Bleak House Books, which operated in Hong Kong from 2018-2021 before relocating to upstate New York, is hosting a grand opening celebration tomorrow, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.

Store owners Albert Wan and Jenny Smith reopened their bookstore in downtown Honeoye Falls, N.Y., earlier this year. The new space is about double the size of their previous location in Hong Kong, and is located in a ground-level storefront in Honeoye Falls's downtown, as opposed to the 27th story of a high-rise office building. The store carries new and used titles for all ages from a diverse range of authors and backgrounds.

Smith and Wan chose to leave Hong Kong over the political situation, particularly the Chinese government's response to pro-democracy protests that began in 2019. Wan told the Democrat and Chronicle: "The government was relentless in cracking down on all forms of civil society that they deemed a threat. I had a feeling books and bookstores would get on their radar at some point."

The Hong Kong location officially closed on October 15, 2021. Wan and Smith gave away their remaining books and returned to the U.S. Neither had ever been to the Rochester, N.Y., area before, but moved there because of its affordability and quality of life. A months-long search led them to the bookstore's current home in Honeoye Falls.

"It was very sad to have to close the shop in Hong Kong, so opening this one was a feat of willpower," Wan said. "We wanted Bleak House Books to continue in a different life."

The grand opening festivities will begin at 11 a.m. Saturday and continue until 9 p.m. There will be a print-making and interactive arts pop-up, along with appearances by authors Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard) and Justin Murphy (Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger), journalists Shibani Mahtani and Tim McLaughlin, and musician Kenneth Kam.

From the Ground Up Books and Resources, a new and used bookstore with an emphasis on supporting local writers, has opened in La Grange, Ky., the Oldham Era reported.

Residing at 207 East Main St., From the Ground Up carries general-interest titles for all ages and shares a space with Mystic Bliss Creations, which offers a variety of handmade gifts. Store owner Lynn Tincher and Mystic Bliss owner Missy Steier held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the store on October 31.

Tincher has applied for a 501c3 designation for From the Ground Up and plans to make education the heart of the bookstore's mission. She'll host workshops and classes designed to help writers at any stage of their career and provide them "with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to hone their craft."

From the Ground Up is also offering bookstore memberships, with 5% of membership fees going toward prize money for contests the bookstore will run, as well as scholarships for the bookstore's writing programs.

Additionally, From the Ground Up will host genre-focused book clubs, poetry slams, author readings, and other literary events.

The American Booksellers Association has announced the names of 73 booksellers who will receive scholarships to attend the 2024 Winter Institute in Cincinnati, Ohio, Bookselling This Week reported. The scholarships cover the conference fee, a five-night stay at the host hotel, and up to $600 in travel expenses to Wi2024, to be held February 11-14 at the Duke Energy Convention Center.

Individual scholarship recipients are not matched with individual sponsors; instead, a portion of total fees raised by Wi2024 sponsorships are dedicated to funding as many bookseller scholarships for as many new and different stores as possible, the ABA noted. The full list of scholarship winners can be found here.

Barnes & Noble is opening a new location in Roxbury, N.J., early next year, TAPinto Roxbury reported.

The new store will reside in a 14,000-square-foot space in the Shops at the Ledgewood Commons shopping center. For 26 years B&N operated a store inside the Ledgewood Mall in Roxbury, which was demolished about three years ago and turned into the Ledgewood Commons. 

The new store will be "a bit bigger than the old location," per B&N senior director of store planning and design Janine Flanigan. The company is eyeing a mid-January opening date.

Jaci Updike

As part of an effort to drive sales growth, Penguin Random House is promoting three executives: Jaci Updike, president of sales and marketing, is promoted to chief revenue officer, Penguin Random House U.S.; Jeff Weber, senior v-p, director, online & digital sales, is promoted to deputy chief revenue officer, Penguin Random House U.S.; and Michael Rotondo, v-p, online & digital sales, is promoted to senior v-p of online & digital sales.

In a memo to staff, CEO Nihar Malaviya said, "As I shared in the global town hall, our cultural aspirations and commercial objectives are directly linked together. Commercial success, in the form of higher sales and profits, enables us to invest more into publishing even more books that help us achieve our cultural mission... I am confident that under their leadership, our Sales and Consumer Marketing teams will continue to grow our sales by excelling in our mission of publishing great books and connecting them with readers everywhere.

Jeff Weber

Updike began her career at the company as a Bantam Books field rep, and since then, Malaviya said, she "has demonstrated a deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities within our industry and has continuously delivered outstanding results. Steadfast in the face of rapid market transformation, Jaci has been instrumental in expanding our reach and engagement with customers across all physical and digital channels, strengthening our position in the market." In her new position, she will "continue to oversee all aspects of our Sales and Consumer Marketing operations and continue to collaborate with her partners across other Penguin Random House businesses."

Weber has been with the company for 22 years, beginning as a sales rep. Malaviya called him "an innovative, strategic visionary, navigating our company through various marketplace disruptions while delivering exceptional growth and performance in our online and digital channels. Jeff has been a key partner to me and many others in developing and executing our digital strategy, forging strategic alliances with Amazon, Apple, Audible, Google, and Spotify, as well as launching new initiatives and platforms to enhance our online presence and capabilities."

Michael Rotondo

Rotondo has been with the company for more than 10 years, and, Malaviya said, "has been instrumental in optimizing our online merchandising and further improving and refining our operational relationships and processes. By creating and executing innovative and effective campaigns, Michael has driven awareness, discovery, and conversion of our titles and has played a key part in enabling us to best position our books and authors for continued success at the online accounts. In his new role, Michael will continue to oversee our sales efforts at all of our major online accounts and will also take on a more strategic role in shaping our online and digital marketing vision and direction."

Author Max Brallier celebrated the release of The Last Kids on Earth and The Monster Dimension (Viking Books for Young Readers) at Rakestraw Books, Danville, Calif. Pictured: (l.-r.) Rakestraw owner Michael Barnard; Max Brallier; Bel McNeill, owner of Bel and Bunna's children's and YA bookstore in Lafayette, Calif.; bookseller Susan Reckers (it was her birthday, hence the champagne); and (front) novelist Nidhi Chanani (Super Bobo Café).

"Congratulations to @rpalase17 and his now fiancé," Thunder Road Books, Spring Lake, N.J., posted on Instagram. "Thank you for trusting Thunder Road Books to help pull off this surprise engagement! Seriously, is there any place better to propose than amongst the greatest love stories?"

"Give thanks for great books" was the early holiday message on the sidewalk chalkboard at the Bookworm, Bernardsville, N.J., which noted: "We're grateful for good reads all year round! What book are you thankful you read this year?! We always love to hear about your favorites!"

Simon & Schuster will handle worldwide sales and distributions in all formats for She Writes Press and SparkPress, effective August 1, 2024.

She Writes Press is known for its catalogue of female-authored books, primarily literary and commercial fiction and memoir. SparkPress has a niche in both commercial and genre fiction, in addition to YA and middle grade fiction.

K. Kerimian

K. Kerimian has joined P&T Knitwear in New York City as events & outreach coordinator. Before joining P&T, Kerimian was the events coordinator at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn and the bookmobile manager for the House of SpeakEasy. They currently head the queer mutual aid initiative the Nonbinarian Book Bike and serve on the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association board.

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At Scholastic:

Shifa Kapadwala has been promoted to senior manager, global brand publicity.

Kelsey Albertson has been promoted to manager, special market sales.

End of the Hour: A Therapist's Memoir by Meghan Riordan Jarvis (Zibby Books).

Apple TV+ has released a trailer for Masters of the Air, based on Donald L. Miller's book Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the War Against Nazi Germany. The nine-episode limited series will release its first two episodes on January 26, 2024, with new episodes dropping each Friday until March 15. 

Written by John Orloff, the series stars Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Barry Keoghan, Josiah Cross, Branden Cook, and Ncuti Gatwa. 

Hailing from Apple Studios, Masters of the Air is executive produced by Steven Spielbeg through Amblin Television, and Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman for Playtone. Amblin Television's Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey co-executive produce alongside Playtone’s Steven Shareshian and writer Orloff. Graham Yost also serves as co-executive producer. Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, Cary Joji Fukunaga, Dee Rees, and Tim Van Patten will direct.

Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury) has won the £10,000 (about $12,200) Goldsmiths Prize, which, in association with the New Statesman, honors "mould-breaking fiction." Organizers said that Cuddy incorporates "poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts [and] retells the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, the unofficial patron saint of the North of England."

Chair of judges Dr. Tom Lee said: "Benjamin Myers' Cuddy is a book of remarkable range, virtuosity and creative daring. A millennia-spanning epic told in a multitude of perfectly realised voices, this visionary story of St Cuthbert and the cathedral built in his honour echoes through the ages. The reader comes away with a renewed and breathless sense of what a novel of this ambition is capable of."

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The longlist has been selected for the $35,000 Aspen Words Literary Prize, sponsored by Aspen Words, a program of the Aspen Institute, which honors "a work of fiction that illuminates a vital contemporary issue." Finalists will be announced on March 13, 2024, and the winner on April 25.

The longlist:
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Pantheon)
Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilal (Simon & Schuster)
Witness by Jamel Brinkley (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa by Stephen Buoro (Bloomsbury)
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (Grove Press)
The Laughter by Sonora Jha (HarperVia)
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jiménez (Grand Central Publishing)
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang (Morrow)
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai (Viking Press)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Riverhead Books)
When Trying to Return Home: Stories by Jennifer Maritza McCauley (Counterpoint Press)
The People Who Report More Stress: Stories by Alejandro Varela (Astra House)
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner)
Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead Books)

Nick Bantock is best known for his groundbreaking Griffin and Sabine books. The first trilogy of the series stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for three years and was published in 18 languages. Critics described his marriage of art and literature as the birth of a new genre. As an author-artist, Bantock has created 35 titles, including The Venetian's Wife, The Forgetting Room, and The Museum at Purgatory. He was born in the U.K. and trained as a fine artist; for many years, he was a leading book cover artist in London. Bantock lives in Victoria, British Columbia. The Corset and the Jellyfish (Tachyon, November 7, 2023) is a collection of illustrated stories.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

A hundred 100-word stories. Tiny, richly illustrated tales that pull you into a multiplicity of wondrous-strange worlds in the blink of an eye.

On your nightstand now:

Just finished Tombland by C.J. Sansom and Warlight by Michael Ondaatje. There's a point in Warlight where the young narrator is helping smuggle greyhounds to and from a London racetrack. There's a scene where he's sitting on a drifting canal barge at two in the morning that gave me such a sense of hiraeth that I could have sworn I was sitting next to him.

Favorite book when you were a child:

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome. As a young lad, I remember laughing so hard, I fell out of bed. I've never gone back to it, for fear of finding out it wasn't quite as funny as I thought it was.

Your top five authors:

Kurt Vonnegut--his books changed the way I saw the world; John Steinbeck; Ursula K. Le Guin; John le Carré; Michael Ondaatje.

My tomorrow's list would almost certainly be quite different.

Book you've faked reading:

I can't be bothered to pretend. If it feels badly written or pompous or self-indulgent, I tend to give it the hoof pretty promptly.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Wouldn't be my choice of word, but I get the drift. Three books I've repeatedly recommended:

East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Such a marvelously written (still modern) story about time, place, and the human condition.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters. Best tale of twisting intrigue I've encountered.

Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, the first book in the Gormenghast trilogy. To my mind, it is the gothic fantasy book that everything has to live up to.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I was a cover artist for many years, so this is a loaded question for me. In truth, I refuse to buy a book with a poor cover. I'll wait for another imprint, rather than encourage bad art. Last book I bought because of the cover (and the title) was The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. And lo, I loved the story.

Book you hid from your parents:

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence. The well-thumbed pages were a complete giveaway.

Book that changed your life:

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I read it in The Hague when I was 17. A small book with a massive message.  

Favorite line from a book:

Struth, that's an impossible ask. Instead, here's one of my favourite opening lines: "In eighteenth-century France there lived a man who was one of the most gifted and abominable personages in an era that knew no lack of gifted and abominable personages." That's from Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume.

Who wouldn't want to know what follows?

Five books you'll never part with:

That's a tough one, because it suggests the specific physical copy of the book is significant. I'm not very sentimental, so my idea of a keeper is a rare book that contains wisdoms and is also an object of beauty. One that jumps to mind is a lovely early illustrated copy of The Rubáyát of Omar Khayyám. I memorized my first literary line from it: " 'Tis all a Chequer-board of Nights and Days/ Where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays."

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

Slaughterhouse-Five by Vonnegut. In retrospect, it taught me that I had a place in the world and that I was free to express my thoughts and ideas.

Top five books you'll probably never read, even though other folks say they are brilliant:

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry; One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez; Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie; War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. My reasons for not reading these classics are varied, but mostly it comes down to the word daunting.

Behind You Is the Sea, Susan Muaddi Darraj's third work of fiction, is a shimmering composite portrait of a Palestinian American community in Baltimore. Across nine stellar linked stories, she explores the complex relationships between characters divided by--or connected despite--class, language, and traditional values.

Each of the stories--four in first-person narrative, five in third-person--spotlights a particular character. For pregnant high-schooler Reema Baladi, her father's death inspires her to keep the baby as a replacement vessel for her love, in "A Child of Air." Reema's younger sister, Maysoon, cleans wealthy Demetri Ammar's house in the title piece, set 17 years later. Though both families are Palestinian American, they're in different leagues. Reema works two jobs; Maysoon drives an ancient Buick the Ammars are ashamed to have in their driveway. But money isn't everything: Reema's son Gabriel aces AP Calculus, while the Ammar boy fails.

A third major family is the Salamehs, cousins to the Ammars. Introduced in "Ride Along," police officer Marcus Salameh had never visited Palestine before accompanying his father's corpse in "Escorting the Body." His emotions are complicated: Baba wouldn't speak to Marcus's sister, Amal--first for having an abortion, then for marrying a Black man. And yet Baba showed extraordinary compassion to Rita, who was imprisoned and tortured during the First Intifada.

Interracial marriage again fuels conflict in "Mr. Ammar Gets Drunk at the Wedding," which highlights the racist microaggressions Darraj's characters sometimes experience. "The Hashtag," the standout in a very strong collection, reprises the theme of the repression of women's sexuality. Soon after Rania Mahfouz's husband returns from his cousin Rasha's funeral in Palestine, Twitter blows up with allegations that Rasha was the victim of a familial honor killing.

Meanwhile, Rania petitions for quality education for her learning-disabled son, aided by Arabic-speaking lawyer Samirah Awadah. Samirah, a domestic violence survivor navigating her father's dementia, stars in "Worry Beads." In the touching "Cleaning Lentils," Ammar daughter Hiba's grandparents--culturally, a world apart--offer the tender care she needs to recover from disordered eating. And in "Gyroscopes," Hiba's science-loving friend, Layla Marwan, futilely objects to stereotyped representations of Arabs in a production of Aladdin.

Darraj (A Curious Land) depicts the variety of immigrant and second-generation experience (especially women's), probing cultural and generational differences in a sensitive, life-affirming way. "The Arabs were a people that knew life could be horrifically unjust... and yet they cherished it." --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: This compassionate novel-in-stories, set in a Palestinian American community, prioritizes the experiences of young women and explores class and cultural divides that surround three families.

In case you missed it, Wednesday was the fourth annual I Read Canadian Day/Des Livres Canadiens Pour Moi, "a national celebration of Canadian books for young people, with the goal of elevating the genre and celebrating the breadth and diversity of these books." The IRC committee featured virtual presentations for the day, and encouraged schools, libraries, bookstores, daycares, and families to "join the rest of Canada in reading, being read to, or listening to a Canadian book for 15 minutes." Last year, nearly 3,300 registered participants tuned into I Read Canadian Day's two livestreamed events. 

The festivities are made possible through the partnership of Canadian School Libraries, the Canadian Children's Book Centre, the Canadian Society of Children's Authors, Illustrators and Performers, the Ontario Library Association, and the Forest of Reading, and through the financial support of Access Copyright and Orca Book Publishers.

Indie booksellers checking in on social media for #IReadCanadianDay included:

Beggar's Banquet Books, Gananoque, Ont.: "We're always celebrating Canadian books, but today, on I Read Canadian Day, we're giving one away too! Buy a Canadian book of any genre today and have a chance to win a gift card of the same value."

Mabel's Fables Children's Bookstore, Toronto: "Happy #ireadcanadianday ! Of course, it is always a good day to read Canadian, but especially today!"

Carrefour Atlantic Emporium and the Puffin Gallery, Halifax, N.S.: "Happy #IReadCanadian day! We are always well stocked with the best books in (Atlantic) Canada!"

Noting that "the yearly event is the perfect time to take the pulse of the performance of books by Canadian contributors in the market," BookNet Canada reported that the number of titles by Canadian contributors in the BiblioShare database has been consistently increasing. From January 2020 to October 2023, the number of titles with a Canadian marker increased by 23%, with 8% of that gain happening from January 2022 to October 2023. 

According to SalesData, however, from 2017 to 2022, the overall sales of Canadian titles decreased by 13%, with the most significant drop happening in 2022 when sales dropped by 9% compared to 2021. In 2021, there was a noteworthy uptick in sales of 6% compared to 2020.

"While these stats might seem alarming, it's important to keep in mind that the sales of Canadian-contributor books represented around 12% of all sales in most of those years. This remained pretty consistent with the exception of 2017, where it rose to 13.3%," BookNet Canada noted.

Another factor was that 2017 to 2019 were exceptional years for books by Canadian authors, including Rupi Kaur's The Sun and Her Flowers, Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life, Greta Podleski's Yum and Yummer, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments. The impact of the Covid pandemic--business closures, supply-chain disruptions, concerns around the economy--also contributed to the recent sales dip.

BookNet Canada's Canadian Leisure & Reading Study 2022 reported that 24% of survey respondents read books by or about Canadians or locals the previous year. Additionally, many respondents displayed awareness of significant Canadian book awards, with the top three more widely known being the Governor General's Literary Awards (29%), Scotiabank Giller Prize (27%), and Canada Reads (25%). "Although high awareness doesn't automatically result in increased sales or borrowing of Canadian books, these figures are promising and reflect a positive trend," BookNet Canada wrote.

Unreleased data from the Canadian Book Consumer survey during the first half of 2023 shows that the desire to discover local or regional Canadian authors was a reason for visiting a bookstore in person (4%), a bookstore online (3%), and a public library (7%). In fact, 25% of respondents said they actively search for books about Canada and regions within Canada, and 28% said they search for books by Canadian authors and illustrators.

As it happens, I accidentally celebrated I Read Canadian Day last weekend by finishing a brilliant book: We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing by Dr. Jillian Horton, which recently won the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Nonfiction.

The book chronicles five days that Horton, a general internist, spent at a Zen center in upstate New York with a group of other burned-out physicians ("It dawns on me--I mean, really dawns on me. This is Doctor Rehab."). 

In addition to sharing her grudging response to retreat assignments ("Noticing the breath. Breath is a vital sign. I was trained to notice other people's breath.... But nobody ever instructed me to notice my own breath.") and her fellow retreatants ("I look normal, though. I look the same as anyone else here, except for the blue hair. Maybe I am the same as anyone else here. Maybe this is normal."), Horton weaves a story of personal and professional challenges. It's a compelling mix.

Horton is not a doctor writing a book; she's a writer who became a doctor for complicated reasons, personal as well as professional. She actually turned down a full scholarship to Oxford for a Ph.D. in English to go to medical school.

"Sometimes people ask why so many doctors are writers," she observes. "But maybe the question really should be, why do so many writers put themselves through the unmistakable hell of becoming doctors?" And later she writes: "Why am I here? To learn to breathe, or to stop holding my breath?"

It was a great week to be reading Canadian.