"We have our regular hours, 9 to 9 on weekdays and 10-6 on weekends. We're in it for the long haul, so you have to pace yourself. We're very, very fortunate that we have a very loyal customer base who've stuck with us through thick and thin."--Christine Kelly, co-owner of Sundance Bookstore, Reno, Nev., in a story in the Reno Gazette Journal about upcoming Black Friday sales, explaining why the store is not opening earlier than usual.
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Yucaipa Companies has more than doubled its stake in Barnes & Noble and now owns 9.6 million shares, about 16.8% of the bookseller, according to Reuters. Chairman Len Riggio is the largest shareholder in B&N, owning about 16 million shares, about 28% of the company.
The move doesn't exactly seem friendly. In documents filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, Yucaipa said it is "concerned with the adequacy and enforcement of the company's corporate governance policies and practices, as evidenced in part by the recent acquisition of Barnes & Noble College Booksellers." It said it was monitoring B&N's performance and would communicate its views with the board, management and other shareholders.
Yucaipa, a private equity firm headed by Ron Burkle, has ties to Bill and Hillary Clinton and has specialized in leveraged buyouts and mergers of supermarket companies.
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Consumerist.com has this caveat for buyers/gifters of Barnes & Noble's new Nook e-reader: B&N gift cards cannot be used to purchase e-books. Commentors on the site also point out that B&N member discounts (and employee discounts) do not apply to Nook or its accessories.
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Among the 200 Waldenbooks outlets slated for closure in January are the three Waldens in San Antonio, Tex., the San Antonio Business Journal noted. The trio include one in the South Park Mall, which opened in 2004 after a campaign by Books in the Barrio and others to draw a general bookstore to the city's South Side (Shelf Awareness, June 28, 2005).
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Fans of the Waldenbooks in the Fairlane Village Mall in Saint Clair, in eastern Pennsylvania, have been signing a petition asking Borders not to close the store, according to the Republican and Herald (via TradingMarkets.com). Borders said it is not reconsidering the move.
David Silver, corporate director of marketing for Levin Management, which is the managing and leasing agent for the mall, called Walden's departure "disappointing to us. We know that this bookstore does well and they are doing better this year than last year."
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Although the publicity campaign for former Governor Sarah Palin's memoir, Going Rogue, starts off today in a traditional manner with an appearance on Oprah and an interview with Barbara Walters that will run on Good Morning America starting on Wednesday, it is but "one part of a carefully crafted strategy that has allowed the former vice-presidential candidate to leapfrog traditional media outlets and appeal directly to her dedicated and vocal fan base," the Wall Street Journal wrote.
"Among the features of this new strategy: buying Internet advertising based on Google searches of her name, and using Facebook as a key means of communicating with voters," the Journal continued. "Her team also has considered filing libel suits against bloggers who spread rumors about her family."
The book tour, which starts on Wednesday in Grand Rapids, Mich., features "a bus adorned with large images" of Palin's face and will go to "the kinds of places she once described as 'real America.' The tour takes her to Noblesville, Ind., Roanoke, Va., Washington, Pa., military bases at Fort Bragg and Fort Hood, and the Villages, a GOP-friendly retirement community outside Orlando, Fla."
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More on the Villages: besides Palin, Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck will also appear at the B&N store at Market Square on Lake Sumter Landing in the next two weeks, the Ocala Star-Banner noted. The visits were arranged by B&N; Erika Reiser, assistant manager, told the paper: "I think [the authors] know their books sell well here... and that's why they are coming."
"It's exciting for Republicans in our area to have these three people coming so close together," Ellen Hoffman, Republican state committeewoman from Sumter County, told the paper. "Republicans and conservatives I know are very excited about meeting them here. In the Villages, they're all big fans of these three."
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When the owner of a bookstore in the village of Poligny, France, 250 miles southeast of Paris, said she was going to close her 150-year-old, 525-sq.-ft. bookstore, citizens formed a corporation, capitalized it at $70,000, spruced up the store and have reopened it as the New Bookstore, the Washington Post reported.
"This place is part of Poligny's history, part of its patrimony," Corinne Dalloz, a shareholder and the only paid employee in the bookstore, told the Post.
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Late fee of the year: Georgette Bordine, librarian at Camelback High School, Phoenix, Ariz., told the Associated Press (via Forbes) that a former student returned two Audubon Society books that had been checked out in 1959, "along with a $1,000 money order to cover the fines."
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This morning on the Today Show: Heidi Montag, author of How to Be Famous: Our Guide to Looking the Part, Playing the Press, and Becoming a Tabloid Fixture (Grand Central, $19.99, 9780446555913/0446555916).
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Today on Oprah: Sarah Palin, author of Going Rogue: An American Life (HarperCollins, $28.99, 9780061939891/0061939897). Tomorrow ABC News begins airing parts of a Barbara Walters interview with Palin.
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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Alan Sipress, author of The Fatal Strain: On the Trail of Avian Flu and the Coming Pandemic (Viking, $27.95, 9780670021277/067002127X).
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Today on Fresh Air: Josh Kosman, author of The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis (Portfolio, $26.95, 9781591842859/1591842859).
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Today on the View: Joseph Califano, author of How to Raise a Drug-Free Kid: The Straight Dope for Parents (Fireside, $15, 9781439156315/143915631X).
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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan (Pantheon, $26, 9780307378798/0307378799).
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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Paul Goldberger, author of Why Architecture Matters (Yale University Press, $26, 9780300144307/030014430X).
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Tonight on the Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson: They Might Be Giants, authors of Kids Go! (Simon & Schuster, $19.99, 9780743272759/0743272757).
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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Carrie Fisher, author of Wishful Drinking (Simon & Schuster, $13.99, 9781439153710/143915371X).
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Tomorrow on Rachael Ray: Jorge Posada and Laura Posada, authors of Fit Home Team: The Posada Family Guide to Health, Exercise, and Nutrition the Inexpensive and Simple Way (Atria, $25, 9781439109311/1439109311).
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Tomorrow on Fox News's Hannity: Vince Flynn, author of Pursuit of Honor (Atria, $27.99, 9781416595168/1416595163).
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Tomorrow night on Larry King Live: T.D. Jakes, author of The Memory Quilt: A Christmas Story for Our Times (Atria, $19.99, 9781439170458/1439170452).
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Tomorrow night on the Colbert Report: Malcolm Gladwell, author of What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures (Little, Brown, $27.99, 9780316075848/0316075841).
Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, the indy movie that opened November 6, last week took in $6.1 million in "sold-out theaters in limited release," according to the New York Times. The film goes into wide release this coming Friday and should continue to benefit from publicity by Oprah and Tyler Perry. The book was originally published in 1996; the movie tie-in version is from Vintage ($13, 9780307474841/0307474844). Incidentally the Vintage/Anchor website features video clips with Mo'Nique and Gabourey Sidibe (who plays Precious), an interview with Sapphire and more.
Magness is a cattle rancher and investor whose parents founded Tele-Communications, a cable company that merged with AT&T. Siegel-Magness has a clothing company called So Low; her parents founded Celestial Seasonings.
Siegel-Magness remembered the accepted wisdom from Hollywood about their decision to back Precious. "They told us we should have instead invested in this or that fund to make 11 different movies, that we were crazy for financing an African-American movie about incest."
From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:
Hardcover
Americans in Space: A Novel by Mary E. Mitchell (Thomas Dunne Books, $24.99, 9780312372453/0312372450). "Suddenly widowed, high school counselor Kate Cavanaugh struggles to pull herself, her children, and the unwieldy and immensely likable kids she counsels together. The 'space' in this engaging, poignant novel is the one in which each character is adrift: grief, adolescent angst, bewilderment, and loneliness. Americans in Space will speak to all readers, especially to parents of teens."--Banna Rubinow, the River's End Bookstore, Oswego, N.Y.
The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name by Toby Lester (Free Press, $30, 9781416535317/1416535314). "The Fourth Part of the World is not a history book you can pigeonhole: map making, printing, transportation, exploration, and imperialism all influence this great story. Perhaps most enjoyable is learning about the evolving mythology associated with the edges of the map, and how it persists through discoveries great and small."--Justin Fetterman, the Alabama Booksmith, Birmingham, Ala.
Paperback
Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude, edited by Jim Perlman, Deborah Cooper, Mara Hart, and Pamela Mittlefehldt (Holy Cow! Press, $16.95, 9780977945894/0977945898). "Beloved on the Earth is the best book on the subject that I've come across. Beautiful pieces from May Sarton, Rilke, Mary Jo Bang and Jane Kenyon are included, but you will make many other discoveries, too. Full of warming and wise poems, this is a collection that will help readers find comfort and solace."--Linda Grana, Lafayette Book Store, Lafayette, Calif.
For Ages 9 to 12
Extra Credit by Andrew Clements, illustrated by Mark Elliott (Atheneum, $16.99, 9781416949299/1416949291). "A sixth grader from Kansas is told that if her test scores don't improve, she'll be held back at year's end. Her mandatory extra credit assignment is to correspond with a pen pal from Afghanistan. Her letters are given, appropriately, to an Afghani girl, but, since her older brother is better at English, he secretly starts adding his opinions too. There will be complications for all of them, but the letters help them experience life outside of their own worlds, and allow them to look at their own cultures in a different way."--Dianne Patrick, Snowbound Books, Marquette, Mich.
[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]
Margaret Atwood, appearing at Austin's Paramount Theater on Friday afternoon, October 31, at the Texas Book Festival, took out her iPhone and snapped a photo of her moderator, Benjamin Moser, author of Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector and also the new books columnist for Harper's magazine. (You can see that photo and more on her tour blog.) Moser seemed surprised by how tech-savvy his guest was. "I can help you do Twitpics," Atwood told Moser. "That sounds kinky," Moser replied. "A lot of this is," said Atwood. She admitted that writing a blog was "hellish. It's hard to keep up," she said. "But I made a vow back in August." On Twitter, her tweets are often playful (see her Mole-a-Teer-themed entries), but she also recently offered writing tips.
Atwood described The Year of the Flood (Knopf, September) as a "simultanuel"--a phrase "I've just invented"--to her earlier speculative novel Oryx and Crake, set in the year Twenty-Five, when much of the human race has been wiped out by global warming and a pandemic. To a packed house at the Paramount, she explained: "Remember in Victorian novels, you'd come to a chapter called 'Meanwhile'? It was taking place at the same time as what you'd read in the chapter before, with different characters. You knew they'd meet up eventually." She waited for the audience's laughter to die down, then added, "So it's the meanwhile book to Oryx and Crake." Moser asked, "Did you know you wanted to write it?" "No, I wish I had. I wanted to about a week later," Atwood said.
While Oryx and Crake focused on the elite who dwelled securely within a sterile barricaded compound, The Year of the Flood follows the walled-out citizens. For her God's Gardeners cult in Flood, Atwood turned to the constructs of religion, with its "special foods, special days and clothing codes," as she put it. The Gardeners' clothes, for instance, must be recycled. "I never solved the shoe problem, though. I'm open to suggestions," she threw out to the audience. "Leather is against their religion. I don't suppose there's a vegetarian shoestore?"
"God's Gardeners are progressive but also fundamentalists," Moser observed. Atwood suggested that these two things are not at odds: "They do have an ideology and it works for them," she said, and discussed how this related to the question she posed to Richard Dawkins when they were both guests for the "Darwin Special" on the BBC's Newsnight Review: "What if religion is an evolved adaptation that we acquired because it gave us an evolutionary edge in the 80,000 generations we spent in the Pleistocene?" (On that program, Dawkins agreed that there is "an evolutionary basis for religious belief.") Atwood continued, "It's not whether you have a religion, but a question of what kind you'll have." Each has its own music, language and a narrative built in; for Flood, she wrote the lyrics to 14 hymns and, "by sheer accident," according to Atwood, "a friend composed the music for the 14 hymns and now it's a CD."
She suggested that "Real religion is what [its followers] spend most of their time doing," and listed some examples: Baptists sing well; Unitarians "rewrote the Word but weren't enthusiasts"; Presbyterians have stern hymns, versus Episcopalians' Christmas carols. She claimed that "Episcopalians have the best funerals," and that Catholics are known for their atoning and "a sparkling place for ritual." According to Atwood, "[Religions] are all used to form a theory about humans' relationship to the natural world."
When Moser opened up the discussion to questions from the audience, a woman said, "I've never seen a happy ending in your books." Atwood replied, "You find happy endings in children's books. Children need to know that such things are possible." She continued, "We want to leave Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in that big house. Such endings are not altogether plausible anymore. In defense of my endings--I never ended with everyone laid out on the floor. I leave the door open--I have not closed it in any single book." Fans who believe that her books are bleak might be surprised by how funny she is: "For those of you who say, 'Isn't it dark?'" Atwood added, "It's a lot cheerier than the end of Hamlet."--Jennifer M. Brown
