During the California Independent Booksellers Alliance annual meeting in South San Francisco, Calif., Wednesday night, CALIBA board president Melinda Powers reported that the association is finally returning to some of the transition goals it set before the pandemic. 

Powers, who is also head buyer at Bookshop Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, noted that CALIBA is only three years old--member stores voted in October 2019 to dissolve the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association and merge with the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. In January 2020, CALIBA was officially formed.

Mimi Hannan, CALIBA treasurer and bookseller at La Playa Books in San Diego, announced that the association's financial situation is healthy, and a rainy day fund is being created to ensure there's plenty of money in the bank "in case of any further craziness."

During the meeting, member stores voted in favor of a bylaw change that will expand the definition of a member bookstore to include non-traditional models like pop-up stores and mobile bookstores. Previously, the bylaws specified that a full voting member of the association had to have a physical storefront, and because of that language, pop-up, mobile, and other non-traditional bookstores could only be provisional members, which had program rights but not voting rights. Going forward, there will be no language in the bylaws barring non-traditional bookstores from becoming full voting members.

The board also announced the creation of the CALIBA advisory council, which will meet virtually four times per year to provide feedback to the board as well as suggestions for education, programming, projects, and more. The council will take effect in 2024, and Powers said the goal is to make sure CALIBA "better serves the entire state."

Member stores also voted to officially congratulate Paul Yamazaki, principal buyer at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers in San Francisco, on receiving the National Book Foundation's 2023 Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

Alison Reid, co-owner of Diesel, a bookstore, with locations in Brentwood and San Diego, wondered if there was any way for indies to unite and have a collective voice "without breaking any laws." Powers remarked that as a single, state-wide association, CALIBA will "have more clout" within the state than either the NCIBA or SCIBA did, and board member Vanessa Martini (Green Apple Books) said it was an "extreme goal" of hers to get the association "more involved in Sacramento."

Finally, Powers announced that next year's Fall Fest will take place in Pasadena, September 17-18, 2024.

More than 230 booksellers from across the state of California convened this week at the South San Francisco Conference Center for the California Independent Booksellers Alliance's Fall Fest. According to CALIBA co-executive director Ann Seaton, there were around 100 more attendees this year than at last year's Fall Fest in Sacramento.

Booksellers mingled prior to the exhibit hall opening.

The busy exhibition floor.

The aftermath of Wednesday night's rep picks bingo and pizza party: (l.-r.) Angela Engel (Collective Book Studio); Jen Cameron (Orca Books); Kevin Peters (Book Travelers West); Richard McNeace (Faherty & Associates); Vicki DeArmon (Sibylline Press); Ty Wilson (Ingram); Travis Hale (IPG); Kristianne Huntsberger (Shelf Awareness); and Lise Solomon (Consortium).

Authors Jason de León (Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling), José Valdi (Chipped: Writing from a Skateboarder’s Lens), and David Kipen (Dear California: The Golden State in Diaries and Letters) discussed their forthcoming books Thursday afternoon. Stephen Sparks, co-owner of Point Reyes Books in Point Reyes Station, moderated the discussion.

The 2023 Fall Fest concluded with a toast to retiring sales reps Wendy Pearl, Roz Hilden, and Tom McIntyre.

Coinciding with Banned Books Week, which begins this Sunday, October 1, the New Republic will launch the Banned Books Tour 2023, aimed at "championing the First Amendment and combating censorship." The bookmobile, a symbol of literary liberation, will visit states that have experienced some of the highest incidences of book censorship, including Texas, Florida, Missouri, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, and continue to operate through the month of October.

The tour will start at the Brooklyn Book Festival this weekend, where, in partnership with House of SpeakEasy, the New Republic will accept book and financial donations at the SpeakEasy Bookmobile. All literature may be donated, with a preference for banned and challenged books. These books will be given away in communities on the tour where access has been restricted or limited.

Partners for the tour include the American Federation of Teachers/Real Solutions for Kids and Communities and the African American Policy Forum. The tour is supported by contributions from novelist Nora Roberts (she writes about how important the freedom to read is below) and produced by Inspira Marketing.

"Launching a book festival on wheels is a huge new undertaking for us, and I can't wait to hit the road to support the importance of reading, New Republic CEO and publisher Michael Caruso said. "It's even more exciting that we can embark in time to support ALA's Banned Books Week. The New Republic has been a leading defender of the First Amendment for over a century, and this is a new way to give people the tools to join the fight for the freedom to read."

Amanda Foreman, co-founder of the House of SpeakEasy, said, "House of SpeakEasy believes that book ownership is a right not a privilege and access to literature should not be restricted. Since we launched it 2017, the SpeakEasy Bookmobile has visited over two dozen towns and cities across 15 states. We are thrilled with the opportunity to play a role in the 2023 Banned Books Tour."

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The American Booksellers Association is offering the ABA Right to Read Toolkit: How Booksellers and Readers Can Resist Book Bans, which is full of how-to advice, resources, and case studies to help booksellers (and others) deal with challenges in their day-to-day work. The kit is designed to be easily navigated, so users can read it in full or skip to the sections they need.

In a kind of magazine format, the 56-page ToolKit features profiles and commentary by a range of booksellers and others--including Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in southern Florida, Ramunda Young, co-owner of MahoganyBooks, Washington, D.C., and National Harbor, Md., former Rep. Steve Israel, owner of Theodore's Books, Oyster Bay, N.Y.--about dealing with various aspects of book bannings, censorship, and in-store "book challenges." Included are a sample of an op-ed that could be sent to local media, suggestions on how to contact government officials, attend a school board meeting, and hold a secure event, a chart about what ABA is doing to fight book bannings, and more.

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As part of Banned Books Week, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is hosting a digital workshop called "Free People Read Freely: How Children's Book Creatives Can Fight Book Banning" on Thursday, October 5 at 7 p.m. Eastern on Zoom. Free and open to the public, the workshop will feature Joyce McIntosh, assistant program director for the Freedom to Read Foundation, which is dedicated to First Amendment education, litigation, and advocacy. McIntosh will discuss ways creators of books for children, teens, and young adults can address the current surge in challenges to books for young people.

Sarah Baker, executive director of SCBWI, commented, "Book banning is nothing new. But all of us at SCBWI are increasingly disturbed by the ferocity and sophistication of this current wave of book banning and censorship. I'm pleased to welcome Joyce McIntosh to the event 'Free People Read Freely: How Children's Book Creatives Can Fight Book Banning,' where our 21,000-plus members and the wider children's book community can learn about the current state of book banning and acquire the tools they need to fight back. Young readers deserve nothing less."

To register, click here.

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At noon this Sunday, October 1, the FREADOM Coalition is inviting the Miami, Fla., community to join in a Walk for FREADOM. Participants will meet at the Sanctuary of Banned Books at the Coral Gables Congregational Church in Coral Gables and then walk to the flagship Books & Books location in Coral Gables. The walk aims to show support for "books--words, reading & learning, information and knowledge."

Books & Books will continue to mark Banned Books Week with a variety of events, including:

Monday: Comedy featuring sketches, stories and jokes by comics whose work has been censored (hosted by Villain Theatre)
Tuesday: Game Night, which includes Banned Book Trivia Night and Banned Book Bingo Night
Wednesday: Brad Meltzer, banned book author of I Am Billie Jean (hosted by PEN)
Thursday: Banned Book Happy Hour
Saturday: Un-ban Words: Favorite banned word imprinted on personal Moleskin journals (hosted by Moleskin)
Sunday: At the Billboard Bus: Teacher and Librarian Appreciation Day & free distribution of banned books (hosted by United Teachers of Dade)

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In partnership with the Freedom to Read Foundation, PEN America, and the Little Free Library, Penguin Random House is launching the Banned Wagon Tour, which during Banned Books Week will travel across the South, stopping in communities affected by censorship, celebrating the power of literature, and getting books to the people who need and want them most. PRH called the Banned Wagon part of its "ongoing efforts to combat book banning and censorship, which includes legal actions, tailored support for various stakeholders, and advocacy for First Amendment rights."

The Banned Wagon will feature a selection of 12 books that are currently being banned and challenged across the country, distributing free copies (while supplies last) to event attendees in each city. The Banned Wagon will also drop banned books in Little Free Libraries along the tour route and make a book donation after each Banned Wagon event. The Banned Wagon will include material from the Freedom to Read Foundation about how to write letters to school boards and elected officials, as well as regional spotlights from PEN America highlighting books and challenges being banned in specific states.

The Banned Wagon will hold events in Atlanta, Ga. (a signing and q&a at Charis Books & More, Decatur, with author Nic Stone); Nashville, Tenn. (stopping at the Bookshop); New Orleans, La., (at Baldwin & Co., which has created the (Un)Banned Book Festival, with music, refreshments from Willa Jean, book signings, and panel discussions with authors including Jumata Emill and Ani DiFranco); and Houston, Tex. (with a stop at Kindred Stories). At each partnering bookstore, bookmarks and tote bags from Out of Print will be available.

The Banned Wagon's dozen books are I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson, I Am Jazz by Jessica Herthel and Jazz Jennings, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen, Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag by Rob Sanders, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, and Dear Martin by Nic Stone.

Nora Roberts

Author Nora Roberts on book bannings:

When I grew up in suburbs outside of D.C., everyone in my house read. Books were everywhere. I didn't see this as a gift, but just as the normal, ordinary way of things.

In hindsight I understand it was a gift more precious than diamonds. Those trips to the library. My mother's monthly book club and my father's collection of Louis L'Amour and Edgar Rice Burroughs. My brothers' Hardy Boys and comic books. Being handed both Shakespeare and Eloise as a child. My Classic Illustrated subscription and the Nancy Drews my mother faithfully bought for me.

All great, wonderful gifts.

Never once in my memory did either of my parents ever say: No, you can't read that... That's not appropriate... That's not for you. I just picked up a book from the shelf, the table, the collection in the attic and read.

My formative years included a great, marvelous scope of stories. Books were treasures to be enjoyed, doors opening to worlds to be explored. Stories, a foundation of the human experience, to be discussed.

I raised my kids exactly the same way, with trips to the library, with books all over the house, with the freedom to choose and explore.

I do remember another parent once expressing dismay that my boys read comics. And my thought was: But they're reading! They still are, as grown men, who enjoy the written word and stories, and the freedom to explore those worlds.

As a parent, I had a right to say no to what my boys read, but the thought never entered my mind.

Now, as a grandmother, I'm stunned and appalled that some have amassed the power to say no to ALL children, all teenagers when it comes to reading certain books, when it comes to what trained educators can offer in school libraries. There, in my opinion, they have no right.

I think back to my formative years, and a house full of books, and the gift of being encouraged to read, read, read.

I wish that for everyone. Freedom, exploration, the opening of doors to other worlds, other viewpoints and experiences.

I would not be the woman, the human, the writer I am without that freedom.

Carmichael's Kids bookstore, Louisville, Ky., has closed indefinitely for the second time this year because of water damage. On Wednesday, the store posted on social media. "This is the worst case of déjà vu. We are closed due to flooding. We’ll be back! We just don’t know when exactly. We’ll sure sure to share here when our doors are back open. In the meantime, you can visit the Carmichael's Bookstore on Frankfort Avenue for kid book needs. We hope to see you soon!" In an update later, the store added: "We’ve sustained water damage from an issue with the roof and we will make a decision about a reopening date after we fully assess damages and necessary repairs."

Carmichael's Kids had to close in January due to water damage caused by a broken main sewer line. The store reopened about a month later.

Carmichael's was founded in Louisville in 1978, and Carmichael's Kids opened in the Highlands in 2014.

Matthew Blake and a group of Boston-area booksellers celebrated his debut thriller, Anna O, coming from Harper in January 2024. Pictured: (l.-r., standing) Geoff Raywood, Trident Booksellers and Café, Boston; Lauren Tiedemann, Book Ends, Winchester; Mary Dolan, Belmont Books, Belmont; Lorna Ruby, Wellesley Books, Wellesley; Jessica MacDonald, Boston Public Library; Katie McGarry, HarperCollins; Hope Genty, Boston Public Library; Nick Petrulakis, Drinks with Nick, and Newtonville Books, Newtonville; (seated) Jillian Hartline, Book Ends, Winchester; author Matthew Blake; Summer Porter, Harvard Book Store, Cambridge. (photo: Anne DeCourcey, HarperCollins).

"We have your next fall read!" Lake Forest Book Store, Lake Forest, Ill., noted in sharing a pic on Instagram of the shop's sidewalk chalkboard message: "Looking for a good book to FALL into, ask us! We will make sure you LEAF with one or two."

"Has September been a doozy for everyone?" the Book & Cover, Chattanooga, Tenn., asked on Instagram. "Book clubs have been a nice, long exhale after a wild month. We hope you’ll join us for October book clubs--they are the last of the year as we don’t host clubs in November and December!"

Take the Lead: Hanging On, Letting Go, and Conquering Life's Hardest Climbs by Sasha DiGiulian (St. Martin's Press).

Eva Noblezada (as Daisy Buchanan) and Jeremy Jordan (as Jay Gatsby), stars of the upcoming The Great Gatsby musical, offered an advance look at the show recently. Playbill reported that they were joined by the cast to perform three songs from the Kait Kerrigan, Jason Howland, and Nathan Tysen production, based on the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 

The Great Gatsby is scheduled to run October 12-November 12 at Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. Directed by Marc Bruni, the production features a book by Kerrigan (The Mad Ones) and an original score by Tony nominees Howland and Tysen (Paradise Square), with choreography by Dominique Kelley.

Apple has "shared a first look at best actress hopeful Lily Gladstone" in a film clip from Killers of the Flower Moon, the historical epic based on David Grann's 2017 book and directed by Martin Scorsese. The Hollywood Reporter noted that In the clip, Gladstone (Certain Women, Reservation Dogs) "goes toe-to-toe with Leonardo DiCaprio, playing recently returned war veteran Ernest Burkhart who is aggressively trying to court Gladstone's Mollie."

The cast also includes Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Tatanka Means, Michael Abbot Jr., Pat Healy, Scott Shepard, Jason Isbell, and Sturgill Simpson. The Apple Original film, which earned rave reviews at the Cannes Film Festival starring has set its wide theatrical release for October 20, and will subsequently stream on Apple TV+.

The shortlist has been released for the $75,000 Cundill History Prize, administered by McGill University and recognizing the book that most "embodies historical scholarship, originality, literary quality and broad appeal." The finalists will be named in mid-October, and the winner announced November 8 during the Cundill History Prize Festival. Two runners-up receive $10,000 each. The shortlisted titles are:

The Huxleys: An Intimate History of Evolution by Alison Bashford (University of Chicago Press)
Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (W.W. Norton)
The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets by Matthew Connelly (Pantheon)
The Perfection of Nature: Animals, Breeding, and Race in the Renaissance by Mackenzie Cooley (University of Chicago Press)
Queens of a Fallen World: The Lost Women of Augustine's Confessions by Kate Cooper (Basic Books)
Dust on the Throne: The Search for Buddhism in India by Douglas Ober (Navayana/Stanford University Press)
Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future by James Morton Turner (University of Washington Press)
The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullit, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson by Patrick Weil (Harvard University Press)

photo: Edmund Blok

Abigail Williams is professor of 18th-century literature at the University of Oxford. She's published a series of books on 18th-century literary history, including The Social Life of Books. She's intrigued by how, why, and what we read--from the furor over the immorality of the novel in the 1700s, to identity politics and sensitivity readers in the 2020s. Reading It Wrong: An Alternative History of Early Eighteenth-Century Literature (Princeton University Press) is a history of all the ways in which books might have confused or bewildered their first readers.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Reading It Wrong is a new history of 18th-century literature showing the way books were dependent on imperfect readers and their muddle and confusion.

On your nightstand now:

I'm probably the last person I know who is reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall for the first time. But what a world she created! So rich and so immediate: I feel I'm in the room with them all. She's especially good at describing eyes, I think: Anne Boleyn's are shiny and black and "go click, click" like "an abacus."

Favorite book when you were a child:

I loved A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley. It's a time travel novel about a girl who slides out of her 20th-century world and into the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots. The fact that the little girl, Penelope, knows what's going to happen but can't alter it was a weirdly compelling new idea for me. And I learnt that in the olden days you could spell your name however you wanted, and I practised that a lot.

Your top five authors:

Nancy Mitford for the wit and fun--and total irreverence.

Rose Tremain for her luminous historical writing. There's so much hard-won research in there, but she manages to make you feel you are living it all yourself, in the court of 17th-century Sweden or 19th-century New Zealand gold mines.

Audre Lord, who channels ideas and anger with such pitch-perfect urgency.

James Rebanks, whose writing is personal and lyrical with a profound sense of place.

My grandmother wouldn't forgive me if I didn't include Ruth Rendell. Both of us read detective fiction and thrillers compulsively, so fast I don't always quite understand what's happened at the end.

Book you've faked reading:

Wolf Hall. But not anymore!

Book you're an evangelist for:

I keep buying friends The Assassin's Cloak, edited by Alan and Irene Taylor. It's an anthology of diary entries across time. Each day you get a snippet from that moment in someone else's life: Brian Eno talking about desperately trying to find batteries on Christmas Day for his kids' new toys, and how his urine looks like Pinot Grigio; Tolstoy; Kafka; Anne Frank. It's a perfect kaleidoscope of experiences.  

Book you've bought for the cover:

Every Faber & Faber poetry volume I own. Those typographic book covers make me feel clever and cultured just by looking at them.

Book you hid from your parents:

Shirley Conran's Lace. We passed around copies of that racy '80s bonkbuster at my convent school. I think we believed we were reading about what being a grown-up woman was really like. Quite surprising to find out how wrong we were.

Book that changed your life:

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. It starts from an author trying to find out how to run without getting hurt, and ends up in the Mexican Copper Canyons, with him watching people doing ultramarathons on three corn grains with old tyres strapped to their feet. I stopped buying expensive new trainers.

Favorite line from a book:

From George Eliot's Middlemarch: "Somebody put a drop [of Mr. Casaubon's blood] under a magnifying-glass, and it was all semicolons and parentheses." It's a good reminder of why scholars should avoid becoming pedants.

Five books you'll never part with:

Does an ordnance survey map of Dartmoor count? That, then Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway for the brilliant narrative patterning. Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, which is such a wonderfully comic gothic vision of rural living. George Eliot, Middlemarch. Big, rangy, ambitious yet intimate--it's a novel that speaks differently to me on every reading.

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

The first book I ever read on my own was by Enid Blyton. I was in my bedroom, and I didn't come down till I was halfway through. I'd love to recapture the magic of that first immersion.

In The New Naturals, Gabriel Bump (Everywhere You Don't Belong) offers a surprisingly tender story about grief and hope packaged within a rollicking series of darkly funny, quixotic journeys. After the loss of her infant son, a young Black mother named Rio persuades her husband, Gibraltar, to help her form a new utopian community underground. While at first Rio's dream seems too far flung, a mysterious Benefactor swoops in and makes it a material reality.

Soon, many people find themselves inexplicably drawn to their spot. Two men, Elting and Buchanan, whose only home is each other, attempt to piece together a trip there from Chicago by bus. A jaded but headstrong journalist stumbles into the spot and finds she never wants to leave. A disgraced professional soccer player, now infamous for surviving what should have been a fatal accident, wonders if Rio's place is the only one left for him. Soon, the price of idealism becomes a bit too high, and both the Benefactor and Rio begin to wonder what kind of salvation is possible.

Bump's prose--crisp, clipped, and urgent--whisks readers down his rabbit hole from the start, leading them through spirals that feel as stylistically assured as they are narratively unpredictable. While the plot carries his characters down unexpected paths, Bump's attention to the details of their personalities never wavers. For example, where Rio was "the brilliant one, the beautiful mind" who "studied slave revolts" and "could trace herself to a lush grove in Florida," her husband "wanted to write a bestselling book and get paid lump sums to comment on race for media conglomerates." These juxtapositions between characters never sever their ties, but rather allow them to fit together like puzzle pieces. Thus, even in the midst of the novel's manic machinations, its characters form unlikely intimacies that keep hope--no matter how foolish--alive.  

Even the novel's dialogue, which often reads like the disjointed experience of two people talking past one another, underlines this paradox between difference and connection. And while Elting and Buchanan are held narratively apart from the rest of the cast of characters, by the novel's end they act as its center. Through them, the truth of the simplicity of living together reigns over convoluted plans to achieve unified perfection. To Buchanan, it is this existence that "felt natural" even in a world that Bump shows to be ridiculously and terrifyingly broken. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: A tragicomic portrait of the longing people share for a better world, The New Naturals is a thought-provoking and head-spinning sophomore novel by Gabriel Bump.

Meryl Halls

In anticipation of next week's BA Annual Conference, Meryl Halls, managing director of the Booksellers Association of the U.K. & Ireland, observed recently in a column for the Bookseller that "it's always a leap of faith to become a bookseller. It's a notoriously low margin business, and it's also increasingly fantastically hard work. The corollary of that has always been the reward inherent in working in a passion project: in the work's variety; in meeting beloved authors and book-hungry readers; and in the knowledge that the aspects of what you deliver are genuinely enhancing the cultural and social texture of where you choose to live and run your business."

There is, of course, the long-held myth about being a bookseller, also known as what non-booksellers think the job entails: long, quiet days reading behind the counter, sleeping cats, well-read colleagues, a gentle bell ringing over the door when the next voracious reader enters the shop looking for recommendations.

We know it's more complicated than that, which is one of many reasons booksellers gather at events like the BA Annual Conference or the fall regional bookseller conferences in the U.S., to connect with their peers, to learn, and to feel a bit less isolated and overwhelmed by an ever-challenging business.

After the excitement and community of a trade show, however, it's always back to the bookshop. In a Bookseller piece headlined "My top five bookselling mistakes," British bookseller Sam Taylor, who co-founded Max Minerva's bookshop in Bristol five years ago, offered a peek behind the non-mythologized curtain: "I don't think it was unreasonable to presume owning a bookshop would mainly involve selling books. Wrong, but not unreasonable. As it turns out, I can easily work 50 hours in one week without serving a single customer in either of our shops. Paying invoices, placing stock orders on numerous individual excel spreadsheets, managing said orders in Edelweiss and the shop POS, fretting over P&Ls and cash flow forecasts, organizing rotas, looking for other bits to sell alongside books, approaching schools about supplying their library, pitching for events, finding venues for events, ordering stock for events, writing questions for events, a lot of other stuff to do with events, and school events. The task list goes on and on. If you want to own a bookshop and just sell books, you can, but paying the bills may prove difficult."

A reality check indeed. And yet, whether it's a bunch of booksellers gathering for a conference, or a bookseller returning to their shop afterward, all roads lead to the key factor in this complex equation: the books. 

As it happens, I came across those two pieces about booksellers while simultaneously living within the pages of a book about bookselling: Satoshi Yagisawa's novel Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, translated by Eric Ozawa. I was particularly intrigued by the evolution of the narrator, Takako, from a nonreader into a devoted reader and bookseller after she reluctantly takes refuge in her Uncle Saturo's bookshop in Jimbocho, Tokyo's legendary neighborhood of used bookstores. 

"What I didn't expect about the used-book business was how big the network was," says Takako at one point. Her uncle tells her: "Even though we think of it as an independent business, what matters in the industry more than anything are the relationships you have with people. I guess that's probably true of the world in general." 

As all this was swirling around in my bookish brain, I also considered how this one little book, Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, has been making its way in the world, building its own relationships with the help handselling booksellers: 

Faqir Chand Bookstore, Delhi, India: "A tale of love, new beginnings, and the comfort that can be found between the pages of a good book.... Quirky, beautifully written, and movingly profound."

Harris & Harris Books, Clare, England: "Currently reading: Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa.... Thank you also to everyone who's added this to your shopping pile. Have you read it yet?"

The Country Bookshop, Southern Pines, N.C., U.S.: "Angie read and recommends Days At The Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa."

The Bookshop Bowral, Bowral, Australia: "#Bookseller Shannon has lost her heart to this quiet, comforting and cozy slice-of-life read. 'It's a story about the comfort that can be found in books,' she said. 'I loved the quirky and heartwarming characters.' "

Nautilus English Books, Bucharest, Romania: "The wise and charming international bestseller and hit Japanese movie--about a young woman who loses everything but finds herself--a tale of new beginnings, romantic and family relationships, and the comfort that can be found in books."

Times bookstores, Singapore: "The moving international sensation about new beginnings, human connection, and the joy of reading.⁠"

Author's Daughter Bookshop, Malabon, Phillipines: "Here's a first-page look of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. A must-read for anyone seeking the comfort of a gentle, slice-of-life narrative set in Japan." 

From booksellers to bookseller to book; the journey continues. While reading Motojirō Kajii's Landscapes of the Heart, Takato comes across a passage that speaks to her. "At some point in the past," she realizes, "someone reading this book had felt moved to take a pen and draw a line under these words. It made me happy to think that because I had been moved by that same passage too, I was now connected to that stranger." That's also a leap of faith.