In a front-page story, today's New York Times surveyed "hybrid books" such as four titles to be released by Simon & Schuster's Atria imprint, working with Vook, that "intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read--and viewed--online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch."

The Times's judgment: "Some publishers say this kind of multimedia hybrid is necessary to lure modern readers who crave something different. But reading experts question whether fiddling with the parameters of books ultimately degrades the act of reading."

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Barnes & Noble has completed its purchase of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, which it announced this summer (Shelf Awareness, August 10, 2009). The purchase price was reduced to $514 million from $596 million to reflect $82 million in cash bonuses paid to 192 members of B&N College's management team and employees, but not, the company emphasized, Len Riggio, who both owned B&N College and has a controlling interest in Barnes & Noble.

B&N said, too, that it is changing its fiscal year to align with B&N College's so that it runs from May 1 to April 30. The company has used a fiscal year that ran from February 1 to January 31.

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Maria's Bookshop, Durango, Colo., which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month, "stands not only as a 'bookstore' but a regional icon of Southwestern literary voices, community service and a place where those with a passion for books can gather," the Durango Telegraph wrote. "The shop was opened by Dusty Teal during the depressed economy of the early 1980s. Now, as independent bookshops across the country are closing their doors, Maria's Bookshop still thrives."

"What's going on here is so much bigger than us, this building, or our staff," said Peter Schertz, co-owner of Maria's. "Sometimes I feel like we're riding a wave of something that comes straight from this community."

Added co-owner Andrea Avantaggio: "The first day I 'got' what this bookshop means to people was the day a man came in looking for books about felt napping. I just remember watching his eyes twinkle when he saw how many titles there were that could feed his new interest and passion. I realized that's the kind of thing people use their local bookshop for."

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The new Espresso Book machine at Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Mass., was featured on New Hampshire Public Radio's Word of Mouth program, which spoke with owner Jeffrey Mayersohn.

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Lulu.com, the online book publisher, "has inked a deal with Yahoo that will expand its potential audience," the Raleigh News and Observer reported. Yahoo began posting Lulu's weRead book discovery application on its redesigned home page Tuesday.

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Happy E-holidays? The Los Angeles Times reported that an online survey commissioned by Retrevo found that "1 in 5 shoppers said they planned to buy an electronic book reader such as a Sony Reader or Amazon Kindle this year. When asked what they would like to get as a gift, about 1 in 10 cited a digital book reader."

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Apple's much-anticipated but still mysterious Tablet could "specialize in reviving dead-tree media (i.e., newspapers, magazines and books)," Wired.com observed, noting that "all the rumors suggest the device would be a larger iPod Touch/iPhone with a 10-inch screen. Previously Wired.com argued that redefining print would be a logical purpose for a gadget this size."

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Winnie the Pooh and his friends have found their way home to Disney. The Guardian reported that the Walt Disney corporation "fought off a challenge to its ownership of the rights to Winnie the Pooh and his lucrative fellow characters in Hundred Acre Wood."

A Los Angeles judge "struck out a claim against Disney lodged by the family of Stephen Slesinger, a comic book pioneer who bought the copyright to Pooh in 1930 from the bear's British creator, A.A. Milne. After Slesinger's death in 1953, his widow licensed the rights to Disney in return for regular royalties--but the family sued in 1991, claiming to have been short-changed by Disney."

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Penguin Group has committed to a "second season" of its From the Publisher's Office online network, which includes the Screening Room, the Radio Room and the Reading Room. The company said that the network had more than 100,000 page views in three months.

Among presentations planned for this fall: an interview with Tomie dePaola, footage from his 75th birthday party and a reading from his Strega Nona: Her Story by Liz Shanks; Penguin Classics's Ten Essential Penguin Classics that everyone should read; and Favorite Font?, about types and fonts.

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Book trailer of the day: How Many Licks?: Or, How to Estimate Damn Near Anything by Aaron Santos (Running Press).

Simon & Schuster has created Gallery Books, an imprint that is joining Pocket Books's hardcover and trade paperback lines with Simon Spotlight Entertainment. With the move, Pocket Books will return to its roots as a mass market publisher. Gallery is expected to issue its first books this spring.

Louise Burke will be executive v-p and publisher of Gallery, and Anthony Ziccardi becomes v-p and deputy publisher. The pair continue to hold the same positions at Pocket Books.

Jen Bergstrom is v-p and editor-in-chief of Gallery. She and other Pocket Books editors will acquire and publish books both for Gallery and Pocket Books imprints. Similarly the publicity department of Pocket will now handle Gallery and Pocket.

In a company memo, S&S CEO and president Carolyn Reidy wrote that Gallery will be "an immediate leader in those areas where Pocket Books and SSE have already forged well-earned reputations, such as women's fiction, pop culture and entertainment" and will have a mandate "to acquire top authors and hot prospects in a broad range of publishing categories, both fiction and nonfiction."

Pocket Books's hardcover and trade paperback fiction authors include Johanna Lindsey, Lisa Genova and Mary Alice Monroe. Since its founding two years ago, Simon Spotlight Entertainment has published such books as This Family of Mine by Victoria Gotti, High on Arrival by Mackenzie Phillips, Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea by Chelsea Handler and Mommywood by Tori Spelling.

Today on Fresh Air: Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (Penguin, $18, 9780143115571/014311557X).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Duff McDonald, author of Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase (Simon & Schuster, $28, 9781416599531/1416599533).

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Tomorrow on Fox New's O'Reilly Factor: Richard Dawkins, author of The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Free Press, $30, 9781416594789/1416594787). He will also appear tomorrow night on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher.

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 website.

Saturday, October 3

8 a.m. Carol Berkin, author of Civil War Wives: The Lives and Times of Angelina Grimke Weld, Varina Howell Davis, and Julia Dent Grant (Knopf, $28.95, 9781400044467/1400044464), profiles the wives of abolitionist leader Theodore Weld, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Union Army General Ulysses S. Grant. (Re-airs Saturday at 3 p.m. and Sunday at 11 p.m.)

10 a.m. Judy Shepard, author of The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed (Hudson Street Press, $25.95, 9781594630576/1594630577), recounts the torture and murder of her son Matthew due to his sexual orientation in 1998 and the subsequent legal work involved in prosecuting her son's murderers. (Re-airs Sunday at 2 a.m.)

2:15 p.m. At an event hosted by Politics and Prose Bookstore, Washington, D.C.,
Nicholas Thompson talks about his book, The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War (Holt, $27.50, 9780805081428/0805081429). (Re-airs Monday at 5 a.m.)

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment that first aired in 2000, Philip Short discussed his book, Mao: A Life. 

10 p.m. After Words. Ron Suskind interviews Chris Hedges, author of Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (Nation Books, $24.95, 9781568584379/1568584377). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 3 a.m.)
       
Sunday, October 4

12 p.m. In Depth. Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, author most recently--with Hank Adler--of The Fairtax Fantasy (Townhall Press, $14.99, 9781607913047/1607913046), joins Book TV for a live interview. Viewers can participate in the discussion by calling in during the program or e-mailing questions to booktv@c-span.org. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

3 p.m. T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, author of The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union' (Bloomsbury USA, $18, 9781596916678/1596916672), presents essays about the "race speech" then-candidate Obama issued in March, 2008, in response to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy. (Re-airs Monday at 6:45 a.m.)

Temple Hill Entertainment acquired the film rights to L.A. Candy by Lauren Conrad, former star of reality series the Hills and Laguna Beach. Variety reported that "Temple Hill partners Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey (Twilight) will produce. Conrad will be exec producer through her Blue Eyed Girl Prods. banner. The book, published in June by HarperCollins, has been on the bestseller lists of the New York Times for 14 weeks."

"Lauren, who became an icon in that reality show world, came to us with a structure of how to tell the story in an interesting fashion that was separate and apart from the book," Bowen said. "We loved her take. Her book is an honest portrayal of what it must be like to set out to be normal, then sign on to become famous and eventually realize, wow, this isn't at all what I'd planned for myself."

Hound: A Mystery by Vincent McCaffrey (Small Beer Press, $24, 9781931520591/1931520593, September 2009)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

Death was, after all, the way Henry made his living.

The books he sold were most often the recent property of people who had died. Book lovers never gave up the good ones without cause. But then, the books which people sold willingly were not the ones Henry really wanted. The monthly public library sales were stacked high with those--the usual titles for a dollar apiece, yesterday's best sellers, last year's hot topics.

But not always. Occasionally, some relative--often the child who never cared much for Dad's preoccupation for medieval history or Mom's obsession with old cookbooks--would drop the burden their parents had so selfishly placed upon them by dying, and there they would be, in great careless mounds on the folding tables in the library basement or conference room. Always dumped too quickly by a "volunteer" from the "friends" committee, with the old dust jackets tearing one against the other.

Like encounters with sin, Henry had occasions of luck at yard sales, though not often enough to waste a weekend which might better be spent at home reading.--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

Forgive the book its pretentious, silly name. Otherwise, it's a gem.

My cat and I have not enjoyed a book together so much in years. The more emotionally engaged I became, choked up at author Tolle's simple, profound vision of the effect pets have on our lives, the louder the cat in my lap would purr. He's tucked there now, his nose buried between my knees, lost to the world, a warm bundle of love. If only human beings could live in the "now" like that!

Which is exactly the point of Eckhart Tolle's superb new picture book, Guardians of Being, packed with hilarious, big-hearted art by Patrick McDonnell, the creator of the comic Mutts. Tolle rocketed to fame with a little help from Oprah and his two self-help, philosophical books that climbed the bestseller list and never came down, The Power of Now and A New Earth.

In Tolle's spiritual teachings, animals live in the present moment. He asserts that the "vital function that pets fulfill in this world hasn't been fully recognized. They keep millions of people sane." Haven't you always suspected that, really? According to Tolle, when I pet my cat, I'm participating in his "nowness," that my grumpy, comical, bossy feline friend is constantly teaching me and healing me, attuned to the moment, living effortlessly in the now. Proving this point are McDonnell's illustrations that are pure genius, achingly touching and quietly goofy and unpretentiously wise.

Your guides through the picture book, illustrating Tolle's philosophical vision, include big-mustached Ozzie and his adoring mutt, Earl. They don't need a leash because the two are connected at the heart. In fact, Ozzie and Earl can both deliver the same command to each other, "Heal!" and mean entirely different things.

As I finish the book, shaken and strangely emotional, deeply touched by Tolle and McDonnell's blatant, undisguised passion for their pets and their powerful vision of the role of animals in our spiritual and mental lives, I look down at the furry creature curled up in my lap, my own personal little Zen master. I'm weeping. He's sleeping.--Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: A gem of a book about the role animals have in our spiritual and mental lives.

I met Patrick W. Galbraith, author of The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan (Kodansha, $19.95 trade paper, 9784770031013/4770031017, October 2009) when he made a presentation on nico nico douga at a linguistics conference at the University of Washington in Seattle. "What's nico nico douga?" I asked even though I had intended my first words to him to be "Define otaku." Clearly used to neophytes, he calmly explained that nico nico douga is a video-sharing website, similar to YouTube, where fans post written comments on streaming video in real time. Then I found out that otaku means nerd, geek or fanboy. With a positive spin, it connotes great, expert, smart, cool, hip; at its most negative, it carries the sense of the sociopathic, because of a 1989 serial killed dubbed "the Otaku Killer." Because otaku are seen as either saviors of a content industry or disturbed people, Galbraith wants to "unpack the culture." His book is meant to help people understand this fan culture built around new technology and media.

Still uncertain of how to ask Galbraith to unpack more of his wealth of otaku lore, I confessed that I knew very little about anime and manga with the exception of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a seven-volume manga series created by the renowned Miyazaki Hayao and made into an animated film in 1984. As it so happens, Galbraith saw the original video as a young lad in Anchorage and was immediately hooked, and we bonded over being forever drawn to the bugs in the movie. He said by the time his family moved to Montana, he was deep into anime--Sailor Moon was his passion rather than girls or sports.

His enthusiasm is compelling, and it's easy to get caught up in his delight and fascination. Background and facts spill out in a rush. For instance, it was difficult to make movies in post-war Japan, but paper was cheap, so creativity and energy went into producing anime and manga, which dealt with adult themes like life and death, xenophobia, racism, politics. The student unrest in the '60s started in anime and manga. Otaku appeared in the late 1990s, with costumes, consumption of much media material and community orientation.

The difference between U.S. comics and manga, as Galbraith sees it: In the U.S. the characters are owned by a company, and many creators work on the stories and art. In Japan, the creator has 100% control over his creation. There is a clear story, a singular image, one vision. This artisanal approach results in a more interesting story, with characters that change over time. He says there is nothing comparable to manga's intensity, range and duration.

The Otaku Encyclopedia is obviously a treasure trove and necessary for anyone who is interested in anime and manga, but it also has much to offer anyone interested in Japanese history, society or linguistics. For instance, turn to the word "yankii," which means "bad adolescent." The word was used after World War II to describe Japanese youth who mimicked fashions and hairstyles of American youth. It re-emerged in the late '70s and early '80s when disenfranchised youth started strutting around wearing aloha shirts and baggy pants. Or the word "Goth-loli," a conflation of "Gothic" and "Lolita." It's a Japanese fashion influenced by Victorian-era children's clothes, aristocrats or porcelain dolls, and variations from the dark esthetic to the softer are myriad.

Otaku and its place in Japanese society are reflected in two common phrases. First, "Otaku gari": "Otaku hunting. The practice of finding otaku and hunting them. People target otaku for three reasons: 1) otaku have money to spare to fund shopping sprees, 2) they are considered weak and won't fight back, and 3) they are too shy to tell the police and are unpopular with authority anyway." Following that, "Otaku gar gari": "Hunting otaku hunters. Dressing like an otaku and beating the snot out of would-be predators."

There are some dark aspects to otaku, Galbraith says, but "on the whole it's a happy, bright, colorful culture" and a world that is coming up around us. With The Otaku Encyclopedia, you will at least have a clue about those waitress costumes, yaoi and glomping, and won't be a hetare.--Marilyn Dahl