Notes: Store Logo Design Makeover; Eat That Book
More than 50 members of Citizens for Local Control protested
Saturday against a new Barnes & Noble set to open later this year
in the Town Center in Corte Madera, Calif., the Marin Independent
Journal
reported. The group says the store will threaten nearby Book
Passage. Citizens for Local Control said it will try to pressure the
Florida State Board of Retirement, which owns the mall, and investment
firm Morgan Stanley, which manages the bulk of the pension board
assets. The group is also collecting signatures to get an initiative on
the local ballot next year.
Stan Hoffman, general manager of the shopping center, told the paper that "the No. 1 request we've gotten over the years is to add a bookstore to the shopping center" and said he expects "the loyal Book Passage customers will continue to support Book Passage, as they should."
---
Stephanie Chandler, who three years ago founded Book Lovers Bookstore, Sacramento, Calif., which sells used books and audiobooks, won a logo and Web site redesign from Entrepreneur magazine and VistaPrint.
The result: "The new logo features neatly stacked books and a friendly cat, uses warm colors, and has a polished, stylish look. Book Lovers Bookstore is written in a fun and funky script that is easy to read, and by separating the name of the store and the tag line, the print portion of the made-over image can be scaled differently to work in a variety of formats while remaining perfectly legible." Check it out on the Web.
---
On the occasion of her 85th birthday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer profiles Jane Kessler, who upon her retirement in 1990 from the psychology department at Case Western Reserve University, bought Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. At her recent birthday party, Kessler said, "I'm going to be very short. This is absolutely my last birthday. I'm going to be 85 forever."
---
This coming Saturday is the seventh annual Edible Books Festival, which "unites bibliophiles, book artists and food lovers to celebrate the ingestion of culture and its fulfilling nourishment. Participants create edible books that are exhibited, documented then consumed."
Here's how one store celebrates the day. The item, in its entirety, is from the Akron Beacon Journal:
"There is no entry fee, but it will cost $3 to taste and vote for your choice Saturday in the third annual Edible Books Festival sponsored by Loganberry Books and Strong Bindery, 13015 Larchmere Blvd., Shaker Heights. Participants must create edible art that has something to do with books. Bookstore owner Harriett Logan fondly recalls the contestant who made a beer mug from a loaf of bread and tossed a wiener inside: Frank-in-stein!"
---
Take a minute to read the Globe and Mail's theory that Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence spawned an annual flood of books with the word "year" in the title. Among the more recent ones: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg.
---
The curriculum chosen for the college booksellers's day of programming on the Thursday before BEA, May 18, includes a literary luncheon and afternoon panels on graphic novels and manga's huge potential in bookstores, how to mine the backlist, the attraction of selling bargain books and more.
The luncheon features:
For more information, see the National Association of College Stores's Web site. To register, contact Cindy Thompson at NACS.
---
Borders Group will pay another quarterly dividend of 10 cents per share on April 26 to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 5.
---
In a cover story, today's New York Times notes that at the racketeering and murder trial of two former police detectives in Brooklyn, both prosecutors and the defense regularly refer to Mafia Cop, the memoir by one of the defendants, Louis J. Eppolito. Originally published in 1992 and co-written with Bob Drury, the book is being reprinted April 26 (Pocket Star, $7.99, 1416517014). Depending on the verdict, the original subtitle, The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, may be rubbed out.
---
Some people whose stories are told in The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman (Scribner, $27.50, 074323300X) are objecting to the book about the onetime leper settlement in Hawaii and are being supported by other Hawaiians, including politicians and the National Park Service, which doesn't sell the book at its settlement bookstore, according to the New York Times.
Complaints range from the use of the name "colony" to describe the place, the cover photo (which depicts part of the Amalfi Coast in Italy), the use of the word leper and supposed inaccuracies. One of the detractors is working on her own book. Another said the story is too "deep and complex and tragic and difficult" to tell in 300 pages, if at all. The author had been praised by reviewers for aiming to maintain the dignity of the subjects of the book.
---
In honor of the paperback Da Vinci Code explosion, starting tomorrow, we offer up Slate's decoding of Dan Brown's 69-page witness statement, filed with the court in the London plagiarism case against his publisher. Among the many interesting codas:
"Brown has done a lot of thinking about what makes a successful Dan Brown thriller. He has found that it requires a few essential elements: some kind of shadowy force, like a secret society or government agency; a 'big idea' that contains a moral 'grey area'; and a treasure. The treasures in Brown's four novels have been a meteorite, anti-matter, a gold ring, and the Holy Grail. The shadowy forces have included the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei, and the National Security Agency. The big idea, if I'm reading him correctly, goes something like this: Is the Vatican good . . . or is it evil? Is the National Security Agency for us . . . or is it against us? When all of Brown's elements come together, doled out over cliffhanging chapters, with characters that exist to 'move the plot along,' it is like mixing the ingredients to make a cake."
Stan Hoffman, general manager of the shopping center, told the paper that "the No. 1 request we've gotten over the years is to add a bookstore to the shopping center" and said he expects "the loyal Book Passage customers will continue to support Book Passage, as they should."
---
Stephanie Chandler, who three years ago founded Book Lovers Bookstore, Sacramento, Calif., which sells used books and audiobooks, won a logo and Web site redesign from Entrepreneur magazine and VistaPrint.
The result: "The new logo features neatly stacked books and a friendly cat, uses warm colors, and has a polished, stylish look. Book Lovers Bookstore is written in a fun and funky script that is easy to read, and by separating the name of the store and the tag line, the print portion of the made-over image can be scaled differently to work in a variety of formats while remaining perfectly legible." Check it out on the Web.
---
On the occasion of her 85th birthday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer profiles Jane Kessler, who upon her retirement in 1990 from the psychology department at Case Western Reserve University, bought Appletree Books in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. At her recent birthday party, Kessler said, "I'm going to be very short. This is absolutely my last birthday. I'm going to be 85 forever."
---
This coming Saturday is the seventh annual Edible Books Festival, which "unites bibliophiles, book artists and food lovers to celebrate the ingestion of culture and its fulfilling nourishment. Participants create edible books that are exhibited, documented then consumed."
Here's how one store celebrates the day. The item, in its entirety, is from the Akron Beacon Journal:
"There is no entry fee, but it will cost $3 to taste and vote for your choice Saturday in the third annual Edible Books Festival sponsored by Loganberry Books and Strong Bindery, 13015 Larchmere Blvd., Shaker Heights. Participants must create edible art that has something to do with books. Bookstore owner Harriett Logan fondly recalls the contestant who made a beer mug from a loaf of bread and tossed a wiener inside: Frank-in-stein!"
---
Take a minute to read the Globe and Mail's theory that Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence spawned an annual flood of books with the word "year" in the title. Among the more recent ones: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks and The Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg.
---
The curriculum chosen for the college booksellers's day of programming on the Thursday before BEA, May 18, includes a literary luncheon and afternoon panels on graphic novels and manga's huge potential in bookstores, how to mine the backlist, the attraction of selling bargain books and more.
The luncheon features:
- Mark Siegel, editorial director of First Second Books, which aims to bring together the best in graphic novels from around the world. Siegel is also a former designer at S&S Books for young readers and the illustrator of several picture books and upcoming graphic novels.
- Michael Wex, author of From The Three Stooges to Seinfeld, Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of its Moods and a major force in the current revival of Yiddish. Lecturing widely on Yiddish and Jewish culture, he lives and kvetches in Toronto.
For more information, see the National Association of College Stores's Web site. To register, contact Cindy Thompson at NACS.
---
Borders Group will pay another quarterly dividend of 10 cents per share on April 26 to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 5.
---
In a cover story, today's New York Times notes that at the racketeering and murder trial of two former police detectives in Brooklyn, both prosecutors and the defense regularly refer to Mafia Cop, the memoir by one of the defendants, Louis J. Eppolito. Originally published in 1992 and co-written with Bob Drury, the book is being reprinted April 26 (Pocket Star, $7.99, 1416517014). Depending on the verdict, the original subtitle, The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, may be rubbed out.
---
Some people whose stories are told in The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman (Scribner, $27.50, 074323300X) are objecting to the book about the onetime leper settlement in Hawaii and are being supported by other Hawaiians, including politicians and the National Park Service, which doesn't sell the book at its settlement bookstore, according to the New York Times.
Complaints range from the use of the name "colony" to describe the place, the cover photo (which depicts part of the Amalfi Coast in Italy), the use of the word leper and supposed inaccuracies. One of the detractors is working on her own book. Another said the story is too "deep and complex and tragic and difficult" to tell in 300 pages, if at all. The author had been praised by reviewers for aiming to maintain the dignity of the subjects of the book.
---
In honor of the paperback Da Vinci Code explosion, starting tomorrow, we offer up Slate's decoding of Dan Brown's 69-page witness statement, filed with the court in the London plagiarism case against his publisher. Among the many interesting codas:
"Brown has done a lot of thinking about what makes a successful Dan Brown thriller. He has found that it requires a few essential elements: some kind of shadowy force, like a secret society or government agency; a 'big idea' that contains a moral 'grey area'; and a treasure. The treasures in Brown's four novels have been a meteorite, anti-matter, a gold ring, and the Holy Grail. The shadowy forces have included the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei, and the National Security Agency. The big idea, if I'm reading him correctly, goes something like this: Is the Vatican good . . . or is it evil? Is the National Security Agency for us . . . or is it against us? When all of Brown's elements come together, doled out over cliffhanging chapters, with characters that exist to 'move the plot along,' it is like mixing the ingredients to make a cake."