The New York Times told a "story of the family that lives above BookCourt, an independent bookstore in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn," with a once-upon-a-time beginning, in 1979, at "a bookstore on Harvard Square," where the "staff included two young part-timers named Henry Zook and Mary Gannett, and in a 'maybe someday' kind of way, they thought about opening a bookstore of their own."
After several fascinating plot and real estate developments over three decades (including the births of two sons), "today, most of the family is still living above the store. The mother, who handles the shop's finances and is the children's book buyer, lives upstairs in No. 163 with Ben. Zack, the general manager, is ensconced on the top floor of No. 161. (A small doorway upstairs connects the two buildings.) And the father, the senior buyer, lives nearby on Douglass Street."
"We converge every day at the store," Zack said. "It's psychotic, but it works."
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Because Ernie Ford is selling his bookstore, Fine Print Books, Greencastle, Ind., he has resigned from the board of the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association. To fill his term, which ends in the fall of 2011, the board has appointed Terry Whittaker, owner with his wife, Susan, of Viewpoint Books, Columbus, Ind. The store was begun the her parents in 1973. Whittaker was on the GLIBA board for seven years, beginning in the late 1990s, and served as president for a year.
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Four friends who all worked at Ned's Bookstore, East Lansing, Mich., in the 1990s and worked there until recently last month opened their own bookstore, Collegeville Textbook Co., also in East Lansing, NACS's Campus Marketplace reported. Another Ned's veteran has joined them.
Like Ned's, the Student Bookstore, the Spartan Bookstore and a nearby Barnes & Noble, the new store mainly serves students at Michigan State University. Collegeville Textbook Co. will focus on textbooks and hopes to garner 5% of the market.
"I think there's a lot more personality in our store," co-owner Tom Muth told CM. "Our store just feels different and looks different. It feels alive and bright, and I think a lot of that is because we've been friends for so long. That bond shows through in our store."
CM added: "The store is marketing to students through the campus newspaper and by handing out fliers at orientation. It's also communicating with the Michigan State faculty for book adoptions."
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Obituary note: Author E. Lynn Harris, "whose novels about successful
and glamorous black men with sexual identity conflicts (and the women
and men who love them) made him one of the nation's most popular
writers," died last week, the New York Times reported. He was 54.
"We at Doubleday
are deeply shocked and saddened to learn of E. Lynn Harris's death at
too young an age," Alison Rich, Doubleday's executive director of publicity, told the
Journal-Constitution in Atlanta, where Harris lived. "His pioneering novels and powerful memoir about the
black gay experience touched and inspired millions of lives, and he was
a gifted storyteller whose books brought delight and encouragement to
readers everywhere. Lynn was a warm and generous person, beloved by
friends, fans, and booksellers alike, and we mourn his passing."
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In the wake of Amazon's decision to remove copies of George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm from its customers' Kindles (Shelf Awareness, July 20, 2009), the New York Times reported that a subsequent apology by CEO Jeff Bezos was "not enough for many people."
"As long as Amazon maintains control of the device it will have this ability to remove books and that means they will be tempted to use it or they will be forced to it,” said Holmes Wilson, campaigns manager of the Free Software Foundation.
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The expansion of Google's digital library continues to raise
concerns ranging from fear of monopoly to endangering reader privacy.
The Boston Globe reported that when Dan Clancy, Google Books
engineering director, appeared on a panel at the Boston Public Library
recently, "his opening remarks focused on the search engine's efforts
to enable access for 'every kid in Arkansas' to Harvard-size digital
libraries. But soon afterward, he was hearing from librarians on the
panel that they felt 'queasy' about Google Books."
"I appreciate the trepidation, because this project is very big, and
very complex," he said. "It is also part of a very large
cultural and societal shift."
"Google is creating a mega bookstore the likes of which we have never
seen," added Maura Marx, executive director of Open Knowledge Commons.
"People are very uncomfortable with the idea that one corporation has
so much power over such a large collection of knowledge."
Boing Boing's Cory Doctorow observed that his specific misgivings about
the Google Book Search settlement "don't trump my delight at the idea
of guaranteeing public access to all these books, and the restoration
of orphan books to public hands."
He contends, however, that "the issue of privacy is much more grave.
I want Google to create a binding, written agreement to hold readers'
information private, so that the future of reading doesn't include the
possibility of warrantless spying on your book-reading activity. For
complex legal reasons, it's unlikely that anyone will ever be in a
position to give Google a settlement permitting this again, so this is
it. The status quo Google sets will be the one that we end up living
with for the foreseeable future."
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Bookshop Santa Cruz's longtime owner and now county supervisor Neal Coonerty was profiled in the Mercury News, not for his bookselling or political acumen, but for his weight loss accomplishments. During the past year, Coonerty has lost 135 pounds and on Sunday planned "to take on the Wharf to Wharf Race."
"I want to let you know that I'm going to be running and walking," he said. "I know if I can't run that far at least I can get to the end."
"My guess is he'll feel much better after the race than I do," said his son, Ryan.
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"Poets, from ancient times, have written about war," observed
Britain's poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, who "invited a range of my
fellow poets to bear witness, each in their own way, to these matters
of war." The poems appeared in the Guardian.
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Book trailer of the day: Cathy's Ring by Sean Stewart and Jordan
Weisman, illustrated by Cathy Brigg (who wrote and performs the accompanying
song).
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Beach biz reads: As the dog days of August approach, the Wall Street Journal suggested that while "it's nice to curl up with a page-turning, mind-free thriller, this summer of our great recessionary discontent might be a good time to bone up on things finance and investing."