"And then booksellers did that thing they do, that beautiful, mercurial thing (that publishers have tried to harness, but always fail at)--they started talking about it. They told each other that it was worth a read. They passed their copy on, they went on Twitter and banged the drum. I wasn't expecting it--19 books had taught me to expect little--but bloody hell, it was a lovely feeling. 

"Publication day came, and there were these wonderful piles of it in shops. And windows. Windows! I got over the embarrassment of introducing myself. I went for it, visited more than 60 shops, driving over a thousand miles. I was cream-crackered, but it was worth every Sharpie I bled dry.... So what I want and need to say to booksellers is: thank you. What you do, every day, when you shove books into readers' hands, is alchemy, pure and simple. This sales director/author is unbelievably grateful to you. And I still have a Sharpie in reserve if you need me to drop in. It's always a pleasure and never ever a chore." 

Aslan's Square, a bookstore and coffee shop with titles for all ages, has officially opened in Dyersville, Iowa, the Dyersville Commercial reported. Store owner Jacey Stanbro hosted a grand opening celebration on June 29.

"It is such a tight-knit community, and everyone is so warm and welcoming," Stanbro said. "It is such a beautiful area that is going to grow, so I thought it would be the perfect time to put in a coffee shop and bookstore."

The store carries new and used books across all genres, and a plethora of nonbook items such as candles, stationery and homemade pottery. There is Wi-Fi for customers and areas for shoppers to sit and read, as well as a children's area.

The coffee shop side of the business sells pour-over coffee, loose-leaf tea and a variety of baked goods. Each cup of coffee sold goes toward supporting Christian missions, and the tea is sourced from a Christian company in Washington. The baked goods, meanwhile, are made every day by a local named Shelly Rollins.

Stanbro emphasized that while she is Christian, her store is not an exclusively Christian bookstore, as she carries general-interest books for everyone. Over the coming months, she plans to start hosting live music, wine and cheese tastings, book talks and Bible study groups.

Page 158 Books, a bookstore and bar in Wake Forest, N.C., is expanding into an adjacent storefront. Owners Suzanne and Dave Lucey have purchased the 3,200-square-foot retail space next door, which will bring Page 158's total square footage to 4,800.

The new space will be home to a stage, which will be used for author events and shared with the Wake Forest Listening Room, a live music series featuring local and regional artists. The Luceys will add a full commercial kitchen and partner with another local business to bring a cafe to the space that will serve lunch and grab-and-go dinners.

Dave Lucey reported that the expansion will allow Page 158 to have more dedicated displays for things like Small Press of the Month and Local Authors, which they've "wanted to do for a while." At the same time, the bar's beer and wine selection will grow, and a neighboring business is giving Page 158 a section of its old bar-top.

"We'll finally have room to have board game nights, which we are very excited about," Lucey added. "Naturally we'll be expanding our board game selection to go along with that."

The Luceys hope to have the additional space "at least partially open" by the end of this year.--Alex Mutter

Speaking via video link during the Interlivro conference in São Paulo, Brazil, this week, Waterstones managing director and Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt said "booksellers should embrace their role in championing new authors and ensuring fresh voices continue to come through," the Bookseller reported.

James Daunt

"I have always thought that we are called booksellers for a reason... we recommend particular books and champion particular authors that we, the bookseller, like, and we convince people to buy a book in quantity and that that is an important role that we perform," he observed, adding that booksellers should see their role as finding "the new author" and "putting a pile of that book up and selling it in quantity.... That's fun to do, but it's also important within the industry so that new voices come through." 

He also spoke about the importance of being well stocked to achieve success and running bookshops efficiently: "We have a long tradition of being able to return to a publisher what we don't sell, and this allows us to be lazy." As an example, Daunt said Waterstones and B&N were previously running returns at roughly 20%-25% of sales, but now Waterstones is at 3%-4%, while B&N is below 10%.  

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HalInBook, a bookshop in Lviv, Ukraine, is offering its services to international bookshops and libraries that wish to purchase Ukrainian titles, the European & International Booksellers Federation's Newsflash reported. In addition to providing a book order service, HalInBook helps its customers with stock curation, preparation of promotional materials and social media content, and facilitates contact with Ukrainian publishers and authors. Find out more.

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In Norway, a new study has spotlighted a gender gap in reading. EIBF's Newsflash reported that according to the report, one in six Norwegian boys 8-19 years old did not read a single book last year. Among girls the same age, this figure is 9%. The worst result is seen among boys between the ages of 16 and 19, with 32% not reading a book in 2021. 

"We see boys on top of a lot of negative statistics," said Heidi Austlid, head of the Norwegian Publishers' Association. "This is our new gender equality challenge. Reading is not the answer, but one of the tools." 

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The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association's Meet Our Member blog series highlighted India Bookworld in Surrey, B.C., which has been serving readers since 1993. CIBA spoke with co-owner Dr. Rajwant Chilana about the store's incredible history, expanding into publishing, and his vision for the future. Among the highlights of the q&a: 

What is your vision for the store's future?
We are planning to increase our inventory of books and reach more people and libraries. We want to expand by including more South Asian languages and e-books. There are many prominent award-winning Indo-Canadian authors who have published bestsellers in various languages. India Bookworld is developing a special collection of works by local authors and will be actively promoting their publications among local customers and libraries. We also hope to involve more young people and foster lifelong reading habits in different languages. Some of our customers have asked us to host book reading clubs or literary festivals for South Asian writers and we are currently looking at options. --Robert Gray

Hong Kong novelist and screenwriter Ni Kuang, who wrote some 300 screenplays including The One-Armed Swordsman and The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, died July 3. He was 87. "Hailed as a giant in the Chinese literary world, Ni rose to fame with the New Adventures of Wisely series, which was first published in Chinese daily Ming Pao in 1963. He specialized in martial arts, wuxia and science fiction," Deadline reported. 

Ni wrote about 140 Wisely novels, featuring "a man who encounters strange creatures and aliens on futuristic adventures around the world. The stories have been adapted into movies, TV series, radio dramas and comics," Deadline noted. He won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2012 and the Jubilee Honor Award from the Hong Kong Screenwriters' Guild in 2018.

Born in Shanghai in 1935, Ni smuggled himself into Hong Kong in 1957 and never returned to the mainland. Beginning in 1965, he branched out into screenwriting, often working for the Shaw Brothers. His credits include The One-Armed Swordsman; Infra-Man; The 36th Chamber Of Shaolin; Enter the Fat Dragon and hundreds of others. He is also associated with Bruce Lee films The Big Boss and Fist of Fury. 

"While Ni's own novels, from series such as the Dark Heroine Muk Lan-fa and Wisely, were also adapted for the big screen, fans of his books focused mostly on the author's impact on younger generations of Chinese-language science fiction writers," the South China Morning Post wrote. 

The Hong Kong government's newly established Culture, Sports and Tourism Bureau published a statement in which it "expressed sorrow over the passing of renowned author Ni Kuang, and extended deepest condolences to his family.... The novels by Ni Kuang have been popular among readers in Hong Kong, and have been adapted into television and cinematic productions numerous times. Even though he has passed away, he will be fondly remembered by those who enjoyed his works."

Treats at Books & Company, Wisc.

Just in case you missed it (though feel free to celebrate today anyway), yesterday was World Chocolate Day. Among the indie booksellers showcasing their chocolate obsessions on social media were: 

Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock, Ill.: "It’s World Chocolate Day! Did you know that many of our fine chocolates are handmade by Abdallah Chocolates, a family-owned business in Minnesota? Which are your favorites? Is there one you’ve always wanted to try?"

Blacksburg Books, Blacksburg, Va.: "Happy World Chocolate Day! We’ve got Blacksburg-made goodies from @thechocolate_spikeinc and we’d like you to come get some before we eat it all! (That’s only sort of a joke. We’ve eaten a lot of chocolate today.)"

Books & Company, Oconomowoc, Wisc.: "How are you celebrating World Chocolate Day? We have a few delicious suggestions...."

Portkey Books, Safety Harbor, Fla.: "Where oh where could Waldo be? Wait, did you know it's WORLD CHOCOLATE DAY?!?!? MAYBE HE'S CELEBRATING AT Rocking Delicious !!!"

Posted on Facebook by Square Books, Oxford, Miss.: "It's a nice quiet day to get your Square Books fix!"

At Curious Iguana bookstore, Frederick, Md., bookseller and writer @PoorRobin shared a photo of the shop's latest sidewalk chalkboard message: "When the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be a dumpster fire, it's time for a new book."

At Simon & Schuster:

Toi Crockett has been promoted to the new role of director, independent sales, West.

Melissa Hurt has been promoted to the new role of director, independent sales, East.

Lauren Acciari has joined the company as national account manager, children's sales. She was previously mass merchandise sales manager at Independent Publishers Group.

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Danielle Kolodkin has joined Abrams as brand and partnership manager. She was formerly a manager with the Speakers Bureau at HarperCollins.

Hotel California: An Anthology of New Mystery Short Stories edited by Don Bruns (Blackstone Publishing) the first in the Music and Murder Mystery Series.

A sneak peek cast performance video was released for the stage adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Playbill reported that the upcoming New York City premiere "has extended its run by a week and will now play Lincoln Center's David H. Koch Theater through July 24. Performances of the cult favorite French musical begin July 13, with a gala performance set on July 14, Bastille Day."

The production, written by Richard Cocciante and Luc Plamondon, has played in 23 countries since premiering at the Palais des Congrès in Paris in 1998. The New York premiere, which will be performed in French with English supertitles, is directed by Gilles Maheu and choreographed by Martino Müller. It follows a Covid-related delay of more than a year.

The principal casting includes Angelo Del Vecchio as Quasimodo, Hiba Tawaji as Esmeralda, Daniel Lavoie as Frollo, Gian Marco Schiaretti as Gringoire, Yvan Pedneault as Phoebus, Jay as Clopin, and Emma Lépine as Fleur de Lys.

Eleanor Tomlinson (The Outlaws, Poldark) has joined the cast of the Netflix romantic drama series One Day, based on the novel by David Nicholls. Deadline reported that she will play Sylvie, who in the novel forms a relationship with male lead Dexter Mayhew. Also in the cast are Ambika Mod (This Is Going to Hurt) and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus). 

Shooting on One Day has begun this week in London, with production later moving to Scotland for further filming. The series comes from Doctor Foster producer Drama Republic, along with Universal International Studios and Focus Features.

Finalists have been released for the 2023 NSK Neustadt Prize for Children's and Young Adult Literature, which is awarded every other year to a living writer or author/illustrator with significant achievement in children's or YA literature. The winner, who will be named October 25 during Neustadt Lit Fest at the University of Oklahoma, receives $35,000, a silver medallion and a certificate at a public ceremony at the University of Oklahoma and is featured in an issue of World Literature Today. Check out the complete list of finalists here.

photo: Jordan Matter

Kate White is the author of eight standalone psychological thrillers and eight Bailey Weggins mysteries, including Such a Perfect Wife, which was nominated for an International Thriller Writers Award. White, former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine, is also the editor of The Mystery Writers of America Cookbook and author of several popular career books. Her newest thriller is The Second Husband (Harper, June 28, 2022).

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

The Second Husband is a gripping thriller about a woman whose "perfect" second marriage is rocked when police reinvestigate the murder of her first husband.

On your nightstand now: 

A Separation by Katie Kitamura
Watergate: A New History by Garrett M. Graff
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight
The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray  
Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

I always have a few books going at a time, and I try to make it a mix of one literary novel, at least one nonfiction book (such as a memoir or history), one mystery or thriller, and one book on personal development (ha, I'm still always trying!). I'm loving my current mix. I read Katie Kitamura's Intimacies earlier in the year and thought it was terrific, so I had to go next to her acclaimed 2017 work. Watergate is gripping, and it's been great to learn new details about that scandal, which really impacted my young adult life. I'm also thrilled to be reading Blight's book on Douglass after taking his amazing Yale class on the Civil War, open to the public online during the pandemic. (Can I please use this as an opportunity to sneak in a reference to one of my favorite Civil War books, Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase to Catch Lincoln's Killer by James L. Swanson?)

Though I'm not a big cozy mystery fan, how could I fail to check out a mystery that touches on Jane Austen? As for Four Thousand Weeks, it's an eye-opener and is really making me rethink how I schedule my life, and yes, even how I live it.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (which my mom gave me) tied with The Secret of Red Gate Farm (Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, book 6) by Carolyn Keene. Don't ask me how crushed I was when I learned as a young adult that there was no woman named Carolyn Keene, though I should have guessed at age 12 because my letters to her went unanswered.

Your top five authors:

Please, no. I could never narrow it down like that. I've loved hundreds of books, and so many have had knocked my socks off. Maybe instead I'll list a few authors I like so much that I ended up reading everything they wrote: Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, John Fowles and Sue Miller (she's one of my absolute favorite contemporary authors).

Book you've faked reading:

Several Faulkner novels in college.  

Book you're an evangelist for:

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt, a magical book (and great gift to give) that Sherlocks the Bard and attempts to clear up some of the many mysteries about him. This is tied with Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, a recent first novel that is so brilliant that I told everyone I could about it.

Book you've bought for the cover:

What It's Like to Be a Bird by David Allen Sibley. Gorgeous cover and fantastic title. I've been a birder for years, so it was easy to be seduced by this book cover. And the book totally delivers.

Book you hid from your parents:

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious. This scandalous novel from the 1950s, which I found in my aunt's basement in the '60s, is tame by today's standards, but back then almost every page could make you blush. 

Book that changed your life:

The Year of Living Dangerously by Christopher Koch. I read this riveting, dazzling novel--about an Australian foreign correspondent, Guy Hamilton, who is stationed in Jakarta at the time of the overthrow of Sukarno--after seeing the 1982 movie, and loved it as much as the film. I'd just gotten divorced from my first husband and felt very uncertain about the future, and the movie seemed to promise that the world was wide open to me and to anyone willing to take a chance the way Guy Hamilton does.

Favorite line from a book:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

From The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I loved this famous line from the moment I read it in high school, mainly because of how poetic it is. But as I've gotten older, it's resonated for me in a whole different way. The past really does call out for you in the second half of your life.

Five books you'll never part with:

Dubliners by James Joyce. I have to have a copy around because I reread the story "The Dead" in it every year. It's one of the most moving, heart-wrenching stories ever.

Last Seen Wearing by Hillary Waugh. A delicious, slow-burn police procedural from 1952, often called the first police procedural. I'm always afraid it will go out of print, so I have to have my own copy nearby. I'm a fan of the slow burn, and I tried to bring some of that into my newest thriller, The Second Husband. It helps to see how other authors do it effectively.

Jerusalem the Golden by Margaret Drabble. I adored this book when I read it years ago--it seemed to treat life as something full of promise--and though I haven't done so yet, I'm going to reread it one day. I have to keep my copy, because it's not available as an e-book.

Kissing the Gunner's Daughter by Ruth Rendell. One of my favorite mysteries/police procedurals ever, and I like to refer to it from time to time.

History of Art by H.W. Janson. I'm not nearly as knowledgeable as I would like to be, but I love art and spend a lot of time in museums and galleries. This book has been a good guide for me (as long as I overlook the lack of diversity).

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

A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley in a three-way tie with The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and The Last Time They Met by Anita Shreve. All three of these books left me absolutely breathless, and I'd love to re-experience that sensation.  

Books that made you cry:

I bawled like a baby reading The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, Middle Passage by Charles Johnson, Carry the One by Carol Anshaw, Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, Fraud by Anita Brookner and The White Hotel by D.M. Thomas. I'm so embarrassed to be caught crying while I'm reading a book ("sorry, there's something on my contact lens") but, damn, it always feels so good afterward.  

"Agnes--the first Agnes, who was my father's mother, not long dead, on whose island I find myself now, and whom I named my daughter after (if only to try to solve a mystery)--had always protected her love for her only child." Meghan Gilliss's contemplative first novel Lungfish examines such mysteries of family in an austere setting.

Her protagonist takes refuge from unnamed problems on an island off the coast of Maine, in her late grandmother's cabin, scraping a meager living from the rocks and the sea. In her fractured first-person narration, Tuck slowly releases information. She has brought along her young daughter, Agnes, named for the beloved grandmother. She is also accompanied by her husband, Paul, who is unwell. She has the field guides and religious texts her grandmother left behind, and little else. Paul's trouble and the issues they have fled on the mainland only gradually become clear, to Tuck as well as to readers.

Some chapters offer consecutive pages of narrative storytelling; some are very brief and take a more gestural or lyric approach, revealing Tuck's fragile grasp on her own story and history. The chronology shifts from present to past. Tuck's father, who is legally heir to the cabin where she squats with her family, is missing, and has always lived an unconventional life. "He looks off the rails because we cannot see his rails." Paul offers a new and different challenge. Tuck fearfully watches the calendar, knowing that when Maine's fall turns to winter, her family will no longer be safe on this island; just as fearfully, she watches for the executor of her grandmother's will. She scrambles the rocky beaches foraging for bladderwrack, rosehips, mussels and crabs, her toddler daughter in tow and knowing only this life. Tuck hides the key to the dory from her troubled husband between trips to the mainland for the most basic of provisions. It is a precarious system; mother and daughter flirt with starvation. A lone boat at sea allows Tuck to dream and hope.

Lungfish is a novel steeped in the harshness and beauty of the natural world, in which islands may be both real and metaphorical, where a woman may be accompanied by child and husband but also alone in navigating grief and responsibility. Tuck considers her relationships to her own father, mother, brother, her troubled husband and the growing Agnes, who "comes from different stock." Although this novel's setting is particular, its themes are universal. Atmospheric, haunted, but struck through with beauty and love, Lungfish is one to remember. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: A woman wrestles practical and existential questions of family and survival on an abandoned Maine island in this contemplative debut novel.

That spring and summer it became impossible to glance out the window without entertaining questions of physics, of multiverses collapsing onto themselves, of time lines breaking off like Antarctic ice shelves. Was all this really happening: masks and tyrants, aerosol sprays and gun-toting clowns?

--Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends

Shteyngart is writing about the summer of 2020, though I read the novel this spring. Over the past two years, my reading habits have taken a turn for the worse, and I mean that in a good way... kinda. I'm not reading less, nor am I reading bad books; I just can't seem to stop reading books about the end, to varying degrees, of the world, a dystopian habit I know I share with others now. 

I think I have Reader's Covid. What are the symptoms? Well, I just finished Cal Flyn's extraordinary book Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape, and am currently halfway through J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World. After that on my TBR list is Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's The Last Man. 

None of these works is about the Covid-19 pandemic, and yet all three portray a planet that has been lethally compromised by human habitation, so there's that. Flynn's book explores nature's reclamation of toxic landscapes like Chernobyl or the Salton Sea, offering occasional, if still unnerving, shreds of optimism: "We are in the midst of a huge, self-directed experiment in rewilding. Because abandonment is rewilding, in a very pure sense, as humans draw back and nature reclaims what was once hers."

In addition to worrying slightly about the potential side effects of my current reading habits, I also find myself wondering where all the masked readers have gone. Just yesterday, the Pew Research Center released a survey reporting that only 48% of respondents now say wearing masks around people indoors has been extremely or very effective at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, while the remainder describe masking up as no more than somewhat effective.

A few months ago, I wrote a short piece highlighting books that could be considered part of a developing Covid-19 pandemic lit genre. "Watch for masks," I suggested. "I still mask up regularly and take note of face masks appearing more often in the books I'm reading."  

"We Know You've (Probably) Ditched Your Face Mask, but It's Time to Dig It Out" was a headline in yesterday's HuffPost UK: "Go on the bus, the train, or head to any social gathering and you're unlikely to see many face masks today. A year ago, the view was completely different, and the year prior even more so. Since the relaxation of Covid rules, many of us have developed a pretty lax attitude to wearing facial protection when we're out and about. And we get it, it's nice to pretend Covid doesn't exist sometimes."

"Who was that masked man?" townsfolk in the Old (as seen on TV) West used to ask when the Lone Ranger rode away. "Wearing that mask, Clayton Moore became one of the most recognizable characters on the planet," Roy Peter Clark wrote in the summer of 2020. "Until the end of his life, he wore it with honor. If he were alive today, I bet he'd be wearing not one but two masks--both designed to save lives and help others."

Inspired to take action, I scrolled through social media posts in search of book trade face masks. I saw plenty of smiling faces--authors, booksellers, customers, publishing folks--and that was lovely, but I only turned up a half-dozen masked booksters. I know many booksellers are still wearing masks and bookshops have modified face mask policies, but the ubiquity has gone. 

Michael McCann at Gallery Bookshop

Scottish bookseller Michael McCann, who recently opened the Gallery Bookshop in Glasgow, told the Herald that he runs the business almost single-handedly and has requested that customers wear masks in an effort to help him avoid having to take time off work due to Covid, which he says could leave him with no option but to close. Linking to the article, McCann tweeted: "Right Michael, Do NOT do or say anything to upset anyone about Cov....... Shit!"

Maybe it's time to reread The Experience of Landscape, in which Jay Appleton explores the Prospect-Refuge theory through the lens of our oldest instincts for survival, as applied to our aesthetic experience of landscape. Consider one of your ancestors. Squatting near his morning blaze at the mouth of a cave, he surveys distant terrain--maybe open land, maybe high grass, maybe trees, maybe undergrowth--that might camouflage life-threatening hazards... and, hopefully, food.

Masking up at Flyleaf Books

A good provider, he makes calculations: the family's survival depends on how far he's willing to venture out on the open savanna, or into the forest, to hunt and gather. Stay in the cave too long and his family dies of hunger. Go too far away from it and he becomes prey. That he survived long enough to keep threads of your DNA going is a testament to his ability to strike a balance between the two. 

I make similar calculations with mask wearing. Covid-19 is still hunting us. I wake each morning and squat near my cave entrance, calculating the risks of a grocery store run. Refuge and prospect.

On July 2, 2020, I asked: "How does an independent bookseller celebrate Independence Day during a global pandemic? By masking up and handselling great reads at the proper social distance, damn it!" And what did the future hold for that writer? Well, here he is, two years later, still masked and reading dystopically.