At the Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis, Debra Frasier (r.), author of A Fabulous Fair Alphabet (Beach Lane/S&S), congratulates Daniel Archimbault (pictured here with his mother), who found all 26 letters of the alphabet in the signs of the fairgrounds on his "Alphabet Fair Word Game" scorecard. Frasier created the word game as well as an activity kit (available at kiosks at the fair as well as on Frasier's Web site) to encourage children to observe the fairgrounds with a fresh perspective.

Photo by Jennifer M. Brown

In their first joint marketing campaign for the new Indiebound initiative (Shelf Awareness, November 20, 2009), the Booksellers Association and Book Marketing Limited (with support from Gardners) have announced the dozen titles selected by independent booksellers in the U.K. and Ireland for this year's independents' Christmas Books Catalogue.

The catalogue "will be supported by additional material available via the IndieBound website, including author interviews, sample chapters, recipes, competitions and signed books," the Bookseller.com reported.

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Starting today, Borders will offer a revamped loyalty card program that includes a paid option. The Associated Press (via Bloomberg Businessweek) reported that "members of both programs will receive in-store and online discounts, personal shopping days, free coffee, a free birthday gift and earn 'Borders Bucks' that add up to other discounts depending on how much you buy," but members who opt for the $20 per year Borders Rewards Plus will also receive a 40% discount on hardcover bestsellers, 20% off selected other hardcovers, 10% off most other items and free shipping for "most online orders." Teachers who sign up for the discount program will receive a "10% discount on top of other discounts on specified days."

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Sisterspirit Books, which was, in its heyday, "the place for lesbians and feminists to go in San Jose," plans to close September 15, the Mercury News reported, noting that the bookshop "was the place to meet like minds, a place to buy books and videos they couldn't get anywhere else, or simply revel in the comfort of being together in a world that went out of its way to make them feel there was no place for such things--or no place for such people."

"There were no places like this when we started," said Margie Struble, a volunteer and "guiding force" at Sisterspirit for 24 of its 26 years. "Many people met their partners here."

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10 Facts About Books You Won't Read in a Book About Books (aka "tree sandwiches"), brought to you by the Melbourne Writers Festival.

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The Children's Book Review's Dog Days of Summer feature recommended dog books for dog lovers.

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J.K. Rowling has donated £10 million (US$15.4 million) to help set up a clinic to research treatments for multiple sclerosis, the disease that killed her mother. The Guardian reported that the Anna Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic at the University of Edinburgh "will carry out research into a range of degenerative neurological conditions and diseases including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntingdon's and motor neurone disease."

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Cool idea of the day: Operation Medical Libraries was created in response to nearly three decades of war and religious extremism in Afghanistan, which "have devastated medical libraries and crippled the educational system for doctors, nurses and other health professionals," the New York Times reported. The program "began modestly in 2007 with a plea for books from a U.C.L.A. medical graduate serving in the Army," but "has since been embraced by 30 universities and hospitals, more than a dozen professional organizations and scores of individual doctors and nurses."

Valerie Walker is the director of UCLA's Medical Alumni Association and helps lead the project. She said the Taliban "not only burned the books, but they sent monitors into the classroom to make sure there were no drawings of the human body on the blackboard."

Walker estimated that "27,000 medical texts have reached Afghanistan through Operation Medical Libraries, but she adds that the number is probably much higher. Donors can contribute directly by visiting the project’s website to find a military volunteer’s address, then shipping the books on their own," the Times wrote.

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Back to school reading. NPR recommended "Three Books for Surviving Graduate School": Piled Higher and Deeper: A Graduate Student Comic Strip Collection by Jorge Cham; Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic by Alfred Lansing; and Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss.

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Raining poetry in Germany. Last weekend, a helicopter dropped 100,000 bookmarks "with poems by 80 poets from Germany and Chile" over Berlin, in an initiative "intended as a protest against war and a message of peace, as well as a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the independence of Chile," the Guardian reported.

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Book (festival) trailer of the day: Brooklyn Book Festival's video featuring authors who will be attending this year's festival on Sunday, September 12: Mary Gaitskill, Dennis Lehane, Rosanne Cash, Gary Shteyngart, Elizabeth Nunez, Jon Scieszka, Sara Shepard, Tad Hills, Paul Harding, Sofia Quintero, Rakesh Satyal, E. Lockhart, Jacqueline Woodson, Kurt Anderson and Amy Goodman.

 

Staples will begin selling Amazon's Kindle later this fall. Jevin Eagle, executive v-p of merchandising and marketing for Staples, said the company "is not just bringing this incredible product to our 1,550-plus U.S. stores, but we are offering customers a chance to discover first-hand Amazon's revolutionary reading device. As part of our efforts to offer customers a wide range of top technology products and services at amazing values, the new Kindle is a natural fit." Staples will carry three Kindle models as well as a full line of accessories.

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Borders will now have a $99 e-reader after announcing price cuts on the Borders-compatible Aluratek Libre ($99.99, down from $119) as well as the Kobo eReader ($129, $20 off). CNET reported that Borders is also "hoping to up the ante in the features department with the upcoming Velocity Cruz tablets. The Android-powered $199 and $299 models offer direct access to the Borders store via built-in Wi-Fi, as well as color LCD touch-screens and additional media features."

Mike Edwards, president and CEO of Borders, told the Wall Street Journal that "it's too early to tell what level of market penetration Borders has, given the newness of the business, but he said the price cuts don't 'have anything to do with pricing in the marketplace.' Borders knows achieving its market-share goal is 'entirely contingent on selling devices,' Edwards said, and it wanted to make sure it had an offering priced below $100 to attract customers."

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EcoGeek.org's report card on the Kindle's environmental impact gave the e-reader straight A's: "The Kindle device itself, of course, has a carbon footprint caused by manufacturing and shipping all of its parts around. And it does use electricity (though, really, a very small amount compared with devices like laptops or even some cell phones.) But while I still love real books for a lot of reasons, I've got to give it to the Kindle. Authors are getting paid more, consumers are paying less, and (according to a study from the Cleantech Group) as long as the devices replace the purchase of more than 22.5 NEW (not used) books in the lifetime of the device, it will be a positive force for the environment."

Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Tony Blair, author of A Journey: My Political Life (Knopf, $35, 9780307269836/0307269833). He will also appear tonight on Nightline.

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Paul Muldoon, author of Maggot (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24, 9780374200329/0374200327), and Sparks. As the show put it: "A Bookworm music show! First, Ron and Russell Mael of Sparks introduce the new Bookworm theme songs--'Where Would We Be Without Books?' and 'I Am a Bookworm'--and discuss their compositions. Then, Irish poet Paul Muldoon, whose most recent book is Maggot, talks about rock lyrics and how they differ from poetry. We play the song he wrote with the late Warren Zevon (as sung by Bruce Springsteen) and hear a brand new lyric: 'Julius Caesar was a People Person.' "

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Tomorrow night on a repeat of the Colbert Report: Heidi Cullen, author of The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet (Harper, $25.99, 9780061726880/0061726885).

 

Three broadcast networks have deemed Kim Gatlin's book Good Christian Bitches a hot TV property. Deadline.com reported that ABC, NBC and CBS are all vying for rights to the "Darren Star-produced dramedy... which will be written by Steel Magnolias and The First Wives Club scribe Robert Harling." The project has been dubbed by some observers "Desperate Housewives in Dallas."

 

"Does a book's popularity guarantee its movie's success?" was the headline for a post by Carolyn Kellogg on the Los Angeles Times Jacket Copy blog in which she examined both the high expectations for upcoming English-language film versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, as well as the recent--merely "satisfactory"--box office performance of Eat Pray Love. Kellogg noted that "it's not clear that a book that's a favorite with readers will prove equally successful at the box office."

"Could it be that the essence of Eat, Pray, Love was not the eating, the praying and the loving--things easy to see on screen--but Gilbert's quest for them and her discoveries along the way?" Kellogg suggested. "Was Gilbert's writing style--witty and self-deprecating and brutally honest--essential to the pleasure of the story? Are some books too internal to translate well to film? Is Eat, Pray, Love one of them?"

She also observed that readers "become attached to books in a certain way: Especially with fiction, we can imagine the characters, fill in the blanks, the voices, the mannerisms.... And in addition to different ideas about characters, there are rooms and cities, the light in the sky, soundtracks all ways the filmmakers' vision can rub up against the vision of all those devoted readers."

 

House Films and New Real Films will produce a movie version of Russell Smith's novel Girl Crazy. CTV News reported that production is expected to begin in Toronto next year.

"I swear and promise I'm not trying to get into movies just to meet hot chicks," said Smith, who will write the screenplay. "People have often told me my books read like blueprints for screenplays, so I'm very excited to be trying my hand at a real one."

 

Bemoaning that fact that "the fun of complaining about the Man Booker Prize has been rather spoiled by the fact that the judging panel appears to have compiled a pretty strong longlist," the Guardian is nonetheless soliciting nominations for this year's Not the Booker Prize, which asks--then seeks to answer--the following questions: "Does the current longlist really stand up to scrutiny? Have the best books got through? What are we missing?"

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And for those of you interested in the real Man Booker Prize, there is, of course, an app for that.

 

Two new books put animals in place of what humans usually do, to hilarious effect.

Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown (Little, Brown, $ 16.99, 9780316015486/0316015482, 40 pp., ages 3-6, September)

Any child who's begged for a dog, cat or hamster will appreciate the playful parody in Peter Brown's latest picture book, a complete departure in tone and palette from his The Curious Garden. As Lucille Beatrice Bear is "practicing her twirls," decked out in a pink tutu and a bow between her ears, she notices "the cutest critter in the WHOLE forest," a human boy in jeans, striped tee and tennis shoes. She picks up the fellow, names him Squeaker because of the sounds he makes and takes him home to Mom: "Can I keep him. PLEASE?" Brown depicts the pair having a high old time: Lucille dons a kangaroo costume and tucks in Squeaker as her joey, and next tosses him berries to catch in his mouth (like an animal performing in a circus). The artist frames each pencil illustration, drawn on an eggshell or minty green background, with a wood grain in varying shades of brown. A stellar example of this effect depicts boy and bear napping together on a tree branch that seems to grow out of the picture's frame. But things quickly get worse, as Squeaker ruins the furniture and throws cake at the tea party. To top it all off, he disappears. Brown portrays Lucille's face filling an entire page as she cries, "Squeaker, where are you?!" Lucille follows his scent through a mazelike spread; she suddenly looks so small. Lucille finally finds Squeaker, but realizes that his rightful place may not be with her. With humor and insight, Brown gently introduces for youngest book lovers the concepts of family, love and responsibility.

 

A Pig Parade Is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black, illus. by Kevin Hawkes (S&S, $16.99, 9781416979227/1416979220, 40 pp., ages 4-8, September)

Here, in top comic form, Michael Ian Black warns against the temptation to mount a pig parade. "Like most children, you have probably thought to yourself at one time or another, I bet a pig parade would be a lot of fun." Hawkes makes the perfect match for Black's fantasy run amok. As Black describes the fun of "gathering a few hundred pigs together for a grand parade," Hawkes renders them as Looney Tunes–style characters hoofing it like the Music Man and his minions, complete with fireworks and a porcine float. But on the next page, when the author states, "The only problem is, a pig parade is a terrible idea," Hawkes paints a realistic image of a sow sucking on a corn cob, eyes closed, slobber dripping from its maw. Next, he depicts the porkers on the trail of the parade route's remnants--gum and lollipops stuck to their snouts ("They prefer to snuffle, which is kind of like walking with your nose"). Other reasons a pig parade is a terrible idea: they "absolutely refuse to wear majorette uniforms," they don't care about floats--not "Wilbur the Pig from Charlotte's Web" floats, only "root beer floats, which they love" (Hawkes shows them bellying up to a root beer bar). Hooves-down, the best reason against parading pigs has to be the music they play: "sad, sad, country music ballads with titles like 'My Tears Are Wet 'Cause my Mud's Gone Dry' and 'I Just Wanna Plop into This Bucket of Slop.' " Black and Hawkes take the natural characteristics of pigs and transplant them in a human context for maximum comic effect. If you've never thought of making a boy into a pet or putting a pig in a parade, you certainly won't ever forget those ideas now.--Jennifer M. Brown

 

 

Sara Paretsky has written nearly 20 books, including 13 titles featuring private detective V.I. Warshawski, whom she introduced in Indemnity Only in 1982. She has won a lifetime achievement award from the British Crime Writers and the best novel award in 2004 (for Blacklist). In 1986, she created Sisters in Crime, devoted to helping female mystery authors, and has won numerous honors for her work on behalf of women and children. She currently works with several literacy and arts organizations; she and her husband live in Chicago. Paretsky's 14th V.I. Warshawski novel, Body Work, was published by Putnam on August 3, 2010.

 

On your nightstand now:

Jennifer Egan's Goon Squad. Even though I can't keep track of the characters, I think this is an amazing novel. When I'm not reading it, I want to be back in it. Barbara Pym's Excellent Women. I re-read Pym at times of stress--her understated wit and understanding of human foibles helps calm me down. My youngest brother's Ph.D. dissertation. He writes well, but it's economics, which I find a slow go. Kathryn Davis's The Thin Place. Artist Antonia Contro gave it to me to help me think about ways to describe the natural world--it's an unusual and beautiful book. Margot Livesey's The House on Fortune Street--I'm reading it for the fourth time now--a beautiful book.

 

 

Favorite book when you were a child:

Little Women and the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. I had four brothers, and I loved reading about sisters.

 

Your top five authors:

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Anna Akhmatova, Charlotte Bronte.

 

Book you've faked reading:

Oh, a whole bunch. Ulysses--I used to keep trying because A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was an important book in my adolescence. Don Quixote. Paradise Lost. I've actually read War and Peace from beginning to end, and it still makes me furious that Natasha, who is brooding and artistic, turns out to have an emotional disease for which pregnancy is the cure.

 

Book you're an evangelist for:

North and South. I greatly admire Elizabeth Gaskell's work, and think she is in some ways Dickens' superior as a stylist and an observer of social problems. In addition to writing, to raising her six children, and corresponding with leading European scientists and artists, she also worked directly with Manchester's neediest young people on literacy, hygiene, and other social needs. No wonder she died young of a heart attack!

 

Book you've bought for the cover:

Most of what I buy. The cover art tells me if it's the kind of book I want to read, so I pick it up and read the flap copy and if I'm still hooked, I read the opening paragraph and if that works, I read randomly from the middle, and if the writing seems good, the dialogue authentic, no cheap sentimentality or over-strained metaphors, I'm in.

 

Book that changed your life:

I live inside my head, in the stories I've been telling myself since I was a small child, so all books change me in some way, but Raymond Chandler literally changed my life because reading his novels made me want to create a woman detective who challenged the noir stereotype of women as virgins, vamps or victims.

 

Favorite line from a book:

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."--Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

 

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

A Blessing on the Moon by Joseph Skibell.

 

 

Author photo by Steven E. Gross.