"Oh gosh, independent bookstores have been at the very core of things for me!... Right now, when I finish this interview, I'm walking to go meet a friend for dinner in my neighborhood, Echo Park. I will stop in at Stories, a wonderful local bookstore, sceney in a cool and vibrant and not an obnoxious way, with a very hand-picked selection of new titles by the front.

"And if I can get up the courage, I'll also stop at Des Pair, which was started by some young people in Echo Park and is the absolute center of a certain poetry scene but I've been too intimidated to go inside! The kids, you see, are into books and bookstores! Indie bookstores are hip! They are cool! And they are also the soul of the world I want to live in, and, luckily, do."

--Rachel Kushner, whose novel Creation Lake (Scribner) is the #1 September Indie Next List pick, in a q&a with Bookselling This Week

On Wednesday morning at NEIBA's 51st annual fall conference, held in Newton, Mass., a group of knowledgeable booksellers, bookstore owners, and industry professionals greeted newcomers to NEIBA and bookselling at the "New-to-NEIBA Bootcamp" panel. Liz Whitelam, incoming NEIBA board president and owner of Whitelam Books in Reading, Mass., moderated the group which included Sam Kaas, co-owner of the Norwich Bookstore, Norwich, Vt., Keith Arsenault, sales rep, Chesapeake & Hudson, Jason Rice, wholesale rep, Ingram, and Cedar Fields, NEIBA member relations manager and registration coordinator for the American Booksellers Association. The group discussed tips and tricks for attending the conference itself, suggesting newbies talk to everyone, prioritize selfcare, and remember to be judicious about the things they take--"Do take a million things, but maybe a million minus one," Whitelam said, "Because you'll be living with your choices." Kaas and Whitelam gave a primer on attending bookseller conferences--explaining keynotes and how rep pick lunches work--while also giving suggestions on certain traps to avoid as a new store owner: "Make sure you have an understanding of cash flow: what you're going to need, what you can expect, and what you can have on hand."

From l.: Liz Whitelam, Sam Kaas, Keith Arsenault, Jason Rice, and Cedar Fields

Rice and Arsenault spoke about how they as sales reps and wholesale reps can help new bookstores make their opening store order, decide on POS systems, and figure out how to use iPage. While it's a challenge, Rice said, "I can walk you through different things. I like to think of myself as a connection maker." Fields focused on how ABA can help new bookstores and booksellers, telling the room that "ABA has dozens and dozens and dozens of forms of educational content. What we can do is hook you up with resources to make the best decision for your store. Our industry is full of a wealth of knowledge and experience."

In the afternoon, Emily Gilbow of House of Books, Kent, Conn., moderated "The Art of Handselling," featuring Melissa Lavendier, general manager of An Unlikely Story in Plainville, Mass., Lauren Tiedemann, co-owner of Book Ends, Winchester, Mass., and Josh Cook from Porter Square Books, Cambridge, Mass. The group discussed approaching browsing customers, recommendations, and upselling. "I like to coincidentally straighten a shelf near where the customer is," Cook said, "or strategically grab books that need to be shelved. That way it's not a targeted strike on them and it allows for as much conversation as they want." That is what bookselling--as opposed to book "finding"--is about, Lavendier said. "It's more 'conversation selling' than it is 'handselling.' We all love books. Sharing that passion never feels like selling, but that passion translates to sales." That, Gilbow noted, "is what we're really talking about: upselling. How do you approach that?" Lavendier has an unusual approach: "I always say this is probably not the last book they're ever going to read, so you shouldn't feel bad about upselling to them. If it is the last book they're every going to read--if they tell you that this is the last book they're ever going to read--don't upsell." Cook added that "it is much easier to get someone who is already spending $45 to spend $60 than it is to get someone who wasn't planning on spending any money to spend $15."

From l.: Melissa Lavendier, Emily Gilbow, Lauren Tiedemann, and Josh Cook

The group also discussed the "build a basket" technique and how to effectively use social media to handsell. Tiedemann said her booksellers don't only "build baskets" with individual customers while handselling, they also use the technique for displays: "You have the anchor book that customers are familiar with and then surround it with similar books and related items." Social media, the panelists said, is an additional way to handsell. "Go with what your booksellers know," Cook said, "If they're on Instagram, pitch books there. If they're on TikTok, pitch books there." Lavendier pointed out that "comfortability is a very important part of social media," but the more people from your store who are a part of your media presence, "the more reflective that is of your community." On most Tuesdays, Tiedemann records employees who are comfortable with social media quickly pitching a book they're particularly excited about. She also said that employees who are not interested in social media can still take part in this brand of handselling--"social media posts do better if there's a human part in the book," she said. "It doesn't have to be a face--it can just be a hand holding the book."

A panel discussing what they called "Backroom Bookselling" and B2B sales was led by Steve Iwanski, founder of Charter Books in Newport, R.I., and included Alex Schaffner, community engagement coordinator of Brookline Booksmith, Brookline, Mass., Katya d'Angelo, owner of Bridgeside Books, Waterbury, Vt., and Kenny Brechner, owner of Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers, Farmington, Maine. "In 2024, it's not enough to hang a sign outside that says 'BOOKS' and expect foot traffic." Iwanski started. "You have to supplement that traffic with what we're calling backroom bookselling: things that take you outside the standard business model." Schaffner expanded: "We're talking about any way you can move a lot of one book or a lot of books to one customer that aren't people walking in off the street." For Brookline Booksmith, Schaffner said this includes corporate orders, acting as prime booksellers for authors, partnerships with the MSPCA, and doing events with people and companies interested in having a person onsite to sell titles. D'Angelo's store focuses on "partnering with other organizations or businesses that we can cross market with--we go the creative route to find new people." And Brechner said he does a lot of outreach with schools, working closely with librarians, teachers, and administrators. "I have two basic principles," Brechner said, "every transaction should benefit everyone involved and you should always ask how you can add value to the transaction."

From l.: Steve Iwanski, Alex Schaffner, Katya d'Angelo, and Kenny Brechner

Suggestions to develop similar partnerships were plentiful: focus on your customer community, your local authors, your reps; create relationships with local business owners and make sure to support them; create "wide and deep" (Brechner) roots with institutions by getting to know several people at companies, non-profits, libraries, and schools; make donations to local non-profits with whom you'd like to work. And, as Schaffner said, "Being organized and competent just one time can be a homerun with these partnerships."

As for B2B selling, "it's a really specific term for when books are being purchased by a customer to be given out by that customer," Schaffner said. Brechner noted that the rules of engagement change from publisher to publisher, but d'Angelo assured the audience it's not hard to begin making these types of sales. "Pulling it off" can be a bit more difficult, though. "When you're starting to make this a part of your business," Schaffner said, "make a process for it. Create a central repository for all your information. Everything follows the exact same trajectory every time--make sure you have a step-by-step process and communicate clearly and frequently with the customer." Brechner and d'Angelo agreed, and Brechner added, "Too much communication is not enough--you need way too much communication." --Siân Gaetano, children's and YA editor, Shelf Awareness

Spencer & Co. bookstore and coffee shop will host its grand opening celebration this weekend at 116 E Robinson St. in Gaffney, S.C. The Spartanburg Post and Courier reported that owner Savannah Spencer, a lifelong reader, had always wanted to open a bookstore, but the idea for a coffee shop came later. The business had its soft opening on September 7, with more than 100 people stopping by the newly renovated building. 

Spencer said she is excited to bring something new to the city's growing historic downtown district. She decided to open her business believing downtown will continue to see additional interest from new ventures and with more people moving to the area business is looking up for merchants.

"I love Gaffney and being downtown," Spencer added "My family is here and I am not going to leave. I decided to open my business, in part because I was tired of having to go all the way to Spartanburg or Greenville since I did not have anywhere like this place to go."

Over the past two months, Spencer has worked to prepare the building for opening. The Post and Courier wrote that there are several rooms in the business designed for different purposes, including one "designated for children while another has tables and chairs for a more casual setting. There's also a room designated for monthly book clubs that will be held after hours. Spencer said her goal is to provide a relaxed setting for customers."

She noted that there has been excitement in the community about her opening since there's a dearth of local coffee shops and bookstores in Gaffney: "I think we will do well. We put in the effort and put in the money to get this started."

Belleville Books, a new and used bookstore coming soon to Belleville, Ill., will open for business on Tuesday, September 24, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.

Located at 120 W. Main St., in an historic bank building, Belleville Books will carry a wide-ranging, diverse inventory for readers of all ages. Stock will be about 25% new titles and 75% used, with donations of gently used books accepted on Saturday afternoons. Nonbook inventory will consist of notebooks, coffee mugs, and other store-branded merchandise.

Owners Steve Matthews and Robert Eckman purchased the building earlier this year and have been overseeing some extensive renovation work. The 112-year-old building also contains a few office spaces, some of which are vacant. The owners may rent those spaces out or, should they decide to expand, make use of them for Belleville Books.

Eckman and Matthews moved to Belleville from Utah, where Eckman was most recently the general manager of the King's English Bookshop. They sold their home in Utah and moved to Belleville specifically to buy the historic bank building and open Belleville Books.

Following the opening on September 24, there will be several days' worth of festivities, with details to be announced.

Landon Y. Jones, who was "the top editor of People magazine in the 1990s, when its profits increased fourfold, and whose fascination with popular culture inspired him to write a 1980 book that helped popularize the term 'baby boomer,' " died on August 17, the New York Times reported. He was 80. An unapologetic champion of the newsworthiness of celebrities, Jones "would say that People, a publication of Time Inc., was about the 'three D's': Diana, diet and death, specifically that of celebrities."

"There were other people at People who dreamed of being on the big book--on Time," said colleague Jeff Jarvis in an interview. "But I never sensed that Lanny was chagrined about being on People. It was the pathway that led to the things that fascinated him, like baby boomers and celebrity. He did it with pride."

Ann S. Moore, People's publisher at the time who went on to preside over Time Inc.'s magazine empire, said Jones had been an enthusiastic partner in redirecting and fattening the corporate cash cow that was People, adding: "We were a great team."

Jones was known for supporting women's careers. Martha Nelson, the founding editor of InStyle, a People spinoff, who went on to become the first female editor in chief of Time Inc. in 2012, said, "Lanny championed me, as well as many others.... Creating a new magazine is a gamble and an experiment, watched by skeptics and critics. Lanny was supportive, protective and understanding every step along the way."

In 1980, Jones wrote Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation, which examined the cultural and political influence of the 75 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964. He later recalled in the Washington Post that he had proposed naming the book The Baby Boomers, but his publisher didn't go for it: " 'Oh, no,' came my publisher's quick answer. 'No one knows what that means. It will confuse booksellers. They will shelve it under Child Care.' "

Jones remained a v-p for strategic planning at Time Inc. until 2000, when he retired at the relatively young age of 57. In retirement, he wrote two books about the explorers Lewis and Clark: The Essential Lewis and Clark (2000) and William Clark and the Shaping of the West (2004). His last book was Celebrity Nation: How America Evolved Into a Culture of Fans and Followers (2023).

Shelf Awareness for Readers, our weekly consumer-facing publication featuring adult and children's book reviews, author interviews, backlist recommendations, and fun news items, is being published today. Starred review highlights include Baking in the American South, in which food writer Anne Byrn provides hundreds of recipes, alongside mouthwatering photos by Allen Rinne, that answer the question, "What makes Southern baking so special?"; The Full Moon Coffee Shop, where feline proprietors prepare "just the right" dishes for their directionless clientele; and, for teen readers, Tigest Girma's Immortal Dark, "a fabulously bloody and intricate reimagining of the vampire myth" that pivots on a treacherous ancient agreement. In The Writer's Life, Jacqueline Woodson takes a look back at her celebrated memoir Brown Girl Dreaming and the role it played in helping her understand the historical context she was born into. Plus, rediscover the late science writer Steve Silberman, whose bestselling book NeuroTribes helped broaden the public's understanding of autism and those diagnosed with it.

Today's issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers is going to 635,000 customers of more than 250 independent bookstores. Stores interested in learning more can contact our partnership program team via e-mail. To see today's issue, click here.

Sporting cool generic touring gear, Brad and Kristi Montague stopped by the Story Shop, Monroe, Ga., while on tour for their new picture book, Fail-A-Bration! (Dial Books).

"WELCOME TO OUR FIRST CATS IN RESIDENCE!!!!!!" Sower Books, Lincoln, Neb., posted on Facebook. "One-year-olds Pixel (female tabby with beautiful markings and the tiniest meows) and her brother Tippy (black with an eensy-weensy white tip on his tail) arrived last night. They were rescued by Guardians for Felines and would love to meet you and find their 'fur' ever home! Ideally, they'd be kept together but are available to be adopted separately.

"We will post more details about the adoption process and their personalities as we get to know them, but for now, you can come meet them anytime during normal store hours!... (And as always, thank you so much to Holly at @lockcitybooks in Lockport, N.Y., for the inspiration and guidance in this bookstore/cat rescue model!)"

"Embrace the beauty of autumn with a good book from the Doylestown Bookshop! Chalk art and design by Bookseller Nick," the Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, Pa., noted in sharing a quotation from Oscar Wilde on its fall foliage-themed sidewalk chalkboard: "And all at once, summer collapsed into fall." 

Kindall Gant is joining Phaidon as senior publicist.

Helping Your Unmotivated Teen: A Parent's Guide to Unlock Your Child's Potential by Melanie McNally (New Harbinger Publications).

Max has released the first trailer for Salem's Lot, an adaptation of Stephen King's 1975 novel, Deadline reported. Directed by Gary Dauberman (It franchise) from his own script, the movie will premiere on the streamer October 3. 

The cast includes Lewis Pullman, Alfre Woodard, Makenzie Leigh, Bill Camp, Spencer Treat Clark, Pilou Asbæk, and John Benjamin Hickey. Dauberman will serve as executive producer. Producers include James Wan and Michael Clear for Atomic Monster; Roy Lee for Vertigo; and Mark Wolper.

The novel was previously adapted into a CBS miniseries, directed by Tobe Hooper and starring David Soul and James Mason, in 1979. 

This week the National Book Foundation is releasing longlists for the 2024 National Book Awards. Finalists will be announced October 1, and winners named November 20 at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony. This year's longlisted titles in the Poetry and Nonfiction categories are:

Poetry
Wrong Norma by Anne Carson (New Directions)
[…] by Fady Joudah (Milkweed Editions)
Life on Earth by Dorianne Laux (Norton)
Spectral Evidence by Gregory Pardlo (Knopf)
Silver by Rowan Ricardo Phillips (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Book of Wounded Sparrows by Octavio Quintanilla (Texas Review Press)
Mother by m.s. RedCherries (Penguin)
Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss (Graywolf Press)
Something About Living by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (University of Akron Press)
Liontaming in America by Elizabeth Willis (New Directions)

Nonfiction
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib (Random House)
Our Moon: How Earth's Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are by Rebecca Boyle (Random House)
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De León (Viking Books) 
Circle of Hope: A Reckoning with Love, Power, and Justice in an American Church by Eliza Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia by Kate Manne (Crown)
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie (Random House)
The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder (Atria/One Signal Publishers)
A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America by Richard Slotkin (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press)
Whiskey Tender by Deborah Jackson Taffa (Harper)
Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (Tiny Reparations Books/PRH)

The winners of the 2024 New England Book Awards, presented last night during the New England Independent Booksellers Association Fall Conference awards banquet:

Fiction: North Woods by Daniel Mason (Random House)
Nonfiction: Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson (Penguin)
Poetry: The Wonder of Small Things by James Crews (Storey Publishing)
Picture Book: Small Things Mended by Casey W Robinson, illustrated by Nancy Whitesides (Rocky Pond Books)
Middle Grade (tie):
Chinese Menu by Grace Lin (Little, Brown)
Timid by Jonathan Todd (Graphix)
Young Adult: Gather by Kenneth Cadow (Candlewick)

photo: Andrew Pyper

Mason Coile is the sci-fi/horror pseudonym for Andrew Pyper. Pyper is the author of 10 novels, including The Demonologist, which won the International Thriller Writers Award, and Lost Girls, which was a New York Times bestseller. Oracle, his audio-only thriller performed by Joshua Jackson, was a number one bestseller in the U.S. and the most listened to fiction audiobook in Canada the year of its release. William (Putnam, September 10, 2024), Coile's first novel, is part psychological horror, part cyber noir, a haunted house story in which the haunting is by AI.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

The story of a brilliant engineer who builds a DIY robot that self-identifies as the world's first AI demon. And who's to say it's wrong?

On your nightstand now:

I just finished my good friend Nick Cutter's new novel, The Queen, which contains some of the most inventive, detailed, gorgeously gross body horror you could ask for. Up next is On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche (another friend), which surveys all the ways one can write and feel like a loser. Given the topic, it's an astonishingly short book.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I have little memory of there being many "books for children" around our house growing up, so I was reaching for the adult lit sooner than I likely should have (and certainly before I could fully understand it). So while it may not qualify as my favorite children's book, I would assign the Most Influential Book of My Youth Award to Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot. The town in King's novel was so much like my own, which made it way too easy to imagine the homes, schools, and streets outside my bedroom window seething with vampires. It terrified me and made me skittish as a racehorse. My mother forbade any more "scary stuff." Of course, her warnings were ignored. I was all in.

Your top five authors:

Margaret Atwood. Henry James. Stephen King. Martin Amis. Shirley Jackson.

Book you've faked reading:

Jane Austen's Emma saved me a lot of money I might have otherwise had to spend on sleeping pills in university, as every attempt to dig into it left me drowsy and distracted. For the exam I ended up watching the Gwyneth Paltrow movie and pretending I'd finished the book, all of which had the added side benefit of my falling into a deep crush on Gwynnie.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Come Closer by Sara Gran. A swift novel about demonic possession that shifts seamlessly from funny to suspenseful to horrific to heartbreaking. There are scenes that feel like terrible dreams invading the main character's reality--which the reader realizes (too late), are in fact dreams invading their own reality.

Book you've bought for the cover:

There are oh-so-many horror novels and thrillers I bought from the spinning drugstore rack in my hometown that were all about the lurid, sexy, irresistible covers. The Rats by James Herbert, Jaws by Peter Benchley, Hell House by Richard Matheson come to mind, though it's all a gold-foiled, pulpy blur.

Book you hid from your parents:

Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. It was famous among my schoolmates for the sex it contained, and famous among parents for the kind of sex it contained. Looking back on it, the thrill of hiding that book was probably more fun than actually reading it.

Book that changed your life:

I think they all have, in their ways (at least the good ones). But I will give the top honor to The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I know, I know. It's regarded as a little stale these days, and it's a common answer to this question for readers (mostly men?) of a certain age. But the truth is, it did blow me away when I first read it as a small-town adolescent with dreams of living an authentic, unconstrained life. The idea of being surrounded by fakes, of searching for selfhood while grappling with loneliness: the 13-year-old me was right there.

Favorite line from a book:

"All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever; you can't live forever.' " --F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Five books you'll never part with:

My prized first editions. Joseph Conrad's Within the Tides. Henry James's The Europeans. Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye (signed!). James Dickey's Deliverance. Andrew Pyper's Lost Girls (my first novel, forgive me).

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

This is a tough one! I'm going to say Peter Straub's Ghost Story. It opened my mind to the ways that horror could be literary and attentive to character and setting with the same effectiveness as delivering involving, deeply psychological scares.

Poet, novelist, and translator Anna Moschovakis unsettles readers of An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth, a narrative meditation on the obsessions one clings to in the face of chaos. In an uncanny near future, a seismic event has disrupted Earth's crust, leaving everyone to live through continuous earthquakes. While not all of them are large, they are nearly constant.

This catastrophic event is not the first thing to upend the novel's first-person narrator, however. Her lackluster career as an actress seems to have finally petered out. Facing the chasm of unfilled days on shaking ground, she develops an obsessive focus on her young, attractive housemate, Tala, which quickly sharpens into a desire to kill her. When Tala inexplicably disappears, the narrator spirals through her own existential dread, reliving memories of what it means to be a woman in a world that's always watching. Her hunt for Tala soon dissolves into a more hallucinatory hunt for stability in an increasingly unstable environment.

Reading Moschovakis's prose is a singular experience, not least of all because of its inherently poetic sensibility. Her lyrical turns of phrase, unexpected juxtapositions, and associative iterations are perfect for An Earthquake's narrator as she slips into the book's long, existential stare. Sometimes, that stare is a literal one. The narrator stares at a brochure, at the "dark shapes on its bright surfaces," and then out a window: "a small hole, the size of a lime, in the middle of the lower pane.... I leaned over and brought my eye to the hole. A rabbit rustled in the strip of dirt by the chain-link fence. A rabbit? I blinked. A squirrel. A ragged brown squirrel, looking down, doing something with its hands." Even that which one sees with her own eyes can shapeshift unexpectedly into something mundane yet disturbing.

In this world of constant movement, there is one thing that ultimately catches the eye and keeps it. As she explains, "When Tala arrived, from nowhere, nothing looked the same. The possible had bled through its container, like the skyscrapers through their frame. Tala became the missing piece, the perspectival shift." The narrator's fixation on Tala appears disturbing at first and yet increasingly understandable. Shifts, of course, are not easy to live with. But they are, Moschovakis ultimately suggests, the only state of being one can depend on. --Alice Martin, freelance writer and editor

Shelf Talker: Anna Moschovakis's An Earthquake Is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth is a poetic, thought-provoking novel that embraces the mind's recursive attempts to make order of chaos.

It has often been my experience that re-reading a book that was important to me at earlier times in my life is something like lying on the analyst's couch. 

--Vivian Gornick, Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader

Happy National Reread a Book Day!

What, you didn't know that September 13 is Reread a Book Day? Well, it isn't... not officially, not yet. I just made it up after reading Oscar Schwartz's recent Paris Review essay, "Against Rereading." 

"The correct and virtuous way to read, according to those who knew about reading and writing, was to reread," Schwartz observes. "Rereading was that which separated the real reader from the average book consumer.... This disinclination to reread the books I treasure alienates me not just from Nabokov, but from a vast pro-rereading discourse espoused by geniuses who regard rereading as the literary activity par excellence."

I disagree, of course, but the article did inspire me to launch Reread a Book Day, which happens to occur just a week after Read a Book Day (September 6) and Buy a Book Day (September 7). 

"This is a big weekend!" Rhythm and Co. Books, Glen Rose, Tex., posted on social media last Friday. "Today is Read a Book Day! Tomorrow is Buy a Book Day! Does that seem backwards to you? Then Sunday is Grandparents Day! What better way to spend that day than reading with those special family members? Or working a puzzle? Either way we've got you covered."

Other bookshops marking Buy a Book Day included the Lynx bookstore, Gainesville, Fla. ("Happy National Buy a Book Day to all who celebrate."); A Book Place Boutique, Riverhead, N.Y. (Treat your shelf for #nationalbuyabookday.... We love what we do and couldn't be happier sharing in your reading journey."), and Bazoo Books, Sedalia, Mo. ("Come celebrate National Buy A Book Day with us!)."

For National Read a Book Day, Whitelam Books, Reading, Mass., posted: "Happy National Read A Book Day from Harriet, Staci, and the whole Whitelam Flock! We hope you get to celebrate this very excellent day with a good book!" The Books Inc. Opera Plaza store, San Francisco, Calif., called it "a great day to celebrate readers, writers, and all lovers of words"; and Schuler Books, which has four stores in Michigan, posted: "It's National Read a Book Day! Our favorite kind of self-care. For a book lover, this is basically like any other day but it's fun to celebrate nonetheless. Plan a little time to read a book (or at least a few chapters) in your favorite reading spot today!... Happy reading!"

So why not add National Reread a Book Day to the mix? In 2021, during the height of the Covid pandemic, the Reading Agency released a survey that revealed 35% of respondents found happiness in re-reading books, while 53% had re-read at least one book in the previous 12 months. 

In Unfinished Business, Gornick recalls it was when she went to college "that I began re-reading, because from then on it was to the books that had become my intimates that I would turn and turn again, not only for the transporting pleasure of the story itself but also to understand what I was living through, and what I was to make of it.... 'How often have lifelong friends or lovers shuddered to think, 'If I had met you at any other time'… It's the same between a reader and a book that becomes an intimate you very nearly did not encounter with an open mind or a welcoming heart because you were not in the right mood; that is, in a state of readiness."

Gornick shares thoughts on her long reading relationship with J.L. Carr's 1980 novel A Month in the Country: "Sometimes I shiver when I think that I might not have re-read [the novel]... and then I shiver some more thinking of all the good books I wasn't in the mood to take in the first time I read them, and never went back to." 

As it happens, my own weathered, nearly 25-year-old NYRB Classics ARC of A Month in the Country is a book I often reread, most recently this past June. Time passing is the soul of the story, in which an old man, Tom Birkin, gazes back half a century, with longing and regret, to a golden summer in 1920 when he was hired to uncover a parish church's medieval wall painting in Oxgodby, a small Yorkshire village. 

Shell-shocked from his experiences in the trenches during WWI, young Birkin's gradual healing process includes a subtle and compelling friendship, edging tentatively toward love, with the vicar's beautiful young wife. He later recalls (rereads?) this as "the missed moment" of his life. 

In Carr's foreword to the novel, he addressed the mystery of time for a writer, though the theory could apply equally to a (re)reader: "Then, again, during the months whilst one is writing about the past, a story is colored by what presently is happening to its writer. So, imperceptibly, the tone of voice changes, original intentions slip away. And I found myself looking through another window at a darker landscape inhabited by neither the present nor the past."

Or, as author Hilary Mantel once put it: "You have to find out by experience what everyone tells you: that a good book is never the same twice. Rereading is a pleasure and duty of middle age, and illuminating, even if it only sheds light on how you yourself have changed."

So, happy inaugural Reread a Book Day! You know what to do.

--Robert Gray , contributing editor