Encore! Encore!

This really, really is our last issue of the year. But we will be making updates on Facebook, on Twitter @ShelfAwareness and on our home page.

And be sure to catch Shelf Awareness publisher Jenn Risko on Wednesday, December 29, live at 8 p.m. Eastern on Book TV on C-Span 2, where she and Sam Tanenhaus discuss "the notable books, bestsellers and publishing industry stories of 2010." During the q&a portion of the show, viewers may call in, send e-mails and tweet. The program will re-air on Friday, December 31, at 8:30 p.m.; Saturday, January 1, at 4:30 a.m.; and Sunday, January 2, at 6 p.m. (all times Eastern).

We'll see you here again on Tuesday, January 4. We wish you all happy holidays and a very happy new year!

 

"I'm the happiest person you know. I am an optimist, I'm happy, I love life, I love friends, I love my job. Every day I wake up and I wish I could believe in God, because I want to thank somebody for my wife and for my life. So reading a story or a book isn't going to bring me down."

 

 

Books & Books, which has stores in southern Florida, Westhampton Beach, N.Y., and the Cayman Islands, is opening another outlet, a boutique in the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, according to the Sun-Sentinel. This is Books & Books' first store in Broward County.

The boutique is being added as part of a renovation that executive director Irvin Lippman said is aimed to transform the museum's entrance into a public gathering space and that "extends the cultural life of the museum into the city." He added that bookstores are "the place where you can really bring the community together." Customers will be attracted by "the pleasure rummaging for books and intelligent conversation."

The kiosk will include a café run by the same chef at the café at Books & Books' main store in Coral Gables.

Books & Books owner Mitchell Kaplan praised both the museum's downtown location and his partners, which include Nova Southeastern University. "It's a great group of people, who are proactive," he told the paper. "They know what they want to do."

 

Aletheia Research and Management, the third-largest shareholder of Barnes & Noble and at times an apparent ally of insurgent shareholder Ron Burkle, has reduced its stake in B&N, Reuters reported. According to a filing yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Aletheia owns 12.7% of the company. Last month it owned 14%, and earlier this year it owned 15.1%. Aletheia began buying B&N in October 2009. 

The move likely reflects Burkle's losses this year in his bids to have representation on the B&N board and his suit against B&N's poison pill provision.

Aletheia said in the filing that it paid $149.8 million for the 7.67 million shares of B&N stock that it still holds, which has dropped in value to about $108.1 million.

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E-readers present a challenge to Orthodox people of the book on the Sabbath. The Atlantic notes that e-readers are "problematic not only because they are electronic but also because some rabbis consider turning pages on the device--which causes words to dissolve and then resurface--an act of writing, also forbidden on the Sabbath." On the other hand, reading printed matter on the Sabbath is kosher.

One Jewish blogger has proposed "a special Kindle that can bypass Sabbath prohibitions by disabling its buttons, turning itself on at a preset time, and flipping through a book at a predetermined clip."

But most Orthodox Jews seem to accept the e-prohibition and will stick to printed books, newspapers and magazines for Sabbath reading. As one rabbi commented sagely: "There's real value in embracing technology. It's just about knowing when to turn it off."

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Congratulations to Valerie Koehler of Blue Willow Bookshop, Houston, Tex., who has won a scholarship sponsored by the Ingram Content Group to attend the ABA's sixth annual Winter Institute January 19-21 in Arlington, Va., Bookselling This Week reported.

Koehler called the scholarship "a wonderful Christmas present! I appreciate Ingram's support of the Winter Institute, as it is always invigorating and inspiring to attend."

Some 35 booksellers attending the Winter Institute have received scholarships, including 31 publisher scholarships announced last month.

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Flavorwire relays the Coen brothers' favorite authors, who include Jim Thompson, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy (no surprise!), Homer, Dashiell Hammett and William Faulkner.

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Buzzsugar offers a winter reading list consisting of "15 Books to Read Before They're on the Big Screen," including The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, The Keep by Jennifer Egan and Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The site wrote: "Cozy up with one of these books next to a warm fire--plus, you'll be able to claim that 'the book was so much better" before everyone else.' "

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Late in the season, Bloomberg offers five "last-minute gift books for procrastinators."

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It may not come as a surprise that "austerity" topped Merriam-Webster's list of Top Ten Words of the Year, which is determined by the volume of user lookups at Merriam-Webster.com in response to current events and conditions.

"Austerity clearly resonates with many people," said Peter Sokolowski, editor at large at Merriam-Webster. "We often hear it used in the context of government measures, but we also apply it to our own personal finances and what is sometimes called the new normal."

Slate examined two key questions sparked by the top word from an economist's perspective: "So what is austerity, economically speaking? And why did it become so very prevalent in 2010?"

Merriam-Webster's Top Ten Words of the Year:

1. Austerity
2. Pragmatic
3. Moratorium
4. Socialism
5. Bigot
6. Doppelgänger
7. Shellacking
8. Ebullient
9. Dissident
10. Furtive

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"Three Books in Praise of the Clueless Detective" were suggested by NPR's Anjanette Delgado, who noted that "in an era in which we're no longer sure of anything--not our own economies, and not even whether Twitter is a waste of time or the greatest invention since contact lenses--there's something to be said for stories about hero sleuths who don't know it all, but will do what it takes to learn."

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"We started down a rather unconventional route for our Christmas card this year and there was simply no turning back. The pull of the dark side was just too strong," 39 Degrees North observed in explaining its video adaptation of Neil Gaiman's poem, "Nicholas was...".

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The Huffington Post paid tribute to the "big, fat guy in a red suit with a fluffy white beard" by showcasing "9 Books About the 'Real' Santa Claus and the History of Christmas."

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Effective January 17, Abigail Cleaves will become associate director of publicity of Shreve Williams Public Relations. She formerly was assistant publicity director of the Penguin Press, where she worked five years. Earlier she worked at Holt and Norton.

 

 

Next Thursday on the Today Show: Chef Rahman "Rock" Harper, author of 44 Things Parents Should Know About Healthy Cooking for Kids (Turner Publishing, $9.99, 9781596527447/1596527447).

Gulliver's Travels, based on the book by Jonathan Swift, opens this Saturday, Christmas Day. The movie is directed by Rob Letterman and stars Jack Black as Gulliver. The tie-in edition is from Penguin ($14, 9780143119111/0143119117).

Author and Entertainment Weekly pop culture columnist Stephen King "names his faves: Computer nerds, a mutant baby, and Leonardo DiCaprio all made the cut."

Who else would include The Social Network and Jackass 3D on the same list? Of the latter, King wrote: "I actually saw it in 2-D, but humor this low hardly needs an extra dimension. Few of the gags can be described in a family magazine, so let's leave it at this: If you find the idea of grown men in their underpants playing tetherball with a hive of pissed-off Africanized bees as hilarious as I do, you loved Jackass. If not... go rent a Woody Allen movie."

 

From this week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover

Hull Zero Three by Greg Bear (Orbit, $19.99, 9780316072816/0316072818). "Hull Zero Three is a fast-paced story of cloned people aboard a colonist ship that is damaged and at war with itself. The clones have to piece together what has gone wrong in their world in order to survive the dangers of manufactured beasts that would kill them. This is one of the best science fiction novels that I have ever read. A real page turner!"--Fran Wilson, Colorado State University Bookstore, Fort Collins, Colo.

The Turquoise Ledge: A Memoir by Leslie Marmon Silko (Viking, $25.95, 9780670022113/067002211X). "Novelist Silko's memoir invites readers to travel with her outside her home in the Tucson Mountains and deep into the arroyos and foothills of the Sonoran Desert. Where others see a barren landscape, she finds a lushness and a home. Even bits of the land, the turquoise, reach out to her. To read Silko's writing is to enter into a space in which our assumptions about time, family, relatedness, and nature are upended. The stories she tells are beautiful, haunting and true."--Karen Maeda Allman, Elliott Bay Book Co., Seattle, Wash.

Paperback

A Good Fall: Stories by Ha Jin (Vintage, $15, 9780307473943/0307473945). "Ha Jin never fails to amaze. His newest work, a collection of short stories, focuses on individuals who struggle to reconcile their cultural identities with their new and disparate surroundings. A Good Fall is at times tragic, at others humorous, yet persistently enchanting."--Bridget Allison, Phoenix Books, Essex, Vt.

For Ages 4 to 8

Small, Medium and Large by Jane Monroe Donovan (Sleeping Bear Press, $15.95, 9781585364473/1585364479). "This richly and warmly illustrated story of one girl's Christmas dreams come true will keep you smiling and reaching for a cup of cocoa. The adventures of one young girl and her new best friends are a perfect way to keep grounded in the things that matter the most during the holiday season--cookies, wild toboggan rides, a warm fire, and the comfort of being with those you love."--Tom Heywood, the Babbling Book, Haines, Alaska

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

 

 

Tramp by Tomas Espedal (Seagull Books/University of Chicago Press, $21.95, 9781906497682, December 15, 2010)

Opening lines of a book we want to read:

Why not begin with a street. The street and the route I walked, up and down, almost every day for more than two years. Bjørnsonsgate, dirty and car-choked, working class housing in rows on each side of the shadow that resembles a road, a traffic artery, bloodless and cold, a narrow pavement past factory lots, the filling station, down towards Danmarksplass, the city's darkest traffic light intersection. A miserable street, punctuated with depressing relics: a dying tree, that ruinous wooden house and a hedge smothered with exhaust dust, the window where she stands pulling off her cotton jumper.

A miserable street, my home and favourite route into the city.... Down under the traffic tumult. Right or the left through the underpass?

The tunnel divides, today I take the right fork, and in retrospect I should be grateful that I didn't choose the left, because a bit further along on the right, just past the Forum cinema, after the slope leading to the lake, on the bridge where fish lie dying on the tarmac, the sunlight strikes a traffic sign and I am struck by an unexpected shaft of happiness. It simply says: you are happy. Here and now. For no reason. In this instant you are happy, unreasoningly, like a gift... suddenly I'm happy. Why? Because sunlight picks out a road sign? I have to stop and catch my breath. I feel a warm and jubilant transparency inside me. Thoughts reawaken and lose their dullness, it's a thoroughly physical experience, my thoughts brighten, and I start walking again, lighter this time, up towards the prominence of Nygårdshøyden and the city centre. Slowly it dawns on me, you're happy because you're walking.

--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

 

 

This slender, unpretentious little volume packs a heartfelt emotional wallop.

There she sits, beautiful Grandmother as she once was, a victim of mental illness perhaps, a kind of "love folly." As a genuinely attractive woman, she is always convinced handsome men are just about to propose to her, a truly lovely woman who perpetually hopes that the man of her dreams is just about to arrive. She covers the walls of her house with drawings, entrusts her most intimate thoughts to a hidden black book and sits on the bench in front of her home in the little village of Cagliari on the island of Sardinia, smiling fixedly, "as if she understood nothing, as if she had arrived from the land of the moon."

In 1950, at the age of 40, Grandmother leaves the husband she doesn't love in the village of Cagliari. At the thermal baths on the mainland she meets the Veteran, the great love of her life, who may be the narrator's real grandfather.

The ineffectual husband whom Grandmother doesn't love has arrived in town as a stranger with nothing but a suitcase and proposes to her one month later. Grandfather never stops settling for her degrading behavior--and then we discover why he continues to love this very damaged woman. In his earlier life, before coming to Cagliari, as he was leaving work on his birthday, with his wife, children and relatives all gathered at his home ahead of him, waiting to celebrate, American bombers attacked his village. His family home was reduced to rubble, his entire family killed. He is determined now to keep his new family.

We meet grandmother Lia as an obstructive, bitter, unpleasant old woman--and then we learn that, as a teenager, she ran away from home, pregnant by a shepherd who emigrates to America, an already married man who may have truly loved her.

This simple but profound tale of how little we know each other is told in a very condensed, chronicle style, a tale spanning three generations boiled down to its essence in less than a hundred pages. Sketching out only a few scenes into dramatic life, author Milena Agus artlessly strings together half a dozen plot threads of people caught in a tragic tangle of unfulfilled and unrequited loves, in which the characters who are most judgmental are often the people with the same secrets.

 "...what do we really know about others...?" Agus asks. "What can we know, truly, even about those closest to us?"

Begin this novel a doubter, if you will, that anything so short can span so very much and shake you to your emotional center. You may find yourself remaining in your armchair stunned when the last page is turned, then going back to the beginning to read again, with wiser eyes, this unassuming little gem.--Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: An unassuming little gem of a novel that packs a heartfelt emotional wallop.