Notes: Landlord of Dutton's Brentwood Says 'I Was Wrong'
After a major public outcry, Charles T. Munger, the
billionaire landlord of Dutton's Brentwood Books, who had wanted to
build condos on the site of the store, now intends to build a two-story
retail complex "that would retain Dutton's Brentwood Books in a new and
improved space" and build the new bookstore first, the Los Angeles Times reported. He also said he would charge "a very low" rent.
"I was wrong," Munger told the paper. "Bookstores are fragile. Jostle
them slightly and they never reopen. The best thing is to make sure it
never closes."
Owner Doug Dutton called the plans "wonderful for the store" and "wonderful for the neighborhood."
Left up in the air are efforts by the daughter of the architect of the complex to designate it a historical-cultural monument.
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BookExpo America has shuffled its show deck: in 2010, BEA will be
held in Washington, D.C., and in 2011 the show will be held in Las
Vegas, Nev., reversing its previous order.
The main reason for
the move was "scheduling conflicts outside of our control at the Las
Vegas Convention Center," event director Lance Fensterman said in a
statement. He called the site switcheroo "the least disruptive move BEA
could make" and said the show is committed to moving around the country
in an "equitable" way.
So now, for future reference, show dates are:
- 2008: Los Angeles, May 29-June 1
- 2009: New York City, May 28-31
- 2010: Washington, D.C., June 3-6
- 2011: Las Vegas, June 9-12
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In an especially cheerful story, Bookselling This Week talked with three owners of the 12 new bookstores that joined the ABA during June. The dozen stores, BTW
said, reflect "the diversity of which independent booksellers are proud
. . . these newest members include general, children's, and new
age booksellers, as well as one store with a focus on revolution."
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Booksellers
are invited to apply to the International Booksellers Seminar,
sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German Foreign Office,
which runs October 11-20. During the seminar, participants will attend
the fair, visit bookstores, wholesalers and publishing companies, work
briefly at a bookstore, see a library and more. The seminar will be
conducted in English.
The program is open to 18 booksellers from
non-German-speaking countries who have an interest in importing German
books. The cost is €290 (about $395), travel to Germany not included.
Application forms can be found at book-fair.com/scholarship_programmes/. The deadline for applications is July 15.
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In August 2008, Barnes & Noble plans to open a store in Stuart, Fla., in the Stuart Towne Center at U.S. Highway 1 and S.E. Dominica Terrace.
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"Is Ventura 2007--population 100,916, with a swanky restaurant and wine bar for practically every resident--really a 'Book Town'?" asked the VC Reporter in response to a proposal the city council will consider that would name Ventura, Calif., "an International Book City."
"The meaning would be to recognize the uniqueness of the many different types of bookstores Ventura has," said Clarey Rudd, owner of Bank of Books and Abednego Book Shoppe and the person who brought this possibility to the city's attention. "Too often, one overlooks the very good things in the community, then they lose it and discover their loss. It's a healthy thing for a city to recognize what's here."
The VC Reporter was a bit less enthusiastic, noting that "in comparison to most other Book Towns, the number of local mom-and-pop bookshops is rather paltry."
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Few things get newspaper readers more fired up than Top 10 lists. In early June, the Chicago Tribune featured its 10 favorite bookstores, including Anderson's Bookshop, Bookman's Alley, the Book Stall at Chestnut Court, Centuries & Sleuths, Gemini Fine Books & Arts, Powell's Bookstore, Prairie Avenue Bookshop, Quimby's Bookstore, Seminary Co-op Bookstore and Women & Children First.
Tribune readers were invited to disagree, and they accepted the invitation. This week the Tribune added two dozen readers' suggestions to the list. Was anybody left out?
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Oh-oh, Canada . . .
"This isn't a eulogy for a defunct Canadian book business," Kathleen O'Hara wrote in a cautionary piece about BookExpo Canada, published in the Peterborough (Ontario) Examiner. "That would be much too extreme. But it is a note of concern."
O'Hara expressed reservations about the pressure now being placed on writers to serve as multimedia marketers of their work: "I must confess that I am one of the multitude of hopeful novelists, and I'm beginning to find today's ultra-competitive, multimedia environment very daunting. Facebook and YouTube are not where I want to flog my work and myself. Perhaps, I need to attend the Paris Hilton School of Self-Promotion."
On a more positive note, she was impressed with the bookselling passion of Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Robinson in New York City, who said, "Can you imagine a world without bookstores? . . . I really believe that book professionals are different than most. At all meetings such as this, we can take as a given that we are all here first and foremost because we have been inspired by literature to devote our work to it."
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In Alberta, the Banff Craig & Canyon explored the respective efforts of a Canadian and an American bookseller, both of whom feel they are battling to save their communities' retail souls. The pair are "Gabi Wedin of the Banff Book & Art Den, who launched a campaign to have chain stores banned in favour of community character," and Wendy Hudson, owner of Nantucket Bookworks in Nantucket, Mass.
While their quests have certain similarities, a significant difference is that "while Wedin's campaign has sparked some serious conversations with Banff policy makers and is set to be up for debate once again in the Banff community plan, Hudson has already been successful. Last year, in April, chain stores were banned from Nantucket after she brought up the issue in a town meeting in 2005."
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Granfalloon Books has opened in Chardon, Ohio, the Willoughby News-Herald reported. The new bookshop takes its name from Cat's Cradle, in which Kurt Vonnegut "defined a granfalloon as a group of people who have a shared purpose, but whose association is meaningless."
Owner Keith Gottschalk suggested that granfalloon "has two meanings. Vonnegut said, 'If you wish to study a granfalloon, just remove the skin of a toy balloon.' Something looks big, but when you pop it, it's just air. . . . I thought it's literary and kind of cute."
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Mary Sheldon, former manager of Tecolote BookShop, Montecito, Calif., is now the owner, having purchased the business from Peggy Dent. According to the Montecito Journal, Sheldon acknowledged the contribution of "three book-loving partners: Montecito residents Herb Simon and Len Freedman, and Austin, Texas-based Marc Winkelman."
"I want people to know that without them [her partners] Montecito might have lost its only bookstore," she said, adding that "anybody investing in an independent book store is really doing it as a labor of love. Book selling is a fairly unique business. I like to think of it as a profession. I don't know of anyone who runs an independent book store that doesn't absolutely love books. We're all willing to take the reward we get from choosing the right book for the right customer as our pay, instead of making tons of money."
The Bronx Is Burning, an eight-part weekly miniseries
chronicling the summer of 1977 in New York, when the Son of Sam
terrorized the city, arsonists seemed to work every night and the New York Yankees won the World Series, will
air on ESPN beginning next Monday, July 9. The miniseries is based on Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City by Jonathan Mahler (Picador, $15, 9780312424305/0312424302). The movie tie-in edition is called The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City (Picador, $15, 9780312427023/0312427026).
Avi's (Crispin at the Edge of the World) tale of the first conflict between two iron-clad ships, which helped decide the fate of the Civil War, is as immediate as they come. Even the most reluctant reader will be swept up in the events as related by 13-year-old Tom Carroll. As the story opens in a cold January 1862 in Brooklyn, N.Y., Tom's family is still reeling from the news of his father's death while serving in Brooklyn's Fourteenth Regiment. Both Tom's mother and his 17-year-old sister take in officers' washing for $2 per week each, but without his father's salary they are struggling. That's how Tom winds up in Rowland's Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, "bolting Ericsson's floating battery together." Through Tom's eyes and his curiosity, readers learn how the Monitor, nicknamed "Iron Thunder," gets built, from its hull, which rises only 18" above the water's surface, to the innovative moving turret that allows the gunmen to shift among targets. They have 100 days to finish her, as they race against the Rebels who are building a "sea monster," also coated in iron, officially called the Virginia, but widely known by its earlier name, the Merrimac. If the skepticism does not raise the stakes enough (onlookers call the Monitor an "iron coffin," and indeed she weighs 120 tons without her guns), a Rebel spy stalks Tom throughout the book, attempting to find out the ship's secrets. Tom introduces readers to a host of colorful characters, from Garrett Falloy, the class bully-turned-hero who helps Tom ward off the Reb spy, to Swedish Captain Ericsson, who engineered the Monitor, to Captain John Worden, who would sail her. The book culminates in the clash between the two iron-clads at Hampton Roads, where the Monitor's mission is to save the Union's naval blockade. Science, history and adventure come together in this tale of suspense and intrigue that illuminates one of the more unusual aspects of the war that helped determine the nation we take for granted today.--