Also published on this date: Tuesday, February 6, 2018: Dedicated Issue: Bonnier Zaffre

Shelf Awareness for Tuesday, February 6, 2018


Groundwood Books: Skating Wild on an Inland Sea by Jean E Pendziwol, illustrated by Todd Stewart

St. Martin's Press: The Cut by CJ Dotson

Random House Books for Young Readers: Mr. Lemoncello's Fantabulous Finale (Mr. Lemoncello's Library) by Chris Grabenstein

Yale University Press: Tattoos: The Untold History of a Modern Art by Matt Lodder

News

Another Chapter Bookstore Opens in Cumming, Ga.

Former Humpus Bumpus employee Katie Anderson (l.) opened Another Chapter.

Another Chapter Bookstore has opened in the Old Towne Shopping Center in Cumming, Ga., the Forsyth News reported. The store is owned by Katie Anderson, who wanted to be sure that the town had a bookstore after Humpus Bumpus Books, which sold new, used and rare books, closed last year.

"It was killing me that the store was closing down," Anderson, who had been a bookseller at Humpus Bumpus, told the newspaper. "With it being part of the community for so long and it having something that makes people want to go [there]."

Another Chapter is in the Old Towne Shopping Center and will have, the newspaper wrote, "all of the same types of books and customer accounts that Humpus Bumpus had, and will continue the neighborhood-bookstore-with-character tradition the old location was known for." The store is accepting credit from Humpus Bumpus.

Another Chapter held a grand opening celebration on Saturday that featured book signings by Melody Scott, author of the Maria Sebastian mystery series, and Fran Stewart.

After nearly 30 years in business, Paul Cossman decided to close Humpus Bumpus, because, he said, "I decided that it is getting close to the time in my life where I need to start doing some other things. I love my work here, love my customers, love the community, they love us, but sometimes time just pushes us inexorably onwards and you have to make a decision about what you want to do next, and there are other things I want to do."

Another Chapter Bookstore is located at 216 Atlanta Rd., Suite F, Cumming, Ga. 30040; 404-617-9019.


G.P. Putnam's Sons: Kate & Frida: A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Books by Kim Fay


Daedalus Books & Music Closes, Sells Online Operations

One of the main book remainder wholesaling and retailing company for decades, Daedalus Books & Music has apparently shut its wholesale operations in Maryland and sold its online business to Universal Screen Arts in Ohio. Daedalus did not respond to queries. The Daedalus website, which was inoperative for several days, now says, "We're moving and have a lot of boxes to unpack! We apologize. Orders will begin shipping on February 9th."

Daedalus was founded in 1980. In addition to its core remainder wholesaling business, selling books, movies and CDs, it had a store in its Columbia, Md., warehouse and, for four years, a freestanding store in North Baltimore. The warehouse store is holding a "going out of business sale" for the month of February.

Universal Screen Arts has its headquarters in Hudson, Ohio, and warehouse and distribution operations in Twinsburg, Ohio. The company began in 1983 as a T-shirt and sweatshirt marketer that now specializes in internet and online shopping. Products offered include "apparel, jewelry, outdoor living, entertaining, gift, spa and personal care, pet care, kids products, home, furnishings, books and literature, T-shirts and sweatshirts, DVDs and other media, home accents and wall decors and accessories."

Besides Daedalus, Universal Screen Arts companies are Acorn Online, which specializes in British entertainment and gifts "from around the globe"; Bas Bleu, "books and gifts for avid readers"; CatalogClassics, "customer favorites from the world of Mail Order and Online retail"; Signals, "gifts that inform, enlighten and entertain"; Support Plus, "better products for a better life"; and Whatonearth, "cool tees and stuff."


BINC: Donate now and an anonymous comic retailer will match donations up to a total of $10,000.


Wisconsin's Village Booksmith Adds New Books

photo: IndieBobSpot.com

In response to the closing around the corner of a Book World store late last year, the Village Booksmith of Baraboo, Wis., has added new books to its used book inventory.

Last November, Book World abruptly closed its 45 stores in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota and Missouri.

"We had a great relationship with Book World and were very sorry to see them go," Village Booksmith owner Rob Nelson said. "And as much as we love used books here, I feel that giving people access to new titles--particularly nonfiction--is critical to the health of our communities and our democracy."

The Village Booksmith will continue to emphasize used, rare and collectible books, but Nelson said he plans "to have a steady supply of bestsellers available, along with new books of local or regional interest."

Nelson was a longtime assistant before becoming owner in January 2017, after the death of founder Annie Randall four months earlier. The store celebrates its 20th anniversary in May and hosts concerts, readings, films, and other cultural events most Friday evenings.


Report: Amazon Books Eyeing Denver's Cherry Creek Neighborhood

Amazon is planning to open a new Amazon Books location in Denver, Colo., BusinessDen has reported, citing a source familiar with the deal. The book and electronics store will be around 5,000 square feet and located in Denver's Cherry Creek neighborhood, where Denver indie Tattered Cover Book Store had a large store for many years. Amazon, of course, declined to comment.

Since opening the first Amazon Books store in Seattle, Wash., in 2015, Amazon has opened 12 more locations around the country, with upcoming stores announced for Bethesda, Md., Washington, D.C., and Austin, Tex.


Obituary Note: Duncan Steen

Duncan Steen, who "was perhaps best known as the reader of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations on Naxos AudioBooks, which has sold in the tens of thousands," has died, the Guardian reported. He was 65. Steen was also ordained as a Buddhist monk with the name Jinananda in 1986, and was widely recognized as a teacher of, and writer on, Buddhist meditation.

Although he wrote a number of secular books, including The Essential Englishman (1989) and a translation of Sophocles's Oedipus the King (recorded with Michael Sheen in the title role), Steen went on to write almost exclusively on Buddhist topics, producing "a string of titles based on the seminars of his teacher, Urgyen Sangharakshita, as well as The 100 Minute Buddha (2009) and Karma and Rebirth in a Nutshell (2009)," the Guardian noted.


Notes

The Regulator Bookshop's Super Bowl Connection

Posted on Facebook yesterday by the Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C.: "Regulator's own lucky charm--Tom Campbell! You are welcome, Philly! Tom inherited this Eagles Super Bowl ring from his father, who worked for the Eagles in the late '70s and early '80s. The ring is from Super Bowl XV, 1980. Tom (one of the founders of the Regulator Bookshop) grew up in the Philadelphia area and still has family there. Congratulations, Philadelphia Eagles! Good game, Pats!"


Milkweed Books Among 'Best Hidden Spots' in Minneapolis

In a piece headlined "Shopping in Minneapolis: An Insider's Guide to the Best Hidden Spots," Vogue magazine noted that the city "is finally starting to get the national recognition it deserves for being a hub of great culture.... But the city's shopping scene remains largely overshadowed by the suburban mass-market behemoth that is the Mall of America. It's a shame, because locally-owned shops cropping up all around town are certainly worthy of attention, and the message they are celebrating is: Buy and make local."

Among the businesses highlighted was Milkweed Books, which is "housed on the ground floor of downtown Minneapolis' Open Book building, the country's largest literary arts center. The shop is a project of Milkweed Editions, an independent publisher based upstairs. Milkweed Books' nonprofit status has the freedom to advocate for titles you won't see in other shops. The uber-knowledgeable staff and highly curated shelves will ensure you leave with an under-the-radar selection that will soon hit the cultural zeitgeist."


Cool Idea of the Day: Outdoor Library

Dartmouth North Public Library in Nova Scotia "is now home to what the head of Halifax's library system calls the first outdoor library space in Canada, and one of only a handful of similar examples in the world," the CBC reported. The exterior wall of the building was replaced with glass sliding doors looking out on a deck and new playground. "Books and deck furniture will be moved to the outdoor space in the spring, as soon as the weather allows it. The bookshelves will be mobile so staff can shift them back indoors during poor weather."

"Dartmouth North is blazing a trail," said Asa Kachan, chief librarian of Halifax Public Libraries. "I have colleagues across the entire country watching this project very closely.... It just gives us room to stretch out, it invites people to linger and connect to their neighbors. It's a community where most people are in apartments, so we're imagining this to be their back garden."

The renovations were paid for with a C$500,000 (about US$407,400) grant from TD Bank's Friends of the Environment Canada 150 program, and a matching grant from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.


Pennie Picks Lincoln in the Bardo

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has chosen Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House, $17, 9780812985405) as her pick of the month for February. In Costco Connection, which goes to many of the warehouse club's members, she wrote:

"Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, has always been one of my favorite historical figures. So it should be little surprise that George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo is my book buyer's pick this month.

" 'Bardo' is a Tibetan word for the state of the soul between death and rebirth. Using the real-life death of Lincoln's son Willie, Saunders weaves the story of Willie's time in purgatory. There he listens to ghosts as they argue, snipe and engage in odd acts of penance.

"It's been a long time since I've read anything as clever and creative as this novel. It encompasses tragedy, joy, lightness and tender moments between father and son. Saunders' writing is everything I could want in a book."


Media and Movies

Media Heat: The 5:17 to Paris on the View, Daily Show

Tomorrow:
The View: Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler and Spencer Stone, co-authors of The 15:17 to Paris: The True Story of a Terrorist, a Train, and Three American Heroes (PublicAffairs, $15.99, 9781610398190). They will also appear on the Daily Show.

Conan: Van Jones, author of Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together (Ballantine, $27, 9780399180026).

Tonight Show: Tim Tebow, co-author of Shaken: Discovering Your True Identity in the Midst of Life's Storms (WaterBrook, $15.99, 9780735289888).


TV: Rabbit, Run

John Updike's "Rabbit" novels (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit at Rest) will be adapted for television after the BBC Worldwide-backed production company Lookout Point (War and Peace) optioned the rights, Deadline reported.

Andrew Davies (Pride and Prejudice, Bridget Jones's Diary) will adapt the four novels. This is the fourth collaboration between Davies and Lookout Point, including the original House of Cards for the BBC and The Tailor of Panama.

"This is such an important series of books for me," Davies said. "As a young man, I read Rabbit, Run when it came out and thought: gosh, this is what life is all about. For me, no other writer examines the mundane, everyday details of life with such expressionistic, colorful, spiritual power."

Lookout Point CEO Simon Vaughan added: "We were talking to Andrew about whether there was any great work of literature he had always wanted to adapt and Andrew said without breaking breath that it was Updike's Rabbit books. Following his adaptations of non-British epics including War and Peace, Les Misérables and A Suitable Boy, it seems perfectly logical for him to take on one of America's iconic titles."



Books & Authors

Awards: Ezra Jack Keats Winners; EBRD Literature Shortlist

The Ezra Jack Keats Book Awards, which recognize a writer and an illustrator early in their careers for their outstanding work, have gone to:

New Writer: Derrick Barnes for Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, illustrated by Gordon C. James (Agate Bolden/Denene Millner Books)
New Illustrator: Evan Turk for Muddy: The Story of Blues Legend Muddy Waters, written by Michael Mahin (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)

The winners receive a bronze medallion and an honorarium of $3,000, which is triple the amount awarded in previous years. The awards are presented by the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, in partnership with the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.

The 2018 award ceremony will be held on April 12 during the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival at the university. T.A. Barron will present the Ezra Jack Keats Book Awards, and Charlotte Jones Voiklis will deliver the Keats Lecture.

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An inaugural shortlist has been released for the €20,000 (about $24,820) EBRD Literature Prize, which was launched by the British Council and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to champion "the art of translation as well as the extraordinary richness, depth and variety of arts and history in the countries in the Bank's region."

The prize honors "the best work of literary fiction translated from the original language into English and published by a U.K. publisher in the 18 months up to 15 November 2017." The money is equally divided between author and translator. Three finalists will be announced in early March, with a winner named April 10 on the eve of the London Book Fair. The shortlisted titles are:

All the World's a Stage by Boris Akunin, translated by Andrew Bromfield from Russian
Belladonna by Daša Drndic, translated by Celia Hawkesworth from Croatian
The Traitor's Niche by Ismail Kadare, translated by John Hodgson from Albanian
The Red-Haired Woman by Orhan Pamuk, translated by Ekin Oklap from Turkish
Istanbul Istanbul by Burhan Sönmez, translated by Ümit Hussein from Turkish
Maryam: Keeper of Stories by Alawiya Sobh, translated by Nirvana Tanoukhi from Arabic


Book Review

Review: Happiness

Happiness by Aminatta Forna (Atlantic Monthly Press, $26 hardcover, 368p., 9780802127556, March 6, 2018)

Happiness, Aminatta Forna's fourth novel, a follow-up to The Hired Man, is about love, trauma, immigration and the ongoing conflict between nature and civilization, among other things. The plot is built around the chance meeting of two outsiders in London: Jean, an American studying urban foxes, and Attila, a Ghanaian psychiatrist in the city to give a keynote speech on trauma. Through their repeated meetings--Attila takes the position that coincidences "happen far too often to be considered extraordinary"--Jean and Attila gradually become insinuated in each other's lives.

The search for a missing young boy becomes the pretext for a variety of characters to bump into each other, from Jean and Attila to a lot of hotel doormen, security guards and even one man moonlighting as a "living statue." Many of the characters are immigrants--Forna pays particular attention to West African transplants to London. One of the pleasures of the book is seeing how all of these characters and plot elements fit within a narrative that opens in 1834 and bounces between the present and the past.

It would be reductive to refer to Happiness as a love story, but the bond that slowly develops between Jean and Attila is an obvious highlight. Instead of love at first sight, the novel is concerned with a more cautious, perhaps more mature, approach to growing infatuation. Forna writes: "The reckless open their arms and topple into love, as do dreamers, who fly in their dreams without fear or danger. Those who know that all love must end in loss do not fall but rather cross slowly from not knowing into the knowing."

Happiness is not an overtly political book. In fact, it takes place pre-Brexit and so skirts many of the arguments over immigration that have intensified in the wake of the referendum. It takes a broader view, making a case that adverse life experiences and thus trauma are more common to most of the world than sometimes cloistered Western lives of wealth and plenty. Or: "The glass dwellers were terrified of the cloche [bell-shaped lid] being lifted. They treated the suffering of others as exceptional, something that required treatment, when what was exceptional was all this." Attila, who has spent his life venturing into war zones, frequently finds himself uncomfortable with "all this."

Jean and her urban foxes are also struggling to adapt to abnormal circumstances. Her fierce love of animals and nature puts her in conflict with urban dwellers who fear and hate the wild creatures that intrude on their orderly world. Jean's wide-ranging empathy lies at odds with entire communities--like London--and even those close to her, as in her previous marriage. Happiness observes them building a new community, a found family composed of oddballs and outsiders. Forna's novel is unusual and engaging, heartfelt and ambitiously crafted. --Hank Stephenson, bookseller, Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C.

Shelf Talker: The lives of an American doing a study on urban foxes and a Ghanaian psychiatrist specializing in trauma collide among the expatriates and immigrants in London.


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