A general-interest bookstore called the Collective Bookstore is opening in Verona, N.J., this summer, MyVeronaNJ reported.

Owners Josh and Lauren Jacobs, who also own the Hearth Realty Group in Verona, will carry titles for all ages along with a curated selection of vinyl records and products from local businesses. The bookstore will be located in the storefront with the Hearth Realty Group office, at 460 Bloomfield Ave., across from Verona Park, and the owners plan to host events that include book clubs and author readings.

Josh Jacobs noted that the store will have a strong emphasis on giving back. The bookstore will donate a percentage of annual profits "to our education programs [and] offer fundraising opportunities for local organizations." Teachers will receive discounts on classroom products, and there will be educational field trip programs throughout the year.

The owners are hoping to host a grand opening celebration in July.

Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Miss., has been closed since suffering extensive damage from a fire that broke out last Wednesday night, causing heavy smoke, fire and water damage throughout the two-story building, which also houses Turnrow Cafe and Turnrow Art Co. 

Main Street Greenwood Inc. quickly launched a $10,000 GoFundMe campaign, noting: "On April 26, our beloved Turnrow Books, Turnrow Art Co., + Turnrow Cafe, Delta landmarks and Greenwood icons, were devastated by fire. Please join Mainstreet Greenwood, Inc. in helping these three Greenwood businesses and Main Street members in the wake of the extensive damage. While we don't know what the immediate future holds, let's help them in the meantime!" The campaign has already exceeded its goal and has thus far raised over $12,000.

On Monday, Turnrow posted an update on Facebook: "We are your neighbors and we couldn't be prouder. Our #indiedisplaycontest was too lit 🔥 so this is what we're left with this year. The community came together and decorated the outside of the store and it's our favorite display yet. You also hit that gofundme goal real quick! THANK YOU!"

Fellow Mississippi indie Friendly City Books in Columbus expressed support on Instagram: "Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi, unfortunately suffered a huge fire just a few days before Independent Bookstore Day. They've been such good friends to us, and we're holding them in our hearts. If you can help out, there is a fundraiser at @gofundme to support the bookstore, cafe, and art gallery."

Spelled Ink, a new and used bookstore in Orange, Va., has opened a second location, in downtown Culpeper, Va., Rappahannock News reported.

Store co-owners Heather Griffin and Cindy Pagan had a soft opening on Apil 28 followed by an opening celebration on Saturday, complete with local author visits, face painting, a food drive, and various giveaways.

The new store resides in a two-room space at 138 N. Main St. In addition to books, Pagan and Griffin carry a variety of locally made gift items, while their event plans include clubs and classes, with a manga club having already proven popular at the store's original location.

The owners told Rappahannock News that a Culpeper realtor approached Pagan about the space. Noting that Culpeper has been "blowing up" recently, they "jumped at it."

Spelled Ink began as an online and pop-up store before the owners found a permanent space in Orange. Earlier this year Griffin and Pagan organized the inaugural Orange Literary and Arts Convention, which was held in March.

In Australia, children's participation in reading for pleasure has dropped from 79% in 2017-18 to 72% in 2021-22, according to a survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Books+Publishing reported that the survey on cultural and creative activities found that of 72% of children who read for pleasure, 32% read for two hours or less per week, and only 2% read for 20 hours or more per week.

More girls enjoyed reading for pleasure (77%) than boys (68%), but reading for pleasure was less popular with older age groups, with only 63% of children in the 12-14 age range reading books compared to 76% in the 5-8 category.

Screen-based activities were more popular than reading for pleasure, with 90% of children aged 5-14 years old spending at least one hour a week on screen-based activities. Although the percentage of children using screens remained the same compared to 2017-18, 24% spent 20 hours or more per week on screen-based activities, compared to 16% in 2017-18; while 40% spent 10 to 19 hours per week on screen based activities.

Children participating in any creative activity was 63% in 2017-18, but fell to 59% in 2021–22. Participation in creative writing dropped from 23% to 19%. Creative activities were less popular for older children, with 55% of 12-14-year-olds participating in a creative activity, compared to 60% of 5-8-year-olds. Creative activities were also more popular among girls (67%) than boys (52%).

ABS head of education statistics Michelle Ducat said, "Arts and crafts were the most popular creative activity among children, with 39% of children participating at least once a week. This was followed by singing or playing musical instruments and creative writing, both with 19% of children involved in these activities." 

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UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay has named Accra, Ghana, the UNESCO World Book Capital for 2023, following the evaluation of the World Book Capital advisory committee. Accra was selected "for its strong focus on young people and their potential to contribute to the culture and wealth of Ghana. Accra's proposed program seeks to use the power of books to engage these young people, as an effective way of skilling up the next generation." The year of celebrations started on April 23, World Book and Copyright Day.

The program targets marginal groups with high levels of illiteracy, including women, youth, migrants, street children, and people with disabilities. Measures to be implemented include the reinforcing of school and community infrastructure and institutional support for lifelong learning, in order to foster the culture of reading. By championing the publishing sector and other creative industries, the program also aims to encourage professional skills development to stimulate the country's socio-economic transformation.

Activities will include the introduction of mobile libraries to reach marginalized groups, the holding of workshops to promote reading and writing of books in different Ghanaian languages, the establishment of skills and training centers for unemployed youth, and the organization of competitions to showcase Ghanaian arts and culture and promote inclusivity.

The application from Accra features a strong human rights dimension, which aims to raise public awareness about freedom of information and expression, building on its own promotion of these rights as well as its involvement in World Press Freedom Day.

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The Bookshop Podcast, hosted by author and writing coach Mandy Jackson-Beverly, recently featured Jan Smedh, co-owner of the English Bookshop in Uppsala, Sweden, and the store's events manager Stina Björkelid about what it's like to live in the country during the winter months, the history of the area, and how reading fiction helps develop empathy and tolerance. 

In 2018, the English Bookshop was chosen by the London Book Fair as its International Excellence bookstore of the year. Smedh and Christer Valdeson founded the store in 1995 in the historic town of Uppsala, and have since added locations in Stockholm and Göteborg. --Robert Gray

John Underwood, "a stylish writer at Sports Illustrated for nearly a quarter century whose rollicking account of a fishing trip in Florida with the baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams led to their collaborations on two highly regarded books," died April 12, the New York Times reported. He was 88. 

Underwood joined Sports Illustrated in 1961, specializing in covering college football, including its shady side. He also wrote about boxing, golf, baseball, and professional football, as well as the impact of gambling on sports, players, and fans.

He forged a connection with Williams, one of baseball's legendary players as well as an expert fisherman, when they fished for tarpon off the Florida Keys in 1967. "He brings to fishing the same hard-eyed intensity, the same unbounded capacity for scientific inquiry that he brought to hitting a baseball," Underwood wrote.

Their camaraderie on the trip prompted Underwood, at the suggestion of a Sports Illustrated editor, to ask Williams if he would help Underwood write his autobiography. The project began as a five-part series in the magazine, and was subsequently expanded into the bestselling book My Turn at Bat: The Story of My Life (1969).

It was followed by The Science of Hitting (1971), "an instructional manual that became a Bible to many major leaguers, including the multiple batting champions Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs. In 2002, Sports Illustrated ranked it No. 86 on its list of the top 100 sports books of all time," the Times noted.

Underwood's later collaborations with sports figures included working on the autobiographies Bear: The Hard Life and Good Times of Alabama's Coach Bryant by Bear Bryant (1974); baseball manager Alvin Dark's When in Doubt, Fire the Manager (1980); and the father/son NFL quarterback tandem Archie and Peyton Manning in Manning: A Father, His Sons and a Football Legacy (2000).

The death of Ted Williams in 2002 prompted Underwood to write It's Only Me: The Ted Williams We Hardly Knew (2005), a reminiscence about their friendship. Donna Underwood, his wife, said, "He thought of Ted as an uncle. And 'It's only me' is what Ted would say when he called. John or I would answer the phone and he'd say, 'It's only me.' "

Buxton Books in Charleston, S.C., hosted the sold-out launch event for Patti Callahan Henry's The Secret Book of Flora Lea (Atria Books) at the Riviera Theater. (photo: Meg Walker)

Oprah Winfrey has chosen The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (Grove) as her 101st Oprah's Book Club selection. Noting that she was enthralled by her selection, Winfrey said, "It's one of the best books I've read in my entire life. It's epic. It's transportive. Many moments during the read I had to stop and remember to breathe. I couldn't put the book down until the very last page. It was unputdownable!" 

Verghese observed: "Hearing the melodious and signature voice of the person who has done more for books in America than anyone alive, then hearing her passion for my book, which she'd read more closely than any reader I know, well, I teared up. My thoughts were flashing back through the decade-plus of writing The Covenant of Water, during which time my mother had died. The call felt like a miracle. I'd been reflexively standing throughout the conversation and when we hung up, I'm not ashamed to say I got to my knees and gave thanks. Mom would have approved."

Winfrey, Verghese, and Oprah's Book Club readers will participate in a discussion of The Covenant of Water on OprahDaily.com beginning May 13, and follow the reading schedule outlined here. 

Diamond Book Distributors has signed a worldwide distribution agreement with Opus Comics for exclusive distribution of their books to North American and international book markets. Distribution to the comic book specialty market will continue to be handled exclusively by Diamond Comic Distributors.

An imprint of production company Incendium, Opus Comics was founded in 2021 by writer and creative director Llexi Leon with more than a dozen comic book titles based on well-known music-related IP, including Bill and Ted: Roll the Dice, Frank Frazetta's Death Dealer and Evanescence: Echoes from the Void.

"Diamond saw the potential in Opus Comics right from the start and provided us with the tools we needed to survive in a tough marketplace. Now that we're taking our partnership to the next level, we will be equipped to thrive in both the direct market and the book market," said Denton J. Tipton, executive editor at Opus Comics.

Stephanie Pando has been promoted to publicist at Candlewick Press. She was formerly marketing and publicity associate.

AudioFile magazine's 14th annual summer AudioBookSYNC program, which offers 28 free audiobooks for teens and partners with OverDrive Education.

Today:
Fresh Air: Alexandra Auder, author of Don't Call Me Home: A Memoir (Viking, $28, 9780593299951).

Tomorrow:
Today Show: Erica Dickerson and Jamilah Mapp, author of A Good Mom's Guide to Making Bad Choices (HarperOne, $27.99, 9780063161979).

CBS Mornings: Luke Russert, author of Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself (Harper Horizon, $28.99, 9780785291817).

Tamron Hall: Luvvie Ajayi Jones, author of Rising Troublemaker: A Fear-Fighter Manual for Teens (Philomel, $10.99, 9780593526040).

Rachael Ray: Bill Bellamy, author of Top Billin': Stories of Laughter, Lessons, and Triumph (Amistad, $29.99, 9780063237629).

Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit, Next Goal Wins) is in negotiations to direct a film version of Klara and the Sun, based on Kazuo Ishiguro's 2021 novel, for Sony's 3000 Pictures, Deadline reported, adding that the project is in development, with Dahvi Waller writing the original draft of the screenplay.

David Heyman is producing for Heyday Films, and Garrett Basch and Waititi are in negotiations to produce. Heyday's Jeffrey Clifford and Rosie Alison brought in the project to Heyday. Ishiguro is an executive producer. Elizabeth Gabler and Aislinn Dunster are overseeing the project for 3000 Pictures.

"After directing Marvel's Thor: Love and Thunder, which bowed in July, Waititi was weighing a number of options for his next film including his anticipated Star Wars movie at Lucasfilm," Deadline wrote. "He ultimately landed on Klara and the Sun and, once a deal closes, likely would make it his next film."

The Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association has announced the shortlists for the 33rd Annual Reading the West Book Awards. Member bookstores and the reading public are encouraged to vote for their favorites online through May 31. Winners will be announced on June 13. See the shortlisted titles in nine categories here.

photo: Kate Lamb

Thomas Mullen is the author of seven novels, including Darktown, an NPR Best Book, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, and the Indies Choice Book Award; Lightning Men, named one of the Top Ten Crime Novels of 2017 by the New York Times and shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger; and The Last Town on Earth, named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today and awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize. His novel Blind Spots (Minotaur, April 4, 2023) plays with ways our perceptions of reality can be manipulated.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Blind Spots is a speculative crime novel, akin to Blade Runner or Minority Report, set in a world where people use devices to see.

On your nightstand now:

Metropolis by Philip Kerr: I've slowly been making my way through his Bernie Gunther series and have been saving this, his last, until what feels like the right time. I just don't want it to end. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai: I'm mostly a fiction reader and typically have a stack in my to-be-read pile. The Third Rainbow Girl by Emma Copley Eisenberg: I've been reading more true crime lately and am always interested in books set in Appalachia. American Dreams by Studs Terkel: I find his oral histories both fascinating and inspirational for my own work. (Hard Times was a big help when I wrote my Depression-era second novel, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, and his The Good War was invaluable as I wrote the book I'll be publishing in 2024, which is set in Boston during World War II.)

Favorite book when you were a child:

I became a huge fan of the Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker when I was a seventh grader. For a few years in my early teens, I read only crime/mysteries, then I pivoted for a while, for reasons unexplained and mysterious, before returning to the genre with a vengeance about 15 years ago.

Your top five authors:

Toni Morrison for her combination of lyrical language and complex stories that she always found a completely new way to tell. Jess Walter for his sense of humor, perfectly formed characters, and great plots. Edward P. Jones for packing so much into his short stories and for writing maybe the greatest novel of this century, The Known World. Don Winslow for absolutely bringing it in his crime stories. And Michael Chabon for his ability to play so well in different genres.

Book you're an evangelist for:

I've given Citizen Vince by Jess Walter as a gift so many times to so many different kinds of readers, and no one's been disappointed. Do you like great characters? Or crime/mystery? Or literary fiction? Or interesting settings? Or plot twists? Or humor? Or politics? Or words? You'll love it.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Okay, the reviews were great, too, but that's a perfect cover. I'd never been to the Smoky Mountains at that time in my life, but I've been several times since, and it almost feels like I'm re-entering his story.

Book you hid from your parents:

I never had to hide anything. Maybe I was just a good kid? Also, my parents are voracious readers, so I don't know that they would have truly disapproved of any reading material.

Book that changed your life:

It's a tie: Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem and The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead, which I read within a few months of each other in 2001. They opened my eyes to how you can take the classic hardboiled noir structure and do crazy things with it to create a fun, nuanced story that brings the reader to new places. Books that take elements of those classic mystery tropes but do something unexpected with them tend to be my favorites, and it's what I've tried to do with both my Atlanta series and now Blind Spots.

Favorite line from a book:

From Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: It's only a tiny part of a very long sentence, but it's hard to beat the economy, or the revealing coldness, of the narrator's offhand parenthetical mention of "(picnic, lightning)" when describing his mother's death.

Five books you'll never part with:

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon. I already knew I wanted to be a novelist, but I received that book (about a writer) as a gift right after college graduation, when I felt confused and overwhelmed by the real world and the challenge of getting published, and it reaffirmed my desire to find a way to succeed.

My signed copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace--from a reading I saw him give in Cambridge, Mass., in the late '90s. He was so funny and so down-to-earth and so, so smart.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. Partly because I love it to death and deeply admire the way Mitchell plays with so many genres in that beautiful monster of a book. And partly because, when I signed my first book deal with Random House, my editor, Jennifer Hershey, sent me a copy of that then-new book as a "welcome to the club" gift.

My collection of Dr. Seuss books. The dude was a mad genius. Now that I have kids, we have tons of his books, but even when I was 22 and working an awful job at a consulting firm in Boston, I would sometimes cross the street to the giant Borders (remember them?), walk into the kids' section, and flip through If I Ran the Circus or The Sneetches and Other Stories for a hit of inspiration.

Hiking Atlanta's Hidden Forests by Jonah McDonald. This book helped keep my family sane during the first year or so of the pandemic when there was nothing to do but take long hikes. To avoid being near other people during those early, confusing days, we'd bookmark any hikes he called "underused gems" or "off the beaten track" and head out there.

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

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières. I read it during my first year out of college, and it's everything I want a book to be: expansive and emotionally powerful, an amazing story with lots of interwoven subplots and great characters and a fully realized setting that captures a moment in time perfectly.

The thing that made you want to be a writer:

People ask me this a lot, and the only answer I can think of is: honestly, I've always wanted to be a writer, for as long as I can remember. My parents bought me books like Mr. Happy and Mr. Worry by Roger Hargreaves, and I'd copy them. Then I started writing my own ("Mr. Invisible" was my first complete work, I believe). I've always loved to tell stories.

The apocalypse is fun--and royal--in this YA rom-com celebrating life's unplanned joys and the exhilaration of shedding expectations.

Wren is the girl with a plan: go to law school, become a lawyer, and prove she is as smart as her "genius" sister. The comet hurtling toward Earth complicates everything. Her new plan: get from her study abroad trip in England to her family in Chicago before everyone dies in eight days. Prince Theo, heir to the throne, is her best chance; he owes her a favor after she helped him elude the paparazzi. He agrees to fly her home if she gets him to Greece, where he wants to die released from the burden of "expectations [he'll] never meet," and undetected by his mother, the Queen of England.

It's hard for Wren to focus--she's traveling with a "living, breathing fairytale," bumping knees in a train bathroom, committing accidental grand-theft auto, and rescuing a yellow Labrador. So she compartmentalizes, shoving difficult thoughts--possibly never seeing her family again, the fun she missed while engineering a perfect future, falling for Theo--into her "box of off-limit emotions." Theo, however, transforms, happy and relaxed now that he is free of "royal pomp and circumstance." Wren can't understand why he doesn't want to die with his family. But a deal is a deal. And "not even the fucking prince of Wales is going to keep [her] away from the people [she] love[s]." Except maybe he's becoming someone she loves, too.

The Prince & the Apocalypse by Kara McDowell (This Might Get Awkward) sets a coming-of-age story at the end of the world, featuring characters who struggle to act because they have never truly chosen their own paths. Wren lies about her emotions and avoids the hard question of who she is if she isn't obsessing over her future. Her flaws interfere with how Theo wants to live his last days ("Blimey, Wren. Are you capable of having a conversation that's not buried under a thousand layers of sarcasm and banter?") but mirror it, too ("I don't know who I am if I'm not Theodore Geoffrey Edward George"). Hard-hitting lines ("We can just be Theo and Wren") create tension between plenty of deadpan and situational humor ("My orange hair frizzes out from my shoulders and panic sweat drips down my back. I've never felt sexier in my whole entire life"). Enchanting entertainment. --Samantha Zaboski, freelance editor and reviewer

Shelf Talker: The apocalypse is fun--and royal--in this YA rom-com celebrating life's unplanned joys and the exhilaration of shedding expectations.