"Thoreau would approve of Earth Day.... And I think he'd make his voice heard on these matters, maybe in a blog on the Web. Not that he'd ever buy a computer, lest he be accused of being a consumer. But he'd certainly be fine with setting up his home page at an Internet cafe."
Target will become the first bricks-and-mortar outlet for Amazon's Kindle when it begins selling the e-reader at its flagship Minneapolis store and 102 south Florida stores April 25 before "rolling out to more Target stores later this year," the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch reported. Amazon reports its quarterly sales and earnings late this afternoon.
---
North Carolina's Department of Revenue called the lawsuit filed Monday by Amazon (Shelf Awareness, April 21, 2010) "misleading," and countered that it wasn't violating the First Amendment rights of shoppers by asking for data to aid in tax collection, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The state said that to collect sales taxes it routinely requires "general information" about transactions with out-of-state retailers, but did not ask Amazon to disclose "detailed information revealing personal consumer preferences" such as book titles.
"We have requested the same information from other businesses who have complied with their obligation to provide information to the department," said Kenneth R. Lay, Department of Revenue Secretary, who "described the skirmish as 'an issue of fairness' for small businesses in the state," the Journal wrote.
"These businesses are at a competitive disadvantage when they have to collect sales taxes that other businesses do not," he added. "The department is committed to supporting North Carolina small business and facilitating the equitable collection of taxes from both individual and corporate taxpayers."
---
Mark Suchomel,
president of Independent Publishers Group, wrote from London yesterday,
Volcanic Ash Wednesday:
Micawber's Books, St. Paul, Minn., was named the Twin Cities' best bookstore (new) for 2010 by City Pages, which noted that "this cozy institution packs substantial selling power into a deceptively small frame.... Staff enthusiasm extends well beyond local authors and publishers, too--especially in the well-stocked fiction and poetry sections, where books often come with handwritten endorsements." 
Gabriel Levinson began riding his custom-built Book Bike in public parks across Chicago in 2008, distributing books donated by publishers to anyone interested, Shareable reported. 
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is seeking bookstores to become plaintiffs in Alaska and Massachusetts for challenges to new censorship laws that ban the electronic communications of material "harmful to minors," including the display of "harmful" book jackets and excerpts on bookstore websites.
"We were beginning to think that we had seen the end of these patently unconstitutional laws, but we were wrong," observed ABFFE president Chris Finan.
The Massachusetts law was passed in response to a court decision that resulted in the release of a man who had sent sexual material to a minor. The Alaska measure, due to be signed by the governor soon, is part of a bill banning the sale to minors of all material that is "harmful," including books and magazines. ABFFE and Media Coalition, its legislative watchdog, worked to improve the bill before legislative approval, but proposed changes that would have made the Internet provision constitutional were rejected.
While it has no objection to a law prohibiting a person from sending inappropriate sexual material to a minor, ABFFE stated that these laws are much broader, making it illegal to post material with serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value on the Internet.
ABFFE--along with probable allies from national associations representing
publishers, librarians and others--will participate in lawsuits filed by Media Coalition. Booksellers interested in becoming involved may contact Finan at chris@abffe.com or 212-587-4025, ext. 15. ABFFE noted that there is no cost to participate in the case; cases are usually resolved without a trial; and the plaintiff's only definite obligation will be signing an affidavit that will be drafted by Media Coalition attorneys.
Camp Workman has been developed by the publisher to help booksellers bring more kids into their stores during the summer months for programs focusing on themes like "unplug & play" day, science camp, craft camp or an indoor campout.
"Summer is a great time to bring kids into your store for some hands-on fun. A bookstore summer camp--whether it's a few hours or a weeklong program--reminds kids and their parents that books and reading can make summer memorable," noted Workman "camp director" Craig Popelars, who during the winter serves as the company's director of marketing for the retail book trade.
Cindy Dach, general manager of Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe,
Ariz., added, "Hands-on events like a bookstore summer camp have become a staple in our event schedule, and Workman's kids' books provide a great foundation to spark ideas and create an interactive activity day. These kid-friendly events are easy to implement, and generate great excitement throughout our community."
Depending upon a shop's staff, space and resources, event options include craft projects made from recycled and natural materials, science experiments, gardening projects or scavenger hunts that explore the natural world.
Based on a minimum supporting order of 30 units, Workman will provide:
At an event for My First New York: Early Adventures in the Big City (Ecco) held at Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, N.Y., the book's editor and an editor from New York magazine, which ran stories that led to the book, joined three contributors to the book who read their pieces. From l.: New York magazine editor David Haskell; artist Kara Walker; author David Rakoff; Ecco editor Matt Weiland; actress Parker Posey; and New York City police officer Pierre Hippolyte, who saw the crowd, came inside and greeted Kara Walker, of whom he is a fan.
Tomorrow on NPR's On Point: Gordon Hempton, author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Quest to Preserve Quiet (Free Press, $16, 9781416559108/1416559108).
---
Tomorrow on the Wendy Williams Show: Lisa Oz, author of US: Transforming Ourselves and the Relationships that Matter Most (Free Press, $26, 9781439123928/1439123926).
---
Tomorrow on Tavis Smiley: Todd Bridges, author of Killing Willis: From Diff'rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted (Touchstone, $26, 9781439148983/1439148988).
---
Tomorrow on the View: Craig Robinson, author of A Game of Character: A Family Journey from Chicago's Southside to the Ivy League and Beyond (Gotham, $26, 9781592405480/1592405487).
Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this week 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, April 24
8 a.m. Jack Censer, author of On the Trail of the D.C. Sniper: Fear and the Media (University of Virginia Press, $29.95, 9780813928944/081392894X), contends that reporting by local media increased the level of fear among people living in the Capital area. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 p.m.)
8:45 a.m. Simon Johnson, author of 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (Pantheon, $26.95, 9780307379054/0307379051), talks about the power of Wall Street banks since the 2008 financial collapse. (Re-airs Sunday at 6:30 p.m.)
1 p.m. Book TV features live coverage of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, including events, author interviews and viewer call-in segments. Authors scheduled to appear are Tim Naftali, Nomi Prins, Phillip Kearney, Richard Reeves, Geoffrey Robinson, Miriam Pawel, Peter Schrag, Richard Rayner, Barry Glassner, Andrew Lewis, Martha Sandweiss and Amy Louise Wood.
7:30 p.m. Jack Cashill, author of Popes and Bankers: A Cultural History of Credit and Debt, from Aristotle to AIG (Thomas Nelson, $14.99, 9781595552730/1595552731), talks about the impact credit and debt have had on the development of the Western world. (Re-airs Sunday at 5:45 a.m.)
9 p.m. Jason Mattera, author of Obama Zombies: How the Liberal Machine Brainwashed My Generation (Threshold Editions, $25, 9781439172070/1439172072), argues that electronic and Internet media, as well as liberal academia, always side with Democrats. (Re-airs Sunday at 11 a.m.)
10 p.m. After Words. Larry Johnson interviews Mark Perry, author of Talking to Terrorists (Basic Books, $26.95, 9780465011179/0465011179). Perry contends that it is necessary for the U.S. government to engage verbally with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m. and Monday at 12 a.m. and Sunday, May 2, at 11 a.m.)
Sunday, April 25
8 a.m. Lloyd Constantine, author of Journal of the Plague Year: An Insider's Chronicle of Eliot Spitzer's Short and Tragic Reign (Kaplan, $24.95, 9781607146155/1607146150), presents his account of the former New York governor's brief administration and resignation. (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)
1 p.m. Book TV continues its live coverage of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books with featured authors Tammy Bruce, Joyce Appleby, Roger Farmer, Steven Hill, Matt Miller, Reza Aslan, Erik Conway, Naomi Oreskes, Dean Kuipers, Heather Rogers, Charles Bowden, Ilan Berman and Roxana Saberi. (Re-airs Monday at 1 a.m.)
Spoke Lane Entertainment and Mike the Pike Productions acquired movie rights to The Skin Trade, a werewolf novella by George R.R. Martin. Variety reported that Spoke Lane's president, Ryan Colucci, "previously teamed with Warner Bros. Pictures to produce Terry Brooks' fantasy series Shannara."
Finalists for the Bookseller Industry Awards, covering the publishing and retail industry in the United Kingdom, have been announced. Winners will be named at an awards ceremony May 17.
"The shortlist represents an exceptionally strong group of people and companies, all of whom have inspiring stories of excellence and creativity," said Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller. You can see the complete shortlist here.
The Fishes and Dishes Cookbook by Kiyo Marsh, Tomi Marsh and Laura Cooper (Epicenter Press, $19.95 trade paper, 9781935347071/1935347071 April 28, 2010)
The subtitle sums up this cookbook--Seafood Recipes and Salty Stories from Alaska's Commercial Fisherwomen--but it's hard to say which is more enticing, the recipes or the tales. The authors have worked for more than 35 years between them as cooks and deckhands in one of America's deadliest industries. (Currently Tomi Marsh is owner and skipper of the F/V Savage.) And boy, do they have stories--being chased by storms, setting up a pizza-delivery boat service in the Pribilofs, Bering Sea rescues, boats stolen by the Russian mafia, cooking while riding the troughs and crests of heavy seas. Then there are the recipes: Alaskan Salmon Niçoise Salad, Cioppino, Sake Steamed Clams, Seafood Enchiladas, Salmokopita, Thai Clam Chowder, Salmon Noodle Casserole. It all combines with photographs, art, a few haiku and sidebars about such things as sailors' superstitions into a wonderful book about Alaska fishing, strong women and delicious food.
---
Aunt Epp's Guide for Life: Miscellaneous Musings of a Victorian Lady by Elspeth Marr (Atria, $18, 9781439180501/1439180504, April 27, 2010)
The papers and diaries of Elspeth Marr (1871-1947) have been edited by Christopher Rush--she was his great-great aunt, a free spirit, eccentric and opinionated, who had a decidedly unconventional life, belying common notions of "Victorian." In fact, some of her advice is decidedly startling. (What to do with sperm? Not necessarily what you'd think.) Her opinions are quite definite--you should read Scott instead of Austen; keep the elastic in your knickers in good repair unless you want to conceive; never marry a golfer ("A most uninteresting specimen, with a colossal lack of soul"); maintain a diary all your days; and to brighten decanters, insert crushed eggshells, pour in half a pint of water and "shake as if you had Wallis Simpson by the neck." What she says about sighing is lovely: "Sighing is said to shorten your life, like kissing and intercourse, which involve a surrender of breath, of the soul, of the stuff of life. This is superstition. As you kiss and copulate, doubtless you will sigh, and all three are good for you." A wise woman, whether writing about wealth or wrinkles or toads ("living jewels of your garden") or how to intoxicate and catch fish.--Marilyn Dahl
With Incarceron (Dial/Penguin, $17.99, 9780803733961/0803733968, ages 12-up), Catherine Fisher expands on the classic themes of the prisons we make for ourselves and the prisons we are born into and from which we must break free. Incarceron is a living, pulsing prison with red "eyes" that peer at its prisoners and a means of communicating with them. Legend says that one person was able to escape from Inside--a Sapient named Sapphique. A small band of inmates attempts to follow Sapphique's example: Finn, who believes he was born Outside; Keiro, his aggressive oath brother; Attia, who helped save their lives; and Gilas, a Sapient who believes strongly in the legend of Sapphique. On the Outside, the Warden of Incarceron arranged the marriage of his daughter, Claudia, to Giles, heir to the throne. But Giles is dead, and now she must marry Caspar, who will become a puppet king of a society stagnating in a medieval-like "Era" (artificially frozen in time to avoid the dangers of modern technology). She grows increasingly curious about Incarceron, especially after she discovers clues that Giles may still be alive. When Claudia and Finn fall into possession of identical crystal keys, they begin to communicate--each believing the other may be able to help them escape their fates. We spoke with Catherine Fisher about Incarceron.
With Incarceron, you create two parallel societies--one Inside and one Outside of the prison--and the possibility of a number of individuals with a dual existence. Did you set up those dualities from the beginning?
Obviously I set up the idea of the Inside and Outside from the beginning. Most of the characters Inside want to get out. The Outside believes the Inside is perfect, but it isn't. I did have the thought that [one significant character] who is born Inside is Outside, and then Finn, who believes he was born Outside, who's Inside. But most were not set up from the beginning and developed as ramifications of the plot.
Claudia wants Finn to be the person she once knew as Giles, rightful ruler of the kingdom. Yet within their band, Finn happily forfeits the leadership position to Keiro. Does each of them see what he wants to see?
I think Claudia wants to get out of her wedding, of course, so she's looking for a substitute. She latches onto Finn for that. I wanted to leave it ambiguous as to whether Finn is Giles or not. That's resolved in the sequel. With Keiro, he's the alpha male and takes the lead. But Finn is an interesting character to write about; he's not straightforward. He's quite manipulative and reinvents himself in different ways.
He is a slippery character: he knows his role in trapping the Maestra in that first scene, yet he does not do everything he can to keep her safe--and then he feels guilty for it.
We presume Finn is innocent when he arrives at the prison, if he is Giles. But then he becomes guilty by association, and by not doing as much as he can. But then how can one person change a whole society? The Maestra is a case in point: he tells her how he found himself in prison, and he knows he's working on her sympathies, and he does the same with Claudia later on.
The question of trust comes up repeatedly. Can Finn trust Keiro?
Is he trustworthy? Are either of them trustworthy really? Finn is the hero you instinctively trust, but Keiro does his own thing most of the time; he's more straightforward in many ways. The characters take on a life of their own. Keiro is very popular with readers. And Jared is another popular character.
There are those in the prison who believe in Sapphique, and others who doubt. Jared, Claudia's tutor, is a Sapient on the Outside and doesn't recognize the name Sapphique. How did you go about constructing this character that we never see?
I wanted again to keep the doubt about whether Sapphique ever existed or if he is a legendary figure that people in the prison created out of a need. He's not known on the Outside. The next book is called Sapphique [so some of those questions will be explored further]. I see him more as an angel-like figure or a fallen angel, a "culture hero" as we used to call them.
Gildas says, quoting Sapphique, "What lives in the Cave is a hunger that can never be satisfied. An emptiness that can never be filled." Yet all of the characters have a hunger that cannot be satisfied, don't they? Except perhaps Attia and the Maestra?
I think you're right--the Maestra is not content and we don't see much of her, but she's quite balanced. Attia has a hunger because I think she loves Finn, but I don't think he returns it. They're all questing for something--even the prison itself, which we get into in the later book.
On the Outside, there's a deliberate and conscious effort--a "Protocol"--always to conceal the truth of the present, and conform to "the Era," as they call it, and anything "non-Era" is illegal. Isn't that a kind of prison for those on the Outside?
It is prison. Both societies are a prison. Both are meant to be like paradise, and are a hell. I'm not sure where that came from. I thought, "What if you had a society that had limits?" and I got interested in that idea of a static world. The other contrast is that in the prison everything is changing, and Outside nothing changes.
Both your Oracle Prophecies and Incarceron ask the question, can we ever get at the truth?
Certainly in the Oracle we can't, because how can we know what He wants of us? There's lots of different interpretations. Is there a certain truth? I don't know. I like to set these questions up and play with them. It's just as well if it leaves people thinking.--Jennifer M. Brown
