An unofficial theme of the Frankfurt Book Fair this year is support for Ukraine, which has manifested itself in a variety of ways. The most dramatic came yesterday when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the book fair via video from Kyiv. He was forceful and direct, thanking book industry representatives from around the world "for all the attention you pay to Ukraine. Such attention means that you indeed value freedom and are ready to defend it. This is what Europe needs most these days: to be united in the fight for freedom."

He recounted Russian atrocities, attacks on civilians and infrastructure in Ukraine, its attacks and genocide in other countries, its assassinations of Putin's Russian political opponents on German soil, and said, "Instead of importing culture, Russia imports death." Russia "does not have any limits." Europe and the rest of the world aren't safe and will face the same threats as Ukraine "as long as there are terrorist states."

He called Ukraine "the main battlefield where Russia attacks united Europe" and criticized "public figures" in some countries who are sympathetic to Russia. This is only possible because of "the lack of knowledge" about Russia's crimes.

He said that a key way to combat "terrorist states" like Russia and Iran and to counteract those in the West who support them is by spreading knowledge. "Knowledge is the answer," he said. "Please do everything you can to make people know. Know about the terror Russia brought to Ukraine" and to other countries and parts of Russia, including Chechnya, Georgia and Syria. "Please keep writing about it. Keep reading about it." People should know that "freedom can resist even when many believe it is not possible." Books, documentaries, articles, reports and more are key. He invited "all of you" to Ukraine "to see what our people are going through."

Following Zelensky, Oleksander Afonin, president of the Ukrainian Publisher and Booksellers Association, speaking in person, emphasized that the Ukrainian book industry needs "moral, organizational and financial support" as it keeps "working under the circumstances of massive human, material, economic and financial losses. We keep creating Ukrainian books and despite all the obstacles are doing our best to deliver them to readers both in Ukraine and abroad."

He called for "filling Ukrainian libraries and the book market with the best examples of national and foreign literature" and for foreign libraries and bookstores to buy and carry "Ukrainian classical and contemporary literature."

In the center courtyard of the fair grounds, Ukrainian artist Maria Kulikovska reenacted her 2014 piece, where she lay motionless under the Ukrainian flag on the steps of a St. Petersburg museum.

The Zelensky address was jointly sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Federation of European Publishers. FEP president Peter Kraus vom Cleff noted that several initiatives have helped Ukrainian colleagues, including Books Without Borders, which has raised €52,000 (about $52,000) to print more than 40,000 Ukrainian books to distribute to Ukrainian children currently living in safety in Poland, Germany, Hungary and Italy. He noted that there are other programs, including #StandWithUkraine, and German and European book industry associations will continue their support to show their solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian book world.

Frankfurt Book Fair director Juergen Boos mentioned the German Friedenpreis (Peace Prize) winner Serhiy Zhadan whose most recent book, News about Survival in War, was published in Germany this year. Zhadan will receive the prize at a gala ceremony on Sunday and be honored, organizers said, "for his outstanding artistic work as well as for his unequivocal humanitarian stance, which repeatedly motivates him to risk his own life to help people affected by war and thus to call greater attention to their plight.... His stories illustrate how war and destruction enter into this world and turn people's lives upside down. Throughout his entire oeuvre, he uses a unique language that provides us with a vivid and differentiated portrait of the reality that many of us chose to disregard for far too long." Boos said he was happy that "the truth of [Zhadan's] voice has a stage here."

The Ukrainian stand, where more than 40 Ukrainian publishers are exhibiting, is one of the busiest locations at the fair and has the theme "Persistence of Being." There is a full program of panels and events focused on Ukraine every day of the fair. Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska is speaking at several events, including a panel on Books Without Borders and another with the First Lady of Germany, Elke Büdenbender, wife of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. --John Mutter

After a closure of nearly a year, Provincetown Bookshop will reopen in a new space in Provincetown, Mass., in time for the holiday season. Owner Barbara Clarke and her team, which includes bookstore manager Derek McCormack, took possession of the 450-square-foot space at 229 Commercial St. on October 1 and are busy getting the store ready for opening. 

Like its previous incarnation, Provincetown Bookshop will continue to be a general-interest store with a "little bit of everything," McCormack said. He worked at Provincetown Bookshop before it closed in 2021 and noted that the store's cookbook section and LGBTQ+ sections were "big mainstays for us," and those categories will see "new life in this new bookstore." As for nonbook items, McCormack mentioned stationery, cards, vinyl and gifts made by local craftspeople.

Provincetown Bookshop's future home.

Given the store's small size, the opening inventory will be heavily curated. That space, however, is a temporary one, and eventually the bookshop will move into a larger home that is still in the works.

McCormack remarked that Provincetown "means something a little different" to every member of the community, which can include vacationers in search of beach reads, retired folks, visiting artists and creatives, as well as locals born and raised on Cape Cod. McCormack, Clarke and the other members of the bookshop team hope to "appeal to each of those tastes as best we can" and "be the store they want to see."

Events constitute a big part of the store's plans and, considering the bookshop's small footprint, they will mostly be off-site. The bookshop will look to host events with local authors as well as authors who visit Provincetown during the summers. McCormack mentioned that the bookstore has hosted some pop-up events already, such as a family week event in July, and will be doing an event for Provincetown's food and wine festival the first weekend in November.

McCormack said the plan is to keep the store open through at least the new year. Lots of businesses close in Provincetown during the off-season, McCormack explained, and historically the bookshop would close for about three months at the start of the year.

The new Provincetown Bookshop team is still "assessing how the winter is going to look," and it is unclear just yet whether it will shut down for a few months. He added that the reopening has given the team the opportunity to "interrogate" a lot of the store's policies, and that will continue going forward.

Clarke, a venture capitalist and philanthropist with a house in Provincetown, was a longtime customer of Provincetown Bookshop when she learned last summer that the store would close if it could not find a buyer. It was one of her daughters, in fact, who noticed the sign in the window saying that the building had been sold and a buyer was needed.

"We have all seen beloved local institutions shut their doors and we thought that we could do something to prevent it," Clarke recalled. "So we bought the bookshop business."

Through a series of connections Clarke met Christine Barker, the developer of a new hotel, apartment and retail project in Provincetown called The Pier, and that's how the bookshop found its new home. Clarke added that when the store eventually moves out of its temporary home, it will be moving into another space in the same development.

Describing her vision for the store, Clarke said she wants to "create a space which is inviting and where everyone feels welcome." The store is also in an interesting position as not only the oldest bookshop on Cape Cod, but also "part of a town that is looking ahead to what's new in art and culture." She looks forward to the bookshop once again being part of the fabric of the community, and she hopes that it "reflects the best of Provincetown." --Alex Mutter

Vintage Bookstore and Wine Bar officially opened in Austin, Tex., last Saturday, Eater Austin reported.

Located in central Austin's historic Haehnel Building, the store offers a selection of new books in genres including literary fiction, romance, fantasy and mystery, along with food, wine and other beverages. The wine selection features "reds, whites, rosés, and sparkling wines" from around the world, and food options include grab-and-go snack boxes and pastries, all sourced from local businesses. The bar also features beer, non-alcoholic cocktails and cold-brew coffee.

Owner Jean Elizabeth Buckner told Eater that despite the store's name, she has no plans to stock used books. All of the staff book recommendations are paired with wine recommendations, and Buckner hopes that the bookstore becomes a cozy, comfortable place where people can eat, drink, read and connect.

Hearthside Books in Juneau, Alaska, has a new owner, the Juneau Empire reported.

Olga Lijó Seráns officially took over as the bookstore's new owner on Sunday, October 16, after purchasing the store from longtime owner Brenda Weaver. Seráns, who hails from Spain and has lived in Juneau for about 20 years, has a background as a librarian and so far plans to keep her current position at the legislative library.

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Seráns participated in a lot of foreign-language conversation groups in Juneau; going forward she plans to restart those groups while also adding more foreign-language titles to Hearthside's inventory. At the same time, she'll continue the bookstore programs that customers already know and love.

Weaver told the Empire that after nearly a decade of owning and operating the store, she's "looking forward to exploring more about life that I haven't had the time to." She purchased the bookstore from original owners Susan Hickey and Deb Reifenstein in 2014, and while she was owner the store moved from Front Street back to the Wharf. She added that she's going to miss the bookstore, and she'll probably "still be the bookstore's best customer."

About Seráns, Weaver said: "the more I've gotten to know Olga, the more impressed I am with her, as a book lover and as a very well grounded person that is going to really help Hearthside grow and move into the future in ways that I probably couldn't imagine."

Total net book sales in July in the U.S. dropped 14.9%, to $1.036 billion, compared to July 2021, representing sales of 1,368 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. (Figures do not include preK-12, because of delays in data collection.) For the year to date, total net book sales were down 4.1%, to $6.57 billion.

Almost every category fell during the month, with only downloaded audio and adult paperbacks rising. Trade sales as a whole fell 11.6%, to $668.4 million. Trade hardcover sales dropped 26.5%, to $177.7 million. Trade paperbacks fell 4.6%, to $273.6. Mass markets were off 42.5%, to $14.8 million. Special bindings slipped 2.5%, to $17.2 million.

Sales by category in July 2022 compared to July 2021:

Reverend Adrian Dannhauser (l.) celebrated the launch of her book Ask Me for a Blessing (You Know You Need One) (Broadleaf Books) at the Church of the Incarnation in New York City earlier this week. More than 150 people attended, including New York City Mayor Eric L. Adams (c.) and Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (r.). Dannhauser read from the book and engaged in conversation with author Retta Blaney.

Thunder Road Books in Spring Lake, N.J., posted: "It's the Great Pumpkin season and that season includes spooky reads! Whether it's Charlie Brown, pumpkins or cozy stories, we're here for it all 🍁🎃📚"

BāS Bookshop, Honolulu, Hawaii, shared a video on Instagram from a recent in-store event, noting: "It was such a joy watching @reinayoungdesigns teach her bookbinding workshop this past Saturday right here at Bās. Thank you to everyone who joined the workshop!"

Jordan Rodman has been named senior director of publicity for Vintage Anchor, effective October 31. She has managed the publicity department at Avid Reader Press for the last four years and earlier handled publicity for five years at Knopf, Pantheon, and Schocken.

---

Lizzie Goodell has been promoted to publicity manager, Penguin Young Readers. She was previously senior publicist.

---

Alexandra Derdall has been promoted to senior digital marketing specialist, special projects at Sourcebooks.

Brave Hearted: The Women of the American West by Katie Hickman (Spiegel & Grau).

Tomorrow:
CBS Saturday: Lee Child and Andrew Child, authors of No Plan B: A Jack Reacher Novel (Delacorte, $28.99, 9781984818546).

Picture Perfect Federation and Zurich Avenue have acquired Jeneva Rose's 2020 debut novel, The Perfect Marriage, which will be adapted into a film by Oscar-nominated screenwriter William Broyles (Apollo 13, Cast Away), Deadline reported. Sigal Avin (Losing Alice) is the director.

The film will be produced by Patrick Wachsberger and Ashley Stern for Picture Perfect Federation. Zurich Avenue's Karl Spoerri and Viviana Vezzani are exec producing alongside Broyles and Lenore Entertainment Group's Adam Berkowitz, Avin's manager. Olivia Wachsberger is co-executive producer. 

"The Perfect Marriage took the literary world by storm, immediately solidifying Jeneva as one of the top voices in her genre," Wachsberger said. "I have always had an affinity for modern psychological thrillers, like Fatal Attraction and Unfaithful, for which Bill also brilliantly wrote the script. With Jeneva's excellent story and Sigal as our director, we're confident this will be a strong addition to the space."

Finalists have been named in 18 categories for the An Post Irish Book Awards, which "celebrate and promote Irish writing to the widest range of readers possible" and "recognize the very best of Irish writing talent." Because Covid-19 restrictions have been removed, a live in-person ceremony to celebrate the winners will take place November 23 at the Convention Centre in Dublin. 

On December 10, a TV program will explore the six books and authors competing to be named An Post Irish Book Awards Book of the Year 2022, culminating in the reveal of this year's overall winner.

Shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year are Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, The Colony by Audrey Magee, Seven Steeples by Sara Baume, The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell, The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan and The Raptures by Jan Carson. 

The An Post Bookshop of the Year finalists are Bridge Books, Dromore, Down; Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop, Galway; Tertulia, Westport, Mayo; Bridge Street Books, Wicklow; Philip’s Bookshop, Mallow, Cork; and Books at One Letterfrack, Connemara, Galway. Check out the complete Irish Book Awards shortlists here.

photo: Shane O'Neal

Melody Godfred is the Self Love Philosopher. As a poet, author and speaker, she is devoted to empowering people to love themselves and transform their lives. Her poetry has been featured by Oprah magazine and Today with Hoda and Jenna, among others. Her debut poetry collection, Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers, was called one of the best poetry books of 2021 by Woman's Day. The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective (Andrews McMeel, September 27, 2022) is its sequel.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

The world has changed--but thankfully so have we. The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective embodies the best of who we are now.

On your nightstand now:

Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. For anyone who wants to free themselves from their habits and transform into someone more intentional, this book is an absolute must.

Self Love Poetry: For Thinkers & Feelers by Melody Godfred. Writing this book was very much a form of self-therapy, and I now use the book as an oracle. I flip to any page each night and whatever poem I land on is my reminder to practice that specific form of self love the next day.

The Every by Dave Eggers. A deliciously written and somewhat terrifying work of fiction that feels a little too close to reality, given the way tech companies infiltrate and control our lives.

Conscious Language: The Logos of Now by Robert Tennyson Stevens. A friend recommended this book recently and I've only just gotten started. The thesis of the book is that the language we use (down to the precise words we choose) plays an important role in crafting our realities.

Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown. Language has always been so important to me--it is such a gift to have leaders like Brené Brown lovingly and thoughtfully break it down.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein. He addressed the nuances of life with such depth and lightness at the same time. Where the Sidewalk Ends has stayed with me and served as inspiration for the poetry and illustrations in my book The Shift.

Your top five authors:

Every season of my life has been inspired by different kinds of authors, but perhaps the most consistent inspiration has been authors who write memoirs. My earliest memory of reading a memoir was I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Joan Didion similarly captured me with The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. These memoirs awakened me to the power of one woman's story and words. While not memoirs, I also continually return to the works of Bret Easton Ellis like Less Than Zero and The Rules of Attraction, perhaps because they are loosely based on Ellis's own experiences going to private schools and growing up in my hometown of Los Angeles.

The writers who have most impacted my work as a poet include Toni Morrison and Mary Oliver. Toni Morrison taught me the ability to use words to transport readers to rich, evocative worlds like she did in Jazz and Song of Solomon. Mary Oliver's poetry (Devotions) taught me that even in the simplest of landscapes, you can find life, hope, inspiration and faith.

Book you've faked reading:

This is a true story: many years ago, a nail salon hired me to conceptualize and execute a book club to add some value for their customers. I chose Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, but when the day came to facilitate the book club meeting, I had yet to read the book. I quickly skimmed and read some CliffsNotes and led the book club with gusto. I later returned to the book and finished it. I remain haunted by its beauty and poignancy.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I tend to be an evangelist for the latest book I've read. Currently it's a tie between The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. Both revealed to me the unparalleled power of my own mind.

Book you've bought for the cover:

For a long time, rainbows were my calling card. As a result, I couldn't resist picking up a copy of The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer, despite the fact that the majority of the books I buy these days are on my e-reader. Thankfully, the book's bold cover was the perfect complement to the author's powerful writing. 

Book that changed your life:

Be Here Now by Ram Dass is the first book that made me gasp on nearly every page while experiencing a full body aha moment. Ram Dass had a very special ability to express everything without needing a single word more than necessary. He shifted my consciousness in a way that impacts my poetry daily.

Favorite line from a book:

"Let me fall if I must fall. The one I will become will catch me." --the Baal Shem Tov, the epigraph before the opening line of Hourglass by Dani Shapiro. The book itself is one of my favorite memoirs, but this opening line is the one that has become ingrained. In one line, my fear of failing was obliterated.

Five books you'll never part with:

Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky taught me that to create art is a spiritual endeavor and should be honored as such. He explained, "The spiritual life, to which art belongs and of which she is one of the mightiest elements, is a complicated but definite and easily definable movement forwards and upwards."

Reading Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke felt like the universe coaxing me to write--without self-judgment. "There is only one single way. Go into yourself."

I consulted A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver before writing The Shift: Poetry for a New Perspective. While I didn't follow every rule she set forth, I did feel a deep sense of alignment with her approach and mine, which steadied me as I embarked upon writing The Shift, which contains some of my most personal reflections to date as a poet.

Someone gifted me The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy at the very beginning of the pandemic. It immediately lifted me out of the most fearful time of my life.

I read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield shortly after signing my publishing deal. It's the book that most validated my decision to trust my intuition and go all in as a full-time author.

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

Oh what I would give to read Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal by Amy Krouse Rosenthal for the first time again. Not only is it the most innovative memoir I've ever read (you can text the book!), when I first started reading it I didn't know the author's personal story. Learning her story made this memoir that much more impactful for me. If you haven't read it, please do.

Cursed Bunny, the English-language debut by South Korean writer and translator Bora Chung, is a thought-provoking and blood-soaked collection of 10 short stories, ranging in genre from horror to science fiction. In "The Head," a woman is disgusted to find a creature made of her own defecation forming in her toilet, who seems determined not to leave her alone. In the titular "Cursed Bunny," a cursed bunny lamp wreaks havoc on a corrupt CEO and, much more tragically, on his innocent son. In "Ruler of the Winds and Sands," a goodhearted princess faces a supposed villain only to learn that true evil actually resides closer to home. Finally, in what is perhaps the collection's most haunting story, "Snare," a man consumed by greed encourages his own children to feed on each other to produce gold-infused blood that he can sell to the highest bidder.

From the start, Cursed Bunny refuses to blink in the face of even the most gruesome or disturbing images. Rather than producing such images just for shock value, however, each story mobilizes its grotesquerie to reveal the viscerally disturbing underbelly of patriarchal capitalist systems that produce a shiny exterior. "Snare," perhaps the most literalized metaphor of this kind, is written in clear-eyed and unflinching prose that evokes fables and Grimm fairy tales alike, using the form to produce a moral message about those who see the accumulation of wealth as paramount. The main character's prolonged process of bleeding out first a fox and then his own children, however, is tense and horrifying enough for the reader to get lost inside the story's world, instead of hovering above to see its abstract messaging.

Even in stories such as "Snare" or "Cursed Bunny," the other most explicit capitalist cautionary tale, there is a multifaceted dimension to these surreal and unsettling plots that manages to evade easy reading or overly simplistic messages. The frame narrator's involvement in the "Cursed Bunny" tale, for example, suggests a generational reproduction and collective implication in its primary evil that gestures beyond a straightforward reading. And in stories like "The Head," "The Embodiment" and "Goodbye, My Love," the overlapping ideologies of sexism, capitalism, optimization and classism--among others--become a complex puzzle box. Instead of being merely intellectual metaphors, Bora Chung's stories succeed at being deeply visceral experiences that do what the best fairy tales do: convey the unspeakable in a way that is nevertheless collectively understood. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: Cursed Bunny is a collection of unsettling but transformative stories that blend fairy tale, horror and speculative fiction, perfect for fans of Bong Joon-ho's films or Helen Oyeyemi's fiction.

From the moment I picked up your book until I put it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend to read it.

--Groucho Marx's blurb on the rear panel of Dawn Ginsbergh's Revenge by S.J. Perelman (Horace Liveright, 1929) 

I've been thinking about blurbs, which are hard to avoid if you're a reader. There they are, right in front of you, every day. Blurbs tend to travel in groups, often vertically (a stack of book blurbs?), and to nest on packed bookshelves. For an individual title, the stack's numbers can vary from a single blurb on the front cover to three or four on the back. Ambitious blurbists will sometimes even include a few pages of them inside the book. Fellow writers' blurbs, reviewers' blurbs, publicists' blurbs. Do they all get read? I wonder. 

Not long ago, Barbara Lane wrote in Datebook: "Blurb is such a wonderful word. It conjures up exactly what it is: a belch of praise for a book, generally found on the dust jacket, to lure the reader to purchase it. I must admit to reading blurbs when deciding whether to buy a book, but I am swayed only by plaudits from publications I trust or authors I greatly admire."

Speaking for the opposition, Joe Queenan noted in One for the Books that "writers hate writing blurbs for strangers, because it forces them to read books they do not want to read, at a point when time itself is running out on them.... Purists can decode blurbs to see the procrustean contortions a writer had to put themselves through in order to be able to praise a friend without actually praising his book."

I confess I enjoy tracing the six degrees of separation (often fewer than six) between blurberistas, as Queenan describes them, and the writers they plug. 

In the Guardian last August, professional copywriter Louise Willder, author of Blurb Your Enthusiasm, shared some book trade secrets, including: "The chances are that you have read more blurbs on books than actual books. Perhaps you have even glanced at one I wrote: I've been a copywriter in publishing for 25 years, crafting those miniature stories that aim to distill a book's magic and connect with readers. Part compression, part come-on, blurbs can also, as I found when I wrote a book about them, open up a world of literary history and wordy joy." 

Among the many things she discovered is there "have always been blurb haters. J.D. Salinger refused to have any words on his book jackets other than the title and his name. Jeanette Winterson burned her own books on social media in 2021 because she hated the 'cosy little domestic' blurbs on their revamped covers. Joe Orton was sent to prison for defacing library books with, among other things, outrageous fake blurbs. A copywriter colleague of mine once had a blurb torn up in front of him by an irate editor, while another made him write 21 different versions for a popular novel." 

In his New York Times "On Language" column, William Safire observed in 1981 that a blurb "is an effusion, printed in an advertisement or on a book's cover, extolling the contents by a critic, a friend of the author, or if worse (worst?) comes to worst, the publisher.... I have often dreamt of supplying a blurb that goes: 'The book can be put down but the author cannot.' '' 

He added that the coinage of the term blurb can be traced to Gelett Burgess, "a writer for Smart Set magazine, [who] came up with an idea in 1907 for a way to tout a book: He drew a picture of a simpering girl on his book's jacket and said that his book was beloved by Miss Belinda Blurb. Our girl Belinda has never been busier: Unforgettable. Gripping. Luminous. The best linguistic gift since the gift of speech."

The inaugural blurb (though it wasn't called that) in the U.S. apparently had a dodgy genesis. When the first edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass was published in 1855,  Ralph Waldo Emerson sent the poet a letter that included the phrase: "I greet you at the beginning of a great career." Whitman subsequently had those words stamped in gold leaf on the spine of the second edition. 

If you're desperate, Plot Generator manufactures blurbs. For my never-to-be-written crime novel The Boston Story (under the pseudonym Malcolm Canterbury), PG began with the question: "What would you do if you knew there were illiterate booksellers with shocking habits near the ones you love? The night of the conference changes everything for Samuel Emerson, a 55-year-old bookseller from Boston." PG also created a pair of blurbs. My favorite: " 'Never have there been more chilling villains than illiterate booksellers that plagiarize each other.' --the Daily Tale."

My favorite blurb was Michael Ondaatje's literary blessing on the back cover of John Berger's 1995 novel To the Wedding: "In some countries it must still be the writer's role to gather and comfort... to hold and celebrate a moment before darkness. With To the Wedding John Berger has written a great, sad, and tender lyric, a novel that is a vortex of community and compassion that somehow overcomes fate and death. Wherever I live in the world I know I will have this book with me."

Does he really still have that book with him, more than 25 years later? I suspect he does.