Berean Christian Stores has bought Macon Christian Bookstore, Macon, Ga., an 8,400-sq.-ft., family-owned store that was founded 58 years ago, the Macon Telegraph reported. Berean now has 23 stores.

Owner Chris Childers, who is chairman of the board of the CBA, told the paper: "Berean is as close to independent as they could be. I think Berean is a good example of what a chain can do without feeling like a chain. They feel like, when you go in their stores, they are a part of the community."

Childers added, "I'm just 45, and I'm not ready to retire. I don't want to over-spiritualize it, but I just want to see what the Lord lays in front of me."

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The Extraordinary Bookseller, a used bookstore in Rochester, N.Y., that had to give up half of the space in its original store, has opened a second bookstore downtown, the Rochester Post-Bulletin reported.

Owner Steve Plunkett told the paper that he wanted to stay downtown because the Barnes & Noble there is "a center for book-buying in the region," and that he and B&N often refer customers to each other. "We try not to compete with them at all," Plunkett said. "The only books we have in common with Barnes & Noble are some classic titles. We try to not stock bestsellers at all."

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Once again, the new address of the New England Independent Booksellers Association is:

297 Broadway, #212
Arlington, Mass. 02474

For the first time here, NEIBA's new phone number is 781-316-8894; fax 781-316-2605. The toll free number is 866-398-8860.

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Kay Callison Bonetti, director of the American Audio Prose Library, Columbia, Mo., notes that her conversation with Larry Brown included in Conversations with American Novelists (University of Missouri Press), mentioned yesterday by Karl Pohrt in his dispatch from the South Awareness tour, is, like the rest of the book, based on recorded interviews Bonetti made that are available from the American Audio Prose Library. Go to the Library's Web site for information about the original interview, Larry Brown Interview with Kay Bonetti, which was recorded in 1995.
 

Today Live with Regis and Kelly features John O'Hurley, author of It's Okay to Miss the Bed on the First Jump: And Other Life Lessons I Learned from Dogs (Hudson Street Press, $19.95, 9781594630323/1594630321).

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Today the Oprah Winfrey Show talks with René Syler, former anchor of CBS's Early Show and author of Good-Enough Mother: The Perfectly Imperfect Book of Parenting (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $22.95, 9781416934912/141693491X).

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Today on the Diane Rehm Show: Robert Goolrick, author of The End of the World as We Know It: Scenes from a Life (Algonquin, $22.95, 9781565124813/1565124812).

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Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Robert Stone, author of Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties (Ecco, $25.95, 9780060198169/0060198168). As the show describes it: "Robert Stone has written novels that are said to be the best descriptions of the American 1960s. In this memoir, he travels back to revisit those troubled times. Now stripped of a novelist's resources--the invention of character, the ear for street talk--he recreates and reevaluates the sixties through the lens of a new century."

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: psychologist Philip Zimbardo, author of The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (Random House, $27.95, 9781400064113/1400064112).

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Tonight on the Colbert Report: Clive James, author of Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memory From History and the Arts (Norton, $35, 9780393061161/0393061167).
 

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 31

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 2002, University of Chicago professor and law lecturer Dennis Hutchinson talked about The Forgotten Memoir of John Knox: A Year in the Life of a Supreme Court Clerk in FDR's Washington (University of Chicago Press, $32.50, 9780226448626/0226448622). Knox clerked for former Supreme Court Justice James C. Reynolds. Hutchinson co-edited the book.

7 p.m. Featured Program. Appearing at a book party on Capitol Hill hosted by Rep. Jim McGovern (D.-Mass.), Mike Farrell, best known for his role on M*A*S*H, talks about his memoir, Just Call Me Mike: A Journey to Actor and Activist (RDV Books/Akashic Books, $21.95, 9781933354088/1933354089). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 a.m. and 10 p.m.)

9 p.m. After Words. David Martin, CBS News's national security correspondent since 1993, interviews Jeremy Scahill, a contributor to the Nation, a correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books, $26.95, 9781560259794/1560259795). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

Sunday, April 1

12 p.m. In Depth live: Alexander Cockburn, columnist for the Nation, co-editor of the political newsletter CounterPunch and author most recently, with CounterPunch co-editor Jeffrey St. Clair, of End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate (AK Press, $15.95, 9781904859376/1904859372). During the three-hour show, viewers with questions may call in or send them via e-mail to booktv@c-span.org. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

Announced yesterday, Oprah's 57th Book Club selection is The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Vintage, $14.95, 9780307387899/0307387895), originally published last September. The first printing of the paperback edition is 950,000.

Oprah is pulling out the stops for her pick. She will soon air an interview with the publicity-shy McCarthy, and her club is talking all about The Road.

Here's how the club describes the book: "Set in the smoking ashes of a post-apocalyptic America, Cormac McCarthy's The Road tells the story of a father-son journey toward the sea and an uncertain salvation. The world they pass through is a ghastly vision of scorched countryside and blasted cities 'held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell.' It is a starved world, all plant and animal life dead or dying, some of the few human survivors even eating each other alive.

"The father and son move through the ruins searching for food and shelter, trying to keep safe from murderous, roving bands. They have only a pistol to defend themselves, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food--and each other.

"Awesome in the totality of its vision, The Road is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation."

Yesterday Scholastic released a little bit more of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--in this case, the cover. Again the illustrator is Mary GrandPre, and for the first time, the cover wraps around the book. As David Saylor, Scholastic's art director, said in a statement: "On the back cover spidery hands are outstretched toward Harry. Only when the book is opened does one see a powerful image of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, his glowing red eyes peering out from his hood." The full work will be issued July 21.

 

The winners of the 2007 Kiriyama Prize, which "recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region," are:

• Fiction: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin (Knopf)
• Nonfiction: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking)

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The J. Anthony Lukas Prizes, sponsored by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation, have been awarded to the following titles, according to today's New York Times:

• The $10,000 Book Prize: The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright (Knopf)
• The $10,000 Mark Lynton History Prize: Middle Passages: African American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005 by James T. Campbell (Penguin Press)
• The $30,000 Work-in-Progress Award: Twelve Condemned to Die: Scipio Africanus Jones and the Struggle for Justice that Remade a Nation by Robert Whitaker, to be published by Crown.

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Finalists for the Romance Writers of America's RITA Awards have been announced and are available online. Fellow published authors will pick the winners from the nearly 100 finalists in 12 categories--the top romances will be unveiled July 14 at the association's annual national conference in Dallas, Tex.

Karl Pohrt of Shaman Drum, Ann Arbor, Mich., continues his account of the South Awareness tour in honor of the late Larry Brown and his new novel,  A Miracle of Catfish (Algonquin).

(Morning of) March 24

This morning we drive southeast about eight miles from Oxford to Yocona, Larry Brown's home, and then on to Tula to go fishing. Larry's son Shane, who possesses the courtly formality and generosity I see in many country people here, has kindly agreed to chaperone us on this expedition. Shane wrote Craig an e-mail prior to our trip filled with the technical arcana of fishing:

"hey craig. yeah, i'm still on for going fishing. it should be a good day to fish if the rain holds out. the crappie and bass are biting in the big lakes around here and it should be the same for the ponds. if not, we'll have a good time trying and hanging out. it doesn't matter what time ya'll want to go that morning. where all ya'll staying? it doesn't matter how much beer or what kind. i'll probably get my own. we can fish a few type of fish. if you want brim, then we need brim hooks, small corks, weight, and some crickets. if you want to catch crappie and bass and maybe get lucky and catch a catfish then we need minnows, crappie hooks, medium size corks, and weight. our catfish are usually caught off worms. of course we need some catfish hooks. most of them will bend any other kind of hooks. there getting pretty big.  what time are ya'll thinking about leaving from the pond, because i could grill us something out to eat. just let me know."

Of course, anyone who has read Brown's books would not be surprised that one of his children is an excellent fisherman.
 
I've been fishing once in my life, and it made me restless. Since then I've spent many hours doing zazen, and I believe it has altered the neurology of my brain (for the better). I've become more patient. And if my zen training fails, I'm counting on my new companions to support me through my late-in-life introduction to the ritual of fishing.

Although I worry about the poisonous snakes lurking underfoot, I'd love to catch a glimpse of the wild hogs that inhabit the creek bottoms around here. Toward the end of Catfish there is a wonderful account of a hog hunt. I ask Shane about feral pigs in the area. "They all over the place," he tells me.

Last year I watched a pack of five feral pigs rush around a picnic area in a park in Kerala, India. With what looked like identical Mohawk haircuts, they seemed to me the animal kingdom's version of a gang of tough street thugs. They were remarkably fleet of foot given their stout bodies and tiny legs, but the local people acted like they were no more threatening than squirrels. What are their American country cousins like?

I recently came across a New Yorker article in the December 12, 2005 issue, by Ian Frazier on feral pigs in the United States, and I recall two factoids that were particularly disturbing:

1. One should never lean over and look down at wild hogs trapped in wire pens "because they'll jump up and bite your face."
2. There is a strange overlap between states with large feral hog populations and states that voted for George W. Bush.

What is one to make of this second statement? I picture Republican operatives swatting back mosquitoes while they shell out cash payments to feral hogs in wooded areas of Mississippi. Think about it.

But I digress. Back in the Present Moment, Craig teaches me how to correctly hook a worm or a minnow on the line and then cast it out into the pond. I find this a bit difficult, but Pete, who was raised as a fisherman, helps me.

We settle down into the quiet beauty of this place. Dragonflys zip low over the surface of the pond. There isn't a cloud in the sky, and the light reflecting off the water's surface has a soporific effect on me. Across the pond from where I've positioned myself is the little cabin Larry described building in his essay Shack. It looks like a tiny Taoist hermitage on the side of the hill here. And Larry is buried on this land, next to the grave of his first child, under a stand of pine trees.

None of us end up catching any fish. Craig almost caught what looked to me like a giant catfish (Shane said it was just "pretty big"), but it got away. Craig left his fishing pole on the ground while he was helping one of us, the fish bit and then dragged his pole into the water. Shane and Craig jumped in a boat and went for the pole. As Craig was reeling in the fish, he fell out of the boat. At one point he actually had the fish in his hands--I swear I saw this--but it wriggled off the hook and swam away.

[Editors' note: Pohrt's fish tale continues tomorrow.]