Stan Berenstain, who with his wife, Jan, created the Berenstain Bears, died on Saturday, according to press reports. He was 82 and had lived in Doylestown, Pa.

The Berenstains' first Bears book was The Big Honey Hunt, published in 1962. Eventually the Berenstains' sons, Leo and Michael, joined the family enterprise. Over the years, the Berenstains created more than 250 Berenstain Bear books, which have sold nearly 300 million copies.

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National Book Warehouse is closing as many as 17 stores and may lay off some Knoxville, Tenn., headquarters staff, according to Bargain Book News. (The company has some 130 Book Warehouse stores, which are usually permanent, and about the same number of Book Market stores, which are temporary.) "With Katrina and the rising cost of gasoline prices, the stores have simply not attracted as many shoppers as they have the past," Bargain Book News wrote. "This, coupled with the eroding perceived value offered by 'outlet' type stores, has severely affected the travel and resort shopping atmosphere."

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The Libreria Martinez Books and Art Gallery store in Lynwood, Calif., is celebrating its grand re-opening, beginning tomorrow, December 1. (The other Libreria Martinez store is in Santa Ana.) Events scheduled through the weekend designed to "reacquaint" customers with the store include several author signings; interactive cartooning and storytelling with Los Kitos cartoonist Martha Montoya; and an open mic evening for students to read poetry and essays.

Last year owner Rueben Martinez won a $500,000 MacArthur "genius" grant.

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The Sundance Bookstore, Reno, Nev., had "a very nice, steady weekend," co-owner Christine Kelly told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "Everything's selling. It's amazing what you see cross the counter that you forgot you had." She added that worries about rising energy costs and "other inflationary trends" so far have proven unwarranted.

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Cyber Monday lived up to its name. VisaUSA said online buying on Monday rose 26% this year; an estimated 15 million workers shopped online on Monday compared to 11.1 million a year ago, the New York Times reported. Still, perhaps helped by more widespread broadband access at home, online sales on Thursday through Sunday rose 24%, according to ComScore Networks.

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On Cyber Monday, B&N.com's 10 bestselling books included cookbooks such as Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners and The Silver Spoon. Other top titles were Oprah's recent pick, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, and James Patterson's latest latest, Mary, Mary.

Some of B&N.com's bestselling films were based on books (The Polar Express) or had solid tie-ins (March of the Penguins).

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This year Hanukkah begins on Christmas, the first time this has happened since 1959. Retailers are happy about the late arrival of the festival of lights, according to today's Wall Street Journal. The timing should boost the recent trend of the biggest holiday shopping days occurring right after Thanksgiving and just before Christmas.

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Books-A-Million is opening a 16,500-sq.-ft. store in the Muncie Mall in Muncie, Ind., next summer, according to the Muncie Star Press. When the store opens, a Bookland (also owned by BAM) in the mall will close.

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Mainly because of Internet use, Seattle is the nation's most literate city, according to the third annual America's Most Literate Cities survey, as reported in USA Today.

The survey uses six criteria: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and, new this year, Internet resources. This last criterion includes the number of library connections, commercial and public wireless access points per capita, online book orders and percentage of adults who have read a newspaper online. And perhaps headquarters of major online retailers?

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The San Francisco Chronicle looks at the development of the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance and two national coordinating groups for buy-local organizations. Neal Sofman, president of A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, got the San Francisco organization going; one of its first events is a Shop Local First Week that starts on December 5 and ends on December 10, Shop Local First Day.

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The Portsmouth Herald does a Q&A with Tom Holbrook, owner of RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth, N.H., a man who usually reads five books at a time and keeps a dictionary in his car "in case of an emergency."

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The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle celebrates the 35th anniversary of the Yankee Peddler Bookshop, Volume II, in Rochester, N.Y., owned by John Westerberg. His view of the zeitgeist: "People aren't reading. It's a shame. They're finding other ways to take up their time, but they're not learning anything."

Tom Fritzinger, a principal of Book Travelers West, died Sunday. In recent years he had battled lung cancer and brain cancer.

Craig McCroskey, a colleague of Fritzinger at the rep group, wrote the following appreciation:

"Tom always seemed to me like a Damon Runyon character who'd somehow gone to the same Ohio high school as Jonathan Winters and then ended up in Huntington Beach. Early on he had worked for the larger-than-life Lew Lengfeld, who owned Books, Inc., after which he'd been a salesman for Macmillan in Northern California; then he became a commission rep with the Ron Smith Group in Southern California over 35 years ago. I saw him as a sort of poker player who knew when to be seen thinking, as opposed the average rep, whose tendency is to speak until he discovers what (if anything) he has to say. Add to that an overlay of Southern California that tended to come out in laconic observations reminiscent of Yogi Berra's only minus the paradoxes, and you have the man. One of my favorite of those observations was his reaction to a title he thought he could sell, but which he knew wouldn't engender much interest among his clientele: with a gentle rocking movement of his outstretched down-facing palm, he told the publisher, 'I give that a pale green light.' The poetry of the Southland.

"We will all miss him so much, his sly quiet wit, his ability (unusual in our group) to keep his silence and bide his time when circumstances called for it, his kindness and fairness, his taste or tolerance for all the different types that we encounter in this business, his love of sports, his philosophical and unexcitable outlook, his love of the Manhattan straight up, his devotion to family, his ability to make John Gould giggle like a school kid and make me behave like an adult, and that special spark that made him fun to be with. All this and more we will sorely miss."

Although she wonders if it's an anomaly, Lisa Baudoin, manager and buyer at Main Street Books, Pella, Iowa, said, "Things are going well. We had a good day on the day after Thanksgiving, and sales were up on Saturday, too." A good part of the business is for Christmas, she continued. "We're wrapping a lot of books already."

Among the reasons for the good cheer at Main Street: the Midwest Booksellers Association catalogue (Baudoin, an MBA board member, admitted to being deeply involved in its creation) has gotten "a really good response," in part because of the brilliant execution behind it but also because Main Street Books sold space on the inside cover to local businesses to promote local shopping. ("We've all been very involved in that fight," she commented.) In addition, the store rented mailing lists and sent catalogues to more people than usual, particularly to residents of smaller towns outside Pella where the store has "good customers" whose names it doesn't know.

Also, after Kate Bearce bought the store a little over a year ago and became involved in day-to-day operations (contrasting with the previous owner's hands-off approach), the store has been able to do book groups and other events.

Altogether the efforts have helped raise the profile of Main Street Books. "We've been here six years, and finally people are catching on," Baudoin said. While common wisdom is to advertise heavily in the first year after a store opens and then back off, with today's intense competition, "you can't ever back off," she continued. "You have to remind people constantly that you are there and have the books."

In a related vein, several weeks ago Main Street Books held another annual open house for top customers. (Most are invited on the basis of sales, but "we sneak in a few other favorites," Baudoin said.) The store invited about 50 people, closed its doors that evening, offered 20% off on purchases and cooked food from three cookbooks: The Silver Spoon from Phaidon Press, Chocolate Holidays: Unforgettable Desserts for Every Season by Alice Medrich and A Baker's Tour: Nick Malgieri's Favorite Baking Recipes from Around the World. "Cookbooks are a great gift, and when you cook from them, it's a great way to push them," Baudoin commented. The event also allowed "us to get to good customers and talk to them. It increases contact time and gives a real sense of community since they're all really good readers."

Despite a snow that dampened attendance, the open house still "got people talking and coming in." (The store used the leftovers for people who dropped by during the tour of stores sponsored by local merchants.) The previous year's open house, which wasn't hurt by bad weather, turned out to be the second busiest sales day in the store's history, beaten only by the Saturday before Christmas.

Among books selling well are Leonardo, the Terrible Monster by Mo Willems, which is "lots of fun to sell"; Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter; A Million Little Pieces by James Frey; A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut; The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch; and Why Do Men Have Nipples? by Mark Leyner and Billy Goldberg, M.D.

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion has also sold strongly. "I'm surprised it would do so well here," Baudoin said, adding that the reviews and Didion's many interviews helped greatly.

Owner Kate Bearce has been pushing George R. R. Martin's latest, A Feast for Crows, part four of the Song of Ice and Fire series. In the same general category, Eragon by Christopher Paolini is "still going. We can't keep it in stock."

For her part, Baudoin has been handselling The Singing and Dancing Daughters of God by Timothy Stafford. "It's a nice, sweet story, not too light, and it ends where it should end. It's a very satisfying ending, which is unusual these days."

The author of another Baudoin favorite is arriving on Friday: the store will host Deborah Noyes, author of Angel and Apostle. About Pearl, the daughter of Hester in The Scarlet Letter, the book "examines what it's like to be an outsider," Baudoin said. "[Her banishment] is supposed to be punishment but it's a blessing in disguise. She is not saddled with mores and can enjoy life." Main Street was able to lure Noyes because she had appeared before. Her Hana in the Time of the Tulips tied in well with Pella, a "Dutch town" that has a big tulip festival. Noyes will also appear at two other Iowa stores: Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City and Big Table Books in Ames.

This morning Good Morning America has an audience with Peggy Noonan, author of John Paul the Great: Remembering a Spirit (Viking, $24.95, 0670037486).

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Today on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

• Robert Coover, whose new collection of short stories is A Child Again (McSweeney's, $22, 1932416226)
• Cindy Sheehan, the antiwar protestor whose new book is Not One More Mother's Child (Koa Books, $15, 0977333809)

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Today Ellen Degeneres has fun with Jay Leno, author of How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole World (S&S, $12.95, 1416906312).

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WAMU's Diane Rehm Show hosts "Second Lady" Lynne V. Cheney, author of Time for Freedom: What Happened When (S&S, $15.95, 1416909257).

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Today the View looks at:

• Naomi Moriyama, author of Japanese Women Don't Get Old or Fat (Delacorte, $22, 0385339976)
• Anthony Bozza, author of INXS: Story to Story (Atria, $,26, 0743284038).

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This evening Larry King Live talks with Jerry Lewis, author of Dean and Me: A Love Story (Doubleday, $26.95, 0767920864).

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Tonight the Late Show with David Letterman collides with Maureen Dowd, author of Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide (Putnam, $25.95, 0399153322).

Borders has announced the finalists for its 2005 Original Voices awards; winners will be announced January 19. For the first time, categories include music. Employees at Borders stores and at headquarters in Ann Arbor, Mich., made the nominations:

Fiction

• The History of Love: A Novel by Nicole Krauss
• Kung Fu High School by Ryan Gattis
• The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas: Stories by Davy Rothbart
• The Memory of Running: A Novel by Ron McLarty
• The Mercy of Thin Air: A Novel by Ronlyn Domingue
• A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian: A Novel by Marina Lewycka

Nonfiction

• Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal
• Finding George Orwell in Burma by Emma Larkin
• Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell
• Lipstick Jihad: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America and American in Iran by Azadeh Moaveni
• Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey--The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World by Holley Bishop
• The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer

Children's Picture Books

• Flight of the Dodo by Peter Brown
• The Flower Man by Mark Ludy
• A Froggy Fable by John Lechner
• Our Tree Named Steve by Alan Zweibel, illustrated by David Catrow
• Russell the Sheep by Rob Scotton
• There's a Frog Trapped in the Bathroom by Susan Snyder, edited by Susan McCabe, illustrated by Anna Johanson

Intermediate/Young Adult Books

• Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
• Funny Little Monkey by Andrew Auseon
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy-Tale Detectives-Book #1 by Michael Buckley
• Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
• The Witch's Boy by Michael Gruber

Music

• Amos Lee by Amos Lee
• Careless Love by Madeleine Peyroux
• Illinois by Sufjan Stevens
• Martha Wainwright by Martha Wainwright
• Picaresque by the Decemberists
• Un Viaje by Cafe Tacuba