Shelf Awareness for Thursday, April 19, 2007


Quarry Books: Yes, Boys Can!: Inspiring Stories of Men Who Changed the World - He Can H.E.A.L. by Richard V Reeves and Jonathan Juravich, illustrated by Chris King

Simon & Schuster: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Little, Brown Books for Young Readers: Nightweaver by RM Gray

G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers: The Meadowbrook Murders by Jessica Goodman

Overlook Press: Hotel Lucky Seven (Assassins) by Kotaro Isaka, translated by Brian Bergstrom

Quotation of the Day

Last Piece of the Puzzle?

"The only thing Amazon isn't is a publisher."--Martyn Daniels of Value Chain International and author of the Bookselling Associations's Brave New World study, speaking at the Eighth London Book Fair Supply Chain Seminar yesterday.

 

 


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News

Meskis to Direct Denver Publishing Insitute

Joyce Meskis, owner of the Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, will become director of the University of Denver Publishing Institute in January. She continues as owner and manager of the Tattered Cover and succeeds Elizabeth Geiser, who is retiring after more than 30 years as founding director of the Institute. Geiser will provide career guidance to program classes.

"In my youth I set a course to become a teacher but happily got sidetracked into the book industry," Meskis said in a statement. "Now I can blend these two passions. Elizabeth has established an extraordinary program. It is hard to imagine the institute without her energy and guidance, but I will certainly do my very best to honor and support her legacy."

Meskis is a former president of the American Booksellers Association and has taught at a variety of programs, including the Denver Publishing Institute. The Institute is a four-week, graduate-level course devoted to book publishing.


GLOW: Berkley Books: The Seven O'Clock Club by Amelia Ireland


Notes: Store Snapshots; UConn Co-op Conference

Books & Crannies Bookstore in Middleburg, Va., will soon relocate from its side street location to the town's main thoroughfare. The Loudoun Times-Mirror described Books & Crannies as "a thinking person's bookshop" and Middleburg as "small, upscale, with residents who are famously resistant to franchises and chain stores [and] seemed a good bet for an independent bookstore."

Manager Pat Daly and her business partner Genie Ford opened the bookstore in 2004. "We wanted to be in a community where the kind of store we wanted to create would be well received," said Daly, adding that, after a long career as a corporate lawyer in Washington, D.C., she had decided to take an early retirement and throw her efforts into an independent bookstore that would "make a contribution to the community."

Daly looks forward to the increased space and exposure that the new location will offer. "We get a huge amount of community support," she said. "It allows us to grow the business the way we want to."

Books & Crannies customer Helen Walker lauded the bookshop's staff members, saying they "are all so accommodating. . . . They'll even call me up to inform me of a book or an author signing. That kind of service is like having your own personal trainer for your reading habits."

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Another bookstore profiled this week was Creekside Books & Coffee in Skaneateles, N.Y. The Auburn Citizen highlighted Creekside as a comfort zone for local residents: "If relaxation was tangible, Creekside Books & Coffee in the village of Skaneateles might be the definition."

Like most of her independent bookstore peers, owner Erika Davis said "community" was the prime directive when she moved back to Skaneateles from Texas and opened Creekside in December 2004. "I thought what's missing is a gathering place in the community, a place where there's no pressure to order a full meal, but just meet with friends," she said. "A big part of it is a warm, welcoming place for the locals, as well as a place for visitors to feel comfortable.”

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Sadly we learned that one of the people killed in the Virginia Tech shooting was the son of science fiction writer Michael Bishop. Christopher "Jamie" Bishop, 35, was teaching a German class when the murderer entered the room and shot him and others. He had collaborated with his father on some novels and short stories and illustrated the covers for two of his father's books, Brighten to Incandescence and A Reverie for Mister Ray, as well as Mike Jasper's short story collection, Gunning for the Buddha, according to the Newnan Times-Herald.

Also Nikki Giovanni, the poet and a professor at Virginia Tech, taught the killer and told CNN that she was not surprised to learn his identity. "I would have been shocked if it wasn't," she said, as quoted by the Cincinnati Enquirer. Giovanni also gave what were called "inspirational remarks" at a Tuesday convocation on campus to honor the victims.

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BenBella Books, publisher of two titles mentioned here yesterday that were to have been sold exclusively by Borders Group until September 1, has cancelled the general release of the two books. They will not be distributed to the general book trade by IPG.

The titles are The Great Snape Debate by Amy Berner, Orson Scott Card and Joyce Millman and The Unauthorized Harry Potter by Adam Troy Castro.

BenBella, which does some book packaging, has decided to keep its book packaging and general trade publishing operations separate. 

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In a plot twist worthy of his own mysteries, Vermont suspense novelist Daniel Hecht discovered Vermont publisher Chelsea Green's books while shopping at Powell's Books in Portland, Ore. Hecht, author of Bones of the Barbary Coast: A Cree Black Novel (Bloomsbury, $24.95, 9781596910867/1596910860), made his full confession in a commentary written for the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus.

"I had heard of Chelsea Green Publishing and had lived 40 minutes' drive from their main office for two decades, yet I'd never read one of their books," Hecht admitted. "But as I browsed the shelves at Powell's Books, my eyes were snagged by a series of lovely covers and intriguing titles, and on closer inspection I discovered that the books came from right here in Vermont."

Hecht, who also serves as executive director of the Vermont Environmental Consortium, turned his "confession" into a laudatory look at Chelsea Green, whose "slogan concisely states their focus as 'the politics and practice of sustainable living.' " Describing the publisher's books as "how-to manuals for Planet Earth," Hecht wrote: "A survey of their 400 titles reveals a concern with sustainability from perspectives that are at once technological, philosophical, personal and political."

Case closed. 

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What was the question again? We've noticed for some time now that, when it comes to writing headlines for articles about bookstore woes, editors tend to favor groan-inducing book references ("final chapter," "closing the books," "that's all she wrote," etc.). Another worrisome trend, however, is the increasing popularity of heads and sub-heads written by Jeopardy fans, who feel compelled to create them in the form of a question. Recent examples include "Is this 'The End' for local booksellers?" in the Maryland Gazette and "Wouldn't you hate to live in an area that felt more like a strip mall and less like a neighborhood?" in the Minnesota Daily

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Cool idea of the day: starting on Sunday, Earth Day, and lasting for three days, the UConn Co-op, Storrs, Conn., is holding the second annual Sustainable Living Book Fair and Conference, which includes speakers, films, musical performances, displays and "lots of books on everything from solar energy to organic growing to the Local First movement."

Among speakers and events: for children, readings from The Cat in the Hat and The Lorax; Gary Ginsberg and Brian Toal, authors of What's Toxic What's Not; Baron Wormser, author of The Road Washes Out in Spring: A Poet's Memoir of Living Off the Grid; cookbook author Andrea Chesman; and Greg Pahl, author of The Citizen Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis and Biodiesel.


Fast Forward: BBC Audiobooks America Buys Audio Partners

BBC Audiobooks America, which last week signed with Perseus Distribution to begin selling audiobooks to the trade, has bought the audiobook publishing assets of the Audio Partners Corporation. The company will gain more than 400 titles, including Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Complete Arkangel Shakespeare, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Goals by Brian Tracy, Hiroshima by John Hersey and works by mystery authors Rex Stout, Dick Francis, Dorothy L. Sayers and M.C. Beaton as well as all unabridged Agatha Christie audiobook titles.

BBC Audiobooks America president and publisher Jim Brannigan praised Audio Partners's "extremely strong backlist that is well-established in the trade channel," a line that "will strengthen our already strong library market offering."

In a statement, Grady Hesters, CEO of the Audio Partners, said, "For 26 years my wife Linda (Olsen) and I have had the privilege to publish outstanding audiobooks, read and performed by the most extraordinary readers in the English-speaking world, including 300 British productions, many now licensed from BBC Audiobooks America. It seems fitting and natural to place our valued title list with BBC Audiobooks America as it launches its major new trade audiobook program. We welcome the opportunity to focus our energy and resources exclusively on expanding our Audio Editions direct mail catalog and internet sales operation."


Media and Movies

Media Heat: Among the Righteous

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition: Robert Satloff, author of Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands (PublicAffairs, $26, 9781586483999/9781586483994). He appears with Faiza Abdul-Wahab, daughter of Tunisian Arab Khaled Abdul-Wahab, who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and whose story is told in Among the Righteous.

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Jill Jonnes, author of Conquering Gotham: A Gilded Age Epic: The Construction of Penn Station and Its Tunnels (Viking, $27.95, 9780670031580/0670031585).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Vikram Chandra, author of Sacred Games (HarperCollins, $27.95, 9780061130359/0061130354). As the show put it: "Gangsters, detectives, Bollywood movie stars--Chandra mobilizes the machinery of a thriller in order to reveal Bombay at its most various. Fascinating then, to hear him describe his novel as a mandala of perceptions in which characters reflect the worlds they move through, the plot enacting the clash between different beliefs about reality."

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, $26.95, 9781560259794/1560259795).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky.
 



Book Review

Children's Review: Jack Plank Tells Tales

Jack Plank Tells Tales by Natalie Babbitt (Michael Di Capua Books, $15.95 Hardcover, 9780545004961, May 2007)



If one wished to introduce the work of Natalie Babbitt to young readers, this is the book to give them. It has all of the hallmarks of the author's other standout titles--wit, pithy observations about the human condition--and is perhaps her most accessible. Jack Plank offers his perspective as a failed plunderer. The book opens when Jack has just been fired by the pirate captain of the Avarice, and he winds up on the doorstep of Mrs. Delfresno's boarding house in Saltwash. He must find work in order to pay for his room and board, and each chapter chronicles Jack's consideration of a different vocation. Mrs. Delfresno's 11-year-old daughter, Nina, aids him in his mission. Each night at the dinner table, Jack regales his fellow boarders with pirate tales, and each moral explains why one career after another is not the one for him. Babbitt delivers razor-sharp observations about the underbelly of current culture ("Once you've got people scared you take things away from them," says the omniscient narrator regarding Jack's aversion to the pirate life--applicable to the Patriot Act, perhaps?) as well as uplifting comments from her characters about the importance of imagination: "Will wonders never cease," says a boarder, in response to one of Jack's tales, " 'I hope they never cease,' said her uncle. 'I like a good wonder now and then.' " Adults will appreciate the many kernels of wisdom Babbitt dispenses along the way, while children will plead for rereadings of these salty yarns, populated by mermaids, ghosts and crocodiles tamed by flute music. The author's own illustrations lend charm to the stories, and her cover hints at the hero's true calling. This novel, which comes 25 years after Babbitt's last, was well worth the wait, and will certainly send readers on to her other treasures, including The Search for Delicious and Tuck Everlasting.--Jennifer M. Brown



The Bestsellers

AbeBooks.com Bestsellers: And So It Goes

The following were the 10 bestselling books at AbeBooks.com during the week ended Sunday, April 15, a list that included four titles by the late Kurt Vonnegut:

1. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
2. By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman
3. Man without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut   
4. Transformation by Bill Hybels
5. Take God at his Word: Experience the Power of Giving by Dr. Kregg Hood
6. I Want to Be an Engineer by Stephanie Maze
7. Me and Orson Welles by Robert Kaplow
8. The Purpose-Driven Life by Rick Warren
9. Hocus Pocus by Kurt Vonnegut
10. Fates Worse then Death by Kurt Vonnegut

[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]


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