering a tiny, brightly colored bird. The page turn reveals an equally unwelcoming environment of austere mountains and white-cold sky. But when the wilderness eventually ends, Wenzel's warm colors return, showing a river snaking through a green landscape populated by vast numbers of animals.

Both Rylant and Wenzel are strong proponents of conservation--Rylant showing a particular love of animals, Wenzel collaborating with organizations that protect threatened environments and species. This shared passion can be seen as Life reminds readers that there is always something to love, and always "something to protect," depicting first a dog and a cat, then a gorilla and a polar bear. Each page turn reinforces the idea that animals have a right to life--and healthy environments--as it also speaks in a broader context about what it is to exist and to be human. The subtle beauty of the text pairs with the bountiful illustrations, creating a reflection on life and love that can be appreciated by children and adults alike. And, as life circles back upon itself, so too does Life, opening and closing with life that begins small and grows. --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Shelf Talker: In Life, Brendan Wenzel's illustrations complement Cynthia Rylant's text, creating a picture book with accessible existential musings and a conservationist tilt.

In the original version of our story yesterday about the sale of Otto's Bookstore, we inadvertently moved the store to New York. As most people have known for 176 years, Otto's is located in Williamsport, Pa. Our apologies for the error!

Also, there have been several dates given for when Otto's was bought by Jacob Roesgen, father of Betsy Rider, who sold the store last week. New owners Kathryn Nassberg and her husband, Isak Sidenbladh, recognize the date as 1928.