In part because of crucial business in the Bronx this afternoon (Yankees vs. Red Sox!), Shelf Awareness is taking off tomorrow and will return on Tuesday, September 4. Enjoy the Labor Day weekend!

 

Congratulations to Allison Hill, who has been promoted to president and chief operating officer of Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif. She was formerly v-p and general manager. Joel Sheldon, president since 1978, will continue to be involved in strategic decisions as CEO. Hill's appointment marks the first time in more than 50 years that someone outside the Sheldon family, longtime owners of Vroman's, has been president.

At the same time, Clark Mason has been promoted to chief financial officer and controller. He was formerly controller and corporate secretary.

Hill has spent 14 years in bookselling and publishing, including stints at Book Soup, Waterstone's and Simon & Schuster. Mason has worked almost 14 years at Vroman's and earlier worked three and a half years at Book Soup. Both Hill and Mason have become shareholders in Vroman's.

Vroman's is 113 years old and has three locations: two bookstores and one fine writing, gifts and stationery store.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole (S&S) was the most challenged book in 2006, according to the American Library Association, the AP (via the New York Times) reported. The true story of two male penguins who raised a baby penguin was seen by some parents and educators as "advocating homosexuality." In all, 546 books were challenged last year and 30 were banned.

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Cool idea of the day: at its trade show in Atlanta, Ga., September 28-30, the Southeast Independent Booksellers Association will screen The Kite Runner, based on the bestseller and book group favorite by Khaled Hosseini. The movie will be released in November.

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And here's another cool idea:

With the help of Schoolhouse Supplies--a volunteer-run free store for area teachers that distributes supplies donated by the community--today Powell's Books, Portland, Ore., is beginning to distribute 34,000 books valued at $300,000 to Portland and Beaverton public school librarians and teachers. The books are the fruit, as it were, of the Powell's Schoolbook Challenge, held during the holiday season. For 45 days, beginning last November 14, Powell's donated 10 new books to schools for every book pledge of $5.95 from an individual or business in the community.

Portland and Beaverton school librarians and teachers select from a wide assortment of elementary picture books, classic novels, history, math, social science books, dictionaries, reference and learning tools. The number of books allocated to each school depends on need, which is determined by the school districts and Schoolhouse Supplies. Powell's staff and Schoolhouse Supplies volunteers then box the books and deliver them to the schools.

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Steven Wilson, founder of Kudzu Book Traders and Academic Book Services and owner of One Source Inc. and Wilson and Sons Antiques, Heirlooms and Collectibles, died on Tuesday at age 49, Bargain Book News reported.

Wilson and a partner sold Academic Book Services to Follett earlier this year. Wilson had opened Wilson and Son last October. The store in Atlanta offers antiques, jewelry and a coffee shop that serves breakfast and lunch.

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Labyrinth Books, the scholarly bookstore with three locations--the original in New York City near Columbia University, a relatively new one in New Haven, Conn., near Yale University and another in Princeton, N.J., that is scheduled to open this fall--has changed its name to Book Culture.

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Michael Link, who has been manager at Politics and Prose bookstore, Washington, D.C., for three years, is leaving at the end of this month and will become manager of publisher relations for the Joseph-Beth Group bookstores. He and his fiancee, a painter, wanted to move to Cincinnati, and after a casual inquiry, he landed the job with Joseph-Beth. He has worked at Politics and Prose for six years altogether. Owners Carla Cohen and Barbara Meade said they will miss his "warmth and joie de vivre" and "feel pangs of envy for Joseph-Beth."

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As part of the celebration of its 80th birthday, the Strand Bookstore, New York City, is continuing to ask customers--and members of the book industry!--to vote for their five favorite books of any genre. Voting ends at midnight on September 15. The top 80 titles, the Strand 80, will be displayed in Strand stores and on the company's website. A randomly selected voter will win the grand prize of all 80 titles. Vote at strandbooks.com/strand80.

The grand prize drawing takes places during the Strand Bookstore Literary & Arts Festival, a day-long celebration at the main store on Broadway on October 13, from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Authors and artists are invited to meet their fans and sign books. Among confirmed authors: Christian Jungersen, author of The Exception, David Friedman, author of The Immortalists, Joseph Berger, author of The World in a City, Daniel Mendelsohn, author of The Lost, and Michael Buckley, author of the Sisters Grimm series.
 

Today on KCRW's Bookworm: Naeem Murr, author of The Perfect Man (Random House, $13.95, 9780812977011/0812977017). As the show put it: "Naeem Murr's work has been described as perverse--but he insists that this perversity seems ordinary to him. Here, we examine Murr's ordinary 1950's Southern town, Pisgah, and the depravity, insanity, racism and violence that seem ordinary to him."

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Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation: educator Rudolph Crew, whose new book is Only Connect: The Way to Save Our Schools (FSG, $24, 9780374294014/0374294011).

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in a repeat: Stephen F. Hayes, author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President (HarperCollins, $27.95, 9780060723460/0060723467).

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Tomorrow night on Real Time with Bill Maher: presidential hopeful and Senator John McCain, author of Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them (Twelve, $25.99, 9780446580403/0446580406).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Tuesday this week and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, September 1

12:45 p.m. Public Lives. Roland Haas, author of Enter the Past Tense: My Secret Life as a CIA Assassin (Potomac Books, $24.95, 9781597970860/1597970867), discusses his 30-year career with the CIA. (Re-airs Sunday at 3:15 a.m.)
     
3:15 p.m. A panel debates U.S. foreign policy at FreedomFest 2007. Panelists include Congressman Ron Paul (R.-Tex.), Dinesh D'Souza, Larry Abraham and Doug Casey.

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 2000, Peter Hitchens, author of The Abolition of Britain: From Churchill to Princess Diana (Encounter, $16.95, 9781893554399/1893554392), decries what he feels is the loss of Britain's international stature and the decay of British culture. He also talks about his brother, Christopher Hitchens. (See Sunday at noon below!)

9 p.m. After Words. Cox News Service national correspondent Bob Deans interviews Michael Duffy, author with Nancy Gibbs of The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House (Center Street, $26.99, 9781599957340/1599957345), about the man who served as spiritual counselor to every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush. (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., and Monday at 3 a.m.)

Sunday, September 2

9 a.m. At an event hosted by McNally Robinson Booksellers in New York City, New York University's Mark Crispin Miller interviews Scott Ritter, author of Waging Peace: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement (Nation Books, $13.95, 9781568583280/1568583281). Ritter contends that the antiwar movement in the U.S. should look to military strategists like Sun Tzu and John Boyd to help it end the Iraq War. (Re-airs Sunday at 7 p.m.)

10:25 a.m. Heidi Kraft, author of Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital (Little, Brown, $23.99, 9780316067904/0316067903), talks about her experiences treating Marines as a Navy psychologist in Iraq. (Re-airs Monday at 7 a.m.)
     
11 a.m. Kirsten Holmstedt, author of Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq (Stackpole, $27.95, 9780811702676/0811702677), chronicles the lives of 12 women serving in combat positions in Iraq. (Re-airs Monday at 6 a.m.)

12 p.m. In Depth. Christopher Hitchens joins Book TV for a live interview. Hitchens is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School and author of more than a dozen books, most recently of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (Twelve/Hachette, $24.99, 9780446579803/0446579807). (Re-airs Monday, September 3, at 12 a.m. and Saturday, September 8, at 9 a.m.)

Monday, September 3

11 a.m. Johan Van Overtveldt, author of The Chicago School: How the University of Chicago Assembled the Thinkers Who Revolutionized Economics and Business (Agate B2, $35, 9781932841145/1932841148), details how the University of Chicago's economists, including Nobel Prize-winner Milton Friedman, have shaped their field. (Re-airs Monday at 7:45 p.m.)
     

Buzz by Caroline Bingham, Ben Morgan and Matthew Robertson, illustrated by Mark Beech (DK, $19.99, 9780756629120/0756629128, 140 pp., ages 7-up, August 2007)

Go ahead and judge this book by its cover. Three lime-green circles invite kids to "Smash me!" and "Squish me!," and each, when pressed, produces a real life buzz (for the bee and mosquito, that is; more of a chirp for the cricket). The book's contents keep the senses fully engaged.  Like last fall's Pick Me Up by Jeremy Leslie and David Roberts from DK, this title rethinks nonfiction for a generation of Internet-savvy kids. While Pick Me Up appealed to older kids' insatiable curiosity (the pages acted as the physical equivalent of hyperlinks, sending kids to other pages in the book for tangential topics), newly independent readers or even preschoolers can enjoy this one. The first pages make clear that the authors subscribe to the theory of evolution, tracing the first arthropods (meaning "joined foot") back 400 million years, and in a follow-up page that depicts the arthropods' "family" tree, the text playfully blurts, "We all evolved from worms!" Gorgeous photos on a spread divided like panes of glass demonstrate the wonders of camouflage; later, three full-spread photographic images scattered throughout the book portray other awe-inspiring examples of tiny critters hiding against nature's backdrops in Ecuador and Costa Rica. But kids who relish the "ick" factor will not go away disappointed: a time-lapse spread shows how fly larvae can decompose a field mouse in less than a week, for instance, and a photo of a food  market in Thailand displays insects for sale (complete with a recipe for Mang Non Won, bee grubs in coconut cream). Other fun facts tell how bugs' presence on human carcasses aid in police investigations, how the dung beetle influenced the landscape of Australia and how the tiny cochineal insect changed the course of European history. Two spreads of games (with easy-to-follow directions) aid in mastering bug trivia, and three groups of multiple spreads--on ants, honey bees and spiders--go into more depth with everyday arthropods (the only group to which all three belong, since a honey bee is an insect and a spider is an arachnid). Bug fans can dip in and out of this beautifully produced volume, but they will want to pore over every page.--Jennifer M. Brown

This is the second Shelf Talk column focusing on New Age titles by Susan L. Weis, proprietress of breathe books, Baltimore, Md.:

When customers tell me they want to learn how to meditate, first I ask if they have a specific style in mind: Buddhist, Zen, Hindu, Jewish, Kripalu, Sidda, Sivananda, etc. Then I ask if they are interested in a book or a CD. CDs may be guided or instructional, or a visualization (think "You are on a beautiful white beach, a green healing light is shining on you"), music, singing bowls or Hemi-Sync/Theta Wave (subliminal) CDs.

After I've totally confused them (but not you, I hope!), I take them to the shelf labeled "meditation," clear on the far side of my little shop, away from the Buddhas and Hindus and Jews. These are the books I'm most likely to place in their hands:

Meditation for Beginners by Jack Kornfield (Sounds True, $19.95, 9781591791485/1591791480). Kornfield is an American who trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, Burma and India. In 1975, he co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Mass., a fabulous retreat center (my center of choice!). Kornfield's book/CD set is small (88 pages) and not intimidating for the first-time meditator. He writes in a very clear, easy manner, offering six guided meditations that are included on the accompanying CD. (The CD was recorded live so you hear people moving about, making sounds--you feel that you are in a meditation hall.) Both the book and CD could stand on their own. Together they create a very rich experience in which the novice (or advanced) meditator never feels alone.

Kornfield's best advice? "Keep it simple. An attitude of childlike openness will help you discover the truth of your life in the present moment."

Another book I really love is by Sakyong Mipham, the son of the influential Tibetan teacher Chogyum Trungpa Rinpoche. The Sakyong was raised in the U.S., but his life has been steeped in the tradition of Shambhala Meditation. (Pema Chodron, whom I wrote about in my last column, Shelf Awareness, April 30, 2007, is also of this tradition.) Shambhala and Buddhism are two streams of teaching closely related, "a spiritual worship grounded in realization of basic goodness."

The book, Turning the Mind into an Ally (Penguin, $14, 9781573223454/157322345X), is written for anyone who wants to begin meditating, but the Sakyong deftly handles topics such as suffering, bewilderment, laziness, and boredom that are familiar even to a long-time meditator! He applies techniques to all of these "hindrances" and teaches you how to use them in your practice. This is a great primer on the fundamentals of meditation as well as a gentle introduction to the Shambhala way of living.

A more fully secular presentation comes from Donna Thomson in her book The Vibrant Life (Sentient Publications, $14.95, 9781591810469/1591810469).

Donna, a meditation teacher and therapist in New Mexico, presents meditations designed to increase energy and awareness in your life. She refers to these guided visualizations as "mental exercises" and offers ideas about how to bring meditation to you, rather than you to it. Even a few moments of breathing in line at the bank can reap rewards. Her "meditations" include cleansing and recharging, releasing energy, psychic protection, love, acceptance and recovering your inner child, presented in clear language and easy-to-follow steps. Although she refers to all the great traditions, she doesn't promote any one of them over another.

Another completely secular but more spiritual choice is the book/CD set Meditation: Achieving Inner Peace and Tranquility in Your Life by Brian L. Weiss, M.D. (Hay House, $17.95, 9781561709304/1561709301), the famed hypnotherapist and past-life regressionist. Dr. Weiss is a graduate of both Columbia and Yale and has a private psychiatric practice in Florida. His writings are very logical and he never pushes the reader to uncomfortable places.

In this book, he describes various mediation techniques and relates stories from his private practice and his own life. He writes that he wants "to encourage you to meditate so that you can discover and develop spiritual experiences--but remember to keep your mind open to whatever images may occur." His CD is gentle, quite moving and deeply relaxing. (As with all meditation CDs, it comes with a warning not to listen while you are driving.)

Now onto the CDs. A new bestselling series in my shop, which my Simon & Schuster rep, Bob Schmid, introduced to me, is from the Relaxation Company. It has a series of meditation and relaxation CDs by Dr. Jeffrey Thompson that use theta brain-wave technology (like Hemi-Sync). These are highly effective CDs, packaged with good explanations in the small booklet and well-priced at $19.95 for a two-CD set.

My favorite CDs by the Relaxation Company for newcomers to meditation are the Yoga Meditation series. For a great price ($24.98), you are introduced to three types of meditation presented by master teachers.

There are two collections: Yoga Meditations ($24.98, 9781559617505/1559617500), which includes three CDs read by male teachers, and Yoga Meditations Collections ($24.98, 9781559617680/1559617683), which has three teachings by female teachers. Funny: the women's CDs are about emotional freedom and joy, and the men's recordings are about energy, freedom and life-enhancing meditations! Each of these great recordings from six traditions offer very practical meditation techniques.

I've saved the best for last. I've been practicing meditation (we call it "practice" because you are always evolving in present moment awareness) for almost 15 years. For the most part, I'm a no-frills meditator. I watch my breath. I don't chant. I see my thoughts and let them go. I watch for the important messages as they surface . . . and let them go as well! I don't have many props--a good cushion, a lovely space to sit and maybe I'll hold a crystal or gemstone now and then.

So no wonder my favorite CD comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn: guided mindfulness meditation (lower case letters like breathe books!) series 1, a four-CD set (Sounds True, $29.95, 9781591793595/1591793599), which includes a body scan, mindful yoga 1 & 2, and a sitting meditation. You are guided simply by Kabat-Zinn, who is best known as the founder of the Stress Reduction Clinic and Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

Mindfulness practice, Kabat-Zinn says, is not about trying actively to achieve anything. By increasing awareness to how things are in the actual moment, we often feel states of deep relaxation and well-being in both body and mind. Don't you feel better already?!

In a friendly voice with the use of only a singing bowl (a small brass bowl that "sings" or rings when hit gently with a striker) he moves through yoga and meditation, leaving lots of space for you to find yourself. There are long pauses where you are simply sitting "together." Gently, Kabat-Zinn will chime in to check on your sitting posture, to tell you to let your thoughts go, offer tools for how to deal with pain and to remind you to breathe. After all, that's what it all about--just breathe.