Since its opening last month in Long Beach, Calif., Casita Bookstore has been offering a diverse selection of books in Spanish and English, the Long Beach Post reported.

Store owner Antonette Franceschi-Chavez, who is also the founder of the literature nonprofit Equity Through Literacy, opened the bookstore's doors on December 4. Though the store does carry some YA books and titles for adults, about 70% of the store's inventory consists of books for children between the ages of 0 and 12. 

"Long Beach has such a diverse population, so I hope that's exemplified in the store because I want everybody to feel welcome," Franceschi-Chavez told the Post. "I want to make this a staple here in Long Beach and make it an open community space."

Prior to opening Casita Bookstore, Franceschi-Chavez worked as a parent engagement coordinator at Long Beach's Main Library, and before that she was a dual-language program teacher. A lifelong reader, Franceschi-Chavez always wanted to open a bookstore of her own, but thought it would happen later, perhaps when her children got a bit older.

Last October, however, Franceschi-Chavez had recently left her job at Main Library in order to spend more time with her newborn daughter when she found a small home available on Fourth Street in the Alamitos Beach neighborhood. The house was compelling, and Franceschi-Chavez decided to pursue opening a bookstore. Less than two months later, Casita Bookstore was open for business.

"It looks like a little house... and my big focus is increasing the amount of bilingual Spanish books that are in this community," Franceschi-Chavez explained. "So Casita just made sense."

Talking Animals Books, a new and used bookstore with titles for all ages, is opening soon in downtown Grapevine, Tex., NBC-DFW reported.

Co-owners Katy Lemieux and Valerie Walizadeh said they're aiming for a February 1 opening date for their store, which is located at 103 W. Worth Street. The shop will have comfortable reading spots and a custom-designed play area for children. In addition to books, the store will carry a variety of curated gift items, and event plans include family programming as well as theatrical and literary events.

Lemieux explained that she and her husband are very involved in theater and the arts, and she had always talked about opening a theater company of her own. As she thought more about it and wondered if now was the right time to open one, she realized she wanted to do something that was more than a theater company.

Around the same time she visited friends in Brooklyn, N.Y., where there was "a bookstore on every corner," and found herself wondering why that wasn't the case in Grapevine. During a week of brainstorming, "the whole thing came together," and Lemieux knew she wanted to open a bookstore that had one foot in the theater and arts world.

Not long afterward Lemieux met Walizadeh, who knew "the community was missing this" and felt "called" to what Lemieux was doing. Initially she wasn't going to reach out, but after some encouragement she did, and "the rest is history."

Last fall Lemieux launched a Kickstarter campaign to help her and Walizadeh open the bookstore. They raised more than $54,000 from 345 backers. Contributor rewards included things like discounts in-store and online, reserved seating for future events and swag bags.

Lemieux noted that because of the store's name, a lot of people have assumed the store will be focused on children's books. The inventory, however, will include something for everyone, and she said she chose the name because she loves animals and "I'm just an adult child."

New Renaissance Bookshop, Portland, Ore., had expected to start the year off by closing permanently, but the store has been given a lease on life after a developer pulled out of a deal that would have included tearing down New Renaissance's building. The bookstore said it was "thrilled" that it has signed a one-year lease with its landlord, Legacy Good Samaritan Hospital. New Renaissance added that "the hospital's real estate team believes that it will be quite some time before they will locate another buyer. This location may be our home for at least two years and maybe, up to five years."

The store said that it was "delighted to be here for our loving community.... Thank you so much to everyone who helped, cared, prayed, and worked with us through this challenging year. We wouldn't be here without the love and support of you all."

The store had announced this past summer that it would have to close because its block of Victorian houses would be demolished for a new development. Its old lease ran only to the end of this month.

Besides books, the metaphysical store offers a range of products and services, including candles, crystals, puzzles, games, cards, clothing, jewelry, wind chimes, and reader and practitioner consultations. The store was founded in 1988 and is still owned by the same family, including Amrita (Darlene Potter) and her daughter, Claire Areesa, manager and events coordinator.

Smith Books before the accident.

A car smashed through the storefront window of Smith Discount Books, Virginia Beach, Va., last Friday, injuring two people, 13 News Now reported. According to a city police spokesperson, a teenager and an adult inside the store were hurt. Both had non-life-threatening injuries but were taken to the hospital for treatment. The driver was arrested and after being treated for minor injuries, and was charged with DUI.

The store is temporarily closed. On Monday, owner Barry Smith told 13News, "Our employee was sitting behind the counter and a car came barreling through the front door and everything. The soda cooler got knocked over [and] all the sodas went everywhere and fell on someone, and another girl got pinned up against a bookcase. We're very sad people got hurt. That's our main concern."

Smith, who was waiting to see when he could go back inside his store, added that he was unsure when he would be able to reopen the store: "It's really bad because this is when people come buy books after the holidays and they have gift cards. Our business is closed, so our revenue stream has totally stopped. Just pray for us to get back in business. That's all we really need."

Smith Discount Books posted a Facebook update over the weekend: "Due to structural damage from the incident last night, we are currently closed. We are in the process of cleaning up and will reopen soon. Thank you for all the support!"

Meryl Halls

The number of independent bookshops in the U.K. and Ireland increased in 2022 for the sixth consecutive year, with membership now at its highest level in 10 years, the Bookseller reported. According to numbers released by the Booksellers Association as part of its annual membership survey, BA membership grew to 1,072 shops, up from 1,027 in 2021, and the lowest point of 867 in 2016. This marks a decade of growth, following 20 years of decline.

"We are clearly delighted at the continued increase in the number of indie bookshops on our high streets," said BA managing director Meryl Halls. "Taken with the expansion seen within the Waterstones estate last year, this news confirms that bookshops are crucially important--and valued--parts of our high street communities. Bookshops bring social and cultural capital to every town, village, suburb or city centre they are part of, and punch way above their weight in terms of impact and engagement, locally and nationally. We want the number of bookshops to keep rising.

"What is particularly pleasing in the indie numbers is to be able to welcome a new cohort of booksellers to the industry; those with fresh eyes, new perspectives, energy and a commitment to the cultural contribution of bookselling to our society and our economy. This new energy is so important to the future viability and diversity of our sector.

"The number of bookshops has grown gradually and slowly since 2016; during the pandemic we saw a frankly astonishing number of new entrants to bookselling. Drawn by the cultural relevance of books, reading and bookshops, inspired by the activism on display among current booksellers, seeing bookselling as a valid and rewarding career choice--these are all reasons why people open bookshops, and we want each and every one of the shops to succeed.... It's our job now to ensure that this number stabilizes, and that the industry, and governments--and consumers--know what is at stake when we fight for the survival of bookshops in the U.K. and Ireland."

--- 

Everybody wants to be an indie bookseller. According to new research by American Express Shop Small, "four in ten Britons dream of starting their own small business, with bookshops the most popular choice," Indie Retail reported. 

In the survey, cafés, fashion boutiques, restaurants and pubs completed the list of the top five aspirational start-up businesses, with people most tempted by the prospect of having more independence (28%) and pursuing a passion (22%). Those who choose to run an indie business are admired for their determination (57%), passion (56%) and creativity (37%). 

---

"Check out these Bengaluru bookstores that offer an experience beyond just literature," the Indian Express noted. "While Brigade Road, MG Road and Church Street are popular for their pub culture and New Year revelry, they are also known for housing Bengaluru's literature hub. Amidst the hustle and bustle of Bengaluru, these bookstores tucked in the heart of the city are sure to comfort you and transport you to a world of fiction, adventure, history--and some nostalgia. One can get lost for hours together in between the endless aisles and cosy corners of Bengaluru's many bookstores that cater to the city's rich reading community." --Robert Gray

Fay Weldon

English author Fay Weldon, "who chronicled the ups and downs of British life in novels, TV dramas, plays and short fiction for more than five decades," died January 4, the Guardian reported. She was 91. In more than 30 novels, including The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, Splitting and the Booker prize-shortlisted Praxis, Weldon "charted lives shaped by class and the sexual revolution.... The sharp dialogue, scathing wit and satirical energy of her fiction were forged in the world of stage and television, where her screenwriting credits included ITV's Upstairs Downstairs and an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for the BBC."

Weldon began her career writing scripts for radio and television, contributing to series such as ITV's Armchair Theatre and BBC's Wednesday Play. An ITV drama, The Fat Woman's Joke, would become her first novel, published in 1967. Four more novels appeared over the following decade, as well as a series of plays for stage and screen. Her sixth novel, Praxis, was published in 1978 and earned her an appearance on the Booker prize shortlist. Auto da Fay, her autobiography, was released in 2002.

Weldon's best-known novel, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, was published in 1983. The Observer called it her "nastiest novel so far... the most mutilating kind of satire, whose only 'point' is to bring you up against the bars of your cage." The BBC adapted the book for TV in 1986, and a film version starring Meryl Streep and Roseanne Barr was released in 1989.

In the Guardian, Claire Armistead wrote that Weldon "was to an unusual extent the creation of her own extravagant imagination. A polemicist whose opinions shaped themselves around the plot of her latest book, a pragmatist who giggled her way through every sentence, she was mischievous and evasive, yet wilfully and wittily life-affirming. 'I long for a day of judgment when the plot lines of our lives will be neatly tied, and all puzzles explained, and the meaning of events made clear,' she wrote in her rackety 2002 autobiography, Auto da Fay. 'We take to fiction, I suppose, because no such thing is going to happen, and at least on the printed page we can observe beginnings, middles and ends and can find where morality resides.' "

The Death of a She-Devil, a follow-up to her 1983 novel, was published by Head of Zeus in 2017, the Bookseller noted. Her editor, Madeleine O'Shea, said: "I started working on Fay's books as an assistant when I first joined Head of Zeus and later became her editor. Brilliantly clever and opinionated, Fay was full of energy, wisdom and mischief. She made me laugh, made me think and taught me a lot. To read her books is to hear her voice--varied, quick-witted and always entertaining."

Head of Zeus CEO Nicolas Cheetham added: "Fay was like family. One of the first authors to join Anthony and I at Quercus, Corvus and then Head of Zeus, her books--historical fiction, ghost stories, dystopian SF--launched our lists."

The Booker Prize tweeted: "We are saddened to hear that the brilliant Fay Weldon has died. As well as being shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979, she was a judge in 1983 and delivered one of the most memorable speeches in Booker history. Our thoughts are with her family and friends."

Weldon's death was confirmed by her son Dan Weldon, who did not specify a cause but said she had experienced strokes and had some health problems, the New York Times noted, adding that while she was too weak to hold a pen, she was still writing in her head. "'She was thinking about writing poetry," he said. "She was a writer to the very end."

Author Jenny Colgan, writing in the Guardian, recalled: "Fay was noisy in an era when women were expected to be quiet. She used her voice and took up space; she said what she felt, she brought energy and fun. And she was, as her book festival audiences could doubtless confirm, that very best and most attractive type of person: someone who is utterly, fearlessly and for ever true to themselves, to hell with the consequences. We will miss her."

"It's the season," Commonplace Reader, Yardley, Pa., noted in sharing a photo on Instagram of shop's winter-themed whiteboard message: "Snow better time to read!" 

"New & Improved in 2023!" That's what the storefront window art at Curious Iguana Frederick, Md., proclaimed in a photo shared on Facebook by the bookseller, inviting customers to "swing by and kickstart your 2023 reading goals! Or visit Libro.fm/curiousiguana to sign up for audiobooks!"

Posted on Facebook yesterday by Next Chapter Booksellers, St. Paul, Minn.: "We are open! If you depleted your TBR pile recently, give us a call, order online, or strap on your snowshoes and mush your way in. We're here for you, reader."

After more than 20 years of sales experience, including being a house rep for Harcourt, Curt Kaplan has joined Chickman Associates, for which he will cover the State of Washington.

Ruth Negga (Passing, Loving) will star opposite Jake Gyllenhaal in Presumed Innocent, Apple TV+'s upcoming limited series from David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot and Warner Bros. TV, Deadline reported. 

The project is inspired by Scott Turow's 1987 novel, which was previously adapted into a 1990 movie starring Harrison Ford. As reimagined by Kelley, who is an attorney, the TV series "will be exploring obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together," Deadline wrote. 

Kelley serves as writer, executive producer and showrunner. Abrams and Rachel Rusch Rich executive produce for Bad Robot. Kelley executive produces through David E. Kelley Productions alongside Matthew Tinker. Gyllenhaal, Dustin Thomason and Sharr White also serve as executive producers. Turow and Miki Johnson are co-executive producers. Anne Sewitsky will direct and executive produce the first two episodes.

Maya Songs, a musical tribute to the poetry of the late Maya Angelou, will be presented on Martin Luther King Day, January 16, at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City, Playbill reported. Directed by Jacob Ming-Trent (The Merry Wives), the event features Aisha de Haas (Caroline, or Change) and Meecah (Hamilton). Ray Leslee (Avenue X) has set Angelou's poetry to music. Lyrics are used with permission of Caged Bird Legacy.

The winners of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Awards, sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and celebrating "exceptional books written by Northwest authors," are:

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House)
Ma and Me by Putsata Reang (MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford (Atria Books)
The Necessity of Wildfire by Caitlin Scarano (Blair)
Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk by Sasha LaPointe (Counterpoint)
The Wok: Recipes and Techniques by Kenji López-Alt (Norton)

photo: Christopher Brown

Ana Reyes is the author of The House in the Pines (Dutton, January 3, 2023), a thriller that puts memory and manipulation in the spotlight with haunting results. Before getting her MFA in fiction at Louisiana State University, Reyes worked as a script reader in Hollywood. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and teaches creative writing to older adults at Santa Monica College.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

To solve the mystery of her best friend's death, a young woman must return to a place she can't remember--the house in the pines.

On your nightstand now:

I'm reading The Furrows by Namwali Serpell. It hooked me with its first, heartbreaking, exquitely written scene and hasn't let up since. I'm almost done with it now, deep into its mystery, and can't wait to find out how it ends. I like to read just one book at a time, but I'm looking forward to starting The Cloisters by Katy Hays next.

Favorite book when you were a child:

The Magic School Bus at the Waterworks by Joanna Cole. I love the moment when the kids shrink down to the size of water drops and fall from the clouds like rain and then flow through a reservoir eventually to pour out through a faucet at their school. To this day, I'd follow Ms. Frizzle anywhere.

Your top five authors:

Angela Carter, Elif Shafak, Italo Calvino, Haruki Murakami, Christopher Pike.

Book you've faked reading:

I was assigned Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard in grad school and made it only through the first 20 pages or so. Having never studied philosophy, I found myself stymied by many of the concepts and all of the Descartes references. I'd like to return to it someday when I have more time and space, as I remember sensing Kierkegaard was getting at something important.

Book you're an evangelist for:

The Keep by Jennifer Egan. I can't count how many people I've recommended it to, and everyone who reads it seems to love it as much as I do. Its sense of mystery is so thick you could cut it with a knife.

Book you've bought for the cover:

What We Fed to the Manticore by Talia Lakshmi Kolluri has one of the most beautiful covers of 2022. It features a vivid blue tiger against eye-popping swirls of color and a scattering of roses. I didn't buy this book only for the cover--I was also intrigued by the idea of stories narrated by animals--but the cover was certainly the first thing that jumped out at me.

Book you hid from your parents:

My entire Christopher Pike collection. I was 10 or 11 when I started reading him--the first one I read was Bury Me Deep--and I knew at once from all the sex and occasional drug use that my mom would not approve.

Book that changed your life:

I worked at a talent agency for much of my 20s, reading screenplays and writing reports on them for my bosses. I learned a lot about writing and storytelling from that job, but one downside was that I rarely read for fun.

Then one day a man approached me in the elevator at work and offered me The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. The man (who I'd later learn was a writer) worked in the mailroom and had noticed a collection of fairy tales on my desk while delivering my mail. Something about the cover (and the man) intrigued me enough to read it ahead of the leaning tower of scripts in my inbox, and what I read launched the next phase of my life. Today I'm married to the man in the elevator and count The Bloody Chamber as one of my greatest inspirations.

Favorite line from a book:

This is a tough one! I have many, but one that stands out is from A Short History of Myth by Karen Armstrong, a book I've read, reread and even assigned to a group of college freshman I once taught in a class on comparative mythology.

Armstrong discusses how the stories we tell are part of what makes us human. She points out how dogs, for example, don't seem to agonize over the "canine condition." "But human beings," she writes, "fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value."

This line helps me understand the importance of stories in my own life. For as long as I remember, they've helped me make sense of the world.

Five books you'll never part with:

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter; Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel; The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson; Piranesi by Susanna Clarke; The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey.

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

Kafka on the Shore was the first book I read by Haruki Murakami, and I knew almost nothing about it going in. I wish I could go back and immerse myself in its mind-bending strangeness for the first time.

With Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships; Pandora's Jar) brings her authoritative expertise in Greek myths to bear on Medusa, whose story is fresh and surprising in this telling. Haynes is both a scholar of the classics and a stand-up comic, and that combination is brilliantly evident in this sardonic, darkly funny adaptation.

Stone Blind combines several threads familiar to fans of Greek mythology, although readers need no previous knowledge to follow along. Zeus, king of the gods on Olympus, philanders and bickers with his wife, Hera; this narrative will witness Athene's birth and a battle between gods and giants, among other Olympian events. Medusa is delivered as an infant mortal to the two elder Gorgons who will be her sisters--in this version, they are monsters only in their unusual appearance, and they care for their fragile mortal sister with great tenderness. As a young woman, Medusa is raped by Poseidon in Athene's temple. The goddess is so offended by this sacrilege that she punishes the victim, replacing Medusa's hair with snakes and bestowing her most famous attribute: the ability to turn any living creature to stone by eye contact. In a third thread, the demigod Perseus comes of age as a bumbling incompetent: self-serving, lazy, whining, unnecessarily violent. And Andromeda, legendary beauty and princess of Ethiopia, is cursed to death by her mother Cassiope's hubris.

These threads come together in complex ways when gods are offended and angered and play out their dramas with mortal pawns. Traditional storytelling has cast Perseus as a hero and Medusa as a monster, but Haynes does not concur: "The hero isn't the one who's kind or brave or loyal. Sometimes--not always, but sometimes--he is monstrous. And the monster? Who is she?"

"Who decides what is a monster?" Medusa's sister asks. To which Medusa responds: "I don't know.... Men, I suppose."

Haynes's genius lies not only in her subtle recasting of this story--with an emphasis on who assigns roles and draws conclusions--but in her dryly scathing humor. Her gods are (even more than usual) immature, selfish and often silly. Athene is "delighted with herself" for the simplest of observations about humanity; she burst forth from Zeus's head fully formed, but not necessarily with the emotional maturity or world knowledge her physical perfection would imply. Poseidon's bluster and Zeus's carelessness of his children are exaggerated. Perseus is a dolt, impervious to learning the lessons of his (mis)adventures. Haynes writes in many voices: those of olive trees, Medusa's snakes-for-hair, a crow, the gods and mortals that make up this twisting tale. A surprising ending caps off her truly delightful and novel version of a very old story. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: Natalie Haynes splendidly showcases classical scholarship, witty humor and an appreciation for nuance in this reframing of the story of Medusa.

We love ARCs. Even as the transition continues to digital galleys and the ARC as book object gradually relinquishes its magical domain, we remain addicted to glimpses of the future, especially when we experience a shock of recognition with a book--what Flaubert called "the strength of the punches it has given you and the time it takes you to recover from them." 

I feel the same buzz with "movie ARCs," otherwise known as screeners, when I get to see them. This happened a couple of times last year: in the spring with A.B. Zax's doc Hello, Bookstore, a wonderful portrait of bookseller Matt Tannenbaum and the Bookstore in Lenox, Mass.; and then again in early December when I was given the opportunity to have an early look at Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb.

Robert Caro & Robert Gottlieb (photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

Directed by Gottlieb's daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb (Today's Man, Romeo Romeo), Turn Every Page explores the extraordinary relationship between two literary legends as they race to complete their life's work. Caro and Gottlieb have worked and fought together for 50 years, forging one of publishing's most iconic and productive partnerships. At 87, Caro is now working to complete the final volume of his masterwork, The Years of Lyndon Johnson, while Gottlieb, 91, is waiting to edit it. The proverbial clock is ticking.

Turn Every Page opened December 30 in New York and Los Angeles. I hope it will find wider theater distribution soon, as well as VOD availability. If reading a great ARC prompts a bookseller to want to shout "You've got to read this!" months before publication, then seeing the Turn Every Page screener made me want to yell 'You've got to see this!' " with the same handselling fervor. 

Stay tuned, as they say. 

"My father... has been the editor in chief of Simon and Schuster, Knopf and the New Yorker," Lizzie Gottlieb observed in her director's statement. "He has been the long-time editor of writers such as Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller, Doris Lessing, Bill Clinton, John Le Carré, and Salman Rushdie. One of his most complicated, celebrated and mysterious relationships is with the writer Robert Caro. I wanted to make this film to try to understand a wildly productive, oddly contentious, hugely important collaboration, and through that, to open a window into a secretive creative process, a vanishing world of book publishing, and the way truths about power in America are revealed."

The "two Bobs" in their youth. (photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

With humor and insight, this portrait of two great minds in a kind of mutually sustaining orbit around each other is the rarest of gifts for booklovers. We see their work habits and personality quirks, as well as professional challenges and triumphs, from the meticulous crafting of Caro's The Power Broker through the first four LBJ volumes, and now toward the culmination of a quest that has had an impact on generations of politicians, activists, writers and readers. 

Lizzie Gottlieb & Caro (photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

Lizzie Gottlieb noted that her personal relationship with each of the men "is embedded into the film. My father and I interact informally. In contrast, the dynamic with Caro starts on a formal note, then grows more personal as trust is built. Caro is a man with limited time and strict rules around self-representation. There is a push-pull to Caro--he is resistant to cameras entering the private sanctum of his work space, but gradually allows me into his process. My father is also resistant--he is dismissive of the importance of his story, uninterested in talking about legacy, and doesn't see the value in hashing out erstwhile arguments. But he, too, slowly relents, and then speaks poignantly--about aging and legacy and life. His words speak to larger issues of what we all hope to leave behind."

Caro at work. (photo courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)

Gottlieb has been filming "the two Bobs" for five years, and said she "recently apologized to Robert Caro for taking so long to finish the film. He closed his eyes for a long time, then looked at me with great intensity and said, 'Lizzie. It's not about how long it takes to make. It's about whether it will endure.' "

Turn Every Page is an incisive portrayal of two brilliant, intense, driven and focused intellects. One of the scenes that has stayed with me since watching it (twice) is a moment of calm. It occurs at the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Tex., where Caro and his wife, author/researcher Ina Caro, ascend the grand staircase as if they are in a cathedral. They settle in a research room, at side-by-side desks, to resume the Borgesian task of poring over boxes of Johnson's papers, the end of which they may never see. It is a sacred moment of bookish grace. 

As the publishing world and Caro's devoted readers await the final volume, "the stakes for him to finish become higher and higher," Lizzie Gottlieb said. "The possibility that he might not finish, and that Gottlieb might not get to edit it, looms over every scene. I wanted to capture the delicate power balance between them, the steadfast dedication to craft, collaboration, and the incredible industriousness with which they approach the process of writing and editing. I wanted to really understand what it takes to create something that changes how people understand power, and that will endure."