Shelf Awareness for Thursday, November 8, 2007


Workman Publishing:  Atlas Obscura: Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer

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

Simon & Schuster: Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

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

News

Notes: University Book Store Cooks; Hemingway's Relocates

Cool and tasty idea of the day. University Book Store, Seattle, Wash., and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer co-sponsored a "Nigella Express" contest. More than 100 recipes were submitted by contestants vying for the "chance to be first in line at Nigella Lawson's Seattle appearance November 13, to win an array of food-related swag and to have their recipes published in the P-I."

University Book Store's Stesha Brandon "prepared recipes for nine finalists and presented them at the Bargreen Ellingson test kitchen in Sodo for the three judges." The P-I includes winning recipes in the appetizer, entrée and dessert categories, all chosen because they "were tasty as well as representative of 'express' food."

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The Toronto Star featured a different sort of gastronomic update. For Canada's Giller Prize festivities at the Four Seasons Hotel, the fare of tuna tartare and beef tenderloin apparently did not please Margaret Atwood and her husband, Graeme Gibson.

The Star reported that "two of the most notable guests took a pass on that menu and instead brought their own dinner in a box. . . . They were protesting the Four Seasons' role in a massive resort development in Grenada that threatens an endangered species: the Grenada dove."

According to Gibson, "Until there is a fair resolution of the dispute over the kind of resort being built in Grenada, we cannot accept food or drink from the Four Seasons." 

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Mina Hemingway's Florida Book Store, Naples, Fla., has relocated to larger space in a more family-oriented neighborhood. The Naples Daily News reported that the bookstore, owned by the granddaughter of Ernest Hemingway, features 50,000 titles, 80% of which are used.

Hemingway said that customers sometimes ask her to autograph her grandfather's books, adding that The Old Man and the Sea is the most popular of them.

"We're here to promote reading and the love of books," she said. "We're selling a philosophy of books as a lifestyle and the recycling of books, passing them along."

Hemingway and her husband, Jon Rothenberg, "also have a satellite store planned for Key West, as a partnership with a Yacht Clubs of the Americas gallery. The shop, which will include an art gallery, bookstore and coffeeshop, is set to open before Thanksgiving."  

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Today's New York Times opens a profile of Man Booker Prize winner Anne Enright by welcoming her to the intense world of the celebrity spotlight, as controversy continues to brew over an essay she for the London Review of Books.

The essay was about Madeleine McCann, the child who disappeared last spring in Portugal sparking international media attention, and "newspapers here and in Britain picked out a sentence in which Ms. Enright said that she 'disliked the McCanns earlier than most people' and ignored what she wrote afterward: that she was ashamed of the impulse and, in the end, rejected it."

Headline-grabbing controversy aside, however, the piece also offer a more subtle glimpse at the author's life and her award-winning novel, The Gathering.

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Former Waterstone's employees Tim West and Simon Key have a name for their soon-to-open bookstore in Wood Green, according to the Tottenham, Wood Green and Edmonton Journal. The Big Green Bookshop is the winner, chosen by a panel of judges who "whittled down more than 400 entries from Haringey school pupils." You can follow the bookshop's march toward opening day at its blog.

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Overdue books returned after more than a century.

The BBC reported that Chile has sent 3,778 stolen books back to Peru's national library. In 1881, Chilean soldiers pillaged the library in Lima and made off with "the volumes--written in Greek, Latin, French and Spanish, many dating back to the 16th Century."

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Allen W. Lindstrom has joined Barnes & Noble as v-p, corporate controller. He was formerly chief financial officer of Liberty Travel and before that was financial controller of the Museum Company and held accounting positions at Toys R Us.

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HarperCollins has announced changes in the Internet Development Group:

  • Leslie Hulse has been named v-p, digital business development. She will focus on crafting new partnerships with retailers, search engines and others to distribute the publisher's digital content widely for marketing and commerce. Hulse has worked at HarperCollins for 10 years in a variety of senior financial and management roles, supporting the growth of the company's online efforts. 
  • Rachel Chou has been named v-p, online product development and operations. She will be responsible for working with publishers and marketing staff to define business, user interface and design requirements and for crafting best practice consumer experiences on the publisher's websites. Chou joined HarperCollins in 2005 as a consultant to oversee the development of the www.harpercollinschildrens.com site.

Disruption Books: Our Differences Make Us Stronger: How We Heal Together by La June Montgomery Tabron, illustrated by Temika Grooms


G.L.O.W. - Galley Love of the Week
Be the first to have an advance copy!
The Queen of Fives
by Alex Hay
GLOW: Graydon House: The Queen of Fives by Alex Hay

Quinn le Blanc, "the Queen of Fives," is the latest in a dynasty of London con artists. In August 1898, she resolves to pose as a debutante and marry a duke for his fortune. According to the dynasty's century-old Rulebook, reeling in a mark takes just five days. But Quinn hasn't reckoned with the duke's equally shrewd stepmother and sister. Like his Caledonia Novel Award-winning debut, The Housekeepers, Alex Hay's second book is a stylish, cheeky historical romp featuring strong female characters. Graydon House senior editor Melanie Fried says his work bears the "twisty intrigue of a mystery" but is "elevated [by] wickedly clever high-concept premises and explorations of class, social status, gender, and power." The Queen of Fives is a treat for fans of Anthony Horowitz, Sarah Penner, and Downton Abbey. --Rebecca Foster

(Graydon House/HarperCollins, $28.99 hardcover, 9781525809859, January 21, 2025)

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#ShelfGLOW
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Media and Movies

Trailer for John Gardner's Nickel Mountain

John Gardner's son, filmmaker Joel Gardner, is working on a documentary about his father, whose novel Nickel Mountain was reissued last month by New Directions. Joel and his wife, Cate Camp, have provided New Directions with a film trailer for the novel, which can be viewed here.

 


NYU Advanced Publishing Institute: Early bird pricing through Oct. 13


Media Heat: Listening Is an Act of Love

This morning on the Today Show: Nadine Haobsh, author of Beauty Confidential: The No Preaching, No Lies, Advice-You'll-Actually-Use Guide to Looking Your Best (Avon, $13.95, 9780061128639/0061128635).

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This morning on NPR's Morning Edition: Dave Isay, author of Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project (Penguin Press, $24.95, 9781594201400/1594201404).

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WETA's Author Author! features Amy Bloom, author of Away (Random House, $23.95, 9781400063567/1400063566).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Riverhead, $24.95, 9781594489587/1594489580). As the show put it: "This wide-ranging yet intimate conversation explores many difficult subjects: sex addiction, cultural difference, the Dominican diaspora, dictatorship, new ways of thinking about the function of literature, and the necessity that we leave the isolation of our self-made cocoons."

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Today on NPR's On Point: Ha Jin, author of A Free Life: A Novel (Pantheon, $26, 9780375424656/0375424652).

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Today on Oprah: Charla Krupp, author of How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better (Springboard Press, $25.99, 9780446581141/0446581143). 

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Ronald Brownstein, author of The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America (Penguin Press, $27.95, 9781594201394/1594201390).

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Today on Fresh Air: Katha Pollitt, author of a new collection of essays, Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Random House, $22.95, 9781400063321/1400063329).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a repeat: Valerie Plame Wilson, author of Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (S&S, $26, 9781416537618/1416537619).

 


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This Weekend on Book TV: Miami Book Fair International

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, November 10

9:55 a.m. Book TV provides all-day coverage of the Miami Book Fair International from Miami Dade College, Miami, Fla. Events will be interspersed with interviews and calls with featured authors, including Ian Klaus, Hanna Rosin, Mark Penn and Chris Matthews

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 2001, Kiron Skinner, editor of Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan that Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America (Free Press, $26.95, 9780743219389/0743219384), revealed that many of Reagan's positions were developed long before he became president.

9 p.m. After Words. Richard Viguerie, president of ConservativeHQ.com, interviews Michael Gerson, author of Heroic Conservatism: Why Republicans Need to Embrace America's Ideals (And Why They Deserve to Fail If They Don't) (HarperOne, $26.95, 9780061349508/006134950X). Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter, argues that the Republican party needs to redefine what it means to be a conservative. (Re-airs Sunday at 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.)

Sunday, November 11

9:55 a.m. Book TV continues its coverage of the Miami Book Fair International. Events will be interspersed with interviews and calls with featured authors, including Edwidge Danticat, Paul Krugman, Robert Draper and George Soros.

8 p.m. Richard Rhodes, author of Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race (Knopf, $28.95, 9780375414138/0375414134), talks about the people and events that led to the arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. (Re-airs Saturday, November 17, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, November 18, at 1 a.m.)


    


Book Review

Children's Review: Tap Dancing on the Roof



Park, who has guided readers through Korea's history with novels such as her Newbery Medal-winning A Single Shard and When My Name Was Keoko, invites readers to try a Korean tradition with this book of 27 clever sijo poems. Aspiring young writers and those who work with them will likely embrace this new form (though it's actually quite old, dating back to the 6th century B.C.), with similarities to haiku. In her preface and in a more detailed backmatter section, the author explains that sijo, when translated into English, is composed of three lines, each with 14-16 syllables. The first line sets the topic, the second develops it and the third offers a twist. Unlike haiku, which largely confines itself to nature, sijo may explore a wide range of topics, including relationships and everyday moments. Park gives an ideal example of the quotidian transformed with her opening sijo, "Breakfast": "For this meal, people like what they like, the same every morning./ Toast and coffee. Bagel and juice. Cornflakes and milk in a white bowl./ Or--warm, soft, and delicious--a few extra minutes in bed." Others poems incorporate rhyme, such as "From the Window," which contrasts the "sparrows at the feeder each day, dull in brown and black and gray" with the brightly-hued "triple threat--a primary-colored display: cardinal, goldfinch, blue jay!" Because of the sijo form (with its surprise twist), the poems brim with humor and will have young people testing their wits as they try their hand at a few poems of their own. Banyai's pen-and-inks with splashes of color heighten the humor (as with "Tennis," in which he shows antics not often associated with on-court play). Park's backmatter also notes that sijo began as songs with musical accompaniment, often performed by women, spawning a "strong legacy of women poets." Whether fans of history, cultural study, wordplay or writing, readers will find much to mine in these pages (and if they stick with the endnotes, they'll find an extra surprise: an encore poem).--Jennifer M. Brown

 



Deeper Understanding

Robert Gray: Can You Hear Me? I'm in a Bookstore! In Vermont!

Mendocino Haiku #1

Bookstore serene...
Cell phone call
Jagged rock
tossed in pond
SPLASH !!!!!
Outside. Thanks.


Nearly three years ago, Tony Miksak's staff at Gallery Bookshop, Mendocino, Calif., came up with the idea for Signage Haiku after a discussion about "reports that bad cell phone etiquette is rampant, involving, but not limited to, discussions of pooped diapers and bad boyfriends."

Cell phones have been part of our culture long enough that I can already think of them in a personal, micro-historical context.

During the mid-1990s, I had a phone that looked like the squawk boxes soldiers used in World War II movies to call in artillery support. If I wanted to make a call on the road, I had to put an antenna on top of my car. Sometimes it worked.

As mobile phones diminished in size and increased in power, they became status symbols for a while; they belonged to people who had to be in touch at all times with the office. Just having one was enough, and it was easy to dislike such people. A stand-up comedian at the time said that he had bridged the status gap by holding his garage door opener to his ear and talking, and no one knew the difference.

Now mobiles are the People's Phone; they've been democratized, socialized, promoted to absolute ubiquity. Status is conferred only upon those who buy certain high-priced models that allow them to check e-mail, teleconference, surf--perhaps even sail--the Internet and communicate with the International Space Station.

In New York, I sometimes find myself counting the people walking past me who aren't chatting on cells. It's a small number.

Back here in the Green Mountains of Vermont, where cell phone coverage goes to die, we still have to deal with the issue, and the bookstore is where I'm most aware of cell abuse. I'll share three of my "favorite" cell delinquents. I'm sure you have your own.

The AWOL Shopper comes to the checkout counter already talking on a cell phone. After the order is rung up and they've been told what the cost is, they say, "Excuse me." Not to the bookseller, of course, but to the person on the other end of the line. They fumble briefly for credit card or cash, toss it on the counter, then resume the conversation.

The Retail Commander wanders through the bookstore like an ordinary shopper, but maintains constant communication links with other members of a shopping patrol, barking orders, plotting muster coordinates and repositioning troops to scout for bargains at the J Crew, Versace, Ralph Lauren or Anne Klein outlets. Walkie-talkies are occasionally used, just to raise the irritation quotient.

The Weekend Business Warrior has reluctantly agreed to accompany his or her family for a long weekend in Vermont, but must at all times remain in contact with the main office. Somewhere in the stacks, these vigilant troopers stare uncomprehendingly at bookshelves while saying things like, "I told him that if he didn't come down at least five percent, we'd squash that deal. . ."

WBW's are also most likely to say, with a seamless blend of genuine astonishment and dubious cell reception, "Can You Hear Me? I'm In A Bookstore! In Vermont!"

We all have stories about being trapped in cell hell while someone shares their one-sided tale in a supermarket line, on a train or in a restaurant. We've all heard the muffled ring from a pocket or purse, and seen people who were just speaking with us suddenly say, "Excuse me, I should see who this is." A fumbling for the phone, a bright hello, and they have left the premises as surely as the ghost of Elvis.

I was thinking about all this while reading an article in the New York Times recently about the increasing popularity of illegal cell "jammers." Like my boyhood dreams of being invisible, possessing a jammer is appealing, especially in the bookstore, where lack of cell phone etiquette is most apparent to me. But I'll restrain myself. Bookshops are not libraries. Silence is never a goal, especially on a busy day.

Still, I would love to collect some of your bookstore cell phone horror stories and solutions.

One I've considered is signage on book displays, with this visual and the words: CAN YOU READ ME?--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)

 


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