Usually on this date we offer an April Fool's issue, one of our favorite editions of the year. But in light of new political realities, we will follow the lead of many courageous major universities, big law firms, international corporations, and media outlets by bowing to the new dictates. Today we will stick to sanctioned subjects. We are sorry to disappoint you, and hope that by next April 1, we'll be able to return to our normal April Fool's programming.

New owner Catsby at Clowder Books

Clowder Books in Los Gatos, Calif. (formerly the Book Nook) has new owners--Ebenezer and Catsby, who were longtime employees, have purchased the bookstore from John and Mary Johansen and renamed it. The Johansens, sadly, developed allergies to cats and dust, and were forced to retire.

Ebenezer and Catsby plan to gradually shift the store inventory to feature more feline-related books, both fiction and nonfiction, for all ages, along with gift items, catnip- and tuna-scented candles, and artwork by local catisans. A cafe serving hot beverages and small bites is in the planning stage. Clowder's first event will be the launch for Cat's People by Tanya Guerrero (Delacorte).

Catsby told Shelf Awareness that they will keep most of the dozen human employees, provided they bring sufficient treats and change the litter box.

Inspired by bookselling brand name changes in the UK (once known as the U.K.), Barnes & Noble has decided to rebrand itself.

Noting that more than a dozen years ago, he dropped the apostrophe from Waterstone's, James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble and managing director of Waterstones, said the company was especially inspired by last week's news that WHSmith had sold its WHSmith high street stores in the U.K. to a venture capital firm that is renaming the stores TGJones, a made-up name intended to resemble WHSmith. He also observed that B. Dalton Bookseller, long owned by B&N, was a name based on the name of the head of the company at that time, Bruce Dayton of Dayton-Hudson.

"Dayton-Dalton, Smith-Jones, Barnes-Noble," Daunt mused. "Ampersands, apostrophes, initials with abbreviations and space in people's names! In the digital age, it's better to be clean and streamlined."

B&N top staff considered several name changes, according to people who were involved in the decision making but wish to remain anonymous. Among the options were rebranding all B&N stores Tattered Cover, after the Denver bookstore company it bought last year, as well as naming the company BarnesNoble. In the end, however, Daunt took to a suggestion by a staff member to follow in the tradition of WHSmith and TGJones. Barnes & Noble will soon become AJDaunt.

Daunt noted that "of course" the new name will be easily adoptable by the company's divisions in the UK: Waterstones, Foyles, Hatchards, Hodges Figgis, Blackwell's, and his own London company, Daunt Books. Moreover, Daunt said he liked the idea of being put personally on a par with other iconic booksellers, real and not. "Imagine a dinner party of just WHSmith, TGJones, BDalton, and AJDaunt," he said. "Brilliant."

Blind Date with a Book display (via)

Police were called to Reading for the Love of It, a romance bookstore in Cool Spring, Fla., after a local woman allegedly vandalized the store's "Blind Date with a Book" display. The woman was detained by staff until she could be escorted from the store by police, who have not responded to inquiries about whether charges will be filed. 

The bookshop's owner, Sarah Cooper, said the customer had been browsing the display's selections and reading descriptions written on the brown wrapping paper used to disguise the covers. 

"She was kind of reading to herself but out loud, sounding disgusted," Cooper recalled. "Suddenly she started ripping the paper off to see what the book titles were. Then she just swiped across every level of the display, sweeping the books down to the floor. It was just weird."

Cooper added that while it wasn't completely clear why the agitated patron would resort to vandalizing the display, "she did yell something about the lack of Amish romance novels represented."

Amazon has announced a new imprint, aMAGAzon, whose first list will feature titles by leading officials in the Trump administration. "It's a big, beautiful idea that will be cutting edge, the best, the most successful books, all bestsellers, bestsellers, I tell you," one of the authors said. The company added, "AI will be used extensively in the development of the content of the list. In fact, AI is mandated because it may be the only form of intelligence involved."

The move comes following founder Jeff Bezos's $1 million donation to the January inauguration and Amazon's $40 million deal to produce and air a documentary about First Lady Melania Trump (she reportedly receives $28 million of the total and is now selling "sponsorships" for $10 million each to CEOs and billionaires who attended the inauguration).

The imprint's first titles will appear as the Cabinet of Curiosities Collection:

Profiles in Uncourage by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. "While offering portraits of current Republican senators who haven't been vaccinated against idiocy, the Health and Human Services Secretary also argues that his father and uncle are not rolling over in their graves."

What I Got Learned So Far as Secretary of Defensiveness by Pete Hegseth. "In this tell-all--and tell it to all--screed, the Defense Secretary shares how easy it was to shift from Fox & Friends Weekend to Donald & Friends 24/7."

Look, Ma! No Guardrails! by Howard Lutnick. "The Commerce Secretary highlights the New Paradigm of Tariffs, explaining why the administration's tariffs will work so much better than any tariff ever in history."

Intelligence? Huh?: Essays on What I'm Supposed to No by Tulsi Gabbard. "The Director of National Intelligence asks for directions on how to get to the restroom."

National Insecurity Advice by Mike Waltz. "In the National Security Advisor's hyper-transparent style, the book will be crowd-sourced with all the world invited to join in. Join Signal chat room TopSecretAsIf."

ICE Queen by Kristi Noem. "The Secretary of Homeland Security gives fashion tips for visiting notorious foreign prisons and using brutalized inmates as video backdrops."

See, I A Incompetent Head of a Key Federal Agency, Too by John Ratcliffe. "The CIA Director on his efforts to fire spies and make it easier for the FSB to recruit in U.S. of A."

What About Her E-Mails? by Kash Patel. "The new FBI Director on why Our Weaponization is so much better than Their Weaponization."

And from elected and unelected leaders of the administration:

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speaker No Evil by Mike Johnson. "You want me to write a book, too?? Of course, I'll do anything you want!!"

Hang On, Bros! I'm Wrecking the Economy as Fast As I Can! by Elon Musk. "A story of brilliance and more brilliance and chainsaw maintenance tips. A followup to his memoir Buy the Way: An Immigrant's Path to the Top."

From Russia with Love by JD Vance. "The Vice President on the joy of being a most highly valued asset."

God & Country: An Autobiography by Donald J. Trump. "Because it's a book, the focus will be on the President's cultural achievements, including becoming chair of the Kennedy Center, cleansing the Smithsonian Institution, gutting the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and now taking over the Library of Congress and appointing himself Libarbarian of Congress."

The couple strolled into End of the World Books, Low Point, Ohio, just before closing last Saturday evening, already in a mood. Booksellers busied themselves straightening shelves as they overheard the husband accusing his wife of financial infidelity. "I should've never married you," the wife proclaimed. The lone customer browsing the romantasy section quickly scurried out the door as the couple continued to circle the store, sniping at each other. Before long, the staff were wiping away tears as they witnessed the disintegration of the couple's marriage.

[Thanks to reporter Jaime Clarke!]

Jesse Eisenberg will star in and direct a film version of Careless People, based on the bestselling book Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams, who has been under a gag order that has prevented her from promoting the scathing memoir about her time with the company.

Eisenberg is reprising his role as Facebook (now Meta) founder Mark Zuckerberg, whom he played in David Fincher's film The Social Network (2010). Emma Stone has expressed interest in the role of Sheryl Sandberg. Stone's production company Fruit Tree, which produced Eisenberg's recent film A Real Pain, is on board to produce Careless People.

Despite Wynn-Williams's restricted ability to publicize her latest work, which Meta has described as a "false and defamatory book [that] should never have been published," the memoir has risen quickly on bestseller lists. Meta's legal filing prohibits the author from making "disparaging" comments about the company where she worked as the director of global public policy, but there is no prohibition on adapting her work for the big screen. She will co-write the screenplay with Eisenberg. 

The English language, some 1,500 years old, died this month. English had shaped civilizations and connected cultures for centuries, and leaves behind a rich legacy of literature, art, and communication. Though it had held on bravely through the overwhelming onslaught of the Internet, recent demands by President Donald Trump placed too much of a strain on the diminished language.

Despite the Trump administration's executive order declaring that the United States' official language is English, its actual use was maimed by other orders banning the use of hundreds of words and terms in official documents, government websites, and eventually common use.

Though the New York Times reported that "only" about 250 words were removed from the Trump administration's lexicon, the list included words vital to the language and to communication: diverse, they/them, antiracist, privilege, black, women, trauma, sex, disability, and many others. Even official historical artifacts, such as pictures of the World War II bomber Enola Gay, fell afoul of the administration's policies. The language was also hamstrung by the administration's insistence, soon after taking power, on renaming familiar locations, like the Gulf of Mexico and Mount Denali, and rebranding well-known airports and institutions with Trump's own name (and let's not even mention that font).

Many have offered tributes to the English language, among them:

"The English language is nobody's special property. It is the property of the imagination: it is the property of the language itself," said Sir Derek Walcott, poet, playwright, and recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson said, "I believe it is our values and our ideals that ultimately bind us together as a nation. But it is the English language which serves as the means by which we can communicate these values to those around us."

Author Rita Mae Brown noted, "Language is the road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going."

Journalist Oliver Darcy wrote: "When the battle is over what words are permitted to be used, cute linguistic gymnastics amount to a surrender. Words are the front lines of truth...."

Canadian-born author and commentator David Brooks summed it up: "There is the English language and then there's the Trump language."

Though variants of English remain in use in countries like Canada, that's subject to change. In lieu of flowers, we encourage you to buy a book from an independent bookstore. While you can still find one.

Next Door: The Podcast: The Book by Wanda Wattsup and Phil Mehan (Busybodies Press, $19.99 trade paper, 979998O887776, April 1, 2025)

After three seasons, the hosts of the unduly popular true-crime podcast Next Door, Wanda Wattsup and her neighbor Phil Mehan, have compiled the ultimate nosy neighbor guidebook for deducing whether someone in your general proximity is a serial killer or just another boring nobody. Former law clerk Wattsup and puzzle-master Mehan both became preoccupied with following the patterns of people who live nearby during Covid-19 lockdowns and soon afterward connected with each other on various social media platforms whose algorithms thrive on speculation and outrage. Over time, the presumptuous duo have considered the observable differences between morning joggers and evening joggers; people who sort their recycling and those who don't; those who wear shorts in March or hoodies in July. And they have presented this banal array of circumstantial evidence to experts in human psychology, criminal profiling, ballistics, bird law, mortuary services, and thriller scripting--all of whom have come to regret invitations to appear as guests.

Next Door: The Podcast: The Book includes full-episode transcripts, making it easy for readers to identify the point in each conversation when guests realize the error in their judgment. The cumbersome volume also features unsettling illustrations of high-profile crime scenes drawn with a dull crayon, as well as bits of yarn threaded through the pages to highlight obscure details the podcasters are certain connect to one another. In the margins there are tips about angling your mini-blinds for less conspicuous peering and web resources widely disregarded by polite society for their tendency to overstimulate suspicious minds. Like the podcast it's based on, this scrappy guidebook simultaneously inspires an infectious, morbid curiosity and a persistent sinking feeling that eventually abates--after several deep breaths and a few minutes touching grass.