Lori Fazio

Lori Fazio has been named president of RJ Julia Booksellers, which includes the flagship Madison, Conn., location, and two stores that RJ Julia manages: BookHampton, East Hampton, N.Y.; and Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore, Wesleyan University's official bookstore, in Middletown, Conn. Fazio has been general manager.

"In each of the positions Lori has held over the 15 years that she has been with RJ Julia, she quickly makes her stamp, excels at her responsibilities, and looks to make a difference," said RJ Julia owner and founder Roxanne J. Coady. "Over the last two years, as she led our team through the monster known as Covid, these same talents served RJ Julia, our staff, and our readers to an extraordinary degree, allowing us to survive and thrive."

Fazio commented: "The last few years have reinforced how critical and vibrant bookselling and bookstores can be. I'm honored that Roxanne has trusted me with this legacy and I look forward to thinking about all the ways in which RJ Julia and books can enhance and impact the lives of our readers."

Coady added that her role "will become more advisory in nature, particularly around strategy. I am confident this is the most perfect way for RJ Julia to continue to excel at serving our community of readers and staff, and for me to be an enthusiastic cheerleader and occasional meddler."

Only eight days remain until Independent Bookstore Day 2022, and indies around the country are prepping for author events, giveaways, parties and bookstore crawls.

IBD Spirit Week begins on Monday, with a week full of themed days leading up to April 30. There are digital assets available for bookstores to use, and the theme days are: Crazy Hat Day (Monday), Plaid Day (Tuesday), Bookstore/IBD Shirts (Wednesday), Dress Up as Your Favorite Book Character (Thursday) and Pajama Day (Friday).

Starting on April 25 and lasting through IBD, more than 300 audiobooks will be on sale on Libro.fm, with a specific IBD line-up priced at only $5. Customers will also be able to get a free audiobook when they start a new monthly membership and use the code CHOOSEINDIE. Booksellers can download various IBD and audiobook assets here.

The Cape & Islands Bookstore Trail will return this year, with 21 independent bookstores in coastal Massachusetts participating, from Buzzards Bay to Provincetown and from Martha's Vineyard to Nantucket. The trail will launch on IBD and run through October 31. Customers who visit five or more participating stores will receive a Cape & Islands Bookstore Trail sticker, and those who visit 15 stores or more will be given a chance to win either a $50 or $250 gift certificate to a participating bookstore of their choice.

Trail maps will be available at participating stores and can be downloaded from the Cape & Islands Trail website. The trail event, which debuted in 2019 but could not be held in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19, was organized by Eight Cousins Books in Falmouth and Titcomb's Bookshop in East Sandwich with the goal of highlighting the unusual and diverse array of independent bookstores on Cape Cod and the Islands.

Seven bookstores in New Orleans, La., are teaming up for a city-wide bookstore crawl on IBD. Customers who get their IBD passports stamped at Octavia Books, Baldwin & Co., Blue Cypress Books, Community Book Center, Frenchmen Art & Books, Garden District Book Shop and Tubby & Coo's Mid-City Book Shop will have a chance to win a grand prize of $175 in gift cards.

IBD will hold particular significance for Tubby & Coo's, as it will mark the first time since March 2020 that the store will be open for in-store shopping. Over the past two years the store pivoted to being an almost entirely online business, though owner Candice Huber and their team have offered curbside pick-up. The store moved in July 2020, meaning IBD will also be the first time community members and long-time shoppers will have a chance to step inside the new space. "I'm so excited for our customers to finally be able to come in person regularly and say hello again," Huber said.

Flintridge Bookstore in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif., is celebrating its 15th birthday on IBD with a slew of giveaways, drawings, a scavenger hunt and author appearances. Customers who make a purchase on Saturday will be entered to win a selection of children's, young adult, poetry adult fiction or adult nonfiction books. The author visits will start at 10:30 a.m. and run until the afternoon, with eight authors scheduled to appear. There will be poetry readings later in the day, as well as appearances from local artists.

Faro Café, an independent bookstore and cafe with a focus on community, climate change and climate justice, will open in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Mass. Owner Henry Hoffstot told the Cambridge Day that he is eyeing an opening date in late June or early July.

The bookshop and cafe will reside in an 800-square-foot space that previously housed a beauty salon. Divided into two rooms, the space will be able to seat around 24 people, and sidewalk seating will add space for another 50 or so diners. Hoffstot and his team will serve food and drinks between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., and there will be occasional live music performances and guest speakers. The food menu will feature simple items that can be served without a kitchen.

Hoffstot added that his plans for the bookstore and cafe were inspired by Café Pamplona, a Harvard Square bistro that opened in 1959 and was in business until May 2020.

Under a new agreement with Follett Higher Education, Follett will manage the University of Montevallo bookstore in Montevallo, Ala., and the store will take a new name, Freddie's Books and More, a reference to the university's mascot, Freddie the Falcon.

B.J. Posey, the university's manager of contracts and purchasing, said, "UM made the decision to partner with Follett due to our shared commitment to driving student outcomes and classroom success. Follett's innovation in campus retail and ecommerce, along with their approach to providing affordable course materials for our students, will enhance our student experience and campus community."

Follett is making what the school calls "a significant investment" in the Montevallo campus retail location on Main Street and the online campus store, "giving students and fans anytime/anywhere access to classroom materials and premier fan gear."

Caroline Silver, a model, writer, editor and crossword-compiler, has died. She was 83. The Guardian reported that she was a model in London in the late 1950s, but her "secretarial training and chutzpah stood her in good stead later when she became a freelance journalist for a range of publications including the Telegraph and the Sunday Times."

Living in New York in the '60s, she worked for Scholastic as math editor and crossword-compiler, and wrote books on '60s music. Her numerous horse books included Classic Lives (1973), on the breeding of racehorses; Summer with Tommy (1974), about breaking in a pony; and a guide to the horses of the world, "in which she claimed to have included two invented breeds of horse to make it seem the most comprehensive on the subject," the Guardian noted. She also exercised racehorses, wrote scripts for short BBC films, and in the early '80s wrote a lively and witty monthly property column for Harpers & Queen magazine.

Silver "had a passion for knowledge, undertaking courses at Columbia University in New York in the '60s, and later in horticulture and horse care at Hartpury College, Gloucestershire, and in nursing from the Red Cross. She did not have a degree, but would cheerfully invent one if required: she believed that if you could do a job well, you should have the job," the Guardian wrote. 

Posted on Facebook by Lift Bridge Book Shop, Brockport, N.Y.: "Everybody's favorite holiday: Arbor Day. Send a poem to the village, help plant some trees, or better, both!"

"This April, fall in love with words and the poets who wield them. Take a chance with a blind date from the window" at Powell's Books on Hawthorne in Portland, Ore., which even turned its hand to verse: 

Love is blind
And April is for poets. 
Take a chance on 
A poetry book
And you'll fall in love
Before you know it.

"Book recs with Nova the bookstore dog" at Black Garnet Books, which has been selling books online and through pop-up locations in the Twin Cities for more than a year and plans to open its bricks-and-mortar location in St. Paul later this year.

"Educate yourself today with a new book (or two)!" A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland, Calif., noted in channeling Susan Sontag for the shop's latest sidewalk chalkboard message ("A good book is an education of the heart.").

Pearls of Wisdom: Advice from a Dead Squirrel Who Knows Everything by ME Pearl and Georgette Spelvin (Apollo Publishers).

Today:
Fresh Air: Jeremy Denk, author of Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons (Random House, $28.99, 9780812995985).

Sunday:
Christiane Amanpour (CNN/PBS): Anne Sinclair, author of In the Shadows of Paris: The Nazi Concentration Camp That Dimmed the City of Light (Kales Press, $21.95, 9781733395861).

HBO has released the official trailer for its six-part series The Time Traveler's Wife, based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, Deadline reported. Set to premiere May 15, the project stars Rose Leslie, Theo James, Desmin Borges and Natasha Lopez.
 
"What is thrilling of the interaction of time travel and a love story here, is it makes the most common phenomenon of a completely happy marriage, interesting again," said writer and executive producer Steven Moffat during the show's TCA presentation in February. "Love stories, or love movies, tend to end at the altar. We never do the bit where people are perfectly happy for decades because it seems like a dramatic thing. By scrambling it all up and constantly reminding you that love is inextricably linked to loss, which is a cheery thought, you make this very common phenomenon of a happy marriage, thrilling and full of attention and tragedy."

The Time Traveler's Wife is produced by HBO and Warner Bros. Television with Moffat, Sue Vertue, and Brian Minchin executive producing via their Hartswood Films alongside Joseph E. Iberti and director David Nutter.

Finalists have been unveiled in three categories (nonfiction, literary fiction, romance) for the C$10,000 (about US$8,010) Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, which "recognizes the year's best debut books by Canadian writers," CBC reported. The three winners will be named June 22. The shortlists were selected by Kobo's team of booksellers. See the complete list of finalists here. 

Andrew Muse is a photographer, explorer, multisport athlete and the author of Life Is Golden: What I Learned from the Most Adventurous Dogs (Gibbs Smith, April 19, 2022). Muse is best known for his YouTube series Tiny Home Adventure, where he journeys to places unknown with his dog, Kicker, by his side. Muse lives in Park City, Utah, but also wherever the wind takes him.

Handsell readers your book:

Life Is Golden tells the story of friendship, love, loss and healing and inspires people to live a passionate life and find joy. But most importantly, it's about Booter and Kicker, the best dogs I've ever known.

On your nightstand now:

Living the Best Day Ever by Hendri Coetzee. Kicker and I have been living in Baja for the past few months, and I just finished filming the third season of Tiny Home Adventure. We've been living out of a Ford Bronco, camping in the most beautiful places, surfing, doing yoga and finding joy (and showers) wherever we can. Hendri was an epic adventurer who lived life to the fullest, through the best and the worst of it. I definitely feel like we have a lot in common as far as lifestyle and philosophical outlook.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. As a kid with dyslexia and an unstable home, reading wasn't always the easiest. There weren't a lot of people in my life encouraging me to read, and there weren't a lot of books that worked with my brain. For some reason the Harry Potter books were always different.

Your top five authors:

Don Miguel Ruiz, who taught me that assumptions are limiting and that happiness is attainable.

Paulo Coelho, who inspired me to follow my dreams and not be scared of failure.

J.K. Rowling and Terry Goodkind, whose books gave me an escape from reality when I needed it most.

And Jon Krakauer, who wrote books about epic adventures I dreamed about going on before I had the ability to do so.

Book you've faked reading:

Pretty much every book report I did in high school. I spent most of my time playing in the woods, building forts and going on adventures. I wasn't the best student, but I found a different sort of education through exploring and reading books that really spoke to me.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Golden Retrievers for Dummies or any basic dog training book for new dog owners. As a multisport athlete with an adventure dog, responsible dog ownership is so important to me. Booter and Kicker and I have gone on some pretty incredible adventures--from paragliding to river rafting to rappelling down mountains. When you live a more extreme life with your pup, you have to be even more safe, smart and cautious. It's something that I talk a lot about in the book and hope that more people are inspired to learn more about.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. It was the first time I ever just pulled a book from the bookshelf at a bookstore and was immediately sucked into a story.

Book you hid from your parents:

Honestly, my parents weren't super involved in my childhood. Growing up was pretty tough and I didn't have much support.

Book that changed your life:

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. After I read this book, I realized that happiness has more to do with me than anyone else. I can't change that my Dad left when I was eight, or that we moved around, or that people might judge me for myriad reasons, but I can change how I act and how I live my life. We are all on a journey, and these past 10-plus years have been incredible. But it's all about perspective, right? If I had been dwelling on the past or thinking about how others view me, I would have missed out on all that joy. I hope that I can inspire people who have also struggled to find happiness, because it really comes from within. The Four Agreements helped me learn that.

Favorite line from a book:

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." --Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Four books you'll never part with:

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryū Suzuki
The Toltec Art of Life and Death by Don Miguel Ruiz
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. The world that Goodkind created is so immersive, so complex and so compelling. I would love to be transported back to that forest and get lost there for the first time again.

"Everyone wants to believe in something or someone: a higher ideal, a god on earth, a voice from heaven.... When this appetite for belief combines with the need to belong, great things can happen.... But what about those rare moments when the dark side of human nature takes hold?" The shocking Cults, based on the Parcast podcast of the same name, surveys some of the most famous and disturbing examples of small, extremist, ill-fated sects. Parcast founder Max Cutler is joined by Kevin Conley (Stud; The Full Burn) in writing this roundup of frighteningly charismatic leaders and their followers.

Ten chapters cover 10 cults chosen for their impacts on the world's imagination, beginning (naturally) with Charles Manson and his "family." Cutler's focus is both narrative, detailing the story of the leader's upbringing and the cult's rise and fall, and also probing: Cults is interested in motivations and, to the extent possible, diagnoses. "With so many cult leaders who died suddenly or violently, any diagnosis of psychological disturbance is purely speculative," but the temptation is strong. "Cult leaders make such good case studies: because the gruesome facts of their biographies are both widely known and easy to connect to a psychological disorder." Cults are labeled in the table of contents by the root cause Cutler has identified for each leader's actions. According to this system, Manson was motivated by shame, as was Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, whose Narcosatanists were responsible for at least 16 deaths in Mexico in the 1980s.

Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple was driven by exploitation, taking advantage of his followers financially and sexually until the deaths of 908 Americans (including Jones) in what was called "Jonestown" in Guyana. Likewise exploitative was the bizarre Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose ashrams in India and then Oregon supported his desire for both nitrous oxide and Rolls Royces (he owned 93 at one point), and who laced Oregonian salad bars with salmonella in a bid for local political control. Pathological lying, megalomania, sadism, escape and denial of reality cover the remaining cults: Claude Vorilhon's Raëlism, Roch Thériault's Ant Hill Kids, David Koresh's Branch Davidians, Keith Raniere's NXIVM, Credonia Mwerinde's Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God, and Marshall Applewhite's Heaven's Gate. Manipulative, self-aggrandizing, compelling and lacking in empathy, these characters (in every sense) are by turns laughable, inexplicably strange and chillingly, brutally cruel. Not for the faint of heart but absolutely for the true-crime junkie, Cults is packed with details and unafraid to posit theories to explain these superlatively weird and scary stories. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: This shocking study by the creator of the podcast Cults recounts and dissects the leaders, followers and histories of 10 extreme cults.

You take your influences with you
Everywhere you go
Mine were Carmen Sandiego
Lauryn Hill and Terry Gross

--from the song "Terry Gross" by Dessa

It's still National Poetry Month and I've been reading excellent collections, but I'll admit that some of the best poetry I've encountered has been found in songs on new albums by Willy Vlautin's band the Delines (The Sea Drift) and Dessa (Ides). In fact, I'm listening to them on my AirPods as I write this. It's an immersive music experience that's also, as it happens, a bookish one. There's poetry here. And there's a little backstory. 

Tayari Jones, Willy Vlautin, Sara Blaedel

I first encountered Vlautin at the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Fall Discovery Show in 2017. He appeared at a Future Releases Breakfast with Tayari Jones and Sara Blaedel. We chatted briefly afterward. 

In Denver to promote Don't Skip Out on Me (Harper Perennial), he told the assembled booksellers: "I really appreciate bookstores. I'm kind of a bookstore addict. Every town I go to I end up buying tons of books.... And any town I go to you know you have a safe place to hang out and someone that's a weird book lover. And anyone that's a little cracked is all right in my book. So, I'm sure I'd like all you guys."

A sample CD of his instrumental soundtrack for the tough, tender and brilliant novel was available at the conference, along with an ARC, which I read on the flight back home. I've been reading his books and listening to his music ever since.

Although he hadn't written a soundtrack initially for his most recent novel, The Night Always Comes (Harper), Vlautin said in an interview that the songs on the Delines new album actually came looking for him: "Yeah. Some novels of mine feel like music. I wrote a novel called Northline that felt like music so I wrote a soundtrack with it. Don't Skip Out on Me felt like music so I wrote a soundtrack. This one was different. This novel was so panicked and desperate that it didn't feel like music."

But Cory Gray, the trumpet and keyboard player for the Delines, "brought in a ballad to practice that he had written, and it was such a beautiful song," Vlautin recalled. "The second he finished it, I said: 'That's Lynette [the main character]! That's what she feels like!' And he let me name the song, which was very nice of him, but then I went home and the songs started coming... he kinda opened my mind to the music that should fit the book. So I wrote a bunch of songs, and he wrote a bunch of songs, and we put a soundtrack together." Both novel and album are great. Lead singer Amy Boone will break your heart in every good way.

From the song "Drowning in Plain Sight": 

Past the buildings being put up and being torn down
Past the marinas and then the coast comes around
The kid's ice cream is melting my husband's beer is getting warm
The phone starts ringing an hour after I should have been home
I see cargo ships passing the gas gauge is on empty but I don't stop driving
'Cause the second I do I swear I'll lose my mind

Dessa, the rapper, singer/songwriter, essayist and poet, appeared on my radar a year after I met Vlautin. In the fall of 2018, I read her essay collection My Own Devices: True Stories from the Road on Music, Science and Senseless Love (Dutton). I started listening to her songs, like "Velodrome" and "Fire Drills," and I was hooked.

Since the gods do occasionally smile upon us, that year my trip to the Heartland Fall Forum in Minneapolis was bridged by a couple of free days before flying on to the MPIBA conference in Denver. On the night before leaving, I was able to snag a last-minute ticket to a concert featuring Dessa performing with the Minnesota Orchestra. Watching her read briefly from her book, in a pause between songs, to a concert hall packed with enthusiastic fans of her music, may have been the most amazing author reading moment I've ever seen.  

In addition to her stunning work as a lyricist, Dessa has published two poetry chapbooks (Spiral Bound, A Pound of Steam) and also hosts a podcast, Deeply Human, which is produced in association with BBC World Service and explores the question: "Why do you do the things you do?... Deeply Human investigates the human experience with rigor, humor, intimate stories, and the occasional spit take."

"I write sad songs," Dessa observes in My Own Devices. "Some are funny-sad, some angry-sad, some are dance-even-though(-or-maybe-because)-you're sad, and some are just sad-sad with all the bells and whistles turned to D minor. At the beginning of my career, I thought maybe it was something I just had to get out of my system. It turned out to be the only thing in my system. It's what I'm good at."

From "Life on Land":

And the rose in my teeth
Was a pin so it seems
You pull it and you brace to blast
Get ready for the bang and flash
Alright, just one last dance
Make it fast