Last month's incessant storms didn't hinder consumers, who "are in better shape than feared and have begun the year with a return to more normal buying habits," the Wall Street Journal reported. General retail sales rose 4.1%, according to Retail Metrics.

"It certainly looks like consumers are feeling a little bit better about their situation," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics. "They're coming out of hibernation."

The  New York Times reported that the International Council of Shopping Centers "expects the industry to post a 2.5% same-store sales increase in March. Easter, which is a week earlier this year than last, will most likely help increase sales. So might tax refunds."

"If anybody was wondering about the real state of the consumer, this is their answer," said John D. Morris, a retailing analyst with BMO Capital Markets. “The consumer is coming back."

Moody’s Investors Service expressed caution, however, noting that despite the "modestly positive results, we remain unconvinced that this is evidence of a sustainable trend."

The Portland Business Journal reported that Powell’s Books will relocate "its 10,000-square-foot Tech Store into a Powell's training space about half that size near the flagship Powell’s bookstore on Burnside. The move should be complete by September 1."

The move comes after several initiatives launched during recent years to boost sales were unsuccessful in overcoming "changes in its core business, selling computer books," the Journal noted.

In an e-mail sent to employees, Miriam Sontz, CEO of strategic development, said, "We believe it is time to more aggressively address this changing marketplace.... There are many challenges in the book industry and our goal is to keep Powell’s competitive and strong. Our ability to be flexible and adapt to a changing retail landscape is of paramount importance to our long term survival and prosperity."

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Jon Stewart will return to BookExpo America for the first time since 2004 to serve as Master of Ceremonies for the Author Breakfast on Thursday, May 27, featuring Condoleezza Rice, John Grisham and Mary Roach.

Other speakers on this year's BEA special events programs include Cory Doctorow, Sarah Ferguson, William Gibson, Sara Gruen, Christopher Hitchens, Patton Oswalt, Richard Peck and Mitali Perkins.

"I am amazed by the exceptional array of talent and distinguished public figures who have made themselves available to speak at BEA," said events director Steven Rosato. For BEA's lineup of speakers and events, go here.

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At last month's ABA Winter Institute, Christie Olson Day, co-owner of Gallery Bookshop & Bookwinkle's Children's Books, Mendocino, Calif., shared her experience with "a bookstore self-exam conducted by Gallery staff [that] had provided enormous benefits, including sales-boosting results." The subject had come up in a conversation about Paco Underhill's Why We Buy, Bookselling this Week reported.

"From a purely financial point of view, [the self-exam] proved very valuable," she said. "And it was very inexpensive. There would be no reason for anyone not to do this once a year or more frequently. Why We Buy is a great read, and that the fact that it features a bookstore makes it all the more cool."

Olson Day said that Gallery's self-exam "was not going to involve the same level of sophistication or time described in the book, but we were willing to try it.... It helped us identify what we now call the 'magic spot.' We discovered that there is this one corner--where we now have our front table--if we put the right book with a shelf-talker, we can almost guarantee that it will be the bestselling book in the store. We've sold enormous numbers of books because we now know about the magic spot."

In addition to specific changes in the store's setup, she added that the evaluation "was empowering and was a morale builder for staff. It was just a neat thing for staff members to do. It was something that we could do for ourselves. The payoff of useful information, along with intangible benefits, was enormous."

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Bookselling this Week spoke with Nicole Magistro, co-owner of The Bookworm of Edwards, Edwards, Colo., who said her bookshop made the transition to a new IndieCommerce website last December "specifically so that we could play the e-book game. The interest is there."

Since the change, e-books have accounted for 10% of the bookshop's website sales, "but Magistro and her staff continue to look for new ways to ensure that their long-time customers think of their local bookstore first when they buy books in digital format," BTW wrote.

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In its e-newsletter, Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., reported it has created a television ad with "the goal of reaching new customers in these challenging times." The experiment is "part of a test market program Time Warner Cable is doing with a number of small businesses. The commercial itself was created by young filmmaker and 'friend of the store,' Jamieson Fry and his crack production team, and it will air (starting this month) on numerous cable channels in the Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Echo Park, Eagle Rock, Highland Park, East L.A. and Hollywood Hills areas."

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A week without books sounds like an ultimate--and unlikely--sacrifice for most of us, but the Guardian's Bibi van der Zee put that notion to the test by going cold biblio-turkey.

"I decided to try giving up books for a week because I have come to the point where I wonder if they are holding me back," she wrote, but ultimately concluded that she is "never giving up books again."

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Vampire milestone. For the first time in more than two years, a Stephenie Meyer Twilight series book is not ranked among USA Today's top 20 bestsellers, but that will likely change with the release of the movie version of Eclipse in June.

Candlewick's Handselling Indie Recognition Program (CHIRP), which launches with thie house's spring 2010 list, "salutes the expertise and enthusiasm of children's handsellers across the country" and aims to help booksellers handsell better, the publisher said.

Elements of CHIRP support include:

• The website www.candlewickchirp.com, which will go live later this month (by registering, booksellers become eligible to win a trip to next year's Winter Institute)
• an e-newsletter, also known as CHIRP-mail
• tips and information from authors, reps, the Candlewick staff and other independent booksellers
• promotions that may include additional discounts, dating and/or merchandising funds to support current and future titles
• the CHIRP Box for the first 300 CHIRP-member stores: an updated version of Candlewick's award-winning Handselling Kit (which won a Cuffie Award for Best Publisher Promotion). The box's contents will include titles to handsell, chosen by Candlewick's field reps; shelf talkers and handselling tip cards written by children's booksellers to help sell those select titles.

To sign up for CHIRP, email chirp@candlewick.com or visit www.candlewickchirp.com.

At the South Carolina Book Festival, held last weekend in Columbia, Heidi Durrow, author of The Girl Who Fell from the Sky (Algonquin), spoke on two panels and attended the Author Brunch. Durrow (directly under her sign) is pictured with members of her "five-star table" at the brunch.

"Writer to adapt self for Universal" was the headline for a Variety article reporting that Sascha Rothchild will adapt her own book How to Get Divorced by 30: My Misguided Attempt at a Starter Marriage as a romantic comedy. She will also be executive producer.

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Robert De Niro will star opposite Bradley Cooper in The Dark Fields, based on a novel by Alan Glynn. Variety reported that Neil Burger is directing the movie, with Scott Kroopf, Leslie Dixon and Ryan Kavanaugh producing. Dixon wrote the screenplay for the project, which will start filming in May.

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Fox 2000 is casting Monte Carlo, a film adaptation of Headhunters by Jules Bass. According to Variety, Selena Gomez will play one of the three lead roles in the movie directed by Tom Bezucha, "while a possible deal is in the works for Gossip Girl's Leighton Meester. Nicole Kidman is producing with Denise Di Novi and Alison Greenspan. Kidman may also play a supporting role."

Variety observed that "every studio is seeking out younger femme film properties after the boffo success of a string of female-driven films, led by the Twilight franchise."

Frozen in Time by Ali Sparkes won the Blue Peter Book of the Year award for children's fiction, which is judged by a panel of 8- to 9-year-old readers, the Guardian reported.

"I think if you asked any children's author which they thought was the most important prize for children's books, it's highly likely they would say the Blue Peter prize," said Sparkes.

"It's not the kind of book that I would have picked out in a shop," said Jamie Fenlon, one of the youthful judges. "The cover didn't persuade me and the blurb didn't persuade me, and the introduction [in which the two modern characters are stuck indoors on a rainy day in the summer holidays] was really dull. But the rest of the book is fantastic--it's outstanding."

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The Atlantic Book Awards Society named finalists for the 2010 Atlantic Book Awards, Quill & Quire reported. Winners will be named April 14.

Enchanted Evening Barbie and the Second Coming: A Memoir by Rheta Grimsley Johnson (NewSouth Books, $24.95, 9781588382504/1588382508, February 2010)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

Mother was a woman possessed in the weeks leading up to Christmas. She made candles, using Foremost milk cartons, paraffin from a box, and Number Two yellow pencils with string wound around them to suspend the wicks. She baked. She cleaned. We cleaned at her behest. Every room in the house, including the bathroom, had what she lovingly called "a touch of Christmas."

The boxes came down from the attic, each labeled with what amounted to a cryptic description of Christmas: Better, store-bought items and music boxes. Nutcrackers and nativity. Candles with glitter. Santa Claus bank and table-toppers. Angel with rhinestones. Her enthusiasm was infectious. For weeks I would lie sleepless on the black iron bed—hospital beds they are called—looking up at the blue electric candles in their plastic candelabra that glowed through the curtains in my window. A good little Baptist, I believed the Second Coming was imminent, as sure as spring crabgrass, that is, if Jesus didn't return before spring. And though secretly I never was comfortable with the idea of rising up from this world that I knew and loved, it was clear from the Southern Baptist sermons that we were supposed to rejoice in this idea of going on up to Glory to be with the rest of the saints. So my prayers before Christmas covered all bases and were carefully self-edited, honest in the way you are only if you think someone's looking, careful to make it clear I looked forward to the Rapture, but also getting a plug in for my preferred timetable for Jesus's return.

"Dear God," I'd begin... "I look forward to the return of your Only Son Jesus. But could you please wait until after Christmas because I really, really, really want an Enchanted Evening Barbie dress for my Barbie doll? But I will be happy with whatever Santa brings me. Thank you and goodnight. Amen." --Selected by Marilyn Dahl 

Dexter Palmer's first novel, The Dream of Perpetual Motion, was published on March 2 by St. Martin's Press. He holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University and lives in Princeton, N.J.

On your nightstand now:

The Bascombe Novels, an omnibus collection by Richard Ford. Sitting beneath that is The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Over the past couple of years I've also been slowly working my way through the King James Bible, with the assistance of The Oxford Bible Commentary: I'm up to Isaiah and have stalled out for the moment, but the books are still on my metaphorical nightstand, so I claim credit for them.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. My local library had a copy that featured illustrations that had somehow managed to escape the influence of the Disney version--they were genuinely frightening, like all the best children's literature.

Your top five authors:

This list changes from day to day, but on this particular day, in no particular order (other than alphabetical), I'd say:

Isaac Asimov. I haven't read an Asimov novel in a long time, but there was about a year of my childhood when Asimov was the only novelist I read for pleasure, book after book after book. Over a yard of my shelves is made up of old Asimov paperbacks.

Joan Didion. Especially her nonfiction. I'm happy to read her writing on whatever subject she chooses.

William Gaddis. Gaddis is a writer's writer--he loves formal experimentation, and accessibility isn't the first thing on his mind--but that's not a bad thing.

Douglas Hofstadter. Gödel, Escher, Bach and Le Ton beau de Marot are great examples of how to handle interdisciplinary thinking without giving short shrift to either the arts or the sciences.

Steven Millhauser. Great prose, evocative settings, and a strange sense of humor. Edwin Mullhouse is my favorite book of his.

Book you've faked reading:

Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan, multiple times in college and grad school. I'll get to it eventually. (Maybe.)
 
Book you're an evangelist for:

Joseph and his Brothers by Thomas Mann, translated by John E. Woods. A retelling of the Joseph story in Genesis blown up to life size, it has all the sprawling esoteric showiness of a postmodern encyclopedic novel like Infinite Jest, coupled with the meticulous discipline and structural control of a modernist work like Ulysses.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:

Two, actually: Desperation by Stephen King and The Regulators by King's literary alter ego, Richard Bachman. The hardcover editions had beautiful covers by Mark Ryden that formed a larger single image when placed side by side and thematically reflected the content of the two books.
 
Book that changed your life:

Gravity's Rainbow, a copy of which I found remaindered in a Waldenbooks in a Florida shopping mall when I was a teenager. I bought it only because it was cheap and had a cool title; years later I ended up writing one of my dissertation chapters on Pynchon.
 
Favorite line from a book:

Almost any line of dialogue from Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep or any other Chandler novel for that matter. ("Tall, aren't you?" "I didn't mean to be.")
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Monk by Matthew Lewis. If I re-read it I won't be nearly as shocked as I was the first time, since I'll actually be expecting--well, you know.

"I was early drawn to panache," Evelyn Waugh proclaimed. Paula Byrne makes it clear in her entrancing study of Waugh and the inspirations for his novels that he was equally strongly repelled by anyone dull, boring and/or unattractive. From early on, Waugh found his biological family tedious and was on the constant lookout for spirited companions elsewhere. His quest could begin in earnest when he escaped from home to Lancing, a distinctly second-rate public school. It would be panache or nothing forever after.

At Oxford, Waugh fell in with the Hypocrites Club, where nobody was ever accused of being boring. The club was really an excuse for the aesthetic set to get drunk together, snuggle up and carry on camping. In that crowd, Waugh linked up with three serious boyfriends, two of whom he discussed in memoirs of his "acute homosexual phase." The third was Hugh Lygon, a tall, handsome, blond and charming product of Eton and the aristocracy. Hugh led a life of "idleness alleviated by pranks" during his Oxford years--he was panache personified. Waugh would base Sebastian Flyte, the most memorable character in Brideshead Revisited (1945), on Hugh.

Waugh's literary career was launched with two comic novels that remain hilarious to this day. Decline and Fall (1928) and Vile Bodies (1930) took his humdrum experiences, exaggerated them to gut-busting proportions and offered an astonishing parade of blustering nincompoops (the fools in charge) and the Bright Young Things who endured the fools, went to endless parties and flirted outrageously with whoever was handy. The languid Earl and the glamorous flapper became Waugh's stock in trade and made him famous. He also became divorced (fairly quickly) after marrying a prime example of the flappers he so adored.

As fate would have it, in 1931, after literary fame had arrived and his first wife ran off, Waugh was invited to Madresfield, the country estate owned by Hugh Lygon's father, Lord Beauchamp. Famous for its extravagant parties, Madresfield was heaven for Waugh. The love affair (there is no other way to describe it) that Waugh had with the whole family is recorded in Brideshead Revisited for all to see. Fans of the novel will devour every detail of the correspondences Byrne draws so expertly between the real people and events at Madresfield and their fictional counterparts, but heartbreaking is the only word for her descriptions of the effects of guilt over homosexuality (particularly destructive for Lord Beauchamp and Hugh) and the decline into severe alcoholism of the models for the most beloved characters in the novel. No matter how hard Waugh had tried, he couldn't save the ones he loved from themselves.--John McFarland

Shelf Talker: A dazzling tour of 1920s and 1930s Oxford and London and their magical transmutation into Evelyn Waugh's comic masterpieces.

What if the hare and the tortoise, having resolved Aesop's Relative Speed Conundrum centuries ago, had to join forces to battle an army of evil cyborgs that were consuming our time, literally and figuratively?

Did someone say literary mash-up? Wait, I'd better text my agent!

Here's a question I hope will start a new book trade conversation here: When considering your relationship with electronic devices, social media and other online tools, are you a hare (up to speed but still losing the race), a tortoise (in the race, but taking it one step--and one device--at a time) or a fully armed cyborg (earbuds plugged in, laptop engaged, iPhone/Blackberry at hand)?

In recent months, I've noticed several articles on the Slow Media Movement and thought it worth discussing, especially in an industry like ours where many of us move seamlessly (more or less) from desktops to laptops to smartphones throughout the day and often well into the night. And where the now thoroughly virtual line between personal and professional life appears to have dissolved.

Last November, APR's Marketplace program featured a segment that defined the Slow Media trend this way: "Kinda like slow food, but without the food. Slowies write letters, and, you know, talk to each other, offline. They like to do one thing at a time."

Jenny Rausch, one of the Slowies interviewed, has a blog called "Slow Media: A compendium of artifacts and discourses regarding digital disenchantment and the possibilities for a less-mediated life." This week she wrote in response to a recent New York Times article about the increased time pressures and workloads placed on many contemporary workers.

"Would your life be better if you only worked 40 hours a week?" Rausch asked. "If your work didn't follow you home, and wherever you go? If you enjoyed time spent with friends and family without distraction? If you got extra compensation for extra work, or reclaimed those surplus hours for moonlighting at another (paid) job?"

Slow Media isn't the same as no-media. Slow Media even has a Facebook page.

The tortoise and the hare are still in the race, but now so is the cyborg, and even "the fox yonder," who was recruited to umpire Aesop's classic competition, may not be qualified or sharp-eyed enough to declare the winner of a contest with a digitally altered finish line.

Carl Honore praised Slow Thinking in the Huffington Post last fall, noting that even Google "understands the need to step off the spinning hamster wheel in the workplace. The company famously encourages its staff to devote 20% of their time to personal projects. That does not mean brushing up on World of Warcraft or updating Facebook pages or flirting with that hot new manager in Accounts. It means getting the creative juices flowing by stopping the usual barrage of targets, deadlines and distractions."
   
It seems appropriate in an Aesop's Fables–inspired column that Honore concludes: "The moral of the story is that, even in the high-speed modern world, slowness and creativity go hand in hand."

The New Yorker's George Packer recalled the debut of William F. Buckley's National Review, "whose original mission statement, back in 1955, declared that the magazine 'stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.'"

While dragging his feet a bit in the virtual sand, Packer does concede that he may have get a Blackberry at some point or he "won’t be taken seriously as a Washington journalist and phone calls from my retrograde Samsung cell phone will go unanswered. On Amtrak between New York and Washington I sit in the Quiet Car with my phone off, laptop stowed, completely unreachable, and find out if I’m still capable of reading for two hours."

Near the end of Don DeLillo's Point Omega, a woman and a man study Douglas Gordon's video installation "24 Hour Psycho," which projects the Hitchcock classic film on a translucent screen and slows it down to the duration of a full day.

"She told him she was standing a million miles outside the fact of whatever's happening on the screen," DeLillo writes. "She liked that. She told him she liked the idea of slowness in general. So many things go fast, she said. We need time to lose interest in things."

So here again is your literary mash-up question: In your work and life, are you a hare, a tortoise or a cyborg? Embarrassing personal anecdotes always welcome.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)