The Lost Symbol broke all previous one-day sales records at Barnes & Noble for adult fiction in the first 24 hours of its release and the e-book edition was the number one title at B&N's eBookstore, according to the company, which also noted that pre-orders were the highest ever for an adult fiction book. 

"Tuesday was a record breaking sales day led by Dan Brown," said Jaime Carey, chief merchandising officer for B&N. "It's not every day you get to sell such a rich collection of new titles including such authors as: Dan Brown, Jon Krakauer (Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman), the late Senator Edward Kennedy (True Compass) and Paul Harrington (The Secret to Teen Power), and then round out the week with an Oprah Book Club selection to be announced on Friday."

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West meets east, bookseller style. Patrick Brown of Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., offered an enthusiastic and understandably bookshop-centric account of his recent trip to New York on Vroman's blog. His itinerary included stops at WORD bookstore and BookCourt in Brooklyn, as well as McNally Jackson, Housing Works and Three Lives in Manhattan. 

"At BEA and the ABA's Winter Institute, booksellers often say they feel energized by being around so many people who are every bit as excited about selling books as you are, and that’s what I felt on this trip," Brown concluded. "Talking to so many enthusiastic book people gave me great hope for independent stores and for books in general. In short, it was invigorating. New York, I salute you. Thank you to everyone who welcomed my wife and I into your stores, homes and drinking establishments. You made our trip wonderful and exciting, if a tiny bit tiring."

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Book Soup, Los Angeles, Calif., has expanded its sideline offerings with the addition of adult videos from VividAlt. According to NBCLosAngeles.com, "alt porn" is "like regular porn, but more thoughtful and artistic (Warning: clicking on that link will take you to a site that provides a warning that you're about to enter an adult themed website)."

"We've been following the career of Eon McKai [the California Institute of the Arts grad who is the man behind VividAlt] . . . and feel that he's done some exceptional work at VividAlt," said Robert Tyson Cornell, director of marketing and publicity for Book Soup. "We believe that our customers will want to discover his edgy approach to the genre."

"We are thrilled about being in Book Soup," said McKai in a news release. "It's much more than a store, it's an artistic center for the community and it's both loved and respected."

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Tom Kohl, owner of Book Village used bookstore, Holland, Mich., has opened a second location, Book Village 2, the Grand Rapids Press reported.

"I wanted a bookstore in downtown for a long time, but couldn't afford Eighth Street and just waited for a storefront to open on College Avenue," said Kohl. 

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We're very sad to report that Kathy Anderson, a longtime college bookseller who was a dear friend, died on Monday night after several months of health problems. She leaves her husband, Eric, and two daughters.

During her career, she worked at the bookstores at the University of California at San Diego, Stanford and Montana State as well as for Ingram, O'Reilly, the University of California Press and the old Harcourt bookstore in California. A year ago she joined Black Oak Books, Berkeley, Calif., as manager. She was active in the National Association of College Stores, teaching bookselling classes and was involved in the general books committee.

Suzy Staubach of the UConn Co-op, Storrs, Conn., called Anderson "one of the great college booksellers." Art Carson of Ingram said, "She was very knowledgeable and a voracious reader."

We will have more soon about memorial services.

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Universal Orlando offered some details about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, the Florida theme park scheduled to open next spring where Pottermaniacs can "tour Hogwarts, buy quidditch gear and drink butterbeer," the New York Times reported.

"We’ve tried to include something from every book," said Alan Gilmore, an art director for the Potter films who is helping to oversee park designs. "We had free range to be as grand and as excessive as we could be. It’s only money that holds us back in the end."

At Wizarding World, "three rides will form the center of the new park. Universal still will not talk much about the biggest one, a high-tech experience inside the castle called Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey that involves the likenesses of the heroes from the films. Flight of the Hippogriff is described as a family coaster that simulates a Hippogriff (the half-horse, half-eagle beast from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) training flight over Hogwarts castle. Dragon Challenge is a twin high-speed coaster that will feature elements from the Triwizard Tournament," according to the Times.

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Marjane Satrapi's The Complete Persepolis was selected for the 2010 One Book, One Philadelphia program, which is entering its eighth year, the Inquirer reported.

"Marjane's book was a natural choice given the recent events in Iran," said Marie Field, chair of the citywide literacy program cosponsored by the Free Library of Philadelphia and the mayor's office. "We felt that the Iranian elections and the protests that followed made this a perfect time for the book."

"We are distributing 5,000 copies to every city library and at least one class in every public high school in the district," said Gerri Trooskin, the One Book project manager at the Free Library. 

Yes, this is the same Free Library that this week posted an item on its website saying it may have to close entirely October 2 if the state legislature doesn't pass necessary funding.

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Book trailers of the day: I Shudder: And Other Reactions to Life, Death, and New Jersey by Paul Rudnick.

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A long lexicographical tradition has come to an end. Chambers Harrap Publishers, which publishes the Chambers Dictionary, plans to close its offices in Edinburgh, Scotland. BBC News reported that "all 27 staff were expected to be affected. It is planned Chambers titles will be moved to London to be managed by Hodder Education. The news marks the end of a 200-year association with Scotland for the dictionary."

The "Dan Brown Effect" was the subject of an article in the Australian, which reported that yesterday's release of The Lost Symbol "makes this a red-letter day for the author, his publishers and lovers of implausible thrillers everywhere. However, just as there will inevitably be casualties when yet another sinister secret society tangles with a plucky lone Harvard symbologist, so there are likely to be victims of The Lost Symbol's sure-fire success." Among the potential victims mentioned were booksellers and other authors.

The Australian also noted that "What Brown will do, however, is raise the industry's profile. Tom Tivnan, features editor at the Bookseller, said that The Lost Symbol will 'build excitement about books' even if it does not produce a direct benefit for the industry."

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Calling the feat an "act of ravenous readership," the Guardian reported that world champion speed reader Anne Jones claimed to have read The Lost Symbol in 41 minutes and 55 seconds. Also noteworthy: "Tesco was selling 19 copies a minute from displays next to its fruit and vegetables and Asda shifted 18,000 copies by 4 p.m."

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The Vatican's outrage at the Da Vinci Code is apparently not being replicated by Brown's exploration of Masonic lore. According to Reuters, "a senior representative of the Freemasons in Australia called The Lost Symbol the work of a 'terrific novelist.'"

"We are very pleased, there is nothing in this book that will offend my organization. It does give us the opportunity to open it up a bit," said Greg Levenston, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory for the Freemasons. He added that his group has even organized a book club: "Of course the first book we are reviewing is The Lost Symbol, I think it's a wonderful start."

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Media in Canada reported that Chapters-Indigo "went all out" for The Lost Symbol at Union Station in Toronto Tuesday morning: "The bookseller dominated the station, erecting a pop-up store on the south end of the Go concourse, which sold hundreds of books in its first hour, and staging a read-in by over a hundred Indigo staffers on the upstairs platform of the station."

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Dan Brown-inspired supermarket price wars have been declared in the U.K. The Lost Symbol "is being cut to just £5 by Asda, with Sainsbury's and Morrisons selling the book for between £8 and £9. Tesco will sell The Lost Symbol for £7," according to the Telegraph, which reported that Asda would lose about £4 per copy.

"We expect to sell just under twenty thousand copies of The Lost Symbol in the coming week and our customers and colleagues alike are gearing up for one of our biggest book-selling weeks of the year," said Dewi Williams, Asda's marketing manager for books.

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Security prior to the book's release date was tight in India, where Random House "retained law firm Akash Chittranshi and Associates--intellectual property (IP) specialists who worked on Deathly Hallows 'to prevent the piracy/unauthorized reproduction' of the book. . . . In addition, a leading IP-investigation firm (named IP Boutique) has been retained to investigate and keep under surveillance known offenders and their business locations," livemint.com reported.

Arrangements were also made with police in several cities "to make teams available within 24 hours in case of any pirated book selling, and to help initiate criminal action against them," said Jyoti Taneja, an advocate at Akash Chittranshi. 

Effective September 28, Michael J. Edwards, most recently president of Ellington Leather, a leather handbags and accessories wholesaler, is joining Borders Group as executive v-p, chief merchandising officer.

At the same time, Anne Kubek, who joined the company in 1990 and was most recently executive v-p, merchandising and marketing--one of the last of the old guard at the top of Borders Group--is leaving the company.

Edwards will report to CEO Ron Marshall and is responsible for "developing and executing merchandising and marketing strategies to drive sales and profit as Borders works to re-engage with customers as a bookseller for serious readers," the company said. Edwards will lead teams responsible for buying and merchandising, inventory allocation and control, supply chain, customer relationship management--including the Borders Rewards loyalty program--marketing and e-commerce.

From 2004 through 2007, Edwards was president and CEO for lucy Activewear and earlier was executive v-p, operations, for Jo-Ann Stores. He earlier held executive, marketing and buying positions at West Marine, Golfsmith, CompUSA, Target and May.

Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Jon Krakauer, author of Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (Doubleday, $27.95, 9780385522267/0385522266).

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Tomorrow morning on NPR's Morning Edition: Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising (Harper, $25.99, 9780061735868/0061735868).

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Tomorrow on the Diane Rehm Show: Peter S. Goodman, author of Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy (Times Books, $25, 9780805089806/0805089802).

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Tomorrow on NPR's Bookworm: Clancy Martin, author of How to Sell (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24, 9780374173357/0374173354). As the show put it: "Clancy Martin's first novel reads like a piece of sleaze, but it turns out--surprise!--to be a philosophical novel about the problems of appearance and reality. Martin joins a cadre of novelists--Bret Easton Ellis, Dennis Cooper, Fyodor Dostoyevsky--who expect readers to see beneath the surface. But what if it backfires? What if readers are fooled?"

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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Frank Bruni, author of Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-time Eater (Penguin Press, $25.95, 9781594202315/1594202311).

Love and Other Drugs, director Ed Zwick's romantic comedy adapted from Jamie Reidy's Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman, has added Gabriel Macht, Hank Azaria and Oliver Platt to a cast that already included Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, Judy Greer and Josh Gad.

Charles Randolph (The Interpreter) wrote the script for the film. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "Macht plays a hotshot Prozac salesman who's involved romantically with Maggie (Hathaway), a free-spirited woman with Parkinson's disease who enters into a relationship with charming Viagra salesman Jamie (Gyllenhaal). Azaria plays an unscrupulous doctor and client of Jamie's, and Platt plays his boss, a beleaguered pharmaceutical rep desperate to boost Jamie's sales."

Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles won the inaugural $50,000 St. Francis College Literary Prize, which is given "to offer encouragement and significant financial support to a mid-career writer." Hemon, who was honored during the opening night party of the Brooklyn Book Festival last weekend, bested a shortlist that included Song For Night by Chris Abani, Girl Factory by Jim Krusoe and The Song Is You by Arthur Phillips.

"I was going to quit after this book; now it turns out I'm mid-career,” Hemon quipped in his acceptance speech. "Thank you all for coming tonight and exposing me to this embarrassing pleasure. I will keep writing. I guess I have no other choice."

Judges for the award were Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Heidi Julavits, Ben Marcus and Ayelet Waldman.

"As a small college in Brooklyn, St. Francis is blessed to be in the middle of a remarkable community of writers," said v-p for Academic Affairs and Academic Dean Tim Houlihan. "We feel it is our responsibility to insure that these artists, who engage, amuse and inspire our students have the support they need to continue their work. In addition, we're all very excited that Mr. Hemon's writing reflects an experience so close to that of so many of our students."

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Winners of the 2009 NAIBA Books of the Year prize, which will be presented at the association's Fall Conference Awards Banquet on October 3 in Baltimore, Md., are:

• Fiction: A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin)
• Nonfiction: Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg (Other Press)
• Trade Paperback Original: Buffalo Lockjaw by Greg Ames (Hyperion)
• Picture Book: The Curious Garden by Peter Brown (Little Brown Books for Young Readers)
• Children's Literature: If I Stay by Gayle Forman (Dutton)

Creature ABC by Andrew Zuckerman (Chronicle, $19.99, 9780811869782/0811869784, 120 pp., all ages, September 2009)

Alphabeasties and Other Amazing Types by Sharon Werner and Sarah Forss (Blue Apple, distributed by Chronicle, $19.99, 9781934706787/1934706787, 56 pp., ages 4-8, October 2009)

These two alphabet books will undoubtedly appeal to both adults' esthetic sensibility and also to youngsters learning their letters. In Creature ABC, Andrew Zuckerman repurposes many of the stunning photographs from his book Creature but keeps a young audience in mind. Children will enjoy the element of mystery, for instance, when a scaly "hand" reaches toward them in the opening page, opposite the lower and upper case "Aa." The next spread reveals the creature in full ("alligator"), which seems to be progressing directly toward readers, its scales and teeth in high relief. Zuckerman accentuates the defining feature of each subject, as with "Qq," for which a porcupine's raised "quills" render the animal almost unrecognizable staring out at readers head-on. Many of the animals have almost human expressions: the hippo with a Wally Shawn stare of skepticism, the lion's eyes, which hold the wisdom of the ages. The book's pacing will also keep kids hooked--most notably, a wordless spread that occurs between the "kangaroo" and "lion" entries, in which the two animals share a knowing look across the gutter. An end glossary tells a fact or two about each animal, focusing on the characteristic highlighted in the photograph (e.g., "the hippopotamus . . . sweats a special oil that acts as a 'hippo sunscreen,'" which explains the glistening surface of the animal's skin). Eye candy that makes learning one's ABCs pure pleasure.
 
Alphabeasties by two graphic designers may be enjoyed as a simple alphabet book and also as a humorous and tantalizing introduction to type and design ("Letters look different in all different places. That's because they have different typefaces," the introduction states). The author-artists, coincidentally, also start off with an alligator, theirs composed solely of the letter "A" in different sizes, in lower and upper case, in boldface and in roman. A turn of the flap reveals its open jaws and its name. For some of the supplemental examples that rim the critters, the featured letter might be used once as a kind of puzzle piece, such as the "C" that completes the ear and curling tail of a "cat," or the cursive "L" that serves as a cowboy's "lasso." Werner and Forss use flaps judiciously, to extend the "giraffe" vertically beyond the page, and in a standout example, with two flaps that fan out to accommodate the swirling tentacles of an "octopus." Naturally, the choice of type underscores each creature's characteristics (e.g., the "U" used for "unicorn" has the feel of an illuminated manuscript). The book ends with a bang: against a white background, ribbons of boldface "Z"'s make a dark contrast to bands of roman "Z"'s for the "Zebra" stripes, then a lift of the flap on the page opposite depicts the same image in reverse--white Z's on a black background under a crescent moon for bedtime Zzzz's. Education and entertainment unite in the type of book the entire family can enjoy.--Jennifer M. Brown

Lisa Tucker is the author of five novels: The Promised World, The Cure for Modern Life, Once Upon a Day, The Song Reader and Shout Down the Moon. Her latest novel is The Promised World, which was published by Atria at the beginning of the month. She has advanced degrees in English and math and has taught creative writing at the Taos Conference and UCLA. Visit her website at LisaTucker.com.

On your nightstand now:

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson. I read it the first time years ago, before I thought of writing books myself. It's even better now.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Jane Eyre. I'm sure I didn't entirely understand it then, but I loved Jane's passionate struggle to become herself.

Your top five authors:

Herman Melville, Russell Banks, Mona Simpson, Walt Whitman, Toni Morrison. 

Book you've faked reading:

I've never faked reading a book, though I admit I skimmed some of the literary theory books in grad school. I was never a big fan of deconstruction.

Books you're an evangelist for:

Moby-Dick and Song of Solomon. I think they each fit the definition of "great American novel," but they're also fantastic stories. 

Book you've bought for the cover: 

I don't buy books for their covers, but I do remember buying a book because of its size: Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman. It was so small it fit in my purse. Luckily, it also turned out to be wonderful.

Book that changed your life:

The answer for fiction would be a list that's pages long, but for nonfiction, it's easy: Trauma and Recovery by Judith Herman.  

Favorite line from a book:

I collect quotes. Here are two current favorites:

"Like any artist without an art form, she became dangerous."--Toni Morrison, Sula

That loss is common would not make
My own less bitter, rather more:
Too common! Never morning wore
To evening, but some heart did break.

--Tennyson, In Memoriam

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

I wish I could read Goodnight Moon again for the first time, but only if my son could be six months old again. Briefly. Now that he's an adult, I feel lucky that I can give him my favorite books and enjoy his experience of reading them for the first time.