Here's sad news from a California independent:

After three years of losses--although decreasing each year--the Next Chapter bookstore in Woodland, Calif., has decided to put itself up for sale, owners John Hamilton and Vicky Panzich have announced. If a sale does not occur, the store will close. "In spite of all the money worries, it's been 20 good years for us . . . and we know that other folks have felt equally passionate enough about our community bookstore to invest money and time to help keep us alive," the owners wrote. "The stark fact is that we simply don't have enough customers to pay the bills and we're looking at not being able to take care of ourselves if we don't change course."

The store is currently holding a three-day, 20%-off sale "to raise enough to, temporarily, stave off the wolf."

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Bookselling This Week has a nice piece about the second annual Reading the World collaboration between booksellers and publishers, which will expand this year and aims to celebrate and support literature in translation.

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BTW also has an update on the Emerging Leaders Project, which held its first official meeting at the Winter Institute in January and will meet again on Wednesday evening, May 17, in Washington, D.C., just before BEA begins. The group will discuss its proposed mission statement, which is included in the BTW story.

In related news, Jennifer McPheeters of Sarasota News & Books, Sarasota, Fla., has won the ABA's Emerging Leaders Scholarship, which covers the cost of registration and a five-night hotel stay at BEA. Congratulations!

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On his blog, Carl Lennertz notes this cool display idea from Joe Drabyak of Chester County Book Company in West Chester, Pa.: "I just unpacked a lovely book from Regan Books this morning: China Chic by Vivienne Tam.  Chinese style comes alive in this unique and colorful celebration of cultural synthesis, featuring vivid images from the cutting edge of the East-West exchange. With Hu Jintao, the President of China, currently visiting the United States, we thought that it would be the perfect time to dedicate an endcap display to all things Chinese. We will be featuring this book from HarperCollins along with other volumes focusing on Chinese travel, business, cooking, biographies, history, general fiction, mysteries, interior design, art, and so on. We may even create a mobile with some paper lanterns."

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Cute gesture: A. A. Chadwick and Arthur E. Chadwick, authors of The Classic Cattleya (Timber Press, $49.95, 0881927643), just published, plan to give an orchid hybrid named after Martha Stewart to the domestic diva herself this morning on her show. Carrying the botanical name laeliocattleya Martha Stewart, the orchid has large purple flowers, distinctive splashes on the petals and a sweet fragrance(!). It's registered with the Royal Horticulture Society.

Previous recipients of Chadwick orchid hybrids include former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, First Lady Laura Bush, former First Ladies Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barbara Bush, as well as Tipper Gore and the late Princess Diana.

Tomorrow is World Book and Copyright Day! Although the celebration gets scant attention in the U.S., the situation will change next year when the U.S.'s UNESCO office launches a major campaign for the country to observe the day.

In the meantime, as noted here last month (Shelf Awareness, March 15), David Wick of Silver Light Publications, Ashland, Ore., has been working on celebrating the international day in his part of Oregon. Among the accomplishments and planned events, which include the creation of a poster listing local events as well as a generic poster:

• Bloomsbury Books is doing a window display and readings, and Barnes & Noble will do the same as well as have an in-store display.
• The Medford and Ashland school districts sent posters to all their schools, and Ashland High School is doing a library display on Authors From Around the World and created a book of the year event.
• Jackson Country Libraries are displaying the posters and are linking World Book Day with its Jackson Country Reads: One Book, One Community program.
• Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University is displaying posters.
• Members of the Ashland Chamber of Commerce are displaying posters.
• At least on Oregon state legislator is introducing a resolution about the event for its celebration next year.

Tonight ABC's 20/20 eyes Marc Hauser, author of Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (Ecco, $27.95, 0060780703).

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Tonight on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Jenny McCarthy, author of Life Laughs: The Naked Truth About Motherhood, Marriage, and Moving On (Dutton, $23.95, 052594947X).

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Tomorrow on Weekend Edition, Joe Klein laments Politics Lost: The Lost Music of American Politics (Doubleday, $23.95, 0385510276).

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On CBS Sunday Morning, Meet the Press and several CNN shows this weekend, Senator Edward Kennedy will talk about America Back on Track (Viking, $24.95, 0670037648), which came out this week with a 100,000-copy printing.

The subject of the newest Books for Understanding online bibliography from the Association of American University Presses is a hot topic: immigration. The national and international issue is being debated by Congress and recently resulted in some of the largest, peaceful demonstrations in the U.S. in decades. The immigration bibliography contains more than 120 works of scholarship that provide a basis for discussing immigration policies and their consequences.

To see the full bibliography, click here.


Sample listings:

• Patrolling Chaos: The U.S. Border Patrol in Deep South Texas by Robert Lee Maril (Texas Tech University Press, 2004).
• A Forgetful Nation: On Immigration and Cultural Identity in the United States by Ali Behdad (Duke University Press, 2005).
• Contested Citizenship: Immigration and Cultural Diversity in Europe by Ruud Koopmans, Paul Statham, Marco Giugni and Florence Passy (University of Minnesota Press, 2005).
• The 'Huddled Masses' Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights by Kevin R. Johnson (Temple University Press, 2003).
• American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market by David Griffith (Penn State University Press, forthcoming 2006).

Debra Galant's first novel, Rattled (St. Martin's, $21.95, 0312349319), was a Book Sense pick for February. In addition to writing a second comic novel, also to be published by St. Martin's, Galant is the editor of Baristanet.com, a news and humor site based in north Jersey. Before that, she wrote a column about New Jersey for the New York Times. Here she responds to a series of queries we occasionally ask people in the business:


On the nightstand now:
 
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I believe I am the last middle-aged female in America to read this book. That's because I've never lasted in any book group longer than one meeting and therefore it was never assigned to me.
 
Favorite book when you were a child:
 
Pippi Longstocking. Or was it Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle?
 
Top five authors:
 
Haruki Murakami, Robertson Davies, Nick Hornby, David Lodge, Diane Johnson
 
Book you've "faked" reading:
 
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Surely it is a defect in my character that whenever I pick up a book by Jane Austen, I put it back down within five minutes. And I really, really want to fall under her spell, just like a real woman. On the other hand, I greatly admire her movies.
 
Book you're an evangelist for:
 
I'm always recommending Story by Robert McKee to people who want to write fiction, even though it's about writing screenplays.
 
Book you've bought for the cover:
 
Arthur and George by Julian Barnes. The cover is as evocative as an antique hot-air balloon and suggested an equally enchanting reading adventure. The cover was better.
 
Book that changed your life:
 
Walden by Henry David Thoreau. It completely validated my teenage contempt for the adult world, and it was assigned by a teacher. It warned me to stay on the lookout for signs of quiet desperation when I did become an adult.
 
Favorite line from a book:
 
"Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers after the first excitement dwindles."--Annie Dillard, The Writing Life. But you really have to buy the book for the next four sentences, especially if you're a writer.
 
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
 
The Great Gatsby

The following are the bestselling titles at New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association stores during the week ended Sunday, April 16, as reported to Book Sense:

Hardcover Fiction

1. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (Knopf, $25, 1400044731)
2. Two Little Girls in Blue by Mary Higgins Clark (S&S, $25.95, 0743264908)
3. In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (Random House, $23.95, 1400063817)
4. How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Kaavya Viswanathan (Little, Brown, $21.95, 0316059889)
5. Don't Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings by Tyler Perry (Riverhead, $23.95, 1594489211)
6. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore (Morrow, $24.95, 0060590270)
7. The Tenth Circle by Jodi Picoult (Atria, $26, 0743496701)
8. Mother by Maya Angelou (Random House, $9.95, 1400066018)
9. Gone by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine, $26.95, 0345452615)
10. Intuition by Allegra Goodman (Dial, $25, 0385336128)
11. Through a Glass, Darkly by Donna Leon (Atlantic Monthly, $23, 0871139375)
12. Charmed Thirds by Megan McCafferty (Crown, $21, 1400080428)
13. The Sea by John Banville (Knopf, $23, 0307263118)
14. Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (Random House, $23.95, 1400063795)
15. False Impression by Jeffrey Archer (St. Martin's, $27.95, 0312353723)

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. Manhunt by James L. Swanson (Morrow, $26.95, 0060518499)
2. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme (Knopf, $25.95, 1400043468)
3. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, $26.95, 1594200823)
4. Marley & Me by John Grogan (Morrow, $21.95, 0060817089)
5. The Gospel of Judas edited by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, Gregor Wurst (National Geographic, $22, 1426200420)
6. Cobra II by Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor (Pantheon, $27.95, 0375422625)
7. American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips (Viking, $26.95, 067003486X)
8. Giada's Family Dinners by Giada de Laurentiis (Clarkson Potter, $32.50, 030723827X)
9. The Jesus Papers by Michael Baigent (HarperSanFrancisco, $27.95, 0060827130)
10. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Morrow, $25.95, 006073132X)
11. Failed States by Noam Chomsky (Metropolitan, $24, 0805079122)
12. The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky (Ballantine, $23.95, 0345476387)
13. What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills (Viking, $24.95, 0670034967)
14. The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (FSG, $27.50, 0374292884)
15. Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (S&S, $35, 0684824906)
 
Trade Paperback Fiction

1. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, $14, 0143036696)
2. Saturday by Ian McEwan (Anchor, $14.95, 1400076196)
3. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage, $14, 1400078776)
4. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Anchor, $14.95, 0307277674)
5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $14, 1594480001)
6. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (Random House, $13.95, 0812968069)
7. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Picador, $14, 031242440X)
8. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Mariner, $13.95, 0618711651)
9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Regan Books, $16, 0060987103)
10. The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom (Hyperion, $12, 1401308589)
11. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin, $15, 0143034901)
12. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (Random House, $13.95, 081297235X)
13. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, $14, 0142001740)
14. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (Vintage, $12.95, 1400032717)
15. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult (Washington Square, $14, 0743454537)
 
Trade Paperback Nonfiction

1. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Vintage, $14, 0679745580)
2. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (Penguin, $15, 0143036610)
3. Night by Elie Weisel (FSG, $9, 0374500010)
4. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Scribner, $14, 074324754X)
5. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Plume, $15, 0452287081)
6. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (Gotham, $11, 1592402038)
7. Plan B by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, $14, 1594481571)
8. The Notebook Girls by Julia Baskin, et al. (Warner Books, $22.95, 0446578622)
9. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler (Grove, $14, 0802142494)
10. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (Back Bay, $14.95, 0316346624)
11. The End of Poverty by Jeffrey D. Sachs (Penguin, $16, 0143036580)
12. Collapse by Jared Diamond (Penguin, $17, 0143036556)
13. The Covenant With Black America edited by Tavis Smiley (Third World Press, $12, 0883782774)
14. Duck! by Gene Stone (Villard, $9.95, 0812977297)
15. The Official SAT Study Guide: For the New SAT (The College Board, $19.95, 0874477182)
 
Mass Market

1. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Anchor, $7.99, 1400079179)
2. Angels & Demons by Dan Brown (Pocket, $9.99, 1416524797)
3. One Shot by Lee Child (Dell, $7.99, 0440241022)
4. The Third Secret by Steve Berry (Ballantine, $7.99, 034547614X)
5. Devil's Corner by Lisa Scottoline (HarperTorch, $7.99, 0060742895)
6. With No One as Witness by Elizabeth A. George (HarperTorch, $7.99, 0060545615)
7. The Mask of Atreus by A.J. Hartley (Berkley, $7.99, 042520913X)
8. Animal Farm by George Orwell (Signet, $7.95, 0451526341)
9. Full Scoop by Janet Evanovich and Charlotte Hughes (St. Martin's, $7.99, 0312934319)
10. Rage by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine, $7.99, 0345467078)

Children's (Fiction and Illustrated)

1. Heat by Mike Lupica (Philomel, $16.99, 0399243011)
2. A Family of Poems by Caroline Kennedy, illustrated by Jon J. Muth (Hyperion, $19.95, 0786851112)
3. Night of the New Magicians (Magic Tree House #35) by Mary Pope Osborne, illustrated by Salvatore Murdocca (Random House, $11.95, 0375830359)
4. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (children's movie tie-in edition) by C.S. Lewis (HarperCollins, $7.99, 0060765461)
5. Just Listen by Sarah Dessen (Viking, $17.99, 0670061050)
6. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Knopf, $16.95, 0375831002)
7. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, $7.99, 0763625299)
8. The Pretty Committee Strikes Back by Lisi Harrison (Little, Brown, $9.99, 0316115002)
9. The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Book One) by Rick Riordan (Miramax Books, $7.99, 0786838655)
10. Magyk (Septimus Heap, Book One) by Angie Sage (HarperTrophy, $7.99, 0060577339)
11. Scorpia by Anthony Horowitz (Puffin, $7.99, 0142405787)
12. The Amulet of Samarkand (The Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book 1) by Jonathan Stroud (Hyperion, $7.99, 0786852550)
13. Travel Team by Mike Lupica (Puffin, $6.99, 0142404624)
14. The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, $18.99, 0763625892)
15. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic, $9.99, 0439358078)

[Many thanks to Book Sense and NAIBA!]