Wicked Good Books, Salem, Mass., will be relocating to 260 Essex Street, where co-owners Denise Kent and Mike Gibson opened Silly Bunny Toys & Books this past summer. After nearly a decade in Derby Square, the bookstore will close tomorrow, November 15, and reopen by Sunday, November 19. 

Silly Bunny will also be closed during this time to facilitate the integration. The two stores will operate under one roof. Wicked Good Books' website, e-mail, and telephone will remain the same, but Silly Bunny's telephone number will be retired.

In a notice to customers, the owners said: "It's been both challenging and immensely rewarding to contribute to the cultural community in this very special place since 2014. This move allows us to continue providing thoughtful curation and literary events, and financial support to so many valuable community partners, such as Salem Main Streets, Salem Book Buddies, PALS Animal Life Savers, and the Salem Athenaeum, to name just a few.

"Additionally, we will have the advantages of both handicap accessibility and parking, with the Sewall Street lot just behind our building. We look forward to this next chapter in our bookstore's life, and appreciate your kindness and support over the past decade and in the years to come."

Under the Umbrella bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah, will host a grand opening celebration tomorrow, November 15, for its new cafe. "After months of dust, construction and anticipation, our in-store Umbrella Cafe is open to customers looking for a queer space to sit and sip," noted the two-year-old "queer bookstore, sharing and celebrating queer books written by queer authors and offering a safe, sober, and accessible space for 2SLGBTQIA+ people to gather."

Like the bookstore, Umbrella Cafe prioritizes queer-owned businesses to source its cafe offerings, serving LGBTQ-owned locals including Sweet Hazel & Co., Hans Kombucha and SLC Underground Sweets. Other queer sources include Queer Wave Coffee, Apostate Coffee, PARU Matcha, Sis Got Tea, Pink House Alchemy syrups and Bee Wild honey.  

To commemorate the bookshop's second anniversary and cafe opening, UTU will be holding a weekend Birthday Bash and Supporting Member Drive on Saturday in appreciation of supporters of the shop so far, and to rally excitement for the future of the bookstore. This will coincide with the November Queer Makers' pop-up. 

From Idlewild Co.

At the Potter's House in Washington, D.C., cards are "always huge," bookseller Aliza Cohen reported, and with the holidays approaching they're "picking up even faster." Cohen sources a variety of seasonal cards from makers on Faire, such as Idlewild Co., and Root & Branch Paper Co. Stickers also do well as impulse buys, with the store carrying lots of options from Fabulously Feminist. Cohen noted that around this time of year the bookstore sees an uptick in enamel pins and socks, with Band of Weirdos and Conscious Step being popular suppliers.

After experimenting with prints in the past, Cohen has brought in some new prints from "new and nifty artists" that are doing "better than anticipated." Cohen has focused on prints related to literature, nature, and social justice, and some of the store's more popular prints have come from Fabulously Feminist and Citizen Ruth. The bookstore tries to emphasize local makers and artists in general, with Cohen adding that next month the Potter's House will host a holiday bazaar full of "local creators of all sorts." And on the subject of the holidays, Cohen has brought in 2024 calendars (Cécile Berrubé) along with Christmas ornaments (the Winding Road), stickers, wintry craft kits, and more for the season.

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From Maileg

Benjamin Rybeck, general manager of House of Books in Kent, Conn., reported that the store has been trying to "elevate our children's sidelines" after recently hiring a children's specialist. They've brought in toys and stuffed animals made by the Danish company Maileg, which Rybeck described as "really beautiful" and "very European." House of Books has also started carrying games for the first time, with Rybeck and his team approaching it with "a little more of a boutique mindset." Rather than carry the Hasbro classics, they are prioritizing games like those produced by Keymaster Games.

Asked about perennial favorites, Rybeck pointed to Calyan candles and Leuchtturm journals. He remarked that for the first time in his bookselling career, he's reached the "mythical percentage" of 20% of sales being sidelines and gifts, and House of Books has done it by dedicating about a fifth of the store. The gifts section has "kind of developed its own clientele," and he said he feels that integrating sidelines with books is less important than making sure the nonbook section and the book section match aesthetically and holistically.

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Puzzle display at Cottage Book Shop

In Glen Arbor, Mich., the Cottage Book Shop has had success with jigsaw puzzles featuring "iconic scenes of our area," said store owner Sue Boucher. Some have featured paintings by local artists while others have featured photographs, and they've been "perennial bestsellers." Though the bookstore is open year-round, it is a "resort type store," busiest in the summer, and Boucher and her team have found that "people love the gifts that evoke the area."

Boucher has also made her own postcards through Vistaprint, and the store sells "hundreds of postcards every year at affordable prices." Cottage Book Shop has also created custom stickers through Stickers Northwest that feature pictures of the area, as well as tote bags from Enviro-Tote that feature an artist's depiction of the bookstore. Cottage Book Shop does very well with greeting cards, many of which Boucher sources through Faire, and the shop has had success with Jellycat toys as well as stickers, candles, buttons, and magnets. --Alex Mutter

If you are interested in having your store appear in a future Sidelines Snapshot article, please e-mail alex@shelf-awareness.com.

David Ferry, a poet and translator "whose direct, emotionally resonant work plumbing the chasms between the knowable and the unknowable won him broad praise and honors late in his career, including the National Book Award when he was 86," died November 5, the New York Times reported. He was 99. Ferry spent nearly 40 years teaching literature at Wellesley College, and "during that time he published just two books, both of poetry, with 23 years between them. He was admired as a critic and a teacher, but not as a poet, except within a small circle of admirers."

After he retired at 65 in 1989, he wrote 10 books over the next 34 years, including five of new and collected poems. Initially he translated classical texts, though he did not know Latin or Greek and lacked a grounding in classical writing. His first post-retirement book, a translation of the ancient Babylonian epic Gilgamesh (1993), was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. He later won praise for translations of the Roman poets Horace and Virgil, including Virgil's epic The Aeneid (2017).

Ferry's reputation as a translator contributed to his poetry being at times overlooked, until he won the National Book Award in 2012 for Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations. Other works include Dwelling Places: Poems and Translations (1993), Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations (1999), and On This Side of the River: Selected Poems (2012). His final book, Some Things I Said, will be published in December by Grolier Poetry Press.

Ferry "spoke of living in a state of constant bewilderment--not just him, but everyone, and everything," the Times wrote. "The world is slippery, and nothing, not even words as concrete and precisely chosen as his, could capture it in full.... Even his poems were bewildered, he said, and believed his job was to help them find their way. When writing, he started with a line and worked it out from there on a path of mutual discovery, both for him and for the poem."

He revered Robert Frost and Wallace Stevens, "and like them wrote in a direct, quietly devastating style. It is not frilly or overly difficult, though in its richness it contains multitudes that reward frequent rereadings," the Times noted, adding that he "deployed metaphor sparingly and precisely, never to show off, as in his poem 'Lake Water,' an elegy to his wife, the critic Anne Ferry":

When, moments after she died, I looked into her face,
It was as untelling as something natural,
A lake, say, the surface of it unreadable,
Its sources of meaning unfindable anymore.
Her mouth was open as if she had something to say;
But maybe my saying so is a figure of speech.

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky told the Boston Globe: "David Ferry inspired many other poets with his penetrating, unique verbal music. Also inspiring to me and many others is David's lifelong devotion to the art of poetry as a source of joyful wonder--for himself, for his friends and students, and for his readers."

Preston Fassel (in tan jacket), co-author (with Chris Grosso) of Necessary Death: What Horror Movies Teach Us About Navigating the Human Experience (HCI), joined Clay McLeod Chapman (recumbent), author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters (Quirk), and 30+ other horror authors for a two-day "Halloween Hangover" event at Barnes & Noble Libbie Place in Richmond, Va.--which sells more horror books than any other B&N location.

Clockwise from top left: Lawrence Baker, Kirsten Benjamin, Nahin Cano, Bryce Lewis

At the Seminary Co-op & 57th Streets Books, Chicago, Ill.:

Lawrence Baker joined the stores as a manager in January after serving as the assistant manager of Brown Elephant Books in Chicago. Baker has held bookselling and not-for-profit roles throughout the city, including with Borders and Amazon Books.

Kirsten Benjamin joined the stores in August as events and marketing manager. Benjamin had been event coordinator and bookseller at Browseabout Books, Rehoboth Beach, Del., and has 10 years of experience in event management, sales, and marketing in the bookselling and entertainment industries.

Bryce Lucas will rejoin the bookstores this December as a manager after working with the membership manager for the Independent College Bookstore Association. Lucas began at the Seminary Co-op Bookstores as a part-time bookseller and has served in various roles with the bookstores for more than five years, including, most recently, Seminary Co-op manager.

Nahin Cano will also join the stores in December as a manager. Cano, who was most recently manager at City Lit Books in Chicago, began her career in bookselling at Semicolon Bookstore, where she served as general manager.

Posted on Instagram by Bookeater, Rochester, N.Y.: "We wanted to wait until after Halloween to post this because there's absolutely nothing scary about these beautiful photos. Thank you to this lovely couple for sharing your beautiful engagement pictures with us. They really make us see our space in an even brighter light.  (Photography by @ashleigh.campbell.photography)
Congratulations to the lovely couple, and thank you again for choosing our store for your special day."

Light, Fire, & Abundance by Misty Bell Stiers (Apollo Publishers).

Today:
Fresh Air: Brian Stelter, author of Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy (Atria/One Signal, $30, 9781668046906).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Terese Schlachter and Gregory Gadson, authors of Finding Waypoints: A Warrior's Journey Towards Peace and Purpose (Schaffner Press, $28, 9781639642049).

The View: Mark Harmon, author of Ghosts of Honolulu: A Japanese Spy, A Japanese American Spy Hunter, and the Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (Harper Select, $29.99, 9781400337019).

Tonight Show: Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, author of The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are (One World, $26.99, 9780593446928).

Additional casting has been revealed for the upcoming Broadway premiere of The Outsiders, a musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton's novel and Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film, Playbill reported. Previews begin March 16, 2024 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, with opening night set for April 11. 

Newly added to the cast are Joshua Boone (Skeleton Crew) as Dallas Winston, Emma Pittman (Chicago) as Cherry Valance, Daryl Tofa (Back to the Future) as Two-Bit Mathews, and Kevin William Paul as Bob Sheldon. They join previously announced stars Brody Grant as Ponyboy, Brent Comer as Darrel, Jason Schmidt as Sodapop, and Sky Lakota-Lynch (Dear Evan Hansen) as Johnny.

The musical adaptation features a book by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine and music and lyrics by Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Levine. The first track,  "Great Expectations," is now available from the forthcoming Sony Masterworks Broadway cast recording, which will be released next year. 

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (Riverhead Books) is the 2023 Barnes & Noble Book of the Year, voted on by B&N booksellers. B&N CEO James Daunt commented: "Everyone who reads The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store becomes a passionate advocate for the book. You just want others to share in the sheer pleasure it gives."

McBride said, "I would have never dreamed a book about a simple grocery store would make this kind of difference in the world. But love makes everything possible. Books make noise, but love moves the world. It is the greatest story plot imaginable. It lets us heal the world one book at a time."

David Grann

The inaugural Barnes & Noble Author of the Year Award has gone to David Grann.

Shannon Devito, B&N's senior director of books, said, "David Grann's body of work has been beloved by both readers and our booksellers since his very first book, The Lost City of Z. With the release of this year's The Wager, Grann has cemented himself as a go-to recommendation for death-defying and meticulously researched nonfiction. Booksellers across the country love to sell anything by David, and the votes unequivocally reflected their love and respect for him."

Grann said, "As a writer I'm rarely speechless, but this is one of those times.... I am so grateful to James Daunt and the extraordinary B&N team of booksellers not only for this selection but for their unwavering support over the years, beginning with my first book in 2009 and continuing now with Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager."

The winner of the inaugural Cercador Prize for Literature in Translation is Zoë Perry for her translation of Of Cattle and Men by Ana Paula Maia (Charco Press). The prize was co-founded by Pacific Northwest book workers Justin Walls and Spencer Ruchti to recognize works of literature in translation as selected by a committee of independent booksellers across the U.S. Ruchti serves as the inaugural committee chair.

The prize committee said, "Of Cattle and Men lays bare the brutal labor of the slaughterhouse trade. Zoë Perry's translation from the Portuguese is steadfast in its interpretation of agricultural life in rural Brazil, and remarkable in its ability to render the subtle surrealism and overwhelming bloodshed of Ana Paula Maia's new breed of western. Maia implicates our senseless treatment of animals as product and the trauma inflicted on workers in the name of industry. Of Cattle and Men doesn't demand a change in diet, but it does demand the reader's absolute attention."

Ruchti noted that the committee "considered not only the literary quality and cultural value of each nominated translation, but also its potential audience--in other words, our customers. Of Cattle and Men tells a profound story about the violence behind mass consumption, through genre elements traditional to both westerns and horror novels. It's a book that conjures vital dialogue."

Zoë Perry, who receives $1,000, is a Canadian-American translator who has translated work by several contemporary Portuguese-language authors, including Sevastopol by Emilio Fraia (New Directions), All Dogs Are Blue by Rodrigo de Souza Leão (And Other Stories), Elza: The Girl by Sérgio Rodrigues (Amazon Crossing), and two books by Paulo Coelho (Knopf). Perry was awarded a PEN/Heim grant for her translation of Veronica Stigger's Opisanie Swiata. She is a founding member of the Starling Bureau, a translators collective.

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The winners have been chosen for the 2023 National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose, sponosred by the American Literary Translators Association:

Prose: Chinatown by Thuận, translated from Vietnamese by Nguyễn An Lý (New Directions | Tilted Axis)
Poetry: The Threshold by Iman Mersal, translated from Arabic by Robyn Creswell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Manjula Martin's powerful debut memoir, The Last Fire Season, combines an eyewitness account of pandemic-era wildfires in California with reflections on living with chronic pain. In thoughtful, sharply observed chapters, Martin draws a layered portrait of her beloved northern California landscapes. She investigates the extractive, damaging practices that have left the land more vulnerable to drought, wildfires, and other natural disasters. Driven to learn more, and to find a sustainable way forward, Martin interviews park rangers, naturalists, community workers, and experts (many of whom are Indigenous) on "good fire" to understand how humans can better live in healthy relationship to the land.

Martin writes with deep affection of her "little white house under big red trees on stolen land" in the western forest of Sonoma County; she details the process of making it a home, alongside her partner, Max. Raised by hippie parents in Santa Cruz, Martin was eager to return to the landscape of her youth, but her adult perspective was more sobering than her child's eyes: she knew it was a matter of when, not if, destructive fires came to this land. She details her obsessive checking of the weather and fire patterns; the ever-present "go bag" by the door; the effects of smoke and poor air quality on both the garden and her own lungs; and her neighbors' various responses to the wildfires of the early 2020s. The Covid-19 pandemic, of course, made everything more complicated, including first responders' ability to handle wildfires and residents' decisions to evacuate or stick it out. Martin and Max evacuate more than once, but (for now) they always return to their chosen home, hoping they and the land can thrive after fire.

Alongside Martin's narrative of fire-prone landscapes, she unfurls the story of her own injury (due to a faulty IUD), and her frustrating experiences with the healthcare system. By the time the wildfires come to dominate her life, Martin's body is in chronic pain (of varying intensities). She considers what it means to live in a vulnerable body on a vulnerable planet, where tools exist to mitigate both sets of challenges, but simple solutions are out of reach. She asks thoughtful questions about where to go from here: local and state governments, conservation groups, Indigenous organizations, and ordinary citizens all must play a part. Martin also pays tribute to the mesmerizing, sometimes cleansing, undeniably powerful nature of fire itself: it may be complicated and sometimes dangerous, but it is worthy of respect and care--like the land and the creatures it affects. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Manjula Martin's powerful debut memoir weaves together an eyewitness account of California wildfires with her experiences of chronic pain.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. A Fire in the Flesh by Jennifer L. Armentrout
2. The Graham Effect by Elle Kennedy
3. Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
4. Twisted Love by Ana Huang
5. The Growth Leader by Scott K. Edinger
6. King of Greed by Ana Huang
7. King of Wrath by Ana Huang
8. Twisted Games by Ana Huang
9. Hooked by Emily McIntire
10. Love Redesigned by Lauren Asher

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]