Weber's Book House, a general-interest bookstore and coffee shop offering titles for all ages, opened for business on October 21 in Paragould, Ark. 

Owner Austin Weber carries about 90% new books with a small selection of used titles. The shop has a particularly large children's section as well as a wide variety of adult books pertaining to history and current events. There are a handful of bookish sidelines including bookmarks, book stickers and sets of philosophy flashcards. And while he has yet to host any events, Weber does plan to start once he gets past the "mayhem of opening."

"We're trying to have something for everyone," Weber said.

Weber's Book House has about 1,200 square feet of selling space and shares a 3,500-square-foot storefront with Unraveled Yarn Boutique, a knitting and yarn store owned by Weber's wife, Petra Weber. The two stores, Weber explained, are clearly delineated but not separated, and customers can freely walk from one to the other.

Asked about his prior experience in bookselling, Weber said he's been in construction for pretty much his entire career, but had been wanting to transition to a line of work that "wasn't quite so strenuous." And in January, after he and his wife had a miscarriage, they realized they were both "ready for a change in our lives."

Weber described himself as a lover of books and noted that prior to the pandemic, readers in Paragould would typically go to a Barnes & Noble store at a mall in nearby Jonesboro, Ark. In spring 2020, however, an EF4 tornado struck that mall and destroyed the bookstore. He and his wife also noticed that as the pandemic has waned, "everyone's ready for something to physically go and do."

"We saw a need for a bookstore in the community," he said. "We were in a position to open one and said, let's go for it."

So far, Weber continued, the community has responded very well to the bookstore. News of the opening got a "huge response" on social media and while he did not keep an exact headcount on opening day there were about 120 transactions last Friday. For a town of 30,000 people, he remarked, "that's not too bad."

Amanda Friss

Bookseller Amanda Friss has launched a Kickstarter campaign to help her open Parentheses Books, a general-interest independent bookstore coming to Harrisonburg, Va., next year. Friss is looking to raise $50,000 and with 27 days to go has so far brought in more than $5,500.

The bookstore will span 880 square feet in the Liberty Street Mercantile, a new indoor market that will open next year. In addition to the bookstore, the Mercantile will have a flower shop, a wine bar, a common seating area, an events space and other assorted retail. The Mercantile building is still being renovated, and Friss described the future space as "cozy and welcoming," featuring "warm wood floors and rugs and plants."

The bookstore will carry fiction and nonfiction for children and adults as well as cookbooks, poetry and sidelines. Friss will host author readings and signings, book clubs and a variety of children's events. She noted that despite the bookstore's relatively small footprint, she'll be able to host sizable events and "spread out" thanks to the Mercantile's large event space on the second floor and common area on the main floor.

Parenthesis Books' future home

Friss said she's excited about the chance to work with and support local authors, and she pointed out that there are more authors in the Shenandoah Valley than people might expect, partly because of James Madison University. She added that her husband, Evan Friss, is one such author, and has a title forthcoming from Viking that is a history of bookstores in the U.S.

Prior to moving to Harrisonburg about a decade ago, Friss lived in New York City and was a bookseller at Three Lives and Company. Working there, Friss wrote, "taught me that bookstores are more than just stores that sell books. They are vital to our communities because they help foster relationships. They serve as safe spaces in which people can connect."

Elaborating on the store's name, Friss explained that they're the "literary equivalent of a hug," and "often it's the best stuff that's in parentheses."

B&N Riverhead in progress.

Barnes & Noble has scheduled a November 2 grand opening for the company's bookstore in the Riverhead Shopping Center at 1470 Old Country Road, Riverhead, N.Y. B&N noted that "local legend and New York Times bestselling author, Nelson DeMille, will be cutting the ribbon on opening day and signing copies of his new release, The Maze."

This marks the first new B&N to open on Long Island in 14 years, and the first of two locations the bookseller has plans to bring to the island in the near future. The new store joins other Long Island-area B&Ns at Smith Haven, East Northport, Bay Shore, Massapequa, Carle Place, Lake Success and Manhasset.  

"When Borders closed their doors in Riverhead in 2011, they left a void that was felt by many local readers," said store manager Sarah deQuillfeldt. "Customers have been vocal about their desire for a Barnes & Noble to open in Riverhead and I am just so happy to be able to give our neighbors what they have been asking for."

Among the most telling and interesting commentaries on business trends at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week came from executives at companies that aren't mainly book publishers, including Michael Tamblyn, president and CEO of Rakuten Kobo, who spoke at the Global 50 CEO Talk panel, which was moderated by Rüdiger Wischenbart and featured questions from the international book press.

Tamblyn described Kobo as not just an e-book and audiobook retailer, but a company that designs and manufactures e-readers; "empowers" other retailers; is the force behind Tolino in Germany; has a publishing arm, Kobo Originals; and operates a self-publishing division, Kobo Originals. A third of its revenue comes from Asia, a third from the Americas and a third from Europe. In many of its markets, it partners with booksellers. Without naming them directly, he said his main competitors are Amazon, Apple and Google ("the largest e-commerce company in the world, the most profitable hardware maker in the world and the most powerful search engine in the world"), beyond which "it's clear sailing all the way."

Michael Tamblyn

However, he noted that in contrast to those three, Kobo is "the company you can form an alliance with, that isn't spending all its time trying to figure out how to kill you." Competition for Kobo is focused most on acquiring content; battling in the self-publishing market against companies that want to have exclusive content; and publisher consolidation, which results in "fewer decision makers" who might be less likely to experiment and try something new. Kobo also competes for readers' leisure time, which it aims to do by "trying to take friction out" of the e-book reading experience, making it "easy and natural and not technology focused but reader focused."

Tamblyn noted that in the e-book world, nonfiction and children's titles traditionally have been "the impossible nut to crack," as evidenced by the gap in sales between digital and print versions in those categories. Because children's books are so often gifts, the printed book is the obvious choice for buyers. Studies have shown, he said, that nonfiction readers don't just read printed nonfiction books, "they use them, they engage with them," making notes, highlighting sections, use Post-It notes and more. That's required e-book companies to "build a whole other layer of utility just to capture those sets of dynamics," thereby hoping to gain some of that "25%-30% of the market that's outside of what we sell today."

Tamblyn also emphasized the importance of self-published books, saying that "one in four books that we sell in English is a self-published title," which he compared with having "another Penguin Random House sitting out in the market that no one sees." He noted that traditional publishers' sales statistics don't account for these books and lead to a mistaken sense that the e-book market is sluggish. Publishers don't realize that they're actually losing market share, he continued. "It's not that e-book sales are flat to down; it's that their e-book sales are flat to down." --John Mutter

Mike Davis

Mike Davis, whose 1990 book City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles "was almost irrationally ambitious" and "quickly materialized on bestseller lists when it debuted," died October 25, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was 76. The book also turned its author into a public intellectual, even though his "visions of the city's 'spatial apartheid,' as described in City of Quartz, had initially been chided as apocalyptic by some critics. But the 1992 uprisings, which left swaths of L.A. in cinders, showed that his analysis had been prescient."

Prior to the book's publication, Davis had been "a Marxist urban scholar whose primary contribution to the public discourse at the time consisted of a little-read book about the history of labor in the U.S., along with dispatches on related subjects in the LA Weekly and the New Left Review," the Times wrote.

"When you judge the work of somebody, it's what the work itself did, the ways it makes us think differently," said historian William Deverell. "Equally important: How many ships did it launch? And City of Quartz launched so many ships--whether it's dissertations or conferences or articles."

Though best known for City of Quartz, Davis wrote more than a dozen books, including Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties (2020), which he co-authored with historian and journalist Jon Wiener; Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (1998) and The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.

In the Nation, Wiener wrote that Davis "hated being called 'a prophet of doom.' Yes, L.A. did explode two years after City of Quartz; the fires and floods did get more intense after Ecology of Fear, and of course a global pandemic did follow The Monster at Our Door. But when he wrote about climate change or viral pandemics, he was not offering a 'prophecy'; he was reporting on the latest research. After Covid hit, we did several Nation podcast segments about it; he told me at one point 'I’ve been staying up late reading virology textbooks.' "

Wiener added: "Davis was committed to showing his readers a kind of bleakness that was neither voyeuristic nor moralizing but overpowering in its scope and scale. As a truck driver turned geographer, he knew that there was a lot of road to cover for people to see just how human activity has depleted our landscapes. He tried to show his readers that grim reality in every sentence."

Congratulations to Willard and Holly Williams, co-owners of the Toadstool Bookshop in Peterborough, N.H., which recently celebrated 50 years in business. The Monadnock Ledger-Transcript reported that in 1972, Willard Williams and his siblings began operating the Toadstool Bookshop on Main Street with no previous management experience. In 1983, Williams opened a second location in Keene, followed by the Nashua location in 1989. The Peterborough store relocated to Depot Square in 1992.

"When we started, I was 20 and we knew absolutely nothing about it," Williams said. "The store wouldn't be where it is today without support from the community."

Holly Williams agreed: "It's a wonderful place to be. The motivation is finding books for people and being part of the community."

Hachette hosted the 11th annual Book Club Brunch last weekend, with more than 350 guests. Fiction panelists were Nathan Harris, Salma El-Wardany and Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, and the Narrative Nonfiction panel featured Delia Ephron, Andrew McCarthy and Rafael Agustin. Author and book critic Bill Goldstein moderated both. The event also included Andrew Sean Greer in conversation with David Gilbert. Karen Torres, v-p, director field sales/account marketing for the Hachette Book Group, was the host, and Connecticut's R.J. Julia Booksellers was the official bookseller. Pictured: (clockwise from top left): Bill Goldstein, Rafael Agustin, Delia Ephron, Andrew McCarthy.

Bree Martinez has joined Holiday House, Peachtree, and Pixel+Ink as publicist, working for all three companies. She previously was content experience manager and manager of author outreach/client relations at BookClub. Before that, she was an associate publicist in the Penguin Young Readers group.

Manatee Lagoon by Jenna Le (Acre Books).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Matthew Perry, author of Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir (Flatiron, $29.99, 9781250866448).

Tamron Hall: Shanita Hubbard, author of Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women (Legacy Lit, $27, 9780306874673).

HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher: Yuval Noah Harari, author of Unstoppable Us: Volume One: How Humans Took Over the World (Bright Matter Books, $24.99, 9780593643464).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend 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 website.

Saturday, October 29
3:05 p.m. Eric Jay Dolin, author of Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution (Liveright, $32.50, 9781631498251). (Re-airs Sunday at 3:05 a.m.)

Sunday, October 30
8 a.m. Nikki Haley, author of If You Want Something Done: Leadership Lessons from Bold Women (St. Martin's Press, $26.99, 9781250284976). (Re-airs Sunday at 8 p.m.)

10 a.m. Chris Miller, author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology (Scribner, $30, 9781982172008). (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

2 p.m. to 6:45 p.m. Coverage of the 2022 Brooklyn Book Festival. Highlights include:

• 2 p.m. Kim Kelly, author of Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor (Atria/One Signal, $28, 9781982171056), and Angela Garbes, author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change (Harper Wave, $25.99, ‎ 9780062937360).
• 2:52 p.m. Mariame Kaba, author of We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Haymarket, $16.95, 9781642595253), Derecka Purnell, author of Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom (Astra House, $28, 9781662601668), and Marlon Peterson, author of Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist's Freedom Song (Bold Type Books, $18.99, 9781645036524).
• 4:09 p.m. M. Chris Fabricant, author of Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System (‎Akashic, $29.99, 9781636140308).
• 4:58 p.m. Qian Wang, author of Beautiful Country: A Memoir (Anchor, $17, 9780593313008), Kendra James, author of Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School (Grand Central, $29, 9781538753484), and Danica Roem, author of Burn the Page: A True Story of Torching Doubts, Blazing Trails, and Igniting Change (‎Viking, $27, 9780593296554).
• 5:51 p.m. Chloé Cooper Jones, author of Easy Beauty: A Memoir (Avid Reader Press, $28, 9781982151997), Meghan O'Rourke, author of The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness (Riverhead, $28, 9781594633799), and Linda Villarosa, author of Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation (Doubleday, $30, 9780385544887).

6:45 p.m. Anya Kamenetz, author of The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children's Lives, and Where We Go Now (PublicAffairs, $29, 9781541700987), at Book Passage Bookstore in San Francisco. (Re-airs Monday at 6:45 a.m.)

7:30 p.m. Washington Post books editor John Williams discusses the newspaper's Book World section. (Re-airs Monday at 7:30 a.m.)

Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles has won the £2022 (about $2,340) 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction book of the year. According to the Guardian, the book is told in Orkney dialect and comes with a parallel translation into English. "It follows Astrid who is returning home from art school on Mars, and Darling, who is fleeing a life that never fits. The pair meet on Deep Wheel Orcadia, a distant space station struggling for survival as the pace of change threatens to leave the community behind."

Chair of the judges Dr. Andrew M. Butler called Deep Wheel Orcadia "the sort of book that makes you rethink what science fiction can do and makes the reading experience feel strange in a new and thrilling way. It's as if language itself becomes the book's hero and the genre is all the richer for it."

The winner was announced at the Science Museum in London as part of celebrations for its exhibition Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of Imagination.

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Titles in three categories have been chosen as Blackwell's Books of the Year. They will now contend for the overall Book of the Year crown, which will be decided by a bookseller jury, the Bookseller reported. The winner will be announced November 23. The category winners are:

Fiction: Babel by R.F. Kuang
Nonfiction: What We Owe the Future by William MacAskill 
Children's: The Ministry of Unladylike Activity by Robin Stevens 

"It's been a joy to witness booksellers around the country talking about the books that they have most enjoyed reading and recommending to customers, and then nominating those books for this accolade," said Blackwell's bookseller Becky Chatwell.

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, November 1:

The World We Make: A Novel by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit, $30, 9780316509893) concludes the speculative fiction Great Cities duology.

Going Rogue by Janet Evanovich (Atria, $28.99, 9781668003053) is the 29th mystery featuring Stephanie Plum.

Lost in the Long March: A Novel by Michael X. Wang (The Overlook Press, $28, 9781419759758) follows two Chinese Communists in the 1930s.

The Best American Short Stories 2022, edited by Andrew Sean Greer and Heidi Pitlor (Mariner, $27.99, 9780358724407) includes 20 short story selections.

Trespasses: A Novel by Louise Kennedy (Riverhead, $27, 9780593540893) follows a young woman in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

The Philosophy of Modern Song by Bob Dylan (Simon & Schuster, $45, 9781451648706) contains 60 essays on songs by other artists.

Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono (Knopf, $34, 9780525521044) is a memoir by U2's lead singer.

Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino (Harper, $35, 9780063112582) is the film director's first work of nonfiction.

Unspeakable: Surviving My Childhood and Finding My Voice by Jessica Willis Fisher (Thomas Nelson, $28.99, 9781400332908) is the memoir of a performing artist raised in an abusive family.

Requiem for the Massacre: A Black History on the Conflict, Hope, and Fallout of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre by RJ Young (Counterpoint, $27, 9781640095021) reckons with an infamous act of racial violence.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry (Flatiron, $29.99, 9781250866448) explores the life of a star of Friends.

The Last Campaign: Sherman, Geronimo and the War for America by H.W. Brands (Doubleday, $32.50, 9780385547284) is a history of the Indian Wars during the 1870s and 1880s.

Free Spirit Cocktails: 40 Nonalcoholic Drink Recipes by Camille Wilson and Jennifer Chong (Chronicle Books, $19.95, 9781797215006) gives options for sober imbibing.

The Delmonico Way: Sublime Entertaining and Legendary Recipes from the Restaurant That Made New York by Max Tucci (Rizzoli, $45, 9780847872039) includes 75 recipes.

Paperbacks:
The Violence: A Novel by Delilah S. Dawson (Del Rey, $18, 9780593156643).

Twisted Tea Christmas by Laura Childs (Berkley, $8.99, 9780593200889).

A Natural History of the Future: What the Laws of Biology Tell Us about the Destiny of the Human Species by Rob R. Dunn (Basic Books, $18.99, 9781541603127).

The Age of AI: And Our Human Future by Henry Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher (Back Bay, $18.99, 9780316273992).

It Doesn't Have to Be Awkward: Dealing with Relationships, Consent, and Other Hard-to-Talk-About Stuff by Drew Pinsky and Paulina Pinsky (Clarion Books, $14.99, 9780358439653).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
The Night Ship: A Novel by Jess Kidd (Atria, $28, 9781982180812). "Jess Kidd connects the true history of a brutal 1629 shipwreck with the story of a lonely boy in modern day Western Australia with tenderness and vivid storytelling. Epic in scope and heart-wrenchingly detailed, this is Kidd at her best." --Yvette Olson, Magnolia's Bookstore, Seattle, Wash.

Maybe We'll Make It: A Memoir by Margo Price (University of Texas Press, $27.95, 9781477323502). "Margo Price's memoir serves up what it takes to make it in country music. All the heartbreak, sacrifice, bad choices, late nights, triumphs, and travails that have made her one of the hardest working women in country music today are here." --Keaton Patterson, Brazos Bookstore, Houston, Tex.

Paperback
Motherthing: A Novel by Ainslie Hogarth (Vintage, $17, 9780593467022). "Motherthing is dark, witty, and absurd--the perfect combination! Abby and Ralph move in with Ralph's mother, but Laura is conniving and prickly. This book will leave you gasping, and you might think twice about eating chicken à la king." --Caitlin Baker, Island Books, Mercer Island, Wash.

For Ages 3 to 8
How to Eat a Book by Mrs. & Mr. MacLeod (Union Square Kids, $17.99, 9781454945444). "How to Eat a Book brings out the whimsy in all curious children. Filled with beautiful and creative illustrations made from art dioramas, the story explains to children just how my adult soul feels when lost in a book." --Dusty Baker, Austy's, Salem, Ind.

For Ages 9 to 12: An Indies Introduce Title
Children of Stardust by Edudzi Adodo (Norton Young Readers, $18.95, 9781324030775). "A middle grade space opera infused with African culture and mythologies. Zero is on a quest to be a legendary Saba--to find lost treasures and hunt down criminals. There were twists and turns on every page; I cannot recommend this enough!" --Joseline Diaz, Kepler's Books, Menlo Park, Calif.

For Teen Readers: An Indies Introduce Title
Henry Hamlet's Heart by Rhiannon Wilde (Charlesbridge Teen, $18.99, 9781623543693). "This is the best friends-to-lovers romance my cold cynical heart needed. Henry and his first love feelings are a cuteness overload. Full of humor, sincerity, and excellent music, this is one of my new favorite coming-of-age stories." --Melissa Taylor, E. Shaver, Bookseller, Savannah, Ga.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Here's a situation where consent is impossible: we don't agree to be born. Yet here we are, alive now on Earth. The monolithic Question people may ask themselves--in the rare moments when they aren't just getting through the day to day and pause to think about what it's all about--is: Why should we consider life valuable? To answer that question, Nick Riggle (On Being Awesome) offers an introduction to aesthetics in his accessible and motivating second book, This Beauty, which proposes that the meaning of life is to appreciate and share in beauty.

An associate professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego, former professional skater and new father, Riggle has varied life experiences upon which to draw. His philosophical and pop culture references range from Plato to Drake, from Schopenhauer to Saturday Night Live. An extended example comes from Henri Matisse: surgery extended the artist's life by 13 years but limited his mobility. The enforced alteration in his lifestyle coincided with a change in his style from oil painting to paper collage. "Only what I created after the illness constitutes my real self: free, liberated," Matisse wrote. A key to living the good, aesthetic life, Riggle thus concludes, is feeling "at home in your body."

One of the author's main strategies is "using clichés as clues," probing well-worn sayings for the wisdom they may yet contain. Take "you only live once," for example. There are two opposite responses to this statement, he suggests. The one adopted by "The Preservationist" is to view life as fragile and protect it at all costs. The other is to embrace recklessness. "Carpe diem," right?

Except, he discovers, "seize" might not be the best translation for what we are to do with the day. Instead, we should "harvest" it by being fully present in each moment. That chimes, he believes, with what poet Mary Oliver encouraged in her famous line: realizing the beauty around us as we make the most of this "one wild and precious life."

Whatever we value--fashion, food, literature, music--makes us individuals, Riggle contends. And what we love, we want to share with others and respond to. That could start through imitation, but will ultimately fuel fresh creativity. How inspirational to think of life being "animated by beauty." This convivial guide for the questioning is perfect for readers of Rob Bell and Alain de Botton. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: Nick Riggle's second work of pop philosophy, an engaging primer on aesthetics, argues that recognizing and partaking in beauty gives life meaning.