Many of us here at Shelf Awareness are in shock at the election results, in part because polls and predictions were so far off. We're also wary of the rhetoric of the winning campaign, which too often has been inflammatory and not exactly fact-based.

Much of the book world supported the losing side. And while it's difficult to take in the results of the election, it's important to remember that in the turbulent days and years ahead, books will remain a key part of public discourse and provide so much of the information that is part of--or should be part of--discussions of the issues and constitute the basis of momentous decisions and laws. Books are also a great source of perspective, understanding, solace and, when needed, escape.

Mountain Fold Books, Colorado Springs, Colo., closed November 4 after two years in business. This Saturday from 12-5 p.m., the bookstore will host a going-out-of-business sale and farewell party.

In a letter announcing the closure, co-founder and executive director Marina Eckler wrote: "Since 2013, Mountain Fold Books has operated as a project fund of the Pikes Peak Community Foundation. This summer, PPCF announced the discontinuation of its fiscal sponsorship program, which inadvertently became the catalyst for a series of setbacks from which MFB could not recover. In spite of the best of efforts of volunteers, Mountain Fold could not survive the transition."

After opening two years ago, the bookshop "quickly became a hub for many amazing live literary events.... More than a bookstore, gallery and cultural center, Mountain Fold Books was a years-long community art project in and of itself," Eckler observed. "I would like to personally thank all the visitors, authors, artists and contributors (too many to name here) who gave life to the space and brought much needed, underrepresented voices to our city. I would like to thank every donor large and small, without whose contributions we simply could not have kept the lights on. And I would especially like to acknowledge every volunteer who gave their time and energy and good will. Without whose efforts, Mountain Fold Books could not have been possible....

"I will always be proud to say that we took a chance on an improbable project that not only fulfilled but, in two short years, exceeded its mission. Long live Mountain Fold Books, and see you around town."

Atlantis Books, located on the Greek island of Santorini, has been a fixture on "most beautiful bookstores of the world" lists almost since its founding in 2004 by a group of friends from Cyprus, England and the U.S.

In a detailed profile, Vanity Fair reported that the iconic bookshop faces a "new threat to its existence." In October 2015, the building's owners "obtained the construction permits they needed to build on top of the store's terrace--a development that abruptly increased their property's value. [Bookshop co-founder Craig] Walzer was welcome, [Dimitris] Theodoropoulos said, to buy the property for a million euros, roughly 700 times his monthly rent. But he needed to get back to the landlords in two weeks. Otherwise, Atlantis Books would be required to pack up and get out by November." A year later, the bookstore "remains open in the same space and, this past summer, enjoyed its most profitable season yet. Still, Atlantis Books finds itself at a crossroads."

"The guys from Atlantis will have first priority. I'd like to work with them," Theodoropoulos said. "But we've got to get a plan by the end of the year." The plan would require a down payment of "maybe half a million euros," he said, but he would be willing to structure further payments so the Atlantis group would pay no interest "for a couple of years."

Among the options Walzer is considering are crowdfunding, reopening Atlantis Books in a new location in Oia, or "the principals of Atlantis Books declare that it's been a hell of a run, but, indeed, times have changed, and now we're going to call it a day," Vanity Fair wrote.

"I have this part of me that still feels the same as when I was in my 20s," Walzer said, "which is that the shop is awesome, but it isn't necessarily enough. That I need to be doing something more important, addressing bigger problems.... I'm 35. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm also not the most employable character in the world. At this point, what I've learned is there is one thing that I know how to do better, humbly, than anybody else in the world right now, which is sell books on this street, in this village, on this island, in this country."

While his co-founders stand ready to follow his lead, Tim Vincent-Smith said, "I certainly don't think this is the point to say, 'Oh well, it was a good laugh, but let's let it go.' I think this is the point to say, 'This crazy dream that we had as a bunch of kids--it works!' And it doesn't just work as an art project but as a business. If we lose the building, who cares? The building is just a pile of stones. This is an idea--close to an ideology, dare I say."

Stony Brook University recently celebrated the opening of a new Amazon@StonyBrook pickup location in the lower level of Melville Library with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Long Island Business News reported that Stony Brook is "the first college campus in New York State to offer an Amazon pickup location."

"We are thrilled to offer the Stony Brook University community more opportunities to save on their overall costs along with great customer service, better selection and convenience," said Tony Caravano, senior manager of business development and university relations at Amazon.

David Ward

Bloomsbury's group U.K. sales director David Ward is leaving his position at the end of the year, after 30 years with the company. The Bookseller reported that Ward "was one of Bloomsbury's first employees when he joined, from Penguin, as sales representative for the North of England in 1987, before the company had yet published a book." He became U.K. sales director in 1998, served as an executive director on the PLC Board from 2002 to 2004, and subsequently was made group U.K. sales director.

"After 30 amazing years at Bloomsbury the time has come to do something else," Ward said. "I am very proud of my achievements here.... I have worked with some wonderful people and thank everyone who has worked with me and helped Bloomsbury become what it is today. I wish the company continued success." 

Kathleen Farrar, managing director of group sales and marketing, commented: "David will be very much missed by all, not only for his jovial nature but his love of publishing and customer relationships. We wish him all the best in his new endeavors."

On election day, indie booksellers were busy getting out the vote on social media. A sampling:

VOTE!: Carmichael's Bookstore, Louisville, Ken.; Burke's Book Store, Memphis, Tenn.; Fact and Fiction Books, Missoula, Mont.

Staffers at Malaprop's joined Pantsuit Nation.

Malaprop's Bookstore/Café, Asheville, N.C.: "Pantsuit Nation. #vote #indiesfirst #avlreads."

Roundabout Books, Bend, Ore.: "It's election day and ribbon cutting day! After you've turned in your ballot, we hope you'll stop by our shop around 4 p.m. to celebrate our new store opening and enjoy some wine and snacks."

Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass.: Early results: "In honor of election day, stay tuned from low-stress, fun, bookish voting."

Belmont Books, Belmont, Mass.: "Happy #ElectionDay2016 book lovers! Don't forget 2 reward yr civic heroism w/ a favorite treat: books, choc--even quinoa if that's yr thing."

Lift Bridge Book Shop, Brockport, N.Y.: "Hi there. We're closing early today (6 p.m.) for election day. Go vote!"

Milkweed Editions & Open Book, Minneapolis, Minn.: "Happy voting, everyone! 'Voting is a chess move, not a valentine.'--Rebecca Solnit… http://ift.tt/2eAIi1f"

Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, Mass.: "Election Day #waltwhitman #electionday #vote https://www.instagram.com/p/BMjqxKADiI4/"

hello hello books, Rockland, Maine: "This day. This day."

And, this morning:

Avid Bookshop, Athens, Ga.: "Athens, we love you. We respect you. Avid is a safe space. We welcome you to come by today or any day just to take a breath or get a hug."

For its  Best of Chicago series, NewCity shared its picks for the "Best Bookstores to Guard Over the Culture."

"As every bibliophile knows, a bookstore is more than a retail outlet; it's a community space--a neighborhood resource, where much more than goods and currency change hands," Newcity wrote. "After the ravages of the nineties bookstore wars, in which the corporate giants made war on the independents, and the subsequent rise of Amazon, which in turn slew the corporate giants, what's left on the landscape are those booksellers who most fully embrace their role as guardians of culture over slaves to the bottom line. You'll find the most notable of these below, along with a few of their historical forebears."

The German Book Office in New York City has chosen Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky (New Directions, $16.95, 9780811225786), as its November Pick of the Month.

The GBO described the book this way: "Memoirs of a Polar Bear follows three generations of polar bears--a mother, her daughter and her grandson--who are famous as both circus performers and writers in East Germany. The polar bears live in human society, stars of the ring and of the literary world; each of them is trying to balance the public pressures of circus performing with the solitary satisfactions of a writer's life.

"The grandmother accidentally writes a bestselling autobiography and emigrates to Canada, her daughter Tosca moves back to the GDR and takes a job in the circus. Tosca's son Knut is born at the Leipzig zoo and raised by a human zookeeper in Berlin. All the three of them write very different stories, happy or sad, enjoying both celebrity and 'the intimacy of being alone with [one’s] pen.'"

Yoko Tawada is a Japanese-German author, poet, playwright and essayist who writes in both languages. She was born in Tokyo in 1960 before moving to Germany at age 22. She been awarded the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, the Tanizaki Prize and the Goethe Medal.

Susan Bernofsky is a translator who has worked on Yoko Tawada, Franz Kafka and Robert Walser; she is currently writing a biography about Walser.

Mindy Stockfield has been appointed senior v-p of marketing, marketing, creative and multiplatform, Trade Publishing, at Scholastic. She formerly worked at MTV, Disney/ABC's Hyperion, Disney Channel and the Cartoon Network.

Eat with Intention: Recipes and Meditations for a Life that Lights You Up by Cassandra Bodzak (Race Point Publishing/Quarto Publishing Group).

Tomorrow:
Diane Rehm: John Grisham, author of The Whistler (Doubleday, $28.95, 9780385541190).

Watch What Happens Live: Josh Altman, author of It's Your Move: My Million Dollar Method for Taking Risks with Confidence and Succeeding at Work and Life (HarperOne, $25.99, 9780062369260).

Conan: Issa Rae, author of The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (Atria/37 INK, $16, 9781476749075).

Tonight Show: Joe Buck, author of Lucky Bastard: My Life, My Dad, and the Things I'm Not Allowed to Say on TV (Dutton, $28, 9781101984567).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Jade Chang, author of The Wangs vs. the World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $26, 9780544734098).

The first teaser trailer has been released for BBC Two's adaptation of Zadie Smith's novel NW, Indiewire reported, noting that the 90-minute telepic "weaves together the stories of four childhood friends who are all struggling to overcome their past as they make their way through adulthood." The cast includes Nikki Amuka-Bird, Phoebe Fox, O.T. Fagbenle and Richie Campbell.

Madeleine Thien won the C$100,000 (US$74,744) Scotiabank Giller Prize, presented annually "to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English," for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. The other five finalists received C$10,000 each.

The judges wrote: "Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien entranced the jurors with its detailed, layered, complex drama of classical musicians and their loved ones trying to survive two monstrous insults to their humanity: Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in mid-twentieth century China and the Tiananmen Square massacre of protestors in Beijing in 1989. Do Not Say We Have Nothing addresses some of the timeless questions of literature: who do we love, and how do the love of art, of others and ourselves sustain us individually and collectively in the face of genocide? A beautiful homage to music and to the human spirit, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is both sad and uplifting in its dramatization of human loss and resilience in China and in Canada."

S.E. Hinton in 1967

Jon Michaud of the New Yorker once proclaimed that S.E. Hinton "almost single-handedly" brought the young adult genre into being. Her beloved books for young adults include That Was Then, This Is Now; Rumble Fish, Tex and, of course, her 1967 debut, The Outsiders, which she wrote at age 16. She has also written several picture books, a collection of short stories and a novel for adults. She lives in Tulsa, Okla.--the setting of The Outsiders--with her husband.

The Outsiders 50th Anniversary Edition (released on November 1, 2016 by Penguin Young Readers) includes the complete novel, along with never-before-seen photos and letters, a gallery of covers from its editions around the world, and new material from the stars and director of the iconic film--including Francis Ford Coppola, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.

On your nightstand now:

Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. I love author bios. The other Shirley Jackson bio, Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer, is one of my favorites.

The Living: A Novel by Annie Dillard. A friend recommended this. Not an easy read, but a rewarding one.

The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer by Kate Summerscale. A very strange case with twists and turns that help define an era.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis: J.D. Vance has the street cred to write this, and the talent to make it engrossing.

True ghost stories. I always have about five of those going. I am very interested in the paranormal.

Favorite book as a child:

Marguerite Henry's horse books and Duff the Bear. I read a lot of horse books. I was one of those horse-crazy little girls who not only wanted a horse; I wanted to BE a horse. I recently re-read Duff the Bear, and was very proud of my young self. It is not a Disney bear story.

Your top five authors:

Jane Austen, Shirley Jackson, Mary Renault, toss-up between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. It puts you in a different country, in a different century, in a different culture; yet there is so much to identify with in this woman's life.

Book that changed your life: 

No one book changed my life. The act of reading did.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann

Favorite line from a book:

"...we are not to be addressing our conduct to fools."  --from Emma by Jane Austen

Five books you'll never part with:

Jane Austen's major works. I learn something new each time I read them.

Whether it's before-morning snow, polar-bear snow or the first snow of the season, it's all magical. Shelf Awareness plowed through a pile of 2016 snowy picture books for children and unearthed a few favorites.

Before Morning by Joyce Sidman, illus. by Beth Krommes (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $17.99, hardcover, 9780547979175, 48p., ages 4-8, October 4, 2016)
"In the deep woolen dark,/ as we slumber unknowing,/ let the sky fill with flurry and flight." Newbery Honor-winner Joyce Sidman (Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night) and Caldecott artist Beth Krommes (The House in the Night) team up in this exquisite "invocation," a wish for snowfall in the busy city, the kind of snow that transforms the world overnight into a slower, softer, lighter place. Krommes's gorgeous, meticulously detailed scratchboard and watercolor illustrations reflect the enchantment of freshly fallen snow and the intricacy of snowflakes while Sidman chooses just the right words: feathers, sugar, swaddled.

Poles Apart by Jeanne Willis, illus. by Jarvis (Nosy Crow/Candlewick, $15.99, hardcover, 9780763689445, 32p., ages 3-7, November 1, 2016)
"As everyone knows, penguins are found at the South Pole and never at the North Pole." That's usually true, but not when Mr. Pilchard-Brown, the father penguin, is in charge of the map. Now the whole family--including Peeky, Poots and Pog--are on an iceberg 12,430 miles away, drifting toward Mr. White, a big North Pole polar bear in a tiny red hat. The mistake turns into an adventure as the penguin family traverses the globe by flipper on their way back home: the U.S., England ("Gray!" "Grand!"), Italy ("Ciao!" "Wet!" "Wonderful!"), India and Australia. Comical, quirky dialogue makes for a splendid read-aloud, and the delightful, richly textured illustrations fizz with silly details, from a flailing gondolier in Venice to a dog in a red London telephone booth.

The Most Perfect Snowman by Chris Britt (Balzer + Bray/HarperCollins, $17.99, hardcover, 9780062377043, 32p., ages 3-6, October 11, 2016)
Editorial cartoonist Chris Britt whips up a soft-hued snowy habitat for a lonely snowman named Drift in watercolor, acrylic and pencils. Poor Drift is made up of just three stacked snowballs with two stick arms, coal eyes and a coal mouth, "built fast and then forgotten" in the woods. He dreams of having a pointy orange carrot nose, and perhaps some stylish winter accoutrements--especially when he's mocked by an avalanche of sarcastic snowmen who shut him out of all the fun: "Love your style!" "Snazzy outfit!" Fortunately, three kind children save the day with a hat, scarf and mittens--even a very pointy carrot nose. What really makes Drift "the perfect snowman," however, is when he rescues a tiny, "shivery cold" bunny, warming it up with his new-found scarf and feeding it with his delicious carrot nose. A warm and cozy bedtime story for a shivery cold night.

Wonderful Winter: All Kinds of Winter Facts and Fun by Bruce Goldstone (Holt, $17.99, hardcover, 9780805099812, 48p., ages 4-8, November 8, 2016)
The creator of Awesome Autumn turns his talents to "wonderful winter" in this vibrant, photo-rich, fact-filled introduction to wintertime in the Northern Hemisphere with sights, sounds, smells, words (toasty, frosty, scrape, jingle, drip!), clothes, sports, animals and holidays from Christmas and Hanukkah to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Why do trees lose their leaves in the winter? Why can you see your breath in the cold air? Why do animals hibernate? Is it true that no two snowflakes are alike? The "icing" on the cake: Wonderful Winter includes instructions for hands-on activities such as how to make fake snow, six-pointed snowflakes and snow globes.

First Snow by Bomi Park (Chronicle, $16.99, hardcover, 9781452154725, 40p., ages 2-5, September 6, 2016)
Korean artist Bomi Park's appealingly small debut picture book mirrors a young girl's wonder at a first snow in lovely, atmospheric, smudgy black-and-white paintings with only a splash of red on her scarf and mittens. The snowfall wakes her up with "Pit, pit, pit against the window." She dons her winter gear, creeps outside into the moonlight and is joined by a curious puppy who wants to explore, too: "Shhh... let's go." She makes a snowball and rolls it through the city and through the woods until it grows bigger than she is, all the way to a snowy field full of other kids--all building snowmen. The children and their creations float and fly in a flowy, snowy dreamscape, and the girl, her puppy and her snowman make it back home safely before anyone else wakes up.

Little Penguins by Cynthia Rylant, illus. by Christian Robinson (Schwartz & Wade/Random House, $17.99 hardcover, 9780553507706, 40p., ages 1-4, October 25, 2016)
Christian Robinson (Caldecott Honor book Last Stop on Market Street) and Cynthia Rylant (Newbery Medal-winning Missing May) capture the giddy pleasures of a snowy South Pole day, as little torn-paper snowflakes fall from the sky and five little penguins hurry to get dressed to go out and play. "Snowflakes? Many snowflakes." "Mittens? Many mittens." The snow is deep, deeper, very deep, and the penguins sink down in it. Fortunately, Mama's on her way, just in time to shepherd everyone home to jammies, warm cookies and sippies. A snuggly-sweet bedtime book for when the weather outside is frightful. Let it snow!