Notes: Author-Gamers; Writers Marathon; Store Stories
Today's
New York Times
has a long article on publishers and authors who have
gambled--apparently with a high rate of success--that author
appearances in casinos can draw in a slew of longtime and new readers.
For example, Janet Evanovich recently "addressed more than 1,200
ardent, hooting fans" at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket,
Conn. Foxwoods, which started offering books signings last fall, also
will deal in Augusten Burroughs soon. The nearby Mohegan Sun has or
will raise the ante with Erica Jong, Robin Cook, Nora Roberts and Sue
Grafton.
And, of course, the Reading Room in Mandalay Place in Las Vegas, Nev., regularly hosts authors.
---
On the eve of the ALA convention in New Orleans, La., the
New Orleans Times-Picayune
notes that with 18,000 attendees, this is "the first major test of the
city's convention industry since Hurricane Katrina [and] the city's
handling of this event, one of the nation's largest conventions, will
go a long way toward preserving--or diminishing--its reputation as a
premier convention destination."
The paper added that "the library convention's significance is not lost
on the local tourism industry, which spent Monday cleaning heavily
trafficked areas of the French Quarter, Central Business District and
Garden District, nor on Convention Center officials, who plan to greet
the crowds with a refurbished building."
---
Cool idea of the day: the Sanddollar Book Store in Venice, Fla., and
the Florida Writers Association are holding an "FWA Day" tomorrow, "a
writers and readers marathon" that will run from 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.,
the
Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. At least 10 Florida writers will read from their works, and the FWA will have an informational booth in the store.
---
The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., "recently helped to dissuade Duke
University from opening a huge bookstore right down the street" and in May, it launched an online promotion that has increased
Internet sales,
Bookselling This Week reported.
The Internet campaign, called "Dry Up the Amazon," outlined "the
benefits of shopping at RegulatorBookshop.com versus Amazon.com" and
offered 30% off Book Sense Picks and
New York Times bestsellers, 10% off all other trade titles and, during May, a $5 Book Sense gift card on all Web orders of $25 or more.
---
Bookselling This Week
also profiles 30-year-old Prairie Books & Gifts in Hastings, Neb.,
which over the years moved from downtown to a mall and then back
downtown.
---
The current issue of
New Age Retailer
magazine, which is free to retailers, has a Q&A--one of the longest
we've ever seen--with Susan Weis, proprietress of breathe books,
Baltimore, Md., which opened in October 2004 (
Shelf Awareness,
September 27). Among the "answers" that stood out:
- "You cannot just open a bookstore and expect that to be it. I
knew I couldn't make a living just selling books. Events were an
integral part of my original business plan, and I had an events
calendar from Day 1. I had three months of events planned when I opened
my store. People are hungry to learn."
- "The store looks like a living room with a lot of bookcases and
three or four tables set up with other gift items. It is cozy and warm,
and it smells great, like all New Age stores do. You just don't want to
leave."
- Concerning her book selection, which now consists of almost 5,300
titles: "I wanted books you couldn't necessarily find at Barnes &
Noble. I wanted books from smaller publishers. I wanted books that went
deeper into something, rather than just skimming the surface."
---
For anyone who needs to convert a 10-digit ISBN to a 13-digit one or vice
versa, there is an online converter at
www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp.
[Thanks to Ken White of the San Francisco State University Bookstore!]
Notes: Author-Gamers; Writers Marathon; Store Stories
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Be the first to have an advance copy! |
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Ordinary Time: Lessons Learned While Staying Put |
by Annie B. Jones |
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In Ordinary Time, indie bookstore owner and podcaster Annie B. Jones shares tender wisdom and lessons learned while living in a small Southern town for more than 30 years. "Annie is one of us," says Angela Guzman, senior editor at HarperOne. "If you have ever dreamed, if you've ever questioned whether you've made the right choices for your life, or if you have ever wanted more... this book is for you." Watching others move away and move on, Jones wraps readers in a comforting narrative woven like a beautiful quilt, composed of passionate, personal stories rooted in themes of love, marriage, family, faith, and friendship. The day-to-day, small-town moments she shares will undoubtedly inspire others to find meaning, joy, and purpose in life no matter where they live. --Kathleen Gerard
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(HarperOne, $26.99 hardcover, 9780063411272, April 22, 2025)
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CLICK TO ENTER |
#ShelfGLOW |
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Shelf vetted, publisher supported |
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Writers Reflect on Faith & Reason with Bill Moyers
Tonight PBS airs the first of a seven-part series from Bill Moyers called
Faith & Reason,
which features conversations with writers, many of whom he interviewed
while they were in New York City recently for the PEN World Voices
Festival. The authors are Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Mary Gordon,
David Grossman, Colin McGinn, Anne Provoost, Richard Rodriguez, Salman
Rushdie and Jeanette Winterson.
As Moyers explained: "In a world where religion is poison to some and
salvation to others, how do we live together? It's an old debate, this
discussion of belief and disbelief. On one end of the spectrum people
say, 'Only religion counts.' On the other end, 'Only reason counts.'
"Well, I've always been a fellow who falls in the middle of this one.
Neither wholly a believer nor wholly a skeptic, I see democracy as a
co-operative that depends on our thinking out loud and reasoning
through until we resolve the issue."
Writers Reflect on Faith & Reason with Bill Moyers
Media Heat: Bill Buford's Own Heat
Today on 20/20, Dr. Michael F. Roizen shares tips from You the Owner's Manual: An Insiders Guide to the Body That Will Make You Healthier and Younger (Collins, $24.95, 0060765313).
---
Tonight on the Charlie Rose Show: Bill Buford, author of Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Knopf, $25.95, 1400041201)
---
Tonight on the Late Show with David Letterman: Al Gore, author of An Inconvenient Truth (Rodale, $21.95, 1594865671).
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Tomorrow on the Weekend Today Show: Jennifer Rubell, author of Real Life Entertaining: Easy Recipes and Unconventional Wisdom (Morrow Cookbooks, $27.50, 0060778474).
Also on the Weekend Today Show: Arthur J. Barsky, M.D., author of Stop Being Your Symptoms and Start Being Yourself: The 6-Week Mind-Body Program to Ease Your Chronic Symptoms (Collins, $24.95, 0060766131).
Media Heat: Bill Buford's Own Heat
Book Brahmin: Jason Roberts
Jason Roberts is the author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler (HarperCollins, $26.95, 0007161069), a narrative nonfiction rediscovery of James Holman, a forgotten
sightless adventurer of the early 1800s. A member of the San Francisco
Writers' Grotto, Roberts is also the inaugural winner of the Van Zorn
Prize for fiction by emerging writers, awarded by Michael Chabon. Here
he answers a series of questions we occasionally ask people in the
industry.
On nightstand now:
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo by Peter Orner. It's set in
Namibia, which gained independence from South Africa in 1990, and it
draws upon Orner's own experiences as an English teacher there. Not a
long book, but one I'm wanting to take my time with nevertheless. Orner
has an intense, amazingly compressed style, one comparable to (but not
reminiscent of) Nabokov. Some chapters are only a few paragraphs long,
but that's all Orner takes to set you reeling. I'm savoring this one.
Favorite book when you were a child:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Everyone remembers Mrs Whatsit
and little Charles Wallace, but do you remember the book's central evil
(a crime perpetrated by a disembodied brain named IT)? It was
persuading people to give up their individual rights and freedom in the
name of security.
Top five authors:
Vladimir Nabokov, Charles Dickens, J.D. Salinger, Anthony Burgess, Theodore Sturgeon (Theodore who? Discover him for yourself).
Book you've "faked" reading:
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann. In college. I didn't NOT read it, in the
sense that I dutifully raked my eyes across every page. But I certainly
didn't engage with it as anything other than a pile of words. That
disconnect should have shut me up in classroom discussions, yet,
regrettably, it didn't.
Book you are an "evangelist" for:
East Wind, Rain by Caroline Paul. It's a fictional retelling of an
incredible accident of history. Turns out that in 1941, one of the
Japanese Zeros attacking Pearl Harbor crash-landed on Ni'ihau, Hawaii's
most isolated island. The natives didn't even have a radio to tell them
there was a war going on, and they ended up sheltering the injured
pilot for several days. On those bare facts, Paul builds a beautifully
wrought love story and a vivid portrait of this unique, private island,
deliberately kept out of sync with the times by its owners. I
particularly tout it to book clubs and reading groups.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and the Journey by Isabel Fonseca. It was
the combination of the evocative title and the stark black-and-white
image--a young Romany girl, staring unguardedly into the camera--that
hooked me. Fortunately, it's a book that's even better than its
packaging.
Book that changed your life:
A torn paperback edition of The Martian Chronicles that Ray Bradbury
inscribed, "To Jason--Good luck with your writing!" Just a polite
scribble, but to a 14-year-old boy it read like a precious validation
of a true calling.
Favorite line from a book:
Right now, it's from The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo: "Not yet
morning and Obadiah sits in the paling darkness in his blue chair and
caresses his new Grundig radio." Dang.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Snow Leopard by Peter Mathiessen: "the common miracles--the murmur
of my friends at evening, the clayfires of smudgy juniper, the coarse,
dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one
thing at a time: when I take my blue tin cup into my hand, that is all
I do."
(And a bonus question.) What song do you wish was a book?
Pocahontas by Neil Young. I mean, c'mon: "Aurora borealis/The icy sky
at night/Paddles cut the water/In a long and hurried flight." That song
IS a book--or at least it offers a more substantial, unforgettable
procession of imagery than most books. It also has an unreliable
narrator, tragedy commingled with deadpan humor, and a special guest
appearance by Marlon Brando.
Book Brahmin: Jason Roberts
The Book Sense/PNBA List
The following were the bestselling books at Pacific Northwest
Booksellers Association stores during the week ended Sunday, June 18,
as reported to Book Sense.
Hardcover Fiction
1. The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig (Harcourt, $25, 0151012377)
2. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Algonquin, $23.95, 1565124995)
3. Blue Shoes and Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith (Pantheon, $21.95, 0375422722)
4. Terrorist by John Updike (Knopf, $24.95, 0307264653)
5. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (Knopf, $25, 1400044731)
6. Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Knopf, $24.95, 0307263940)
7. Telegraph Days by Larry McMurtry (S&S, $25, 0743250788)
8. The Foreign Correspondent by Alan Furst (Random House, $24.95, 1400060192)
9. The Blight Way by Patrick F. McManus (S&S, $24, 0743280474)
10. The Art of Detection by Laurie R. King (Bantam, $24, 0553804537)
11. The Whole World Over by Julia Glass (Pantheon, $25.95, 0375422749)
12. At Risk by Patricia D. Cornwell (Putnam, $21.95, 0399153624)
13. The Book of the Dead by Douglas J. Preston and Lincoln Child (Warner, $25.95, 0446576980)
14. Beach Road by James Patterson and Peter de Jonge (Little, Brown, $27.95, 0316159786)
15. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue (Nan Talese, $23.95, 0385516169)
Hardcover Nonfiction
1. Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert (Random House, $22.95, 1400064805)
2. Marley & Me by John Grogan (Morrow, $21.95, 0060817089)
3. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, $26.95, 1594200823)
4. The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman (FSG, $30, 0374292795)
5. Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, $29.95, 0670037605)
6. Godless by Ann H. Coulter (Crown Forum, $27.95, 1400054206)
7. Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Morrow, $25.95, 006073132X)
8. Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee (FSG, $24, 0374280398)
9. The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain (Bloomsbury, $24.95, 1582344515)
10. Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan and Melissa Jo Peltier (Harmony, $24.95, 0307337332)
11. Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert (Knopf, $24.95, 1400042666)
12. Heat by Bill Buford (Knopf, $25.95, 1400041201)
13. A Heckuva Job by Calvin Trillin (Random House, $12.95, 1400065569)
14. Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity by John Stossel (Hyperion, $24.95, 1401302548)
15. Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast (Dutton, $25.95, 0525949682)
Trade Paperback Fiction
1. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See (Random House, $13.95, 0812968069)
2. Saturday by Ian McEwan (Anchor, $14.95, 1400076196)
3. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead, $14, 1594480001)
4. History of Love by Nicole Krauss (Norton, $13.95, 0393328627)
5. The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch (Bloomsbury, $13.95, 1582346291)
6. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin, $15, 0143034901)
7. Until I Find You by John Irving (Ballantine, $15.95, 0345479726)
8. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Picador, $14, 031242440X)
9. March by Geraldine Brooks (Penguin, $14, 0143036661)
10. Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos (Grove, $13, 0802142109)
11. Zorro by Isabelle Allende (Harper Perennial, $14.95, 0060779004)
12. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (Vintage, $14, 1400078776)
13. The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd (Penguin, $14, 0143036696)
14. The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (HarperSanFrancisco, $13.95, 0061122416)
15. Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Regan Books, $16, 0060987103)
Trade Paperback Nonfiction
1. An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore (Rodale, $21.95, 1594865671)
2. If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name by Heather Lende (Algonquin, $12.95, 156512524X)
3. Collapse by Jared Diamond (Penguin, $17, 0143036556)
4. Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (Random House, $14.95, 0812973011)
5. Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl (Penguin, $15, 0143036610)
6. Night by Elie Wiesel (FSG, $9, 0374500010)
7. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (Scribner, $14, 074324754X)
8. Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss (Gotham, $11, 1592402038)
9. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins (Plume, $15, 0452287081)
10. The Golden Spruce by John Vaillant (Norton, $14.95, 0393328643)
11. The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson (Vintage, $14.95, 0375725601)
12. The Places in Between by Rory Stewart (Harvest, $14, 0156031566)
13. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (Vintage, $14, 0679745580)
14. Plan B by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, $14, 1594481571)
15. Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson (Harvest, $15, 0156031442)
Mass Market
1. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Anchor, $7.99, 1400079179)
2. Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (Pocket, $9.99, 1416524797)
3. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (Anchor, $7.99, 0307275558)
4. Blood From a Stone by Donna Leon (Penguin, $7.99, 014303698X)
5. Deception Point by Dan Brown (Pocket, $9.99, 1416524800)
6. Black Wind by Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler (Berkley, $9.99, 0425204235)
7. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary, Fourth Edition (Merriam-Webster, $7.50, 0877799296)
8. 1984 by George Orwell (Signet, $7.95, 0451524934)
9. Skeleton Man by Tony Hillerman (HarperTorch, $7.99, 006056346X)
10. 4th of July by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Warner, $9.99, 0446613363)
Children's
1. Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss (Random House, $17, 0679805273)
2. Olivia Forms a Band by Ian Falconer (Atheneum, $17.95, 141692454X)
3. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen (Yearling, $6.50, 0440421705)
4. Junie B., First Grader: Aloha-ha-ha! by Barbara Park, illustrated by Denise Brunkus (Random House, $11.95, 0375834036)
5. Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, illustrated by Clement Hurd (HarperCollins, $7.99, 0694003611)
6. The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo (Candlewick, $7.99, 0763625299)
7. Eragon by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, $9.95, 0375826696)
8. The Prophet of Yonwood by Jeanne DuPrau (Random House, $15.95, 0375875263)
9. Pirates by John Matthews (Atheneum, $19.95, 1416927344)
10. The Third Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares (Delacorte, $8.95, 0553375938)
11. Eldest by Christopher Paolini (Knopf, $21, 037582670X)
12. Ranger's Apprentice (The Ruins of Gorlan, Book One) by John Flanagan (Penguin, $6.99, 0142406635)
13. The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer (Simon Pulse, $8.99, 0689867468)
14. Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett, illustrated by Brett Helquist (Scholastic, $6.99, 0439372976)
15. The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau (Random House, $5.99, 0375822747)
[Thanks to PNBA and Book Sense!]