Dana Volkers Phillips, who sold the Bookstore in Pine City, Minn., in January to move closer to her family, has opened Dana's Bookstore at 120 Heritage Blvd. NE, Suite 3, in Isanti. The County Star reported that Volkers Phillips "has filled her shop with an array of books spanning multiple genres, along with puzzles, gourmet snacks, and book-themed gifts." A ribbon cutting ceremony was held on Monday.

Dana Volkers Phillips

"I feel like every town, no matter how small, needs a Dairy Queen and a bookstore," she said, adding that she had not wanted to just relocate her previous bookshop. "I didn't want to move the Bookstore. It's the only bookstore in Pine County and I felt really bad opening up a store and saying isn't this amazing? Isn't this wonderful? And then three years later taking that away. So I put it up for sale and immediately had a buyer. It was nice to be able to leave it there and then just start over again."

At more than 1,200 square feet, the new store is considerably larger than her former 700-square-foot Pine City location. "It was a little entry and then two rooms. It wasn't one big open area, so this is much different," she noted. "I get to have more books. That's a lot of shelf space, so it'll be really fun filling that.... I think we use the area well. There's a lot of shelf space, but it doesn't feel overwhelming. It doesn't feel claustrophobic."

The goal for Volkers Phillips is to have Dana's Bookstore become a "third space" in Isanti. "I think a bookstore is a gathering place for the community," she said. "A place to meet your friends to talk about books to shop for books to talk to me about books. That's my goal. That this is where you just can gather. You can just gather and be with your friends and hang out."

She also plans to host events throughout the year, including book clubs and book signings: "We did a lot of local author events in Pine City, and we'll do that here too. We already have an Isanti author on the shelves in our mystery section."

The community was so eager for the store to open that while she was still stocking the shelves customers were coming in ready to buy, the County Star wrote. "I was here working, getting things ready so, let's open the doors and see if anyone shows up, and they all showed up," said Volkers Phillips.

Darryl and Anne Peck, co-owners of Righton Books, St. Simons Island, Ga., have expanded their business with the launch of Lakeville Books & Stationery at 329 Main St. in Lakeville, Conn. The store opened last Thursday "and the response has been tremendous thus far," Darryl Peck noted.

The new shop is located in a freshly renovated vintage 1880 building. "We have filled this bright and welcoming space with thousands of illustrated books in a range of categories, including interiors, gardening, architecture, design, automobiles, photography, and cooking," Peck said.

The store also offers a wide variety of stationery, notecards, greeting cards, notebooks, and journals from around the world; globally sourced pens and pencils at all price points; as well as jigsaw puzzles (including wooden ones), art supplies, games, and more.

"We do have a full-service bookstore nearby that we have been shopping at for over 30 years," Peck noted, "which is why we do not sell novels, children’s books, etc. in the new store. We did not want to step on any toes as this is a very small community."

He added that the selection of illustrated books and stationery products at Lakeville Books & Stationery "is more along the line of what McNally Jackson is doing in New York with their Goods for the Study stores, or where they have combined books and stationery."

Olivet Book & Gift, a Christian bookstore and gift shop in Alpena, Mich., will close after 35 years in business, the Alpena News reported.

Owner Mary Rajasekhar has started a closing sale, and if things go according to plan, she will close the store before the end of the month. Following her retirement, Rajasekhar intends to spend more time with her family, which is something she's "longed for years" to do.

Noting that a Christian bookstore operated in Alpena for many years before she opened her store, Rajasekhar told Alpena News she hopes someone opens another and does not leave a hole in the community.

"Thank you again for your years of patronage, encouragement, friendship, laughter, and some tears," she said. "I hope our paths may cross often and I will forever treasure this time we have shared at Olivet Book and Gifts, but I am excited to be able to do family things that I haven't been able to do, and the minutes are slipping away for me to do that."

Jesse Kornbluth, "whose sly chronicles of cultural excess, celebrity and author profiles, personal essays and investigative work enlivened the pages of a newsstand's worth of magazines during the medium's last golden age," died April 3, the New York Times reported. He was 79. Kornbluth also wrote several books and was a co-founder of The Book Report/BookReporter.com.

Jesse Kornbluth

Kornbluth debuted as a published author in 1968 with Notes from the New Underground, an anthology of articles compiled from the era's counterculture newspapers, during his senior year at Harvard. After graduation, he lived briefly at a commune called the Farm in Montague, Mass., before realizing that commune life was not for him, the Times noted.

"He was not a manual labor type of person," said Tom Fels, whose memoir Farm Friends: From the Late Sixties to the West Seventies and Beyond (2008) included a chapter on Kornbluth. "Jesse's ultimate view of things was that we were all losers, and he wanted to go to New York and win."

As a freelancer, he contributed to, among many publications, the New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, Vanity Fair, Architectural Digest, and New Times. He also worked as a ghostwriter, wrote screenplays (still unproduced) and a play about Matisse.

Kornbluth wrote or co-wrote a number of nonfiction books, including Highly Confident: The Crime and Punishment of Michael Milken; Airborne: The Triumph and Struggle of Michael Jordan; Pre-Pop Warhol; and The Other Guy Blinked (with Roger Enrico). He also published two novels, Married Sex (2015) and JFK and Mary Meyer: A Love Story (2020)

"Jesse was the expert on everything, or could sound like one," said Tina Brown, former editor of Vanity Fair.

Actor, filmmaker, and author Griffin Dunne recalled marveling at Kornbluth's multitasking skills: "He could hold a conversation with me while hunt-and-pecking out an article on deadline on his IBM Selectric with a huge joint in his mouth."

Kornbluth "was an early Internet pioneer, jumping in in the mid-1990s, when AOL was ascendant and most people were still baffled by the new medium. In 1996, he and Carol Fitzgerald, a former Condé Nast executive, founded the website Bookreporter.com as an online community for book lovers," the Times wrote. 

In a tribute, Fitzgerald recalled when Kornbluth "learned that AOL was putting companies into business with their Greenhouse program. We presented to them a few times, and we became their book site. That is the basic backstory.... Jesse and I soldiered into a brand-new world, learning tech together (I have many funny stories about that) but, more than that, cementing a friendship that was one of the most important in my life. Jesse was curious, kind, funny and brilliant. He made my writing better; he liked 'snappy copy.' He could shape copy in a nanosecond. He had a Rolodex of contacts that included some of the sharpest and most sought-after names in the business.... 

"People knew him and loved him. He knew everyone's name, from the cleaning lady to the people who ran the office building, and he addressed them as such. He was a Pied Piper of sorts who collected people throughout his career and put them together whenever it would work. His knowledge was vast. I am not sure if I ever talked to him without hearing a quote from a piece of literature or a person of note."

In 2004, Kornbluth started his own website, Headbutler.com, "a cultural concierge service, as he explained it--for which he wrote about movies, plays, books and ideas, at no charge. His last post was in April 2024, when his illness took over," the Times noted.

"On Sunday, March 16, Daniel Reeves proposed to Ana Sucaldito at Scuppernong Books. She accepted! Ana and Daniel's third date was at Scuppernong, and it's always been a special place for them. Daniel was very excited to be able to propose in the store," Scuppernong Books, Greensboro, N.C., noted. 

"Feeling taxed? Procrastinate with a new book." That was the tax seasonally appropriate sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Sandmeyer's Bookstore, Chicago, Ill., which noted: "Got a deadline coming? Perfect time time to pick up a new book!"

Tchotchkes and Their F*cked-Up Thoughts: The Messed-Up Minds of Your Trinkets and Treasures by Elisabeth Saake (The Collective Book Studio).

Today:
Fresh Air: Chris Whipple, author of Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History (Harper Influence, $32, 9780063386211).

Tomorrow:
Tamron Hall: Saraya-Jade Bevis, author of Hell in Boots: Clawing My Way Through Nine Lives (Gallery, $28.99, 9781668027844).

Kelly Clarkson Show: Geri Halliwell-Horner, author of Rosie Frost: Ice on Fire (Philomel Books, $18.99, 9780593624005).

Tonight Show: Zarna Garg, author of This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir (Ballantine, $30, 9780593975022).

An adaptation of John Steinbeck's classic novel The Grapes of Wrath will be the first season of a new anthology series being developed by AMC. Variety reported that Great American Stories will focus on a "different celebrated work, historical moment, or individual narrative celebrating and highlighting the American spirit." 

"For more than a year we have been searching for the perfect story to launch our next big television franchise, and we found it in The Grapes of Wrath, which is as timely and relevant today as it was when first published in 1939," said Dan McDermott, president of entertainment and AMC Studios for AMC Networks. "Our country is built upon so many unforgettable historic and dramatic moments, tales of bravery and courage, classic novels, short stories, and chronicles well known and never-before-told. As a network that began its life as American Movie Classics, this is the franchise we're destined to bring to the screen."

Rolin Jones (Friday Night Lights, Weeds, Interview with the Vampire) will adapt Grapes of Wrath for Season 1 and then oversee the franchise for AMC. Mark Johnson is executive producing.

"We're thinking about Great American Stories like one of those resolute car factories in Michigan--bring in visionary creators, give them an assembly line of singular talent to build the thing, hand them the keys and get the hell out of the way," Jones said. "This is Dan McDermott's big, bold, torpedo bat swing at AMC. He's hired me to roll a beauty off the factory floor every year. I hope to never have another job for the rest of my career."

Garth Greenwell won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Small Rain (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). He will receive $15,000, with the other shortlisted writers each getting $5,000. All five will be honored May 15 at the annual PEN/Faulkner Award Celebration in Washington, D.C., featuring an appearance by the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Literary Champion, Dr. Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress, along with other special guests, including book critic Ron Charles.

"We are deeply indebted to our panel of judges for dedicating themselves to the difficult task of selecting this year's winner among an impressive and brilliant array of stories," said awards committee chair Lauren Francis-Sharma. "In each, we see the extraordinary gift of fiction as it opens new paths to truth. We are excited to celebrate Small Rain, along with our other finalists, at this year's awards ceremony in May."

The judges noted that Greenwell "has wrought a narrative of illness and identity in visceral detail, conveyed with a precision of language that steals the breath. The novel's harrowing narrative is also a mode of anti-narrative that traces the textured chronology of hospital life. Even as the narrator's body succumbs to needles, scans, blood draws, and bureaucracy, the novel affirms the power of art, love, and connection--if not to heal, then to soothe and salve. Small Rain is a dazzling, gutting, unforgettable novel."

"I wrote Small Rain as a way of testing, in the wake of a sudden and bewildering health crisis, my protagonist's faith in art as a source of durable meaning, of transcendence," said Greenwell. "I am immensely grateful to the judges for this honor, and immensely moved to see my book included among such excellent writers."

In the Philippines, the outdoor "dirty kitchen" is where the heavy-duty cooking takes place, as opposed to the indoor show kitchen where the privileged keep Western-style appliances meant to impress guests. Dirty Kitchen is a perfect title for Jill Damatac's debut memoir, given the themes of deception and inequality that followed her traumatic path from the Philippines to 22 undocumented years in the U.S.

In 1992, Damatac, then nine, flew from Manila to Newark, N.J., with her mother and sister to join her father, an Overseas Foreign Worker, required by Filipino law to send half his earnings home. Whereas in the Philippines they'd lived in a "big marble house" he designed, in the U.S. they shared one cramped room in a relative's home. Her father was trained as an architect but had to work at a gas station; her mother had more than 10 years' experience at the Philippine National Bank yet, initially, could find only bakery and grocery store jobs. A crooked lawyer took thousands of dollars from them but never produced the promised visas. That lack of paperwork limited the family's opportunities and access.

It can be emotionally challenging to read about the author's complex trauma. Damatac became a scapegoat for her father's anger over his frustrated ambitions. He beat her daily and demanded her earnings from part-time work. She felt she never merited his approval, even when studying for the National Spelling Bee. Things got worse before they got better: at age 19, she attempted suicide and was expelled from college. Dependence on extended family left her vulnerable; she was raped by an uncle. After years in dead-end jobs, marriage to a British man enabled her to obtain U.K. citizenship, earn advanced degrees in creative writing and documentary film, and legally re-enter the U.S.

Damatac is understandably angry about the lie of the American Dream: hard work was no guarantee of success for her family. She also decries American imperialism in the Philippines, deftly incorporating the history of this multiply colonized country. Food becomes her primary way of reconnecting with her Indigenous culture. Filipino legends and recipes arise throughout the memoir, with each chapter named after a different dish she cooks. Pinikpikan (chicken stew) was traditionally made to appease the gods; Spamsilog (fried rice with canned pork) reflects American GIs' influence.

Though harrowing at times, this memoir is recommended to readers of Elaine Castillo, Stephanie Foo, Qian Julie Wang, and Tara Westover. It showcases the survival of the spirit and the sustaining power of heritage. --Rebecca Foster, freelance reviewer, proofreader and blogger at Bookish Beck

Shelf Talker: Jill Damatac's forthright foodoir calls out injustices: not just personal trauma, but the colonization of the Philippines and U.S. immigration policies that kept her undocumented for 22 years.

The bestselling Libro.fm audiobooks at independent bookstores during March:

Fiction
1. Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
2. James by Percival Everett (Penguin Random House Audio)
3. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Macmillan Audio)
4. Oathbound by Tracy Deonn (Simon & Schuster Audio)
5. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall (Simon & Schuster Audio)
7. First-Time Caller by B.K. Borison (Penguin Random House Audio)
8. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros (Recorded Books)
9. The Wedding People by Alison Espach (Macmillan Audio)
10. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Simon & Schuster Audio)

Nonfiction
1. Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams (Macmillan Audio)
2. Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (Penguin Random House Audio)
3. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (HarperAudio)
4. Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (Simon & Schuster Audio)
5. The Tell by Amy Griffin (Penguin Random House Audio)
6. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (Penguin Random House Audio)
7. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Tantor Media)
8. How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa (HarperAudio)
9. A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby (University of Manitoba Press)
10. The House of My Mother by Shari Franke (Simon & Schuster Audio)