The deal to sell VNU to a group of private equity firms, announced yesterday, appears doomed, according to news reports. Major shareholders have already expressed opposition and say they continue to want the huge company, which among other things owns Nielsen BookScan, the Book Standard, Kirkus Reviews, the Bookseller and Watson-Guptill, split up.

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The Campaign for Reader Privacy, a joint effort of the ABA, ALA, AAP and PEN American Center, has "promised to continue the fight to add reader privacy protections to the Patriot Act," the organization reiterated yesterday. Although the group noted that "some ground had been gained" in the reauthorization measure that will likely be signed into law this week, the bill failed "to narrow authority to search bookstore and library records to the records of people suspected of terrorism."

The Campaign said it supports a bill introduced this week by Senator Arlen Specter to protect some civil liberties omitted from the reauthorization measure.

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The Blooker Prize, created to honor books that evolved from blogs, is given traditional reportorial treatment by the BBC following the announcement of the prize's first shortlist. English-language blooks from around the world are eligible. Winners will be announced April 3.

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Congratulatorians!

Word Fugitives: In Pursuit of Wanted Words by Barbara Wallraff (Collins, $14.95, 0060832738) (see media listings below), which gathers "new" words to describe a range of things and situations, has three contributions from booksellers. One is the word "anticippointment," on pages 31-32, from Lanora Hurley, manager of one of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee. "Licorice books," on pages 130 and 132, was contributed by Russ Lawrence, Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Mont. In addition, "malindropity," in the quiz on pages 107-108, was sent by Anita May and Elizabeth Bogner of Cody's Books, Berkeley, Calif.

Thanks to Carl Lennertz for the headsuption!

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The University of Michigan University Library and the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science are sponsoring a two-day conference in Ann Arbor starting tomorrow morning on "impacts of mass digitization projects," in particular Google's library digitization project. The University Library happens to be a Google Library partner. Among panelists is Karl Pohrt, owner of Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor.

The organizers are doing a live Webcast. For more information, click here.

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Amy Collins, most recently director of specialty sales at F+W Publications and earlier the head book and music buyer at the late Village Green Books--which had 16 stores and headquarters in upstate New York--from 1991 to 1996, has founded Cadence Marketing Group.

The sales and marketing service company will offer a variety of programs, including sales management and training services and temporary sales help while companies are looking for permanent salespeople. The company will also make a money-back guarantee that all clients' titles will be presented to national book buyers of their choice and provide reports on buyers' responses.

Contact Cadence Marketing Group at 6750 Maple St., Cincinnati, Ohio 45227, 513-403-5716 or via e-mail.

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To clarify an item we ran yesterday, Bill Rickman, owner of Island Bookstore on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, is a former director of the board of the ABA.

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And another clarification: the Book End and Bob's Beach Books, which was damaged in a fire last weekend, as noted here yesterday, are located in Lincoln City, Ore.

Realizing it had a book "coming on line that we had to do differently," as v-p Bennett J. Johnson put it to Shelf Awareness, Third World Press, the Chicago publisher that specializes in books about "issues, themes and critique related to an African American public," decided to sign on with Independent Publishers Group, effective February 1. The new deal showed its value almost immediately. Within five weeks, the book that both IPG and Third World thought would have a wide market sold out its first printing of 30,000 and stayed atop both Amazon.com's and B&N.com's bestseller lists much of last week.

The book is The Covenant with Black America edited by Tavis Smiley ($12, 0883782774), which contains essays by Cornel West and others on how the African American community can address the issues most important to them. Smiley, who has shows on Public Radio International and PBS, began talking up the book in a big way, and highlighted it on February 25 during the annual State of the Black Union conference, which was covered live by C-Span.

After that, demand soared with large orders from chains, independent bookstores, church groups and community organizations. "We handled it as a drop ship," IPG CEO Curt Matthews told Shelf Awareness. "Our sales and warehouse staff rose to the challenge. I'm proud we were able to take a very small publisher with limited access to the market and take it to the top of the charts."

Third World had handled distribution on its own since its founding by publisher Haki Madhubuti in 1967. "We've been getting orders from major accounts all along," Johnson said. "But the value of IPG is that we now have a direct pipeline. We have a very small shop, and this eases the burden and has been great help to us." (Johnson was the founder of Path Press, which he merged with Third World Press five years ago.)

Third World has gone back to press for another 70,000 copies of The Covenant with Black America. In an effort to avoid significant returns, IPG has been trying to be "very aggressive and play it very careful and tight" at the same time, Matthews said.

He added that he is heartened by the popularity of The Covenant with Black America for another reason. "This is not a beach book by any means," he said. "If anyone still doubts there is a large and sophisticated audience for black books, this proves otherwise." Matthews acknowledged that Smiley's support was instrumental, "but he's just the editor," he said. "He didn't write it."

Both Matthews and Johnson noted that Third World has several strong-selling backlist titles such as all of Gwendolyn Brooks's works; Black Men: Single, Obsolete, Dangerous? The Afrikan American Family in Transition by publisher Madhubuti; and The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D. by Chancellor Williams.

A new title, 1996 by Gloria Naylor, "represents a move in a new direction of trying to do high quality but not strictly academic and high literary titles," Johnson said. The press also has an extensive poetry program and publishes about a dozen new titles a year altogether.

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 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 Web site.

Saturday, March 11

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 1990, the late Richard Barnet, co-founder of the Institute for Policy Studies, talked about his book The Rockets' Red Glare: When America Goes to War--The Presidents and the People (S&S).

7 p.m. Public Lives. Sponsored by the Smithsonian Associates, this panel discussion on American Presidents features four presidential biographers: former Senator Gary Hart on James Monroe, Sean Wilentz on Andrew Jackson, Joyce Appleby on Thomas Jefferson and Charles Calhoun on Benjamin Harrison. The biographies are part of Times Books's American Presidents series, edited by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (Re-airs Sunday at 4:15 a.m.)

9 p.m. After Words. Pamela Hess, defense correspondent for United Press International, interviews former Pentagon spokesperson Torie Clarke, currently an adviser for Comcast, whose new book is Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game (Free Press, $26, 0743271165). Clarke was earlier an adviser to Senator John McCain and a press secretary to President George H.W. Bush's 1992 campaign. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

10 p.m. General Assignment. Norman Mailer and his son, John Buffalo Mailer, editor of High Times magazine, discuss their new book, The Big Empty: A Dialogue on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America (Nation Books, $14.95, 1560258241).

This morning on Good Morning America: Tom Nagorski, author of Miracles on the Water: The Heroic Survivors of a World War II U-Boat Attack (Hyperion, $24.95, 1401301509) and great-nephew of a survivor of the sinking the book chronicles.

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: John Barth, author of Where Three Roads Meet: Novellas (Houghton Mifflin, $23, 0618610162). As the show describes the segment: "John Barth, a hero of the post-modern novel, talks about (among other things) heroism, the name 'Fred' (which mysteriously recurs in all three of these novellas), the nature of the novella, and the nature of stories. He's so graceful that he even tells how a story can be a narrator, describing its own birth, middle, and old age. The essence of virtuosity: long live John Barth."

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Today NPR's Talk of the Nation talks with John Brockman, whose latest book is What We Believe But Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty (Harper Perennial, $13.95, 0060841818).

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Today NPR's All Things Considered considers Word Fugitives: In Pursuit of Wanted Words by Barbara Wallraff (Collins, $14.95, 0060832738).

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Today on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show, Leslie Morgan Steiner gives a battlefield update on her book Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families (Random House, $24.95, 1400064155).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Bruce Bartlett discusses his new book, Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy (Doubleday, $26, 0385518277).

The 25th annual Northern California Book Awards, which honor titles in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children's literature and translations, will be held Wednesday, April 5. All nominated books--as well as the winners!--will be honored at the ceremony. The awards are sponsored by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, the Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, the Center for the Art of Translation and the San Francisco Public Library.

At the event, the Fred Cody Award for lifetime achievement will be awarded to poet, memoirist and activist Diane di Prima. A Beat movement writer, she also published many writers after founding the Poets Press. She also edited The Floating Bear newsletter and co-founded the New York Poets Theatre. She moved to northern California almost 35 years ago and has published 35 books of poetry and prose, including a memoir, Recollections of My Life as a Woman (Viking), Pieces of a Song (City Lights), Loba (Penguin Poets) and Revolutionary Letters (Last Gasp, $14.95, 0867196602), which is being published in a revised, expanded form this month.

In addition, Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan with a foreword by Adrienne Rich and edited by Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles (Copper Canyon Press, $40, 1556592280) is receiving a special Poetry & Publishing award.

The awards ceremony will begin at 5 p.m. at the San Francisco Library's main branch at 100 Larkin St.

Befitting a show in Washington, D.C., many of the speakers at this year's BEA have political connections or write about political subjects. The opening night keynoter on Thursday, May 18, for example, is Meet the Press's Tim Russert, author of Wisdom of our Fathers: Lessons and Letters from Daughters and Sons (Random House).

On Saturday, which BEA is dubbing "current affairs day," book & author breakfast speakers are Senator Barack Obama, author of The Audacity of Hope (Crown); Amy Sedaris, author of I Like You (Warner Books); and John Updike, author of Terrorist (Knopf). Marie Arana, author of Cellophane (Dial), will host.

The Saturday book & author luncheon includes Pat Buchanan, author of State of Emergency (Thomas Dunne/St. Martin's); Ariana Huffington, author of On Becoming Fearless: Advice for Women (Little, Brown); Frank Rich, author of The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Bush's America from 'Mission Accomplished' to 'Heckuva Job, Brownie' (Penguin Press); and Andrew Sullivan, author of The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back (HarperCollins). Lynn Sherr, author of Outside the Box: A Memoir (Rodale), hosts.

Sunday's book & author breakfast continues with a somewhat political edge. Speakers are Richard Ford, author of The Lay of the Land (Knopf); Monica Ali, author of Alentejo Blue (Scribner); and Anderson Cooper, author of Dispatches From the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival (HarperCollins). Andy Borowitz, author of The Republican Playbook: Dirty Tricks, Distortions, and Other Keys to Victory (Hyperion), hosts.

The children's book & author breakfast on Friday features Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak (Puffin); Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, co-creators of Peter and the Shadow Thieves (Hyperion); and Marc Brown, who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of his popular Arthur series (Little, Brown and Random House Children's Books).

At Saturday's audiobook & author tea, participants will talk about their audiobooks and the experience of hearing their works translated into audibooks. They include: Jim Belushi, author of Real Men Don't Apologize! (Brilliance Audio); Mark Bowden, author of Guests of the Ayatollah (S&S Audio); Joseph Finder, author of Killer Instinct (Audio Renaissance); and George Pelecanos, author of The Night Gardener (Time Warner Audio).

This atmospheric novel starts with a thunderstorm, and is then drenched with rain, barometric pressure, banging shutters, a metallic smell in the air and strange amber light. Frank Tallis wonderfully portrays turn of the century Vienna with gas-lit streets and nefarious doings. The plot hinges on the classic locked-room mystery with the addition of a bullet wound to the heart, but no exit point and no bullet. The murdered woman, Charlotte Löwenstein, is a medium who has been seancing with the usual suspects, among them a locksmith, a banker, a seamstress, a magician, and a flamboyant but shabby Hungarian count. Detective Oskar Rheinhardt is called to the scene, and soon enlists the help of Maxim Lieberman, a young psychoanalyst. Max's expertise with hypnosis, dreams, Freudian slips and hysteria perfectly complements Rheinhardt's more traditional talents. It takes their two skills, along with help from an unanticipated quarter, to solve this puzzler.

While Lieberman is assisting his friend with the investigation, he is also fighting for his beliefs and his job with the director of his institute. Mirroring the changing times, he must defend psychoanalysis against Professor Gruner, who advocates electrotherapy. In a similar vein, the baroque concert halls contrast with the new Secessionist movement, and famous and infamous personages appear, including Gustav Mahler, Gustav Klimt, Aleister Crowley. Of course, Sigmund Freud pops up. He is quite fond of telling Jewish jokes ("so, two Jews meet outside the bathhouse . . . ") and smoking cigars, which he considers to be one of the greatest enjoyments in life. Hmmm.

When A Death in Vienna opens, Max is meeting his father at the Imperial. Waiters glide about with silver trays, a pianist plays Chopin mazurkas, and everyone is lingering over coffee and pastry. The pastries are minor stars of this book and will make you wish you were reading it within reach of Dobostorte (Hungarian seven-layer cake), Gugelhupf (raisin cake) or Topfenstrudel (cream cheese strudel). And the coffee--Pharisäer (coffee with rum and whipped cream), Melange (espresso and hot milk), Türkische oh, my. But back to the book, where Tallis's descriptive powers work just as well on non-food items: "There was a double flash of lightning, and the crystals of dried blood around the wound glowed like garnets." His images of thunder, hooves on cobblestone streets, spoons against China cups and Viennese music are so graphic that you hear the sounds as you read. According to the author, this is the first in a series. Good news for fans of rich, enjoyable mysteries.--Marilyn Dahl