"As a child, my parents would take me to the local library and I'd come back with grocery bags full of books. The public library really introduced me to books as a kid."--Tim Green at a signing done with river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y., at which 20% of sales of his new American Outrage went to the capital campaign project of the Oswego Public Library, as quoted by the Oswego Palladium-Times.

Several national organizations covered the protest yesterday in front of the headquarters of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution against the newspaper's decision to let go its book editor, Teresa Weaver. Check out CNN and Fox for more.

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Hudson and CNN take their partnership a step farther.

When the paperback edition of Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival by CNN star Anderson Cooper appears next Tuesday, Hudson News and Hudson Booksellers will be offering an exclusive edition that includes a new afterword and a bound-in DVD that contains an interview with Cooper and video from Cooper's Reporter's Notebooks.

Last year Hudson and CNN began a partnership to open CNN-branded stores in airports. Already several have opened in Pittsburgh, Pa., and JFK Airport in New York.

Concerning the paperback partnership, in a statement, Sara Hinckley, v-p, book buying and promotions for Hudson Booksellers, said, "The paperback format is perfect for travelers, many of whom are already devoted CNN and Anderson Cooper 360 fans. We anticipate that this book will be one of our top-selling paperbacks this year, and adding the free DVD is a great way to reward Hudson customers in a unique and meaningful way."

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On the Saturday before Mother's Day, the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association will be on the road again. Its newest bookstore tourism tour, focusing on Orange County bookstores, will start at Vroman's in Pasadena and visit Martha's Bookstore at Balboa Island, Latitude 33 and the Laguna Beach Bookstore in Laguna Beach and Compass Books in Anaheim. Lunch will be at La Casa del Camino hotel in Laguna Beach.

Future tours include Los Angeles on June 23; San Diego (from L.A.), August 18; Los Angeles area museum stores, September 29; and the Palm Springs & Coachella Valley Book Festival (hosted by Peppertree Bookstores) November 11.

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The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted 4-0 with one abstention to consider declaring the building housing Dutton's Brentwood a historic-cultural monument, according to the Los Angeles Times. The applicant is the daughter of the architect of the building, which dates from 1950--a prehistoric time in L.A. Building owner Charles T. Munger, a lawyer and local philanthropist, has said he wants to redevelop the site as a mixed-use development that would include luxury condos and a ground-level bookstore.

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Congratulations to Amherst Books, Amherst, Mass.! The store was named Best Bookstore of New England by Boston Magazine, which wrote: "In our Barnes & Nobleized country, rare is the small town bookstore that can compete. Amherst Books is an exception. The shop thrives thanks to a breathtaking selection of poetry, literature and philosophy, in addition to a sizable assortment of small press titles and literary journals. There are no gimmicks or marketing schemes at work here--just a refreshingly genuine appreciation of the art of reading."

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Friends of Elaine Viets are rallying to help the author, who suffered a stroke several weeks ago, to promote her first hardcover, Murder with Reservations, part of the Dead End Job series. The aim is to hold events by proxy. Among the suggestions: authors can place a stack of Viets's books on their tables during their own tours and post an image of the book and a note on their website or blog; and booksellers can set up a party for Viets. For more information, go to breakthroughpromotions.com/elaine.html.

Vicki Erwin, owner of Main Street Books, St. Charles, Mo., said Viets, who is 57 and recovering, grew up in St. Louis and is a local favorite dating from her newspaper days there. Main Street is holding an event for Murder with Reservations.

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We hear that another Barnes & Noble (in addition to the one in Astor Place in New York City) is closing sometime in the next few months because the company doesn't want to pay a higher rent that would come with a lease renewal. This one is on the Main Line, in Bryn Mawr, Pa., and is near a Borders. Ironically the B&N has always been busy and our source said that the CRM, Kathy Siciliano, put on events more days than not.

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In July 2008, Barnes & Noble plans to open a store in the Harrisburg Mall at I-83 and Paxton Street in Harrisburg, Pa.

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You might call this one Harry Potter and the Green Mountain Revitalization. According to the Associated Press (via the Rutland Herald), a Gilman, Vt., paper mill has won a $2.5 million contract to provide recycled paper for Canadian and Australian editions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "We're not wizards but we like to think we've done a pretty good job," said Peter Hanson of Dirigo Paper Company, which had been closed from 2002-2004 after its previous owner declared bankruptcy.

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Bookselling This Week profiles the Bookworm, Omaha, Neb., owned by Beth and Phil Black. For the third year in a row, the store will run Berky Books, the official bookstore at the annual meeting weekend of Berkshire Hathaway, which draws thousands of shareholders (Shelf Awareness, May 10, 2006).

Located in the Countryside Village center, the store has 6,500 square feet of space with a connection to a coffee shop next door. The Bookworm coordinates some of its many author events with Lee Booksellers, which has two stores in Lincoln. The store also has more than 100 registered book clubs and has an annual book club open house that features presentations by publishers reps.

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The Portland, Ore., Bee profiled Looking Glass Bookstore and toured its new location in "the red caboose next door to Grand Central Bakery on Antique Row in Sellwood." Owner Karin Anna said she was pleased with the move and that "the caboose conceals a shop far larger than it looks from outside."

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In a Salt Lake Tribune article on the "Local First" movement among Utah small business owners, King's English Bookstore owner Betsy Burton said, "We're not anti-chain. But we want people to know: Every time you're spending a dollar, you're making a decision to shape your community. Think what you want your community to look like."

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In the same vein, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on a study by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Alliance that found that the city by the bay "remains a stronghold of locally owned retail businesses" that "recycle much more of their revenue in the surrounding community than do their chain competitors."

Locally owned bookstores claimed 55.4% of all bookselling revenues in San Francisco and the neighboring cities of Daly City, Colma and South San Francisco in 2005, according to the study. In addition, the local bookstores create some "2.14 local jobs--both directly through their own hiring and indirectly through hiring by their vendors and service providers--for every million dollars of books sold" while chain bookstores create "1.27 local jobs for every million dollars of sales." Most Internet stores such as Amazon create no local jobs "because their headquarters and warehouses are out of town."

The Alliance is "asking residents to shift 10% of their spending away from chain and Internet stores to local retailers," which it estimates would create "a net gain of 1,295 jobs and $191 million in local economic activity."

Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association and executive director of the Locally Owned Merchants Alliance told the paper, "We're not asking people to boycott the chains, just to shift some of their spending. Say you buy 10 books, and four or five of them usually come from independent booksellers? Buy six."

Landon told us that the NCIBA and several member booksellers were involved in SFLOMA's creation and in conducting the study.

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Anarchy thrives north of the border. "You won't get any Starbucks coffee at Exile Infoshop, Ottawa's first anarchist bookstore," reported the Ottawa Citizen. "And don't try to pay with your capitalist credit cards, either." The shop will be staffed by volunteers and "decisions about the shop are made by the eight-member collective, based on a model of non-hierarchy where every member has an equal say." Sarah Armstrong, a Collective member, offered a concise version of plans for the shop: "We shouldn't just rock the boat--we have to sink the f-----!"

 

The bookstore of the Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen's megachurch in Houston, Tex., has been named Church Bookstore of the Year by the Gathering of Church Bookstores, if we take the word of the Christian Post. The bookstore was cited "for outstanding contributions in the development of Christian retail in the local church." Osteen is the author of the Your Best Life Now books.

The bookstore has nearly 10,000 square feet of space and sells 2,000 titles as well as gifts, jewelry, cards, toys, music and Joel Osteen Ministries products. "A large-screen television broadcasts videos of Osteen's sermons and at the edge of the store is a giant aquarium next to 12 cushioned bamboo chairs," the Post wrote. The store's sales are projected to be $3.1 million this year. Most sales occur on weekends when the church holds four services, drawing nearly 40,000 people. "Eight cash registers, plus 13 more at resource centers scattered around the church, help ring up the thousands of customers."

In other award news, the Post reported that Heidi Bodette, manager of Daily Bread Books at Hosanna! Lutheran Church in Lakeville, Minn., was named Church Bookstore Manager of the Year; DaySpring won Vendor of the Year; and Jeff Miller, regional sales director for Thomas Nelson, was named Sales Representative of the Year.

Two years old, the Gathering of Church Bookstores was formed to serve bookstores located in churches and held its third annual meeting last month in Plano, Tex. For more information on the group, visit the Church Bookstore magazine, a supplement of Christian Retailing.

BEA 2007 (May 31-June 3) is in New York City! Whether you're a native or just visiting, New York is a tough city to tackle. So from now until BEA Shelf Awareness and Frommer's are offering tips on how to make the most of your long weekend in the Big Apple. This week Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer's Travel Guides, offers her list of "must-see" attractions if you have only one day to tour the city that never sleeps.

Ask New Yorkers about their feelings for their city, and they will often respond, "There's just one New York." By that they mean: one city so full of museums (more than 40 major ones); historical sites; world-famous institutions; parks; zoos; universities; theaters for opera, musicals, drama, and dance; architectural highlights; presidents' homes; and kooky galleries, that its diversions are limitless.

If you have just one day in New York, you have my condolences. First thing you're going to want to do is slam your shoe into your fanny for giving yourself far too little time to experience the city. Then go directly to the Ferry Terminal at Battery Park City (try to get there at 9 a.m. to avoid the crowds) and spend two to three hours touring Ellis Island. You'll see the Statue of Liberty from the ferry, but with only one day, you have no time to tour it. From the ferry terminal, walk north to Ground Zero to pay your respects. Then head over to Chinatown for lunch. From Chinatown, catch a subway up to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where you should spend the remainder of the afternoon. Head next across the park to the Upper West Side for dinner, and after dinner down to Times Square to see the lights and take in a show (with just one day in town, you'd be wise to book your tickets in advance). If you have the stamina, head over to the Empire State Building--open until midnight--for a fond farewell to the city, which will be glittering and throbbing with a million tiny lights after dark."

• Ellis Island (ferry fees: $12, $9.50 seniors and children 4-12; daily 8:30 a.m.-6:15 p.m.; 1 Train to South Ferry, or 4, 5 to Bowling Green or R, W to Whitehall St.
• Ground Zero (the open space between Church, Barclay, Liberty, and West Sts.)
• Chinatown (Canal Street Station, 4, 5, 6, N, Q, R and J Trains)
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (1000 Fifth Ave., between 80th and 84th Sts.; 212-536-7710)
• Times Square (Broadway and Seventh Ave., between 42nd and 47th Sts.; Trains 1, 2, 3, N, Q, W, S to Times Square)
• Statue of Liberty (Liberty Island; 212-269-5755; ; daily 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; 1 Train to South Ferry, 4, 5, to Bowling Green, or R, W to Whitehall St.)

For more great NYC travel tips check out your official BEA travel guide, Pauline Frommer's New York City (Wiley), celebrating 50 years of world travel. Listen to Pauline and other Frommer's writers share their travel stories and tips at frommers.com/podcast/.

This morning on the Early Show: Patricia Wells, whose new book is Vegetable Harvest: Vegetables at the Center of the Plate (Morrow, $34.95, 9780060752446/0060752440).

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This morning on the Today Show: beauty tips from makeup artist Carmindy, author of The 5-Minute Face: The Quick & Easy Makeup Guide for Every Woman (ReganBooks, $19.95, 9780061238260/0061238260).

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This evening on Bill Moyers' Journal: Carlo Bonini, co-author of Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror (Melville House, $23.95, 9781933633275/1933633271).

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The weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, in a segment taped at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, Bill Geist talks with Michelle Cromer, author of Exit Strategy: Thinking Outside the Box (Tarcher, $12.95, 9781585425051/1585425052).

 

Are they all named Tiffany? The Eta Gamma chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of San Diego recently welcomed Marjorie Hart at its weekly chapter meeting to discuss her book, Summer at Tiffany. (The 83-year-old debut author was chair of the fine arts department at USD.) Summer at Tiffany is a memoir of summer 1945 in New York, when Hart and a friend, another Iowa Kappa, became the first women to work on the sales floor at Tiffany & Co.

Hart will do a signing at Warwick's in La Jolla next Tuesday and at Rakestraw Books in Danville on Saturday, May 12. She invites readers to submit stories of the best summer of their lives to summerattiffany@harpercollins.com or on MySpace at myspace.com/bestsummerofyourlife.

How about fat, fifty, and fired? Or at least a bit overweight, fifty, and fired?

That is to say that this new book by Nigel Marsh, now chairman of Leo Burnett Australia, an Englishman who has lived in Australia with his family since 2001, resonates with us. But there's no need to be fired to find this book both witty and helpful. It should resonate with most anyone--male or female--trying to balance work and the rest of life. Certainly Fat, Forty, and Fired has already resonated in Australia, where it was a bestseller.

In early 2003, when Marsh was approaching 40, he was CEO of the Australian subsidiary of a multinational company being merged into another, and the Aussie outfit was shut down. Given the choice of taking whatever job could be found for him in the corporation in any of a number of countries, Marsh realized that he didn't want to uproot his family again--and that his life was painfully out of whack. He was more than 35 lbs. overweight, he drank prodigiously, much of his limited interaction with his four children under the age of nine consisted of shouting at them, he was obsessed by work and he and his wife seemed merely to coexist. So he decided to take a year off and try to reconnect with his family, find more meaning in life than what he achieved in high-powered marketing and advertising--much as he loved that work--and rekindle neglected interests such as drawing and running.

In a heart-to-heart conversation with his wife about his desire to take a break--one that gives a taste of the book's humor and directness--she asks what would happen at the end of the year off. Marsh responds:

"We'd be screwed. All our savings would be gone. I'd be a forgotten, forty-year-old advertising executive who hadn't worked for a year. Unemployable."
"So I get twice the husband, half the income, and at the end of the year we'll both have to work at Wal-Mart?"
"Basically."
Kate thought for a minute. "If we do this, will you be less of an asshole?"

The answer is that he'll try, and one of his first steps, mentioned almost casually, is giving up alcohol, which makes it much easier to do the many other things he wants to accomplish. And there's a lot to work on! Marsh chronicles his battles and achievements--such as learning to swim freestyle--with wit, humor and poignancy. After all, this ad man has a soul, as befits someone who appreciates art, reads the Bible in Greek and has adopted Quakerism as his religion of choice.
 
Most important, during his year off, which actually turned out to be nine months, Marsh learns many beautiful lessons about the people closest to him. After earlier trying to connect with his parents in forced ways, Marsh relaxes enough to go with the flow, and he and his mother cross an emotional divide when they recount a highly embarrassing event from his childhood and wind up giggling "like teenagers." And after many false starts and frustrations with his children, Marsh begins to find that by easing up and going at their pace, "I could get the most enormous joy out of the simplest things. Harry would stand next to me in the mornings and mimic me shaving. The girls would lie on either side of me when I was doing situps and raise their arms and legs while shouting, 'Look at us, Mommy. We're exercising.' Alex and I would sit on the same armchair together and watch The Simpsons most evenings--all the time with him impersonating the characters and making unflattering comparisons between Homer and me."

If there is any flaw to this book, it is that Marsh repeatedly makes the reader laugh out loud and want to read paragraphs at length to any nearby willing listener. We'll stifle an urge to quote yet another story and say simply get a copy of the book.--John Mutter