Shelf Awareness for Thursday, May 17, 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

News

Notes: Wily Indies; New NBN Publishers

"Although the number of independent book stores in Colorado Springs is dwindling, a few are still going strong by adapting, evolving and embracing technology," the Pueblo Business Journal reported. In March, for example, Poor Richard's, which operates a restaurant, wine bar and toy store, added new books to its used book selection and has begun hosting book signings and meetings, largely in response to the closing of the Chinook Bookshop two years ago.

Covered Treasures Bookstore in Monument has added greeting cards that "can't be found at chain stores," is participating in community events and is supporting local authors.

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Comparing independent booksellers in Los Angeles to "Darwin's finches," LA Weekly noted that the surviving indies "have found niches and creative ways to stay alive in a tough business and an even tougher town."

LA Weekly focused on "some world-class bookstores, staffed by some world-class booksellers. In this issue, we celebrate those stores--from east to west, Vroman’s, Skylight, Book Soup and Dutton’s, along with two relative newcomers, Family and Diesel--and the book buyers, owners, event planners, publicists and sales clerks who work in them."

In a stirring tribute worthy of Hollywood, the article continued: "These people are clever, wise, savvy, and by turns funny and tragic. Despondent at times about the future of their industry yet determined to see it through in some as-yet-unknown fashion, they and their workplaces are gloriously idiosyncratic in a culture veering precariously toward sameness."

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Yesterday voters in five southwestern Oregon counties defeated proposals to increase taxes to compensate for lower federal timber subsidies, and as a result, services will be curtailed and one county library system will remain shut, according to today's New York Times.

Jackson County voters rejected a measure to raise property taxes so that 15 public libraries, which closed April 6, could be reopened. The county administrator said the county might "might seek financial arrangements with cities or schools to run the libraries."

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Crime does pay for Joanne Sinchuk, owner of Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach, Fla. According to the Palm Beach Post, when Sinchuk moved from Sunny Isles Beach to "the plaza in the Pineapple Grove Arts District plaza in 2002, hers was one of the only shops in the plaza. Now, it's almost full and has two restaurants. And more stores are being built across the street."

Sinchuk said she "knew the niche market was where the business was. And I wanted a mystery theme." She's excited about the growth of the plaza and its "potential to bring more business into her 1,000-square-foot store, which houses about 10,000 titles. She also ships books around the world, which accounts for 30% of her business."

Her niche includes three bookcases dedicated to state authors: "I like to say I am the world leader in signed Florida mystery books. Certain authors have told me that I've sold more of their books than anyone else, even the chain stores."

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The Sudbury Town Crier profiled Jane Van Buskirk. The owner of Bearly Read Books in Sudbury, Mass., since 1989 will retire in June, but the bookshop will continue under new ownership.

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Noted: Amazon.com is now offering music for digital download without digital rights management protection, meaning that the music can be used on any player, including iPods, and can be copied easily for free. For now, Amazon is offering music from only one major label, EMI, and thousands of independent music companies, so many popular songs are not yet available for the program. Today's New York Times pointed out that only three months ago, Apple CEO Steven Jobs urged the music industry to stop using DRM.

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Effective immediately, the following companies are being distributed by National Book Network:

  • Kelley Blue Book, publisher of the guidebook that includes factory list price and cash value on thousands of vehicles. Formerly distributed by PGW, Kelley Blue Book is at booth 3809 at BEA.
  • Salina Bookshelf, a publisher of textbooks, children's picture books, reference books and electronic media in Navajo and English. (Booth 944.)
  • Hannnover House Publisher, a publisher of fine literature and nonfiction books as well as a full service media and entertainment company. Besides books, the company markets and distributes feature films theaters, home video and television. (Booth 3808.)
  • Tatra Press, Suffern, N.Y., publishes literary fiction and general trade titles and was formerly distributed by Midpoint. (Booth 3805.)
  • Miles Kelly, Great Bardfield, England, a children's publisher of fiction, poetry, history and geography. (Booth 3809.)


BINC: Your donation can help rebuild lives and businesses in Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and beyond. Donate Today!


BEA NYC: The ABA Bag Check Room--and Luxe Giveaway

HarperCollins is sponsoring the ABA Bag Check Room (Room 1C01) at the Javits Center for booksellers Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m., and Sunday, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. As part of the deal, Harper is encouraging booksellers to try its paperback Luxe books--"larger print but not LARGE PRINT," as Carl Lennertz puts it. To that end, booksellers who are attending and whose colleagues back at the store want a copy of one of the titles listed below should fill out a plain mailing label, note the title they want in a bottom corner of the label and take the labels to the bag check room.

The available Luxe editions are:
  • Carved in Sand by Cathryn Ramin
  • Religious Literacy by Steven Prothero
  • Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles
  • The Witch of Portobello by Paulo Coelho
  • Blue Zone by Andrew Gross
  • Hurricane Punch by Tim Dorsey
  • Yiddish Policeman's Union by Michael Chabon
  • Land of Mango Sunsets by Dorothea Benton Frank
  • Portrait of an Unknown Woman by Vanora Bennett
  • Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart
  • Life's Golden Ticket by Brendon Burchard
Carl adds he'll probably have to cut off the total at 1,000. For more information, contact him at carl@harpercollins.com.


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


Media and Movies

Media Heat: John Ashbery on Nonsense and Fantasy

This morning on the Today Show: Mario Batali, author of Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home (Ecco, $34.95, 9780060734923/0060734922).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: John Ashbery, whose latest book is A Worldly Country: New Poems (Ecco, $23.95, 9780061173837/0061173835). As the show put it: "In this landmark conversation, John Ashbery talks about his fascination with nonsense and fantasy, beginning with Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Those books involve incomprehension, parody and an extreme use of non sequitur--qualities that for Ashbery define the way we live now."

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Thomas Mallon, author of Fellow Travelers: A Novel (Pantheon, $25, 9780375423482/0375423486).

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Today on Oprah, a segment on an outdoor living space makeover features Australian gardening TV show host Jamie Durie, author of Patio (Allen & Unwin, $24.95, 9781741146547/1741146542) and The Outdoor Room (Allen & Unwin, $34.95, 9781741750218/1741750210), both distributed here by IPG.

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Today the Martha Stewart Show spices things up with Marco Pierre White, author of The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef (Bloomsbury, $24.95, 9781596913615/1596913614).

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Tonight on ABC's Nightline: Janet Doman, daughter of child development pioneer Glenn Doman, who founded the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, and author with her father of the Gentle Revolution series of parenting titles. The newest title in the series is How Smart Is Your Baby (Square One, $16.95, 9780757001949/0757001947), and the "classic" is How to Teach Your Baby to Read (Square One, $13.95, 9780757001857/0757001858). The show follows two mothers through a year of study at the Institutes to help with their children.

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Brink Lindsey, author of The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture (Collins, $26.95, 9780060747664/0060747668).

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Yin and yang on tonight's Colbert Report:

Tom Delay, the former House Republican leader and author of No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight (Sentinel, $25.95, 9781595230348/1595230343)
Randy Kearse, author of Street Talk: Da Official Guide to Hip-Hop & Urban Slanguage (Barricade, $19.95, 9781569803202/156980320X)



This Weekend on Book TV: The War Against Hope

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, May 19

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment that first aired in 1997, Jack Rakove, author of Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution (Vintage, $17, 9780679781219/0679781218 ), reexamined the issues that the framers of the Constitution had to solve.

9 p.m. After Words. USA Today's Washington correspondent Kathy Kiely interviews Rod Paige, author of The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education (Thomas Nelson, $25.99, 9781595550026/159555002X). Paige, Secretary of Education from 2001 to 2005, says teachers' unions have too much power and are blocking needed reforms in the nation's educational system. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.) 

Sunday, May 20

7 p.m. General Assignment. Republican political operative Victor Gold is the author of Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP (Sourcebooks, $26.95, 9781402208416/1402208413). He argues that the Republican Party should embrace the vision of Barry Goldwater. (Re-airs Monday at 7 a.m.)

8 p.m. History on Book TV. Heather Ewing, an architectural historian and author of The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian (Bloomsbury USA, $29.95, 9781596910294/1596910291), recounts the life of James Smithson, the benefactor of the Smithsonian Institution.

 


Books & Authors

Image of the Day: All Those Moments

Rutger Hauer, movie villain extraordinaire and Blade Runner star, signs his new autobiography, All Those Moments: Stories of Heroes, Villains, Replicants, and Blade Runners (HarperCollins, $24.95, 9780061133893/0061133892), at Diesel, A Bookstore in Malibu, Calif., last week. Diesel's Melissa Lion reported that the event was "spectacular--standing room only. The author was generous and kind. We loved him!"

 



Book Review

Children's Review: Edward's Eyes

Edward's Eyes by Patricia MacLachlan (Atheneum Books, $15.99 Hardcover, 9781416927433, August 2007)



Patricia MacLachlan's novels are like poems: the end sends readers back to the beginning to see how the writer accomplished such a literary feat in so few words. Any fan of the author knows that she is attuned to the seasons: the smells, the tastes, the sounds. Her books about the heroine first introduced in the Newbery Medal-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall follow Sarah through the seasons on a farm and the cycle of life.

Edward's Eyes is a summer book. It threads together themes of baseball, dance and music, fireworks, fearlessness and fragility--seamlessly. The youngest of four children, narrator Jake is three years old when his brother Edward is born. In the time-honored tradition of his loving family, it is Jake's job to look after infant Edward. The book begins with a prologue that sets up a sense of foreboding, greatly leavened by the moments that 11-year-old Jake recounts as a series of flashbacks. While Edward is on the toilet, for instance, Jake reads to him about the infield fly rule in baseball, only to learn that Edward had been stalling ("I went a long time ago") because he likes it when Jake reads to him. Later, Edward's perseverance shines through when he teaches himself to deliver a knuckleball, or zeroes in on a pitch as a batter. And when Sabine is born, it's Edward's turn to take care of her ("Have you noticed . . . that she brings our babies home and lets us raise them?" Jake says to Edward). The family suffers a seemingly insurmountable loss that could destroy them all if they were to keep silent. Instead, they cautiously begin to dance again and return to the baseball field. They discover that with their loss comes an unforeseeable gift. It is MacLachlan's gift to capture life as it is, in all its entanglements of joy and sorrow.--Jennifer M. Brown


The Bestsellers

AbeBooks.com Bestsellers: Great Gatsby Again

The following were the bestselling books at AbeBooks.com during the week ended Sunday, May 13:
 
1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Eagle and the Raven by James A. Michener
3. The Children of Hurin by J.R.R. Tolkien
4. The Secret edited by Rhonda Byrne
5. American Tall Tales by Adrien Stoutenberg
6. On the Beach by Nevil Shute
7. Little Blue Book of Advertizing by Steve Lance
8. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
9. The Quest for Character by John MacArthur
10. American 24-Karat Gold: Classic American Short Stories edited by Yvonne Collioud Sisko

[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]


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