Penguin will once again sell its new titles for the Kindle e-reader, Reuters reported, noting that "since April 1, about 150 of Penguin's new books have [been] unavailable for the Kindle."
"We have reached an agreement with Amazon and we are pleased that a full selection of our books will be available on the Kindle," David Shanks, CEO of Penguin Group (USA), said in a statement. Terms of the deal were not revealed.
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Shifting the focus away from choosing which e-reading device to buy, the Wall Street Journal explored the options involved in deciding the equally important question of "which e-bookstore to frequent."
"Reading devices like the iPad, Kindle and Nook will come and go, but you'll likely want your e-book collection to stick around. Yet unlike music, commercial e-books from the leading online stores come with restrictions that complicate your ability to move your collection from one device to the next. It's as if old-fashioned books were designed to fit on one particular style of bookshelves. What happens when you remodel?" the Journal wrote.
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When Demaris Brinton and Theron O’Connor moved from California to Bayfield, Wis., they "were looking for a place that was meaningful to us. We were looking for a beautiful natural setting with good resources and community life, and lots of beautiful, fresh, clean water. We wanted to simplify our life and live closer to the earth."
Not only did they find that place, but Bayfield also reaped its own rewards when they decided to open a new indie bookstore, Apostle Islands Booksellers, the County Journal reported.
"Opening a bookstore seemed like a natural thing for us to do," Demaris said. "Bookstores are a representative of the place you are visiting. It is a place you can come to get a sense of the community."
"We are trying to represent what you would see in a big bookstore but smaller amounts of it that are very carefully selected," Brinton added. "We don't see ourselves in competition with the big stores."
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A Cook County judge ruled that Barbara's Bookstore, Oak Park, Ill., "must pay its landlord more than $126,000 in back rent, taxes and legal fees," according to Chicago Tribune, which added that the "landlord for Barbara's Bookstore, Anthony Shaker, filed an eviction suit against the business last fall when several months' rent was not paid in 2009. Barbara's Bookstore countered that it had been double billed for taxes for years and did not owe the rent." Owner Don Barliant had said previously that the Oak Park store would close this summer and relocate.
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A survey of 17,000 schoolchildren by the National Literacy Trust found that "85.5% of pupils had their own mobile phone, compared with 72.6% who had their own books," the Telegraph reported.
"Our research illustrates the clear link with literacy resources at home and a child's reading ability, as well the vital importance of family encouragement," said Jonathan Douglas, NLT director. "By ensuring children have access to reading materials in the home and by encouraging children to love reading, families can help them to do well at school and to enjoy opportunities throughout their life."
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Worried about shoplifters in your bookshop? In the Independent, London bookseller Anna Goodall shared her experiences and observations on the prowl for book thieves.
"Somewhat naively, as a new bookseller, I didn't think theft would be a big problem," she wrote. "I imagined my biggest difficulty would be being able to keep up with our incredibly well-read customers."
Goodall soon found this was not the case. She also noticed that the books most often stolen "are at the more literary end of the spectrum. One feels that the thief is going to take them home and read them, not just dump them in the bin in a post-klepto depression. Paris Review Interviews Vol. 2 and Crime and Punishment was a rather intellectual haul just the other week. So is it only thrilling to steal quality literature?"
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NPR's What We're Reading list this week includes The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson, Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann and The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender.
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The Daily Beast's editor-in-chief Tina Brown joined NPR's Morning Edition to discuss her Must-Reads "about privacy--how much we have of it, and the perils of losing it."
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Tony Parsons, author of Men from the Boys, the final installment of his Harry Silver trilogy, selected his "top 10 troubled males in fiction" for the Guardian.
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Towel Day. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fans celebrated the late Douglas Adams's life by carrying "the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have"--a towel--on May 25, the Guardian reported.
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Book trailer of the day: The Passage by Justin Cronin (Ballantine), featured in Entertainment Weekly's Shelf Life blog.