"I learned to read at the age of five, in Brother Justiniano’s class at the De la Salle Academy in Cochabamba, Bolivia. It is the most important thing that has ever happened to me. Almost seventy years later I remember clearly how the magic of translating the words in books into images enriched my life, breaking the barriers of time and space and allowing me to travel with Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea, fight with d’Artagnan, Athos, Portos, and Aramis against the intrigues threatening the Queen in the days of the secretive Richelieu, or stumble through the sewers of Paris, transformed into Jean Valjean carrying Marius’s inert body on my back.

"Reading changed dreams into life and life into dreams and placed the universe of literature within reach of the boy I once was. My mother told me the first things I wrote were continuations of the stories I read because it made me sad when they concluded or because I wanted to change their endings. And perhaps this is what I have spent my life doing without realizing it: prolonging in time, as I grew, matured, and aged, the stories that filled my childhood with exaltation and adventures."

Alex Debogorski, one of the stars of the History Channel's reality show Ice Road Truckers, recently trucked down to Ingram headquarters in LaVergne, Tenn., where he shared stories from the road and promoted his new book, King of the Road: True Tales from a Legendary Ice Road Trucker (Wiley). Here he poses with Ingram Content Group president and CEO Skip Prichard (r.), who knows a thing or two about trucks.

As expected, yesterday Amazon.com unveiled a new service to be introduced next year that will let Kindle customers read their e-books from Web browsers. Oddly, Amazon made the announcement at an event held by new e-book rival Google for its Chrome operating system.

The Wall Street Journal noted that Kindle for the Web is "part of a wider effort by Amazon to offer free apps that let customers read its e-books on devices beyond its own Kindle e-reader--including the iPhone, iPad, Blackberry, Android devices, Windows Phone 7 devices, PCs and Macs. (Recently, Amazon has even advertised these apps on TV commercials that sound like they’re narrated by a British butler.)"

The program also will allow Amazon affiliates to sell Kindle e-books on their sites.

On the Los Angeles Times Technology Blog, David Sarno commented: "Now that Amazon is about to have a Web interface, it's just about caught up to Google in terms of the spectrum of devices with which it works."

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Matt Norcross of McLean and Eakin Booksellers, Petoskey, Mich., celebrated this week's launch of the Google eBookstore with a video.

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Emma Straub and Michele Filgate are the two latest additions to Algonquin's Booksellers Rock! series, which itself rocks.

Straub, a bookseller at BookCourt, Brooklyn, N.Y., is the daughter of writer Peter Straub and author of Other People We Married, a short story collection that FiveChapters Books will publish in February. One of our favorite of her answers in the q&a: commenting on what makes the store's neighborhood and customers "awesome," Straub said, "BookCourt is, I would say, at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn. We have an astonishingly smart clientele, and many of the customers have shopped here since the very beginning. Children and dogs are omnipresent. Two of my favorite actresses come in all the time, and I try to stay calm. No, I won't tell you who they are."

In her entry, Michele Filgate, events coordinator at RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth, N.H., was asked to relate the "strangest question a customer has ever asked." Her answer: "When I worked at a college bookstore, a girl once asked me for The Apples of Happiness. I stared at her for a few lonnnnng seconds before asking, 'Do you mean The Grapes of Wrath?' "

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Atticus Books, Kensington, Md., has a far-reaching, cheerful q&a called TLC Books: An Indie Down Under with Tanya Caunce, owner of the "boutique bookstore by the bay" in Manly, near Brisbane, in Queensland, Australia. Asked what she liked most about running her bookstore, she answered: "I love it all really--the marketing, the reviewing, talking to customers about books… being a small business owner means I do it all anyway. If I had to choose one? It would probably be the book buying because then I can pretend I am a kid in a candy store."

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The New York Times surveyed the programs and efforts of foreign governments, publishers and cultural organizations to help the publication in the U.S. of literature from their countries--always an uphill battle. In recent years, these initiatives have grown beyond long-established programs on behalf of French and German literature. Among examples of countries and languages promoted: Romania, Slovenia, Hebrew, Catalan, Mexico and Switzerland.

Publishers and programs that help these initiatives include the Dalkey Archives, Open Letter's Three Percent, Words Without Borders and Amazon Crossing.

All this because, as Esther Allen, a Baruch College literature professor and former director of the PEN Translation Fund, put it: "There is still a very entrenched attitude on the part of mainstream commercial houses that the U.S. consumer of books does not want to read translations."

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In what Sotheby's called a record for the sale of a printed book at auction, an original copy of Birds of America by John James Audubon sold yesterday for $11.5 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The bidding war lasted four minutes and was won by Michael Tollemache, a London fine arts enthusiast and... birder. He told the Journal, "I intend to enjoy it for however long I am able to enjoy it." When asked how long he has been an ornithologist, he replied: "I imbibed it with my mother's milk."

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Anne Holman, co-owner of the King's English Bookshop, Salt Lake City, Utah, appeared on KSL-TV’s Studio 5 to offer a "Grandma's Guide to Giving Books."

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Oprah's e-book club? Forbes suggested a possible meeting of the e-minds this week with the launch of the Google eBookstore and Oprah Winfrey's choice of two books by Charles Dickens for her next book club picks.

Dickens is "the first prominently public-domain choice for the industry-driving book club... It isn't just that Dickens is a prominent author whose copyrights have expired. He's essentially the poster boy for free e-books, the first writer many people download when they fire up their new e-book readers. Google even includes Great Expectations among the three free offerings it bundles with its brand-new Google Books app," Forbes observed, then asked, "Could it be that, with the end of her cornerstone TV show in sight, the all-media tycoon is looking for a way to demonstrate her dominance in a new corner of the digital realm?"

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The famous bouquinistes, with their quaint bookstalls on the banks of the Seine in Paris, "are increasingly forced to peddle mass-produced, touristy merchandise to make ends meet," NPR reported.

"Just because we're in the business of selling culture doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to make a living at it," said Andre Paul, whose stall sells key chains and drink coasters printed with impressionist scenes. "It's hard work being out here in the weather and with the traffic noise. So sometimes we have to compromise and sell a few trinkets along with our books."

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The Huffington Post showcased 25 Outstanding Book Covers of 2010, along with "a few thoughts from some of today's most brilliant designers about their general design philosophy."

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Boing Boing featured the Krzywy Domek (Crooked House)--part of a shopping center in Sopot, Poland--which was "inspired by the fairytale illustrations and drawings of Jan Marcin Szancer and Per Dahlberg."

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About three dozen people gathered outside the Barnes & Noble in Manhattan's Union Square Tuesday evening to listen to Lisa Dierbeck read from her new novel, The Autobiography of Jenny X. The event was planned by Dierbeck and her colleagues at Mischief + Mayhem, a literary imprint that works in collaboration with OR Books; attendees were e-mailed instructions to meet inside the store (wearing red flowers to recognize each other) and try to lure other patrons outside. Dale Peck, another of the imprint's co-founders, introduced the reading, describing it as a celebration rather than a protest, but also laying out a set of tendencies by which "economies of scale" make it more profitable for chain bookstores to sell mass quantities of a smaller range of titles, leading to a decrease in the variety of literary offerings--tendencies M+M hoped to counter by working outside the usual bookselling channels. (Earlier this week, OR Books elected to make its titles available through nearby St. Mark's Bookshop.) To that end, they brought along a laptop, hoping to piggyback onto B&N's wi-fi and sell books to the audience through their own website. The connection did not cooperate, although some of those purchases were presumably fulfilled at the afterparty at Peck's apartment.--Ron Hogan

Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Ree Drummond, author of The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl (Morrow Cookbooks, $27.50, 9780061658198/0061658197).

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Tomorrow morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe: Laurie David, author of The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time (Grand Central, $29.99, 9780446565462/0446565466).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Bill Shore, author of The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men: Inspiration, Vision, and Purpose in the Quest to End Malaria (PublicAffairs, $25.95, 9781586487645/1586487647).

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Tomorrow on KCRW's Bookworm: Nicole Krauss, author of Great House (Norton, $24.95, 9780393079982/0393079988). As the show put it: "Nicole Krauss is more sensitive to emotional textures and to characters than she is to conventional plot. Here, she speaks about how the careful maneuverings of feelings and the details that provoke feeling help to generate a structure for her new novel."

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Tomorrow on Ellen: Steve Harvey, author of Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man (Amistad, $24.99, 9780061728990/0061728993).

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Tomorrow on NPR's Diane Rehm Show: Emma Donoghue, author of Room: A Novel (Little, Brown, $24.99, 9780316098335/0316098337).

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Tomorrow on the Dennis Miller Show: Pat Cooper, co-author of How Dare You Say How Dare Me! (Square One, $24.95, 9780757003639/075700363X).

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Tomorrow night on Larry King Live: Jon Bon Jovi, author of Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful (Collins Design, $19.99, 9780062007292/0062007297).

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Tomorrow night on the Late Show with David Letterman: Bill O'Reilly, author of Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama (Morrow, $27.99, 9780061950711/0061950718).

British director Michael Apted spoke with the Hollywood Reporter about his work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which opens this Friday: "My assignment was to try to recapture the magic of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. That wasn't easy, but the book was so much lighter and funnier and just quicker than Caspian had been. So to bring some of the magic back was a fairly tall order, but it was embedded in the material. [Also] Caspian and Lion had a lot of location work, and it was decided that we should try to slightly reduce that, doing more in the studio. Looking back, I don't know how I ever thought I could have found locations to do some of the stuff. So we had to make a financial adjustment, but I think it was really was a fortuitous move."

Scott Veach sold an untitled project, adapted from City of Dreams by William Martin, to ABC. Deadline.com reported that the project, "described as an action adventure in the vein of National Treasure, is being produced by ABC Studios, with Warren Littlefield exec producing alongside Veach."

Luke Timothy Johnson has won the 2011 Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion for "the ideas set forth" in his 2009 book, Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity, which as published by Yale University Press as part of its Anchor Yale Bible series. The $100,000 prize is given jointly by Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and the University of Louisville.

Award director Susan Garrett, professor of New Testament at the seminary, called Johnson's approach "powerfully illuminating, not only for historical study but also for interfaith relations today."

Johnson holds the Robert W. Woodruff chair in New Testament and Christian Origins in the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

The New York Times Graphic Books list this year includes many fine books of high pedigree, but it didn't overlap much with what we've read and loved lately. The following are some of the comics we recommend from the last few months, with some suggestions for appropriate gift recipients.

For adventurous kids:

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch (Amulet/Abrams, $15.95, 9780810984226/0810984229). Deutsch's charming and energetic story takes the form of a classic hero tale, but its hero is, as the cover declares, "Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl." The depiction of an Orthodox community is smart and sympathetic, and Mirka's struggles with bullies and boring chores, as well as a stepmother who turns out to be the opposite of wicked, will ring true to many kids. The twist at the end makes us hope for a sequel.

Resistance: Book 1 by Carla Jablonski, illustrated by Leland Purvis, color by Hilary Sycamore (First Second Books, $16.99, 9781596432918/1596432918). Set against the backdrop of World War II, Resistance follows two siblings who join the French resistance after their father is imprisoned by the Nazis and a Jewish friend of theirs goes into hiding. Morally complex and filled with nuanced characterizations, Resistance gives young readers haunting images of the horrors of life in wartime and believable young heroes to root for.

Amulet #3: The Cloud Searchers by Kazu Kibuishi (Graphix, $10.99, 9780545208857/0545208858). The latest in Japanese wunderkind Kibuishi's Amulet series is dark and suspenseful enough to thrill 7- to 12-year-olds, but not too much so for parents' comfort. After their father's death, a brother and sister find themselves in possession of an amulet--whose seductive power is a little like Tolkien's Ring--and must use it to rescue their mother from a magical world filled with friendly robots and animals, walking houses and sinister elves.

For grownups who never grew up:

Grandville Mon Amour by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse, $19.99, 9781595825742/1595825746). This is the second of the Grandville series, which follows the adventures of a anthropomorphic badger detective as he tears his way through a beautifully rendered steampunk world. The previous volume, Grandville, is a winner, too, and both titles are available in gorgeous hardcover editions with spiffy embossed covers. A perfect mix of fantasy, Victorian detective lit, sci-fi and wonderful cartooning.

X'ed Out by Charles Burns (Pantheon, $19.95, 9780307379139/0307379132). Influenced by classic Tintin adventure comics but incorporating Burns's dark, surreal sensibility, this original graphic novel vacillates between a lush toxic dream state and a bleak, art-punk 1970s reality. Sounds like an odd pick for the holidays, but Burns's color and line are gorgeous, and this is a must-have for fans of his groundbreaking work Black Hole.

Castle Waiting Volume 2 by Linda Medley (Fantagraphics, $29.99, 9781606994054/1606994050). This long-awaited second volume in Medley's irresistible anti-fairy tale is as satisfying as the first, for all the same unlikely reasons. The plot involves household activities like choosing a new room, keeping the goat pinned up, bowling and dealing with unwelcome guests--but the setting is a castle populated by quirky half-animal characters, sprites, dwarfs and other travelers in search of solace. Medley's cheeky drawings make them lovable, hilarious and even illuminating.

For completists:

Scott Pilgrim Precious Little Boxset by Bryan Lee O'Malley (Oni Press, $72, 9781934964576/1934964573). We've already talked about Scott Pilgrim quite a bit.  Six volumes, boxed set, 'nuff said.

The Walking Dead, Book 1 by Robert Kirkman (Image Comics, $34.99, 9781582406190/1582406197). With the new TV series on AMC, loads of new readers are coming to Kirkman's innovative series about life and death after the zombie holocaust. Image Comics is wisely putting out collectors' editions of the original comics, with new material that will interest old fans and new. 

What I Did by Jason (Fantagraphics, $24.99, 9781606994146/160699414X). Part of Fantagraphics' project to release all of cult favorite Jason's work in beautiful hardcover editions, this volume collects three Jason graphic novels from the 1990s. "Hey, Wait" tells the story of two childhood friends whose reunion unearths a series of surprising revelations. "Sshhhh!" is a poignant life story told without a single line of dialogue. Finally, the "Iron Wagon" is a wonderfully deadpan adaptation of a classic Norwegian mystery tale. 

For history buffs:

It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi (Fantagraphics, $24.99, 9781606993538/1606993534). Selected as one of Library Journal's best graphic novels of 2010, this work by French comics master Jacques Tardi brings the grim realities of World War I to life. A short section of Trenches was published by the cutting-edge comics anthology RAW nearly three decades ago, but Tardi's complete book was never available in English before. Art Spiegelman hailed Trenches as "an essential classic" and dubbed it "the comic book to end all comic books."

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge by Josh Neufeld (Pantheon, $16.95, 9780375714887/037571488X). Now out in paperback, Neufeld's story of four New Orleanians' experiences during and after Hurricane Katrina is as powerful and relevant as ever.  Based on interviews and extensive research, A.D. features characters with authentic voices, and the visuals are stunning. Neufeld's version is somehow suspenseful despite what we know, and makes the storm feel immediate once again. Perhaps no other medium besides comics can convey the strangeness of the events of 2005 so well.

For New York-ophiles

CBGB:OMFUG by various authors (Boom Studios, $14.99, 9781608860241/1608860248). The sadly long-gone birthplace of punk is resurrected in this anthology of comics by plenty of talented newcomers as well as Love and Rockets superstar Jaime Hernandez (who did the cover). The narratives and art can be a bit hit or miss--but what could be more appropriate for an anything-goes place like CBGB?

Two Cents Plain: My Brooklyn Boyhood by Martin Lemelman (Bloomsbury, $26, 9781608190041/1608190048). You know that "authentic old Brooklyn" everyone's always lamenting or trying to recapture? Martin Lemelman's 1950s childhood in his parents' candy shop and soda fountain was the real thing, though it also included the aftereffects of the Holocaust and the city's racial and class tensions. Thick with period detail and family history, this is a sobering and yet still charming piece of nostalgia.

For classics lovers:

Dante's Divine Comedy: A Graphic Adaptation by Seymour Chwast (Bloomsbury, $20, 9781608190843/1608190846). Using an open and often panel-free style, Chwast's inventive graphic novel adaptation re-imagines Dante's epic poem as Prohibition Era fantasia of underworld imagery, flappers and dapper gents in pin-stripe suits. Creative, classy and often surreally funny, Chwast's Comedy is an unexpectedly fresh take on this much-revisited work.

Kill Shakespeare, Volume 1 by Conor McCreery, Anthony Del Col and Andy Belanger (Idea & Design Works, $19.99, 9781600107818/1600107818). We have no idea how the authors came up with the premise behind Kill Shakespeare, but it's a hoot. Shakespeare's most legendary baddies--Richard III, Lady Macbeth and Iago--conspire to send Hamlet to steal the magic quill of the mysterious wizard Shakespeare. More The Tudors than the Royal Shakespeare Company, Kill Shakespeare delivers a fun pop thrill for the comic fan who knows their Falstaff from their Rosencrantz. --Michael Bagnulo

Jeremy Page's latest novel, Sea Change, was just published by Viking (December 2, 2010). His debut novel, Salt, was a finalist for both the Commonwealth Writer's Prize and the Jeff First Novel Award. He previously worked as a scriptwriter and script editor for the BBC and Film Four. He lives in London with his wife and children.

On your nightstand now:

The Wild Places by Robert McFarlane, which is part meditation and part inspirational love letter to the last wilderness parts of Britain and Ireland; Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson, because it's set in a part of Norway I know very well; and The Arctic Journals of William Scoresby by William Scoresby, the 19th-century British whaling captain, partly for research but also to remind myself how tough a working life can be.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Hamlyn Guide to Minerals, Rocks and Fossils. I'm only a writer because I'm a failed geologist.

Your top five authors:

Always too hard to answer, because really the list should change each year, and to name specifics seems to do disservice to writers not discovered yet. But my hunting ground tends to be American writers, from the '50s onwards. And not just novelists--some short story writers and poets, too. I read them like I'm having a shot of espresso.

Book you've faked reading:

Proust, like everyone else. I read up to the bit where he tastes the Madeleine cake, miserably early on in the book, then I suspect it made me hungry and I put the book down, never to return. Perhaps I went off to the café in search of my own patisserie. Like Proust, I don't quite remember.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. As with all of Sebald's books, it is a totally unique reading experience. You have to put a bit of work in, but the blend of observation, humour and breadth of subject is astounding. I love the photos, too.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I don't think I've ever done it. Does that make me odd?

Book that changed your life:

Probably Rabbit, Run and the rest of the Rabbit books by John Updike. Before that, I'd never read such a complete and vivid portrayal of ordinary life, full of its flaws and intricacies and minor victories.

Favorite line from a book:

"Let the rumpus begin!" from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. It's always the start of a lot of fun when I'm reading to my kids.

I like the line in Hemingway's Islands in the Stream where Thomas Hudson goes down to the bar first thing in the morning, has a couple of cold beers, then the barman says, "Why don't you finish that beer and have a drink."

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

The Great Gatsby. It really is a perfect book, one to read over and over again; it manages to reinvent itself each time it's read.

Jenny Han, known more for her young adult titles (Shug; The Summer I Turned Pretty), here demonstrates her versatility with a warm and often funny story about eight-year-old Clara Lee. The book begins in the weeks leading up to her hometown Apple Blossom Festival. Clara Lee wishes she could be Bramley's Little Miss Apple Pie and ride on a float in the festival's parade. As a second grader, she'd been too shy to give the required speech for the entire school. But now that she's in third grade, she's determined to try. She has the perfect outfit to wear if she wins: the dress her grandfather bought her in Korea last year that makes her feel like "a Korean princess from long ago."

One of the most touching aspects of the novel involves Clara Lee's close relationship to her Korean grandfather, who lives with them. As Grandpa asks Clara Lee to explain to him the details of her life and her dreams, the author lets younger readers in on some of the tale's more sophisticated ideas (such as the "chariot" that appears to Clara Lee in a dream). He is the heroine's confidant on good days and bad ones. When fellow third-grader and Miss Little Apple Pie hopeful Dionne Gregory brags to Clara Lee that her "great-great-great-uncle was one of Bramley's founding fathers," and that her family is "as American as apple pie," Grandpa comes up with the perfect reassurance for Clara Lee. "You are all-American Korean American!" he says. "One hundred percent American, one hundred percent Korean. Doesn't make you less than anybody else. It makes you more." In her anxiety about her run for Little Miss Apple Pie, she steps on a few toes and has to make up with her six-year-old sister, Emmeline, and her friends Shayna and Max. Han gets the voice just right, and gives readers a rare glimpse into a second-generation household--all in the context of a third-grader experiencing her first taste of independence. Readers will want to see much more of this winning heroine. Encore!--Jennifer M. Brown

The following were the bestselling books at independent bookstores in and around Chicago during the week ended Sunday, December 5:

Hardcover Fiction

1. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris
2. Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
3. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
4. An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
5. Room by Emma Donoghue

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand
2. Life by Keith Richards
3. Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff
4. Barefoot Contessa by Ina Garten
5. Decision Points by George W. Bush

Paperback Fiction

1. Major Petttigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
2. Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
3. Saving Ceecee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
4. A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
5. Tinkers by Paul Harding

Paperback Nonfiction

1. Just Kids by Patti Smith
2. Michelin Chicago 2011
3. Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
4. Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
5. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Children's

1. Llama Llama Holiday Drama by Anna Dewdney
2. Of Thee I Sing by Barack Obama and Loren Long
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth by Jeff Kinney
4. Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly
5. Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown

Reporting bookstores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; the Book Table, Oak Park; the Book Cellar, Lincoln Square; Lake Forest Books, Lake Forest; the Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka; and 57th St. Books; Seminary Co-op; Women and Children First, Chicago.

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]