Shelf Awareness happily welcomes Jennifer M. Brown, who, starting today, will contribute one children's book review a week and occasional news stories. Her first review appears below.

She may be reached at Brown@shelf-awareness.com. Mail should go to 304 W. 75th Street, #11C, New York, N.Y. 10023.

Effective this coming Monday, April 9, Koa Books, Kihei, Maui, Hawaii, is being distributed by SCB Distributors. Koa was formerly distributed by PGW.

Incidentally congratulations to Koa, which specializes in books on progressive politics, personal transformation and native cultures, for winning, along with Maxine Hong Kingston, the Northern California Book Reviewers' Special Recognition in Publishing Award for Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace. The awards ceremony will take place Sunday, April 15, at 1 p.m. at the San Francisco Main Library.

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Never mind.

Borders Group is "reevaluating" the $250 million of convertible senior notes it was planning to issue today, which was reported here yesterday. The cause: "shareholder feedback." Besides the reevaluation, the company is considering financing alternatives, it said.

Several groups of shareholders had various reasons for questioning the notes, today's Wall Street Journal reported. These groups include shareholders who want the company to be sold, shareholders who want a merger with Barnes & Noble and shareholders who feared their stakes would be adversely affected.

 

During the past 10 years, Barnes & Noble misdated and improperly backdated stock options to the tune of $45.5 million, a special committee formed by the company to investigate the issue has found. B&N will make changes on its balance sheet to reflect that amount; B&N.com, for a time an independent company but again a subsidiary of B&N, will take a gross charge of $10 million. The company issued a summary of the special committee's findings yesterday.

The committee emphasized that it "did not find any intent to defraud or fraudulent misconduct by any individual or group of individuals" and that the dating and pricing practices were applied "uniformly" to the more than 3,300 board members, senior management and employees who received stock grants during the decade.

B&N is one of more than 100 companies whose stock option practices have interested the Securities and Exchange Commission in the past year and led to at least 10 criminal prosecutions. (The committee will share its findings with the SEC.) In addition, the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York City has issued a subpoena to B&N requesting documents about stock options. The special committee's investigation was estimated by B&N to cost between $4 million and $6 million.

On its balance sheet, B&N will record an adjustment of $400,000 to correct compensation for fiscal year 2006. The company will record an adjustment to decrease retained earnings by $22.8 million, increase deferred tax assets by $5.9 million and increase additional paid-in capital by $28.7 million. The company will not restate any financial statements from previous years.

Officers will repay the company some $1.98 million, which represents the difference between the price at which their stock options were exercised and the price the special committee determined they should have been exercised. Some directors' and officers' options are being repriced not in their favor by $2.6 million.

Holders of incorrectly dated options vested after December 31, 2004 and exercised last year may be penalized by the IRS, and B&N has decided to reimburse officers who "voluntarily repay the company" if they pay the taxes. The cost to B&N will be about $960,000, it estimated. In addition, the company will do the same for non-officers, and it estimated payments of between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.

B&N also plans to pay non-officers some $1.6 million as "repriced cash bonuses" to honor option grants for incorrectly dated options that vested after December 31, 2004.

The misdated stock options resulted from "administrative delays, a lack of a clearly defined process and poor record keeping," the special committee found. The problem of backdated stock options arose, the special committee found, "due to a widespread misconception on the part of the company's senior management that the company had some flexibility in the dating of stock option grants." In part, the company blamed an outside lawyer for erroneous advice that was given in conversation. (In a twist, the lawyer, identified by today's Wall Street Journal as board secretary Michael N. Rosen of the law firm Bryan Cave, told the special committee that he "did not specifically recall giving such advice," but said that he would have given it if asked. A source told the Journal that Rosen viewed the matter "as a corporate-law issue, not an accounting issue.")

Also the special committee found "that the minutes of board and committee meetings were often drafted months after the meetings, and at times contained items which were not discussed at the meeting or which were discussed after the meeting."

The special committee has recommended the company make several changes, including reconstituting the board's compensation committee to consist of independent directors who were not members of the committee during the last decade; adding independent directors to the audit committee; reshuffling several other committees; creating a general counsel position; and having the CFO with help from the v-p of human resources oversee stock option policy.--John Mutter

More than 7,000 people attended the CAMEX show and annual meeting of the National Association of College Stores at the end of March in Orlando, Fla., making the event "the largest since 1998," according to NACS CEO Brian Cartier, who added, "I like to think this bodes well for all of us."

At the association's business meeting, in what he called "a top 10 list for NACS," Cartier outlined a series of association accomplishments and initiatives.

After "several key senior position changes," Cartier said, "I'm very encouraged by the senior management team and the overall staff." New hires include Kurt Schoen as president and COO of the NACSCORP wholesaling subsidiary, Wendy Holliday as v-p, marketing and member services, at NACS, and DeAnn Hazey, executive director of the NACS Foundation.

At its November meeting, the board plans to consider updating the association's strategic plan.

NACS has moved its Washington, D.C., office and will add a person to the staff there. Cartier noted that "there have been many more legislative issues" to address than the association anticipated when it decided to open the office in 2003. "On the federal and state level, we are monitoring more than 60 bills." This year more bills than ever passed relating to textbook pricing and affordability and "it doesn't look like it will be abating any time soon," he added.

In the area of digital content, the association recently met at a forum in Denver with EDUCAUSE and the Association of College and Research Librarians. Representatives of college stores, college libraries and college IT departments shared information, and "we will see reports from that meeting in the months ahead," he said.

NACS's ConText conference has been replaced by Innovate!, the first of which will be held July 10-11 in Tampa, Fla. The focus of the conference is new technologies and new trends. A keynote speaker is Ray Kurzweil, professional futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near.

NACS has engaged in research and development that has included many focus groups with students "to know better what interests them." Some results, which were presented during CAMEX, are intended for both member stores and for suppliers.

In a related initiative, NACS is developing what it calls the X4U brand--Exclusively for You, a "store of the future" brand. "We're working with vendors to bring you products we believe students want," Cartier said. The program is based on research and is starting small, "but we have big plans."

The association has also begun what it calls a Magic Box mailing; members have received two so far. Something like the ABA's monthly boxes, the mailings contain samples and information from "20-plus" vendors "interested in reaching students." Eventually Magic Boxes should appear every other month, Cartier indicated.

NACSCORP had its fourth profitable year in a row and ended its fiscal year March 31 with "another strong year."

The NACS Foundation, which, among other things, supplies grants for training, education and research, is celebrating its 25th anniversary with a $300,000 fundraising campaign. In its quarter of a century, the foundation has sent "more than $1.2 million back to individual stores," Cartier said.

NACS store memberships declined slightly to 3,108 from 3,127 last year. NACS's new president is William P. Simpson, president and general manager of the UConn Co-op, Storrs, Conn.--John Mutter

(Look for more reporting on CAMEX and the NACS meeting in the next few issues of Shelf Awareness.)

Today the Early Show serves up grilling guru Bobby Flay, whose books include Bobby Flay's Grilling for Life: 75 Healthier Ideas for Big Flavor from the Fire (Scribner, $22, 9780743272728/0743272722).

Also on the Early Show: Kathy Kastan, author of From the Heart: A Woman's Guide to Living Well with Heart Disease (Da Capo, $25, 9780738210933/0738210935).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm, part one of a two-part interview with Norman Mailer, whose new book is The Castle in the Forest (Random House, $27.95, 9780394536491/0394536495). As the show put it: "Now in his eighties, Norman Mailer has forsaken the violence and declarative sentences of his signature style for the gradual somber analytics of a style like that of Thomas Mann. Here, we discuss this unexpected change and his new novel's subject: the childhood of Adolf Hitler."

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Today on Tavis Smiley's PBS show: Senator John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry, authors of This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future (PublicAffairs, $25, 9781586484316/1586484311).

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Today the Rachael Ray Show shapes up with LL Cool J, author of LL Cool J's Platinum Workout (Rodale Books, $27.95, 9781594866081/1594866082).

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In a repeat, tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, author of Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life (Plume, $16, 9780452288645/0452288649). 

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In a repeat, tonight on the Colbert Report: Jabari Asim, author of The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why (Houghton Mifflin, $26, 9780618197170/0618197176). 

 

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 Web site.

Saturday, April 7

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 2003, historian Michael Howard discusses World War I, including the state of Europe in 1914 and the role of the United States in the Great War. Howard, an Emeritus Professor of Modern History at Oxford and Yale Universities, is the author of several books, including the soon-to-be-published The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, $9.95, 9780199205592/0199205590).

9 p.m. After Words. Bill Bradley, author of The New American Story (Random House, $25.95, 9781400065073/1400065070), is interviewed by former Congressman James Leach. In his new book, Bradley details a plan to reevaluate the current American political system and argues that U.S. politics are currently stuck. He suggests changes to reinvigorate the citizenry and ensure the country's future. Bradley, who served as a Democratic Senator from New Jersey from 1979 to 1997, is currently a managing director at Allen & Company. Leach served as a Republican Representative from Iowa from 1977 to 2007 and is now a visiting professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

Sunday, April 8

10:30 a.m. At the World Affairs Council of Houston, Stephen Flynn describes America's vulnerability to terrorist attacks and natural disasters. The author of The Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House, $25.95, 9781400065516/1400065518) contends that the country's infrastructure has been neglected for many years, leaving us unprepared to respond to bioterrorism, epidemics, floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Flynn, a former adviser on homeland security for the U.S. Commission on National Security, is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

The idea for Masha Hamilton's new novel, The Camel Bookmobile (HarperCollins), came from a source close to home: her daughter. Hamilton was driving her three children to the library when her daughter told her about a camel bookmobile she had heard of in Africa that once had a strict edict. If anyone in a settlement failed to return a book, the mobile library would not go back there. The anecdote struck a chord with Hamilton. "There was something about the camel library and that rule," she said. "I started to feel the story." Within minutes Hamilton had outlined the basic premise of the novel. She spent the next three years writing The Camel Bookmobile, which is now an April Book Sense Pick.

When the book was in its final editing stages, Hamilton and her daughter journeyed to Kenya to visit the camel library that provided the initial inspiration. "I didn't go right away because I'm a reporter, and I didn't want the journalism aspect to kick in," said Hamilton, who had previously been to the Ivory Coast and South Africa. The Camel Bookmobile is told through multiple viewpoints, and each of the main characters is changed in some way by the roving library. "I really wanted to know their stories," Hamilton said, "and have them achieve fullness and resonance before I went to see the actual camel library."

Hamilton spent several days traveling in northeastern Kenya, near the country's border with Somalia, going on outings with the camel library. "It was moving for me to see the parallels between the created world and the real one," she said. "When I saw the thorn fence and the way the camels walk through the bush, it was just as I had envisioned it."

At the time Hamilton visited Kenya, the country was suffering through its third year of drought. In a place where famine and poverty are chronic conditions, she noted, books are a rare and valued commodity. She saw that children were mesmerized by the camel library's offerings, and several young men and women indicated that the library had allowed them to prepare for exams they needed to take in order to continue their education. "I cannot say how inspiring it was to watch the reaction to the books," Hamilton added.

In February, she launched a drive to collect books for the camel library, an idea she devised with author M.J. Rose. Hamilton lauded "the generosity of spirit" that has compelled more than 150 authors, among them Amy Tan, Chris Bohjalian and Maeve Binchy, to each donate a minimum of five of their favorite books. Hamilton is looking to get bookstores, libraries and other businesses and organizations involved in the Camel Book Drive as well.

Books for children and adults (in English, Swahili and Somali) are needed in a wide array of categories, including science, math, history and biography, along with dictionaries, language books and English primers. "Invariably patrons would tell me their favorites were the story books--children's, young adult and even adult fiction," said Hamilton, "but many of them were taking the nonfiction books for study reasons." She also noted that titles by Kenyan and Somali writers are great choices that patrons find inspiring.

Along with promoting the novel in the coming months, Hamilton hopes to raise awareness for the camel library. "There are two strands here for me. There is the real camel library," she said, "and then there is the novel." The Camel Bookmobile is the story of an American librarian who travels to Africa to work with a relief organization that uses camels to bring books to forgotten villages and what transpires when the bookmobile causes a feud among the villagers it aims to help. Hamilton is also the author of two previous novels, Staircase of a Thousand Steps and The Distance Between Us.

Hamilton is in the midst of an author events tour that will include the Arizona Book Festival in Phoenix, Ariz., on April 14, the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minn., on April 20 and the New Jersey Library Association Conference in Long Branch, N.J., on April 24.

At bookstore signings, she plans to encourage attendees to purchase a copy of a favored book and donate it to the camel library--and to inscribe it with a personal message. While in Kenya, said Hamilton, the head librarian "made a point of telling me that patrons especially love it when there is a note written in the book. It really makes them feel connected to the book and to people and places they can just barely imagine."--Shannon McKenna

Few writers can escape the influence of James Joyce--perhaps no Irish writer can. Dowd, an Irish author making her debut, uses his tools in her own unique style in a novel that sophisticated teens and Joyce aficionados alike will not want to miss. Set in 1984, her book begins with a quotation from the Sirens episode of Ulysses, referring to the phrase "swift pure cry" that Leopold Bloom uses to describe a perfect note sung by a sensuous woman ("It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, sustained"). For 15-year-old Michelle Talent, heroine of Dowd's story, the phrase refers to her mother's voice, dead just a year, whom she sorely misses ("A sudden heart-catching climax, the swift pure cry, her mam's singing along, soaring to the high note, peeling the spuds, hand-washing the woolens, turning to smile at Shell as she wiped her hands"). Other townsfolk compare Shell's beauty with her mother's, a comeliness that attracts the attentions of Declan Ronan. His family is wealthy; her family survives on the money Shell's alcoholic father skims from the church collections. The author weaves in themes familiar to Joyce fans: poverty versus wealth, the imposing presence of the Catholic Church, and sexuality--both budding and overblown. She also uses to great effect his device of repeated lyrical phrases to conjure a memory or to demonstrate the heroine's newfound sense of understanding as she navigates her world, like Bloom, largely alone. Declan comes between Shell and her only friend, whom Shell discovers too late has also caught his attentions ("Hickory dickory/ Bridie Quinn/ Ring the bell/ And let yourself in," he tells Shell). She discovers many things too late, and finds herself pregnant in a small rural town where rumors fly and choices are nil. But Dowd also conveys the ties between Shell and her younger siblings, and the kindness of a few neighbors; in each of them the author reveals some evidence of humanity. Readers know who the father of Shell's child is, but in a scene both climactic and cathartic, the heroine informs her father of the truth, and once again hears her mother's "swift, pure cry." Peace has come to Shell at last. Though nearly 80 years have passed from Joyce's Bloomsday (1904) to Shell's coming of age, Dowd suggests that not much had changed in Ireland. Its unforgiving beauty and hard-won independence lives on in the character of Shell and in Dowd's delicious prose.--Jennifer M. Brown