"I was an indie bookstore kid. Growing up in New York City, I spent a lot of time reading on the floors of small bookstores all over the west side. I can still conjure certain corners and what felt to me like the 'secret places' in those stores. The first time I met a writer whose books I loved I was in an independent bookstore (I was eleven, and it was Madeleine L'Engle). And when I was first trying to write a book for kids, my mom and I went to an indie bookstore so that she could make me find the 'S's and put my hand on the place where my book might be someday. So the world of independent bookstores is at the very core of my experience as a reader and a writer. When I'm in a bookstore, I sometimes start talking to whoever is innocently standing nearby, I guess because I assume a kind of kinship."

Sarah and Jay Williams

Next Chapter Books, a new and used bookstore that debuted as a pop-up shop in Detroit, Mich., last fall, is hosting a grand opening celebration tomorrow in its new permanent location, the Detroit Metro Times reported.

Owners Sarah and Jay Williams found a space for their bookstore at 16555 E. Warren Ave., just down the street from where Next Chapter first opened as a pop-up inside the Alger Theater. They took possession of the new space in April, and after months of work had a soft opening there on September 19. On Thursday night they welcomed customers during the first ever E. Warrenfest, a neighborhood celebration, and a full grand opening celebration is scheduled for Saturday.

The store carries general-interest books for all ages with an eye toward local authors and authors from underrepresented communities. In addition to books, there are greeting cards, T-shirts, and tote bags, along with baked goods made by the owners' daughter. They began hosting book club meetings in the new space while it was still being renovated, and their future event plans include author signings, children's storytime sessions, and poetry readings.

The bookshop is sharing the space with Eastside Roasters, which will eventually operate a coffee shop in the back of the building and have a separate entrance. For now, pour-over coffee and Italian sodas can be acquired at a table near the front of the store.

The pop-up originally opened just after Thanksgiving and was supposed to run only through the holidays. The community response, however, was so strong that the Williamses extended their stay in the Alger Theater well into spring of this year. Their lease at 16555 E. Warren Ave. runs for five years, and they were awarded a $50,000 Motor City Match grant for their bookstore.

At the annual membership meeting yesterday during the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Tradeshow, taking place this week in Portland, Ore., PNBA president Lane Jacobson (Paulina Springs Books, Sisters, Ore.) set a tone of general optimism while acknowledging setbacks still felt from the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite financial and community impacts still reverberating from the shutdowns in 2020, the successes of the Bookseller Summer School professional development seminars online, summer and holiday catalogs, and a new book award fee structure, as laid out in overview by PNBA executive director Brian Juenemann, have together reinvigorated the organization.

Secretary/treasurer Melissa Demotte (The Well-Read Moose, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho) noted that revenue streams suggest that the association may yet end 2023 by breaking even, after ending 2022 with a roughly $25,000 loss. Providing a more detailed income-and-expense report of the contributing financial figures (available to members on the PNBA website), she noted that they'll update the information once the trade show margins have been calculated.

Membership is the highest it has been since 2010, at 157 now, as the result of a dedicated effort to connect with and follow up with stores that were not yet members.

Speaking in more detail about the book awards' new fee structure, Rosa Hernandez (Third Place Books, Seattle, Wash.) expressed relief that the books being submitted are fewer in number and higher in quality than had been seen previously. Additionally, the fee has created new revenue for a program that had been, up to that point, a financial loss, accepted in part for its capacity to foster goodwill in the industry. The continued engagement of publishers submitting, however, has reinforced that sense of goodwill and reaffirmed the awards' status as a respected, desirable, and important program in the book community.

Members were encouraged to volunteer for the book award committee as well as the education committee, as both programs continue to support the association's mission. No member is too new to take part, vice-president Sarah Hutton (Village Books & Paper Dreams, Bellingham, Wash.) pointed out. These opportunities don't require expertise sometimes as much as they need fresh perspectives.

Near the meeting's end, Jacobson held a vote on recent revisions to the by-laws, which were mostly efforts to clarify changes made in 2021, regarding membership tiers, board vacancies, and advisory roles filled by past members to pass along institutional knowledge. The vote passed. --Dave Wheeler

Scholastic is launching the Black Bookselling Conference: Connect. Build. Elevate, a free, virtual conference to take place on November 1. The conference aims to support Black-owned bookstores, Black booksellers, and advocates by creating a space for dialogue and action and to showcase a collection of Scholastic books centering the histories and present-day realities of Black people in children's literature while prioritizing Black stories, storytellers, and the communities they serve and reflect.

The live, broadcast event will include panels featuring authors and illustrators such as Tami Charles, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Jamar Nicholas, as well as educators in children's literature. A highlight of the program will be an open forum with Scholastic trade staff to offer bookselling tools, merchandising materials, and resources.

To help plan the conference, Scholastic has formed a steering committee of Black booksellers from around the country, including members of the American Booksellers Association and the regional booksellers associations.

Julia Davis, owner of the Bookworm Bookstore, Powder Springs, Ga., and a member of the steering committee, said, "My hope for the Black Booksellers Conference is to help open the door to leveling the playing field. So often we struggle to get some of the big-name authors, the financing and so much more to help us to not only stay open but to help make a difference in our community. The Black Bookseller Conference could be a great asset not only to the booksellers but the publisher, allowing the concerns and differences to be heard plus providing education and resources that black bookstores don't always have access to."

Ellie Berger, executive v-p and president of Scholastic Trade Publishing, said, "We are thrilled to support the Black bookselling community from around the country with a much-needed platform focused on this vital group of professionals. With the strategic contributions from the steering committee, the Black Bookselling Conference will foster community while sharing an amazing slate of Scholastic authors and illustrators. We hope this conference sparks lively discussions and that participants feel empowered and walk away with new tools to enrich their bookstores."

For more information and to register, click here.

Munro Magruder

Munro Magruder, associate publisher and marketing director at New World Library, is retiring after 33 years and will leave the company on September 29. He joined New World Library in 1990 after having been v-p of sales at Little, Brown from 1984 to 1989. Prior to that, he was a sales representative at Holt, Rinehart & Winston from 1980 to 1984 and at Viking Penguin from 1977 to 1979.

Munro is beloved by his colleagues all over the industry, and we wish him the very best in his new adventures. After September, he can be reached at munro513@yahoo.com.

A cyberattack against event management company Eventcombo disrupted ticket sales Tuesday for an upcoming Anderson's Bookshop event with Fourth Wing author Rebecca Yarros, the Naperville Sun reported.

Tickets for the event were scheduled to go on sale at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and at around 11:15 a.m., the Naperville, Ill., bookstore started receiving calls from customers about problems with the ticketing site. An Anderson's employee told the Sun that for the next hour, the "longest pause between calls was about 30 seconds."

Before Eventcombo's website crashed, some customers were able to purchase tickets, but at the time the Anderson's team could not track how many were actually sold or to whom. By Tuesday evening, the bookstore could confirm that those transactions were valid.

On Wednesday, the team announced that a little less than 300 of the 400 available tickets had sold, and they confirmed that no personal information was compromised in the attack. The remaining tickets then went on sale, but customers continued to experience some problems with Eventcombo's website.

The event, scheduled for Saturday, November 11, is one of only a few stops Yarros is making to promote Iron Flame (Red Tower/Entangled Publishing), the sequel to Fourth Wing. Ginny Wehrli-Hemmeter, director of events and marketing at Anderson's, noted that "other stops across the country sold out of their tickets within minutes. We were expecting to do the same."

In a message to customers posted late Tuesday, the bookstore wrote, in part: "Remember as you process your frustration about this, that we all share a common enemy and that is the people who chose to unleash this chaos. May they step hard on a lego with the middle of their heel, and then right into a thick puddle of cat-sick while wearing socks. Everyday. Forever."

Sherif Meleka read from and discussed his debut novel, Suleiman's Ring, translated by Raymond Stock (Hoopoe/AUC Press), at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Fla. Pictured: Meleka (l.) with general manager Ed Boland.

"Next time you come by the store, be sure to appreciate Delilah’s beautiful artwork! Do you recognize the quote?" Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative, Alamosa, Colo., challenged customers with the shop's latest sidewalk chalkboard art.

At Holiday House, Peachtree, and Pixel+Ink:

Tiffany Coelho has joined as marketing coordinator, school and library. Coelho was previously office manager for the Children's Book Council and an intern for Seven Stories Press.

Saskia den Boon has joined as marketing assistant, school and library. Den Boon has been an intern with Beacon Press.

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Cameron Moore will be joining Candlewick Press as sales assistant.

The Traitor: A Novel by Ava Glass (Bantam).

Apple TV has released first-look images for season three of Slow Horses, based on Real Tigers, the third novel in Mick Herron's espionage series. Deadline reported that the first two episodes of Season 3 will debut on December 1, with new episodes to be released individually each Friday through December 29.

Gary Oldman leads a cast that includes Kristin Scott Thomas, Jack Lowden, Saskia Reeves, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Freddie Fox, Chris Reilly, Samuel West, Sophie Okonedo, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Kadiff Kirwan, and Jonathan Pryce. Ṣọpẹ Dìrísù joins the new season's cast as Sean Donovan, former head of security at the British embassy in Istanbul; and Katherine Waterston plays Alison Dunn, an MI5 agent "who uncovers a dark secret at the heart of the agency," Deadline noted.

(via Booker Prizes Instagram)

The six-title shortlist has been released for the 2023 Booker Prize for Fiction. The finalists each receive £2,500 (about $3,070) and a specially bound edition of their book. The winner, who gets a further £50,000 (about $61,380), will be announced November 26 during a prize ceremony at at Old Billingsgate in London. This year's shortlisted titles are:

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery
This Other Eden by Paul Harding
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo 
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Noting that the shortlisted titles are "full of hope, humor and humanity,” the judges said the finalists "address many of 2023’s most pressing concerns: climate change, immigration, financial hardship, the persecution of minorities, political extremism and the erosion of personal freedoms. They feature characters in search of peace and belonging or lamenting lost loves. There are books that are grounded in modern reality, that shed light on shameful episodes in history and which imagine a terrifying future."

None of the six authors has previously been shortlisted for the prize. There are two debuts--Western Lane and If I Survive You--on the shortlist, which features one British, one Canadian, two Irish and two American authors. 

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Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology, and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias by John Lorinc (Coach House Books) has won the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Global Cities Book Award. Sponsored by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Pattis Family Foundation, the $25,000 award honors books that "deepen our understanding of the role cities play in addressing critical global challenges."

The two runners up were Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City by Jorge Almazán and Studiolab (ORO Editions) and The Moving City: Scenes from the Delhi Metro and the Social Life of Infrastructure by Rashmi Sadana (University of California Press). Each finalist receives a $2,500 prize.

Vanessa Vardon, director of the Pritzker Forum on Global Cities at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said, "Cities are more than just locations--they are actors that shape our global economy, culture, and politics. And with artificial intelligence set to reshape our world, cities will be at the forefront of these changes. Dream States offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the challenges and opportunities of smart city technology."

Judging committee chair Eugenie Birch, co-director of the UPenn Institute for Urban Research, added, "Dream States goes beyond the concept of a smart city as a utopia for tech companies and prepares us for the impact of technology on the city and residents. This book covers pressing, timely geopolitical issues affecting every city around the world."

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The shortlist for the 2023 Financial Times/Schroders Business Book of the Year has been selected. The winner, who receives £30,000 (about $36,900), will be announced December 4. The other shortlisted authors each receive £10,000 ($12,300).

Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf said that the shortlist "covers some of the biggest issues of our time--from the advance of artificial intelligence to the relentless pressure on natural resources--in books that are exceptionally well researched and reported."

The shortlist:
Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future by Ed Conway (Knopf)
Right Kind of Wrong: Why Learning to Fail Can Teach Us to Thrive by Amy Edmondson (Atria)
How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors Behind Every Successful Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner (Currency)
Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (Simon & Schuster)
Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara (St. Martin's Press)
The Coming Wave: AI, Power and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma by Mustafa Suleyman with Michael Bhaskar (Crown)

photo: Michelle Grace Hunder

Maria Lewis is the author of the internationally published Supernatural Sisters series of eight novels, which includes the Aurealis Award-winning The Witch Who Courted Death; titles for Marvel (Mockingbird: Strike Out); and Assassin's Creed: Mirage: Daughter of No One. As a screenwriter, she has worked on projects for Netflix UK, AMC, Ubisoft, DC Comics, Stan, SBS, Netflix ANZ, Nickelodeon, ABC, and many more. She's the producer, host, and writer of the podcasts The Phantom Never Dies--about the first superhero--and Josie and the Podcats, which is about the 2001 cult film. Her 2023 directorial debut, The House That Hungers, is based on her award-winning short story of the same name. The Graveyard Shift (Angry Robot) is a murder mystery that pays homage to slasher films of the '90s. Lewis lives in Australia.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Scream for the millennial generation, The Graveyard Shift follows in the legacy of Wes Craven and John Carpenter. It's a slasher with a feminist twist.

On your nightstand now:

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann, which is a nonfiction tome and may seem a bit unexpected, because I'm better known for writing fantastical yarns. But I started out my career as a journalist, and have been on a bit of a nonfiction spree lately between rereading Patrick Radden Keefe's Say Nothing and American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Matilda by Roald Dahl, no doubt. I think every little girl imagines themselves with superpowers at some point, but as a kid who was a little twisted and loved dark stories, a protagonist who used them for the purpose of revenge deeply appealed to me.

Your top five authors:

Witi Ihimaera, Richelle Mead, Gillian Flynn, Thomas Harris, and Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Book you've faked reading:

On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The person I was dating at the time made it their entire personality. When they asked me if I'd read it, I was, like, "oh yeah, totally, love stories about men... *checks notes*... travelling places."

Book you're an evangelist for:

I'm gonna cheat, but Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy series and accompanying Bloodlines series. I think at the time, even though those books were a massive hit, they were somewhat swamped in the Twilight hysteria and not properly appreciated as the masterpieces of urban fantasy that they are. Mead, who's such an accomplished writer across all of the fantasy subgenres, crafted a unique world that fit so seamlessly within Romanian mythology and our preexisting reality that I was blown away at the time. Even now when I dip back in, somehow those books get even better, and the series evolves as it goes on--which so few do--and fully matures as it moves through the Bloodlines novels (which might even be superior). Obsessed with the fully fleshed characters she's able to create and the prickly, interesting, complicated women she allows us to spend time with.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon, haha. This was 2017 before it had become a phenomenon, and I was working in L.A. on the third Annabelle movie. The Ripped Bodice had just opened, and I was perusing the shelves, wasting time, and froze in front of the original cover, which wasn't as polished as the rerelease, circa 2022. I wasn't quite sure what I was seeing and just thought, "oh my God, that looks hectic"--and it was! More recently, Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman was one of my favourite reads of 2022, and I picked that up knowing nothing about it. I was just obsessed with the clever cover design.

Book you hid from your parents:

I was banned as a kid from watching The X-Files by my grandparents, so I used to keep up to date with the series by reading the novelisations they would publish for each of the episodes. I would sneak them out from the library by hiding them between other books so that I wouldn't get caught. Ellen Steiber's novelisation of "Squeeze" was my favourite, but Voltage by Easton Royce was up there, too.

Book that changed your life:

Dead Until Dark, the first novel in Charlaine Harris's Southern Vampire Mysteries. She's another writer I admire because of her ability to hop between genres so seamlessly, always creating worlds that feel so expansive and the whole while also being specific to that story and that setting. I read Dead Until Dark when I was a teenager and I was just beginning to tinker with the idea of maybe one day I would like to write a book. But I was working as a cadet reporter at the local newspaper at the time and just couldn't see a path forward for the kind of stories that interested me. Dead Until Dark was that. It was scary, it was sexy, it was specific, it tackled capital 'I' important subjects, like racism and sexism, while also managing to be a hugely entertaining piece of genre literature. That era--of which I think Kelley Armstrong, Keri Arthur, and Patricia Briggs are also such vital parts--showed me that there was an audience for these kinds of stories and that really rad women were writing them.

Favorite line from a book:

"There are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights, the light of all lights." --from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Still absolutely kicks.

Five books you'll never part with:

Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid; The Rap Year Book by Shea Serrano; Persuasion by Jane Austen; 99 Percent Mine by Sally Thorne; and Coverups & Copouts by Tom Lewis.  

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

This might be a bit of a clichéd answer, but The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. Like most, it had me up at 3 a.m. sobbing my guts out. It's a novel I return to all the time, whether that's rereading the whole thing or just favourite passages. A masterpiece, imho.

If you could plan a movie marathon to play with The Graveyard Shift, what would it be?

Well, the key to a great movie marathon is not overstaying your welcome--apologies to the Star Wars marathons--so it's crucial to know when to get in and when to get out. Thankfully, the horror genre runs tight! So I'd start with Scream (the essential text for The Graveyard Shift); I'd follow with Green Room (it ties music and politics together in the genre setting so powerfully); and I'd end on Mimi Cave's Fresh, which feels contemporary and pop.

Working as an editorial assistant and coffee runner at the glamorous Bridal Bazaar magazine, Amal Awad's charming hijab-wearing heroine in Courting Samira dreams of pursuing a career in photography, though Samira's Palestinian-Australian parents would prefer she focus her energies on finding a Muslim husband. Australian author Awad's big-hearted novel is set in the suburbs of Sydney and colorfully populated with a sprawling, fun-loving, often eccentric Arab community who are fond of lively music, banquet-style feasts, and strict rules about the mingling of their unmarried sons and daughters.

At 27 years old, Samira prefers being single and living at home to marrying one of the numerous "dud suitors" who come calling at her parents' house. She can't imagine ever meeting the "Arab warrior" type she yearns for, considering she's stuck in a "Victorian-era-style courtship" routine where the steps leading to marriage involve a complicated social dance between two families. To make matters worse, her evil cousin Zahra has just announced her engagement to the handsome and successful Malek. Zahra, with her high-powered job as a lawyer, loves to belittle Samira's communications degree, but still insists that Samira be her bridesmaid. It's enough to make this heroine drown her sorrows in a tub of ice cream.

Delectable dishes and sweet treats feature in Awad's eighth book, her first to be published in the U.S. Awad (The Things We See in the Light; In My Past Life I Was Cleopatra) refers to Courting Samira as a "Muslim rom-com that is funny and sexy without the sex." A quick-witted narrator with a dreamy imagination, Samira must navigate her life within prescribed religious and cultural constraints that don't allow much room for amorous exploits. Fortunately, she has a brilliant sense of humor and a skeptical best friend, Lara, whose constant refrain is "all boys suck."

Immersed in the bridesmaid responsibilities foisted upon her by the bossy Zahra, Samira sees her quiet life suddenly fill with melodrama, and she begins a budding flirtation with the intriguing stranger she keeps bumping into on her coffee runs. With illicit romance in the air, Zahra's wedding around the corner, and career decisions looming, can Samira stay true to herself while fulfilling the wishes of her family?

Featuring a glossary of Arabic words and phrases to enhance the reading experience and remaining loyal to its feel-good genre, Courting Samira is a pleasing, frolicsome drama with a global audience in mind. --Shahina Piyarali, reviewer

Shelf Talker: A young editorial assistant at Bridal Bazaar magazine must navigate the complex rules of courtship in her eccentric Arab community in this big-hearted romantic comedy set in Sydney, Australia.

Learning to read in India meant hearing its pleasures shouted at you by pavement booksellers before you even knew how to read.... I admit it. I am an addict. Addicted to reading by those pavement magicians shouting at us like circus barkers: those booksellers endlessly rearranging their displays and corrupting us with their seductive litany of titles--as they lured us away from the little world of the self into whole galaxies of the imagination. 

--Gita Mehta, Snakes and Ladders

If you live, and read, long enough, you will inevitably outlive some of your favorite authors. There's no escaping it. In The Age Booklist newsletter this week, literary editor Jason Steger asked a pertinent question: "How do you feel when a writer whose work you love dies?" It was a teaser for a piece by David Free about the late Martin Amis. 

"Losing a favorite writer is like losing any loved one," Free wrote. "You forget the valleys and think about the peaks. You see the life whole.... The work is all done; there won't be any more of it. As long as our favorite writers are alive, we cling to the hope that there will be more masterpieces." 

Steger recalled times when his favorite authors died, including the undeservedly neglected Brian Moore: "With other favorites who have died, my reaction has been different. If I have read most of their work I try to keep one book for the future, knowing that to read it immediately would be the end of our reader-writer affair. I'm thinking of the great Irish novelist Brian Moore. I reckon I've read almost all his books, and they have always given me great pleasure, but I have kept his last, The Magician's Wife, for a special day. It was published in 1997 and Moore died early in 1999.... If you haven't read him, do try."

In a 1999 LA Weekly tribute to Moore, Tom Christie had observed that the "most accomplished and least fashionable writer in Los Angeles died last week."

When I was a bookseller, I'd often try to handsell the few (of his 25-plus) novels still in print at the time (The Statement, The Magician's Wife, Catholics) to customers looking for something "new." When I mentioned his name, they would usually respond: "Who?" 

I can still scan my bookcase and see a long line of Moore's novels there, but if he doesn't have the readers he deserves by now, he probably never will. "They're all such great readers, Miss Hearne thought, it's a pity they don't like the same books as I do," he wrote in The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne, 

As we get older, we outlive more and more of our favorite writers. The literary ghosts gradually become a crowd.

Which brings me to Gita Mehta. When I learned last weekend that she had died, I felt another thread break with an author I admired. It was also just a little personal because, in addition to reading her books, I'd met her briefly a couple of times. 

Like many readers of Mehta's work, I started with the brilliant Karma Cola: Marketing the Mystic East. Although originally published in 1979, the Vintage International Edition (1994) was my first copy ("Never before had the Void been pursued with such optimism and such razzle dazzle. Everyone suspected that whatever America wanted, America got. Why not Nirvana?").

Actually, I met Mehta twice before I read her. The first time was in 1992, at a book launch party for management "guru" (an unfortunate term in this context, yet still apparently out there) Tom Peters's Liberation Management.

A who's-who list of Random House folks had traveled north to Manchester Center, Vt., for the event at the Northshire Bookstore (Peters lived nearby at the time). Among the celebrity guests were Gita and her husband, Sonny Mehta, the longtime president and editor-in-chief of Knopf who died in 2019. When they arrived, it was a genuine celebrity moment as they entered what was then a much smaller bookstore.

Sonny and Gita Mehta (photo: Miriam Berkley)

As it happened, that was also the fall Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient was published. I'd read a galley in the summer and, when the book was released, handsold a ton of copies. So I was introduced to the Mehtas as "the English Patient guy." It was a good night.

The second encounter happened the following spring, during my first American Booksellers Association trade show, in Miami. At an evening dinner for novelist Anne Rice in the legendary Biltmore Hotel, I watched the Mehtas make another entrance through the crowd. It was impressive; it was, in fact, quietly spectacular.

Now they're both gone. Outliving your favorite book people is kind of tragic. How do you mourn strangers anyway? Well, I just reread Karma Cola and am reading Snakes and Ladders again now. But I'm also wondering what Gita Mehta's other readers in the U.S. are doing this week. Most of the obituaries I've seen are from Indian media. If I were still a bookseller, I'd be on a serious "Read this!" mission right about now.

"Surely there was no other country in the world where booksellers jumped onto the steps of moving trains," she wrote in Snakes and Ladders, "clinging with one hand to the iron bars of a window and with the other pushing forward a cane basket brimming with books--cajoling, exhorting, begging you to read. Or where the ability to read was thought synonymous with a longing to read."