Harry Goes Hollywood (and New Orleans and New York, too).

Seated on "an enormous gold throne with plush red cushions," J.K. Rowling opened her brief U.S. tour Monday morning at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, where she read from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, answered a few questions and then signed free copies of her book for 1,600 lucky students.

According to the Los Angeles Times, "To handle what the author admits has become an 'unmanageable' situation, Rowling's American publisher, Scholastic, came up with a novel plan to distribute tickets: 40 schools were chosen randomly by LAUSD and given 'Sorting Hats' by which to select 40 students each to attend the event. Every winner was also given a free copy of the final Potter book, Deathly Hallows, with the author signing all 1,600 copies after she had read." The Times also featured a brief video of the author signing copies and meeting the kids.  

Part of her Open Book Tour, Rowling's first appearance in this country since 2000 will be followed by events Thursday in New Orleans and Friday at Carnegie Hall in New York.

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More about Literary Life Bookstore & More, Grand Rapids, Mich., which opened October 2 in an 85-year-old former bank building. According to Rapid Growth Media, owner Roni Devlin has spent two years renovating the building, where she also lives, investing some $350,000. An infectious disease physician who apparently isn't busy enough, Devlin is also working on a book on "the biography of influenza."

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In a roundup of retailers on "the Avenue" in Greenwich, Conn., the Boston Globe travel section leads with Diane's Books, a shop with "the kind of barely constrained clutter that encourages browsing, and before you know it, an hour has passed uninterrupted by the chirping of cellphones (which owner Diane Garrett wisely bans)." 

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More on Barnes & Noble chairman Len Riggio's purchases of company stock. In the past week, Riggio has bought a total of 400,000 shares, not "just" 300,000, as was reported here yesterday, according to today's Wall Street Journal, which has updated figures. In addition, the paper calculated that the 200,000 shares he bought in August and September for about $6.6 million have appreciated by more than 14%--or about $924,000. As the research director for InsiderScore.com put it: "If you'd followed him the first time into the stock, you'd already have some nice upside to show for it."

B&N spokesperson Mary Ellen Keating told the Journal: "He's bought shares in the past, and he continues to believe that Barnes & Noble is a great investment, so he's showing support for the stock." 

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Germany's ZDF Television and the tabloid Bild am Sonntag assembled a list of "titles stolen most often from the stands of 15 leading German publishers" at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week.

"It's amazing. People steal books whenever they can," said Gregor Moeller, marketing expert at Luebbe Publishing House. "You hardly put a bunch out there, and one hour later, they're all gone."

According to ABC News, Dan Brown was one of Luebbe's authors making the most-stolen book index this year. "We just printed 600,000 paperback editions of his recent Diabolus," Moeller said, "and we took plenty of extras to the Frankfurt Book Fair, but we could hardly manage to keep up the supplies. It's as if people have been waiting for those paperback editions to appear on the stand, so they could steal them."

The German translation of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was number seven on the most-stolen book list.

The Women's National Book Association seeks nominations for the Lucile Micheels Pannell Award, which goes to two bookstores--one general and one children's bookstore--that excel at working "within the community to instill the love of reading in young people."

The awards will be presented at BookExpo America in Los Angeles next year. Winners receive $1,000 and a piece of original art by a children's book illustrator.

To make nominations, send the name of the store; its address and phone number; contact person at the store with e-mail address; a sentence or two explaining why the store deserves the award; and the nominator's name and connection, if any, to the nominated store.

Please send your nomination to mary.james@ingrambook.com or to Mary Grey James, Pannell Award Nomination, 2200 Sharondale Dr., Nashville, Tenn. 37215. The deadline for nominations is January 11, 2008.

 

This morning on the Today Show: Will Bowen, author of A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted (Doubleday, $16.95, 9780385524582/0385524587).

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This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., features two interviews:

• Betsy Carter, author of Swim to Me (Algonquin, $23.95, 9781565124929/1565124928)
• Harry Hunsicker, author of Crosshairs: A Lee Henry Oswald Mystery (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95, 9780312348519/0312348517)

The show airs at 8 a.m. Central Time and can be heard live at thebookreport.net; the archived edition will be posted this afternoon.

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Today on Dr. Phil: Dr. Frank Lawlis, author of Mending the Broken Bond: The 90-Day Answer to Developing a Loving Relationship with Your Child (Viking, $24.95, 9780670018345/0670018341).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Andrea Barrett, author of The Air We Breathe (Norton, $24.95, 9780393061086/0393061086).

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Today on Oprah, Bill Cosby discusses his new book, Come On People: On the Path from Victims to Victors (Thomas Nelson, $25.99, 9781595550927/1595550925).

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Today on NPR's Fresh Air: Oliver Sacks, author of Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (Knopf, $26, 9781400040810/1400040817).

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Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Viking, $29.95, 9780670063277/0670063274).

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Today on NPR's Marketplace: Jeffrey Rothfeder, author of McIlhenny's Gold: How a Louisiana Family Built the Tabasco Empire (Collins, $24.95, 9780060721848/0060721847).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: chess master Garry Kasparov, author of How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom (Bloomsbury USA, $25.95, 9781596913875/1596913878).

 

Irish writer Anne Enright has won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for her fourth novel, The Gathering. The prize goes to a novel by an author from Britain, Ireland or the Commonwealth and has an award of roughly $100,000.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, as quoted by the New York Times, Enright made this delightful comment: "I am still churning it through. Tomorrow, I'll wake up and go 'whoopee.' "

Howard Davies, chairman of the judges' panel, cited Enright's "tough and striking language" and said she had written a "powerful, uncomfortable and, at times, angry book." The Gathering was reportedly a compromise choice by judges who favored some of the other finalists.

Black Cat, a paperback original imprint of Grove/Atlantic, published the book in September ($14, 9780802170392/0802170390).

Grove/Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin commented: "We have published all four books of Anne Enright's and we believe she is one of the great voices writing in the English language today."

 

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday and Wednesday, October 23 and 24:

Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House by Valerie Plame Wilson (S&S, $26, 9781416537618/1416537619) chronicles the career of the CIA agent whose leaked identity led to the arrest and conviction of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby.

The Christmas Pearl by Dorothea Benton Frank (Morrow, $14.95, 9780061438448/0061438448) is set during a family Christmas gathering in a North Carolina mansion. The old matriarch, wishing to recreate the holidays of her youth, receives help from a ghostly maid.

Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen (Knopf, $28.95, 9781400043453/140004345X) is a detailed history of Marco Polo's travels and includes 16 pages of photos with several maps.

Lyrics by Sting (Dial Press, $28, 9780385339872/0385339879) contains a collection of lyrics written by Sting and corresponding commentary.

Book of the Dead by Patricia Cornwell (Putnam, $26.95, 9780399153938/0399153934) is the 15th novel starring forensic pathologist Dr. Kay Scarpetta.

A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton (Ballantine, $24.95, 9780345495907/034549590X) is the sixth supernatural romance featuring half-faerie private investigator Meredith Gentry.

The Ghost: A Novel by Robert Harris (S&S, $26, 9781416551812/1416551816) follows a former prime minister's attempts to write a selective memoir of his life. However, the ghostwriter he hires uncovers dangerous and powerful secrets.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell (Harcourt, $23, 9780151014118/0151014116) explores the repercussions of a family member's release from a mental hospital after 61 years.

The Jewish Americans: Three Centuries of Jewish Voices in America by Beth Wenger (Doubleday, $40, 9780385521390/0385521391) is a companion to the PBS television documentary. It includes photos, essays and a history of Jews in America since 1654.

Soul to Soul: Communications from the Heart by Gary Zukav (Free Press, $26, 9780743237000/0743237005) features physical and philosophical explorations of the soul.

The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics by Martha Stewart Living Magazine (Clarkson Potter, $35, 9780307393838/0307393836) contains more than 1,200 recipes.

Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault on America's Fundamental Rights by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose (Random House, $24.95, 9781400062867/1400062861) argues that an overzealous executive branch is diminishing civil liberties in the U.S.

Steroid Nation: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-Aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America's True Drug Addiction by Shaun Assael (ESPN, $24.95, 9781933060378/1933060379) explores the effects of performance-enhancing drugs in sports.

New in paperback:

The Marriage Game: A Novel by Fern Michaels (Pocket Star, $7.99, 9780743477468/0743477464)

 

They're called dillos, these 19-year-old deserters from the doomed Argentine army, because they live hidden underground in the tunnels of the Warren. The Four Kings are in charge, raiding and trading, deciding how much the dillos get to eat and drink each day, deciding who gets to stay below and who is left outside--the sick, the wounded, the unfaithful--to freeze to death in the snow.

Originally titled Los Pichiciegos (small Argentine armadillos, an endangered species) and published in 1982 as one of the first literary accounts of the Falklands War, this novel has been newly translated as Malvinas Requiem (Argentinians call the Falklands the Malvinas).

It's a punchy, startling, thrilling little book. In spare, elliptical style, as though his lean prose has no time to waste and barely survived the hardships of the war, Rodolpho Fogwill sketches the daily terrors of that deadly June winter, the secret transactions with the Brits, the sheep blown up by landmines, the murderous swarms of helicopters, the spectral nuns haunting the mountainside at night.

Fogwill assumes you know that the Argentine generals were ruthless tyrants, the islands were populated almost exclusively by British shepherds with their flocks and that these deserters are bartering with the Brits to betray their own Argie army.

Tortured and killed if caught by their own, subject to the whim of British mercy or brutality, Fogwill shows you battered Argentine soldiers with promise-filled leaflets in hand being napalmed as they stand in line to surrender.

Not until halfway through the third-person narrative does a mysterious "I" begin to appear, writing down notes, interrogating one of the dillos. Then a window is mentioned--an odd detail very much out of place in an underground burrow. Slowly from these clues a narrator surfaces in his hotel room, recording the testimony of one angry survivor.

It's a dazzling little tour de force that sounds as though it were thrown together as fast as it reads, another brilliantly-written, heartbreaking human document of how we slaughter our children.--Nick DiMartino