East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, Calif., which was destroyed by a fire in July, will officially reopen on Saturday, November 30, in a temporary space at 6022 College Ave.

A tour of the new East Bay Booksellers work-in-progress.

Store owner Brad Johnson and his team will celebrate the reopening that afternoon with a toast to the bookstore's community and "to all that goes into making a good bookstore great." In the announcement, he noted: "you'll excuse if there aren't a lot of party preparations & favors. We'll probably be shelving books to get things ready up to the opening hours that morning."

The bookstore was a "total loss" following the three-alarm fire that broke out on July 30, and damage to the building was so extensive that investigators could not discover what caused the fire. Customers and community members rallied around the bookstore in the wake of the fire, and a GoFundMe campaign supporting East Bay Booksellers raised a total of $232,868.

In his message announcing the reopening, Johnson wrote: "If East Bay Booksellers is valuable at all, it is precisely because you have shown that you want it to be a part of your worlds... of who you are." The support the bookstore received was "powerful stuff," and "frankly, it gave us the strength to endure what many assumed would be unendurable as a business."

In October, Johnson told the San Francisco Chronicle that the bookstore will likely remain in the temporary space for at least six months.

Novel Biblio-Brew, a new and used bookstore, bar, and cafe in Schenectady, N.Y., that was founded in 2015, plans to close at the end of the year unless a buyer is found, News10 reported.

In a message to customers, owner Sara Mae Pratt wrote: "We've worked so hard to create an inclusive and welcoming environment that celebrates diversity, a love of literature, and meaningful connection with others. We're endlessly grateful to our extraordinary staff and to the very special customers who've made this vision possible.

"We'd absolutely love to identify an individual or team with the energy and drive to keep this dream-come-true of a business open! We've laid the groundwork, and there's truly so much potential to build upon. Our lovingly crafted space would make a perfect turn-key opportunity for someone interested in assuming ownership of the existing business and all of its assets, or someone starting a new concept."

Going forward, Novel will be adding weekend hours and will no longer be accepting used books. Business will continue as usual through the end of this month, but starting in December, Novel will no longer serve alcohol. December 29 will be the store's final day of food and beverage service.

Anyone interested in buying the bookstore can reach out to hello@novelbibliobrew.com.

Monarch Books in Arroyo Grande, Calif., has opened a sister store dedicated to children's toys and books called Little Oaks Toys & Books, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reported.

Located at 127 E. Branch St., Little Oaks is on the same street as Monarch Books and occupies a storefront that previously belonged to a store selling children's clothing and toys. Originally, owner Taneesha Regez and her husband, Aaron, had planned to use the space to expand Monarch's children's offerings before deciding to make toys a major focus.

The store's toy offerings range from science kits to jump ropes to building blocks. There is an emphasis on "open-ended play and exploration," and the owners source the toys from companies with sustainable and ethical practices.

"Things that get them out and navigating the world, exploring it, using all their senses to play and engage was a big part of what we're looking at when we look at what we're bringing in," Taneesha Regez told the Tribune.

For now, Little Oaks is open Friday through Sunday. Regez plans to start expanding hours in 2025.

Microsoft has launched 8080 Books, a publishing imprint focused on technology, science, and business, that intends to expedite the traditional publishing process, the Guardian reported.

The imprint's first two titles are No Prize for Pessimism by Sam Schillace and Platform Mindset by Marcus Fontoura. The former is available now, while the latter will publish before the end of the year. Schillace is Microsoft's deputy chief technology officer, while Fontoura was the company's technical fellow and corporate vice-president.

Many of 8080's authors will be "current, former, and future Microsofties," though it will publish writers from outside the company. It also plans to publish new editions of some out of print books.

The imprint, which draws its name from an Intel microprocessor, plans to shorten "the lag between the final manuscript and the book's arrival in the marketplace," and it will donate its profits via Microsoft Philanthropies.

Sandra M. Gilbert, a critic, scholar, poet and co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, "a groundbreaking work of literary criticism that became a feminist classic," died November 10, the New York Times reported. She was 87. Gilbert was also the author of eight books of poetry, including Judgment Day (2018) and Aftermath (2011), as well as the memoir Wrongful Death: A Medical Tragedy (1995).

Written by Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic was published in 1979 and became a bestseller. "With gusto, scholarly rigor and flashes of humor, the authors dug into the macho ethos that had long dominated literature," the Times wrote, adding, "Their breakthrough was to uncover the narrative strategies that Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Dickinson and others deployed to gain literary autonomy and to protest an oppressive literary patriarchy."

Gilbert, whose specialty was 20th-century literature, and Gubar, an 18th-century specialist, met as new English professors at Indiana University in 1973. They decided to teach classics by women of the 19th and 20th centuries in a course called "The Madwoman in the Attic."

"It felt like discovering an uncharted country," Gubar recalled.

In 1985, they co-edited The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women, a 2,457-page work spanning seven centuries, and a year later Ms. magazine named them Women of the Year. Gilbert and Gubar edited the three-volume No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, whose final volume appeared in 1994. 

Their most recent book, Still Mad: American Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination (2021), was written after Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. "If the culture is still changing," they wrote in the introduction, "why are we and so many of our friends still mad?... Maybe if you shatter glass ceilings, you have to walk on broken glass. Maybe if you lean in, you topple over."

Gubar said their favorite collaboration was Masterpiece Theatre: An Academic Melodrama (1995), a play that spoofed academia and the culture wars. 

Gilbert retired from U.C. Davis in 2005 as a distinguished professor emerita. In 2012, she and Gubar won the National Book Critics Circle lifetime achievement award.

Gubar observed: "Sandra brought poetry to our collaboration. She never pontificated, either as a critic or a poet or a teacher or a feminist. It was just not in her nature. Instead, she would draw upon lyricism and a visceral response to literature to articulate the fears and hopes of her generation."

Underground Books in Carrollton, Ga., shared the great news that it just had the honor of hosting the store's first wedding, for a couple who also had their first date and later got engaged at the store.

The bookstore posted on Instagram: "Lukas & Rose, thank you from the bottom of our hearts to the heights of our book arch for allowing Underground Books to be the backdrop for a love story as beautiful, bookish, and true as yours. We're wishing you a happily ever after for the storybooks!"

Lukas posted: "@underground_bks will always hold a special place in our hearts--from one of our first dates, to our engagement, and now, to our wedding today. This truly is a magical store. The owners and staff are some of the most amazing people to work with, and we can't wait to continue visiting and supporting this wonderful place. Thank you so much, Underground Books!"

Weather update from Glendora Bookshop, Buchanan, Mich.: "Trust us, it's cozier inside! Open today until 6 p.m. Let us help you find that perfect read for these winters days!"

As ABA approaches its 125th anniversary, the organization has updated several of its logos. Assets featuring the new ABA logo (as well as the updated IndieBound logo) are available on BookWeb.

The most popular book club titles at Reading Group Choices in October were Wings to Soar by Tina Athaide (Charlesbridge Moves) and Half a Cup of Sand and Sky by Nadine Bjursten (Alder House Books).

Today:
Fresh Air: Scott Eyman, author of Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided (Simon & Schuster, $20.99, 9781982176365).

Anne Hathaway will star in Verity, based on the bestselling novel by Colleen Hoover. Deadline reported that Verity "was self-published in 2018 and grew into a phenomenon that was acquired by Grand Central Publishing in 2021. It has spent months on the bestsellers list, selling more than one million copies in 2023 alone."

Hathaway will team up with Michael Showalter for the project, which will be released in theaters. They previously worked together on The Idea of You, adapted from Robinne Lee's novel. The current script is written by Nick Antosca. Prior drafts came from Hillary Seitz, Angela LaManna, and Will Honley & April Maguire.  

Producers for the project include Eat the Cat's Antosca and Alex Hedlund, Semi-Formal Productions' Showalter and Jordana Mollick, Somewhere Pictures' Hathaway, Heartbones Entertainment's Hoover, and Shiny Penny Stacey Sher. Heartbones' Lauren Levine will executive produce. 

Lexington: The Extraordinary Life and Turbulent Times of America's Legendary Racehorse by Kim Wickens (Ballantine Books) has been named winner of the $10,000 2023 Dr. Tony Ryan Book Award, given to "the best book-length writing with a horse racing backdrop."

Wickens was cited for "excellence in thoroughbred racing literature with her meticulously researched and beautifully written biography of the great 19th century stallion, Lexington," which "creates a vivid time capsule back to the pre- and post-Civil War era in which he lived."

Lead judge Kay Coyte commented: "One of the biggest challenges of nonfiction writing about early Thoroughbred racing is making the facts found in 1800s racing publications, newspapers and other records come alive on the modern page. Wickens tells the factual story of Lexington and the characters surrounding him with warmth, intelligence, sometimes humor, and always elegance. She clearly loved her subject and she breathed her enthusiasm into every chapter."

Organizers noted that this was "the second straight year a book about the peerless sire was honored, following Geraldine Brooks' 2022 win for her novel, Horse," which was based on the story of Lexington.

photo: David C. Findlay

Nalo Hopkinson is a Jamaican Canadian author of science fiction, fantasy, and comics. She's received the World Fantasy Award and the Andre Norton Nebula Award. In 2021, the Science Fiction Writers' Association chose her as that year's Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, in recognition of her writing, mentorship, and teaching. Her new book, Jamaican Ginger and Other Concoctions (Tachyon, October 29, 2024), is the long-awaited new collection of her deeply imaginative short fiction, taking readers to far-flung futures and fantastical landscapes.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

In Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions you'll find an ocean-going cyborg pig and a gigantic alien skeleton found at an archeological dig here on Earth.

On your nightstand now:

Honestly? I'm currently listening to the audiobook of my most recent novel, Blackheart Man. Hearing it in someone else's words makes it almost like a different novel.

Favorite book when you were a child:

A two-parter: Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey. My dad had them in English translation from Homeric Greek. I skipped all the "boring" parts and just read the bits with monsters, witches, and ghosts in them. And I rooted for poor Ulysses to finally get home from the wars and be reunited with his wife, Penelope. Though I didn't expect the way he would get rid of all the men who were eating and drinking him out of house and home while they clamored for Penelope to admit her husband was dead and marry one of them. Funny thing is, I tried reading The Iliad a couple of years ago, and I stopped. It was too difficult! As a kid, I didn't get as frustrated at struggling through the language.

Your top five authors:

I don't do hierarchies like that, so I'll just tell you about five authors whose work I really like:

N.K. Jemisin. Her worldbuilding is awesome. You can practically taste the air in her stories. Her characters are surprising and so human, even when they aren't human at all.

Kelly Link. Ever since I first encountered Kelly's quirky, delightfully unsettling fiction, I've been studying how she does it in hopes that I can do it, too.

Samuel R. Delany. Broke my brain open in the best way when I first read his novel Dhalgren. And again when I read his writing about writing. And yet again when I read his autobiographies. Such rich, delicious complexity, like a good plum pudding. So filling. Delany's work made me feel able to live in the world, like I didn't have to become "normal."

Ursula K. Le Guin. Ursula had the knack of making me tear up at a single line of simple prose, even when on the surface it didn't seem to be about anything particularly emotional. A fierce, wonderful woman. I miss her.

Alison Bechdel. I loved the Dykes to Watch Out For comics, and then her graphic memoir Fun Home just blew me away.

Book you've faked reading:

Now it can be told. It was Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion. In 2002, CBC Radio in Canada was hosting its first ever Canada Reads programme, in which five Canadian personalities debate five books in order to choose one book for the whole country to read. I was one of the jurors. They told us the titles, but it didn't occur to them to send us the books! That's standard practice in all the literary adjudications I've done. I thought CBC must have some clever plan up their sleeves, so I didn't ask. And it so happened I had read the book I was going to champion (poet George Elliott Clarke's amazing Whylah Falls) so I didn't think anything more of it. But when I showed up on the day of the recording, I discovered they'd just assumed we'd go out and source the books ourselves. Luckily, I had read Margaret Laurence's The Stone Angel in high school. I even remembered bits of the class discussion about it. I'd read and reviewed Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in the year it was published, so that one was engraved in memory. That was three of the five titles covered. I had read excerpts from and essays about Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance. That left the Ondaatje.

Then a miracle happened; there was a book sale that morning on the first floor of the CBC building. They just happened to have a copy of In the Skin of a Lion, at a price I could afford! I bought it and skimmed as much of it as I could in the minutes before the recording. It's also such a famous book, especially in Canada, that it gets discussed and written about a lot. So I already knew a little about it. Still; gulp.

I went into that debate and argued hard for Whylah Falls, worked from my memory of the other two I had read, and listened attentively to what my fellow debaters had to say about the Mistry and the Ondaatje. Ondaatje's novel won, defended enthusiastically by musician Steven Page from the band Barenaked Ladies. I'm pretty sure that CBC Radio now makes sure their debaters have the books well in advance.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Sundown in San Ojuela by M.M. Olivas. It's her first novel, just out from Lanternfish Press. I describe it as a wild ride of brujas and old Aztec gods, chupacabras and haunted houses that gets stranger, darker, and more dire with each turn of the page. The monsters and the heroes are equally, gorgeously terrifying. I was Olivas's mentor when she worked on an early draft of the novel for her undergraduate thesis, and I'm so proud of her!

Book you've bought for the cover:

I know better!

Book you hid from your parents:

Playboy magazine, January 1968 issue. My parents' student boarder left it behind when he left. I found it. I was a kid; I read the comics in it and didn't much care that there were naked people. I figured that was unfathomable big people stuff, so I ignored it. But that's also where I read my first science fiction: Kurt Vonnegut's short story "Welcome to the Monkey House." So I guess that magazine was formative for me.

Book that changed your life:

Come Back to Me My Language by J. Edward Chamberlin. It's a scholarly book that examines the use of anglo-Caribbean vernaculars in poetry. I knew a lot of the poems and poets, and it gave me new ways to think about how I use vernaculars in my prose. That may not sound life-changing, but as a Caribbean person, even one who already had a strong politic and practice using vernaculars, it helped open up and free my language even more in the face of a mainstream which often erroneously believes that using creole in a piece is shorthand for the character being stupid and/or uneducated.

Favorite line from a book:

"There's two kinds of people in the world. Baseball players and cock-suckers. And the baseball players don't hardly ever see the cock-suckers." From The Mad Man by Samuel R. Delany. I like the way it asserts that the everyday acts of people the normative world considers transgressive can often happen right under the noses of the normies.

Five books you'll never part with:

Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany. That novel showed me what science fiction could do, artistically speaking. It took risks with form and content that thrilled me.

Dance of Knives by Donna McMahon. Fellow Canadian McMahon sets her novel in post-apocalyptic Vancouver when ocean level rise is profoundly changing the landscape. And the silent character of Simon, simultaneously so vulnerable and so prone to outbursts of violence, quite captured my heart.

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin. You think it's pastoral, then you realize it's futuristic. An epic story of two communities at war.

Biological Exuberance by Bruce Bagemihl. Nonfiction. If ever I believed that gender and sexuality were neatly divided into two, these cases from all over the animal kingdom told me my work and my life didn't need to be limited that way.

Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin. Another brilliant writer I miss. Before Atwood, Elgin wrote this powerful feminist fallen society novel drawing on her background in linguistics. That book was catnip to me.

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

Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson. Stan has a way of combining high- tech futuristic stories with a beautiful lyricism and humanity that made this novel so much fun for me to read.

In her debut novel, Grace of the Empire State, Gemma Tizzard constructs an inspiring story of an Irish-American family working to support each other in challenging times. Like the titular landmark, Tizzard's story is built on a strong foundation: family loyalty and the determination to succeed, along with romance, a touch of danger, and more than a few seemingly impossible dreams.

Since their father died, twins Patrick and Grace O'Connell have been working hard to keep their family financially afloat: Grace as a nightclub dancer, Patrick as a steelworker helping to raise the new Empire State Building. When Patrick breaks his arm during a shift, he begs Grace to impersonate him for a few weeks so the three other men on his team won't lose their jobs. Grace, newly unemployed, reluctantly agrees. To her surprise, she comes to enjoy certain parts of the work and forms a deep bond with her teammates: her cousin, Seamus, and Italian brothers Francesco and Giuseppe Gagliardi, known as Frank and Joe. All of them have serious motivation to keep going, even with the risk of Grace getting caught. Besides the financial realities of life during the Great Depression, Grace and Patrick are worried for their little sister, Connie, whose health is poor, and the Gagliardi brothers have family concerns of their own. As Grace adjusts to the work, she and her team must remain constantly on the alert in case their ruse is discovered. But when Grace is forced to make a risky decision--one that may save a man's life but would jeopardize her own precarious position as a steelworker--she doesn't hesitate.

Tizzard vividly depicts the glamor and the heartache of Depression-era New York, including whole families squeezed into tenement apartments and people like Grace's friend Edie, driven to desperation by unlucky circumstances. Grace's friend Betty, a talented dancer, makes her own difficult choice between happiness and security, and Patrick begins searching for other career paths during his forced leave from work. Tizzard slips in glimpses of iconic Manhattan landmarks like the New York Public Library, Central Park, and the Empire State Building itself, giving readers an up-close view of its construction. She immerses readers in the hot, dusty, dangerous details of the job site through Grace's eyes, honoring the effort and sacrifice of the workers (many of them immigrants) who built the skyline that epitomizes New York City today.

With engaging characters and a vibrant depiction of Manhattan--its glittering possibility and its stark heartbreak--Tizzard's novel soars like its namesake building, and moves along as elegantly as its nimble, determined heroine. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams

Shelf Talker: Gemma Tizzard's engaging debut novel follows an Irish-American dancer forced to impersonate her twin brother as a steelworker helping to raise the Empire State Building.

Thanksgiving Day is the calm before the storm. Most independent bookstores are closed and booksellers are, well, thankful, though based on my own memories, it's hard to imagine them settling in for a restful Turkey Day knowing what lies just ahead over the weekend.

Still, recent bookstore e-newsletters have embodied the spirit of the upcoming week, including Rainy Day Books, Fairway, Kan. ("As Thanksgiving approaches, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude for our incredible community of readers and supporters."), which also featured their booksellers' favorite Thanksgiving recipes alongside top book recommendations for the holiday.

"Why did the turkey cross the road?" asked Loganberry Books, Shaker Heights, Ohio, in its e-newsletter. "To get to Loganberry Books, of course! Happy Holidays, friends, for whatever winter holidays you may celebrate."

The Snail on the Wall, Huntsville, Ala., was preparing recently with a pop-up shop, offering "gorgeous amaryllis, wreaths, ribbon, and other tabletop decor for both Thanksgiving and Christmas, all by @bucketsandblooms. Come shop!"

The Doylestown Bookshop, Doylestown, Pa., was also working up an appetite on Facebook: "Need to elevate your Thanksgiving? We've got you covered! Try out new recipes and pick up some tableware to refresh your holiday kitchen."

At Doylestown Bookshop

All heartwarming and celebratory, so why am I still haunted by the ghost of Black Fridays past? I have recurring bookseller nightmares about the olden times, even though it's been more than three decades since my first Black Friday on a bookshop sales floor and 15 years since my last.

My first as a bookseller scared the hell out of me for a month before it arrived. In 1992, I was just a 42-year-old kid who'd been working in a bookstore for six months and believed nirvana had been attained. Like most bookseller rookies, I wanted nothing more from life at that point than to be in the stacks all day, talking with other book lovers about our mutual addiction. Who knew there was a catch?

Shortly after Halloween, as if inspired by the ghoulish holiday itself, my colleagues began to spin cautionary tales about the post-Thanksgiving blitz--the crowds, the noise, the complaints, the screaming kids and, sometimes, adults; the crush of bodies, the scattered heaps of browsed and discarded books. 

In the 1990s, Black Friday seemed a very big deal indeed. Even as late as 2009, I opened a column with: "The adrenaline rush began in the weeks leading to BF. We built up key inventory. Work schedules were meticulously gridded to make sure there was adequate floor coverage for every minute of the day. Sections and displays were given the 'dress right, dress' treatment. A 'soup kitchen' was organized so staff wouldn't have to brave the crowded cafes and sandwich shops downtown. In Vermont, even weather patterns were closely tracked because a bad storm could wipe out everything."

Thanks to the tremendous success of the Indies First/Small Business Saturday movements, Black Friday now sometimes seems like a slightly more distant relative at the indie holiday table. An important family member, no question, as it launches the big bookselling weekend that extends to Cyber Monday, but no longer sitting at the head of the table or carving the turkey.

The decline of mall superstores and the mass wave of online shopping alternatives did little to enhance Black Friday's "traditional" reputation. I guess to the outside (non-bookselling) world, it's still all about the deals, baby, though the deals now start weeks before BF. And Googling "Black Friday" is like opening an infinite number of fire hydrants simultaneously; it's the Deals Matrix. People storm their cellphones and computers the way they used to barge through mall doors. Fewer injuries, perhaps, unless you barge though the wrong virtual door for the ultimate deal: "Why Black Friday Is A Hotbed for AI Scams--and How to Spot Them" (Forbes).

So, like the happy ending to a story, booksellers will celebrate next weekend the indie bookstore, scam-free way, with special emphasis on Saturday's festivities.

Just for a moment, however, while you still can, take a deep breath and consider the blessed quiet of a bookstore before it opens. Inside the shop, you may still hear muted sounds: the distant murmur of traffic, the furnace kicking on, indecipherable snatches of conversation as people walk by on the sidewalk. But the books, even the audiobooks, keep their words to themselves for now. 

Feel better? Now you can think about Thanksgiving weekend. The crowds will most assuredly arrive. It's what crowds do. Something compels people to wake up on the day after Thanksgiving and say to each other: "It's the busiest shopping weekend of the year. The stores will be mobbed; people will be rude and annoying; and traffic will be absolutely unbearable. We sure don't want to miss that!" 

But there will also be those moments. In a 2004 pre-Black Friday blog post, I wrote: "And occasionally, in the middle of the madness, someone will tug at my sweater and, practicing patience, I'll turn and smile. The person will smile back. 

I know you're busy, but I was wondering if you'd recommend a book.
For a gift?
No, for myself. I just need a great read for the weekend, something that will shut out all my relatives, but I know you're really busy...
I only have one customer at a time.
Can you tell what the best book you've read this year is?
That's why I'm here. 

That's why you're there... along with all the other stuff.