"I just don't want fear. I don't want teachers to be afraid of presenting challenging material."--Terry Lucas, owner of the Open Book, Westhampton Beach, N.Y., in Newsday after the local school board voted to remove two books--Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle and James Patterson's Cradle and All--from the reading list for ninth graders and review the rest of the list, a move Lucas has opposed since the books were first questioned several weeks ago (Shelf Awareness, November 23, 2007).

Starbucks Entertainment has chosen Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey through His Son's Addiction by David Sheff (Houghton Mifflin, $24, 9780618683352/0618683356) as the next title in its book program. The book, which Starbucks described as "a compelling true story examining addiction, trust, and renewal told by the parent of a meth addicted teenager," goes on sale at more than 6,500 Starbucks in the U.S. on February 26. Houghton's onsale date for Beautiful Boy is February 26.

Sheff has written three other books and his work appears regularly in various newspapers and magazines. Beautiful Boy is the expansion of an article that originally appeared in the New York Times Magazine.

Nic Sheff, the beautiful boy of the title, has also written a memoir, Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines (Ginee Seo/S&S, $16.99, 9781416913627/1416913629), geared to younger readers. Tweak goes on sale in February, too. Father and son will tour together and are already booked for the Today Show, Fresh Air and other shows.

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Elizabeth Hardwick, critic, essayist, fiction writer and co-founder of the New York Review of Books, died this past Sunday in New York City at age 91. The New York Times has a long obituary.

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The Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society will act as co-counsel for RDR Books, which is being sued by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. (owner of film rights to the Harry Potter books). The plaintiffs are seeking to block publication of RDR's The Harry Potter Lexicon, an unofficial reference guide, and have obtained a temporary restraining order. The book is based on a popular website.

"The public has long enjoyed the right to create reference guides that discuss literary works, comment on them, and make them more accessible," Anthony Falzone, executive director of the Fair Use Project, said in a statement. "J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. are threatening that right. We intend to demonstrate that the fair use doctrine protects the Harry Potter Lexicon."

A preliminary injunction hearing is set for February 6, 2008.

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On the occasion of the arrival of Amazon's Kindle, the AP surveys e-book use and finds that "e-books are already a success in a few niches, where they are giving rise to new ways of doing business. The standout example is role-playing games, but buyers of college textbooks and even romance novels are warming to e-books."

Role-players "buy lots of books, which contain rules for their games or expand on the imaginary worlds in which they are set," the AP wrote. "It's fiction, but it's more like reference material than the kind of long narratives you'd find in novels. Industry insiders see that as a big reason PDFs work for role-players."

In an interesting observation, Gareth-Michael Skarka of Adamant Entertainment said, "The more we treat a PDF like a book, the less likely people are to get it. You price it low enough that the consumer thinks of it as disposable."

Although e-book sales are less than 1% of Harlequin Enterprises's sales, all 120-140 offerings per month are sold as e-books, too, and the company is selling short stories exclusively as e-books at 89 cents each.

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Holiday gift book suggestion update:

With characteristic ESPN 'tude, the sports network's golf book picks included "eight publications that were absolutely, positively, undeniably on my bookshelf when I decided to write this piece."

In compiling a "best travel books for Christmas," the Guardian observed that "British travel writers turned their backs on the foreign and went walkabout in their backyard."

The Christian Science Monitor featured its "annual guide to books."

"A brief roundup of some noteworthy titles, by both new and established writers, that may have slipped past you in 2007" was offered by the Village Voice.

CMT.com featured "Country Music Books for the Holidays."

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Effective January 7, Joseph Monti will become director of paperbacks at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and will oversee the publication of all middle grade and young adult paperback reissues as well as acquire and edit select titles.

Monti was a buyer at Barnes & Noble for 18 years, managing the middle reader and series section, before joining Houghton Mifflin's children's trade division in 2006 as manager of national accounts.

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Ron T. Lippock has joined Eagle Publishing as v-p and group publisher, responsible for the Conservative Book Club and the company's "rapidly growing direct-to-consumer geopolitical publications," which include the club, Human Events, HumanEvents.com, RedState.com and newsletters.

Lippock was formerly director of the CQ Press Division at Congressional Quarterly and earlier had marketing and editorial jobs at Energy Argus, Telecommunications Reports and Oxbridge Communications.

Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Costco's book buyer, has chosen Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (Algonquin, $13.95, 9781565125605/1565125606) as her pick for December. In Costco Connection, which goes to many members of the wholesale club, she writes:

"I know I have used this space to declare my love for my dogs, but there's another animal that captured my heart from an early age. Most girls wanted a pony; I begged for an elephant. Naturally, I was drawn to Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.

"Not only did I fall in love with Rosie, the circus' elephant, but I also cheered for main character Jacob, from beginning to end. I tip my (top) hat to Gruen, who skillfully brings to life a forgotten time. For better or worse, she re-creates the atmosphere of an old-time circus--from flashy showmen to the dark, back-room secrets."

This morning on Good Morning America: Caroline Kennedy, author of A Family Christmas (Hyperion, $26.95, 9781401322274/1401322271).

Also on GMA: Phil Manning and Tyler Lyson, authors of Dinomummy: The Life, Death, and Discovery of Dakota, a Dinosaur from Hell Creek (Houghton Mifflin, $18.95, 9780753460474/0753460475).

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This morning on the Early Show: Jeff Foxworthy, author of Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Dictionary III: Learning to Talk More Gooder Fastly (Villard, $16.95, 9780345498489/0345498488).
 
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This morning's Book Report, the weekly AM radio book-related show organized by Windows a bookshop, Monroe, La., features an interview with Robert Sabuda, author and illustrator of Winter in White (S&S, $12.99, 9780689853654/0689853653) and co-illustrator of The Chronicles of Narnia Pop-Up Book (HarperCollins, $29.99, 9780061176128/0061176125).

The show airs at 8 a.m. Central Time and can be heard live at thebookreport.net; the archived edition will be posted this afternoon.

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Today on Oprah: Mitch Albom, author of For One More Day (Hyperion, $21.95, 9781401303273/1401303277).

Also on Oprah: Richard Carlson, author of An Hour to Live, an Hour to Love: The True Story of the Best Gift Ever Given (Hyperion, $9.95, 9781401322571/1401322573).

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Today on the Martha Stewart Show: Susan Spicer, author of Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans (Knopf, $35, 9781400043897/1400043891).

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Today on NPR's Dennis Miller Show: Rick Beyer, author of The Greatest Presidential Stories Never Told: 100 Tales from History to Astonish, Bewilder, and Stupefy (Collins, $18.95, 9780060760182/0060760184).

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Today on the Charlie Rose Show: Jonathan Schell, author of The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (Metropolitan Books, $24, 9780805081299/0805081291).
 

Atonement, based on the novel by Ian McEwan and directed by Joe Wright, opens this Friday, December 7. Keira Knightley and James McAvoy star as lovers whose lives are changed by a false accusation. The movie tie-in edition is available from Anchor ($14.95, 9780307387158/0307387151).

The Golden Compass, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, also opens on Friday. Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig star in this adaptation of Philip Pullman's sometimes dark and philosophical children's tale. In addition to a range of titles related to the movie, there is a tie-in edition of the book (Knopf Books for Young Readers, $11.95, 9780375842375/0375842373).

For one reason or another--full moon? lack of caffeine?--there are a number of books I read this year that I loved but didn't review, and this is a good time to mention a few that would be fine gifts for discerning donees and for your deserving self. Two memoirs are notable for their integrity, kindness and honesty, and remarkable for their lack of scandalous behavior.

is both uplifting and funny, a winning combination. Braestrup was married to a Maine state trooper who was planning to leave the force to become an ordained minister. A fatal car crash left those plans, and Kate and her children, shattered. She decided to become a minister herself and is now chaplain for the Maine Warden Service, whose task is to serve wardens and their families and to assist victims and families during search and rescue missions. She writes about her experiences movingly and often wryly, laughing that she, a "famously loquacious person, [has] a job that mostly requires me to just show up, shut my mouth, and be." She can also bring you to tears, as when she recounts tenderly washing her husband's body for burial: "I knew that I had to walk up to that which would hurt me most: Drew's body without Drew in it. [In] all the time that I shall live without him--time roaring and tumbling at me like some merciless, black avalanche--I will be able to tell myself that I bore our love with my own hands all the way to the last hard place." She has found immense joy in her work, becoming a conduit for God's love, a cool cup of water offered to thirsting people.

If Kate Braestrup is a cool cup of water, Sara Miles is a warm (and sometimes crusty) piece of bread. Miles was a left-wing journalist who covered revolutions and the disenfranchised for years, a lesbian and mother who led a decidedly secular life. One Sunday when she was 46, she walked into a San Francisco Episcopal church out of curiosity, took communion and was transformed, an "unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion." She still can't explain it, but she embraces the miracle and the mystery. The story of her journey to that transformation and the results of that first communion are told in Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion (Ballantine, $24.95, 9780345486929/0345486927). She came to realize two things: the "truly disturbing, dreadful realization about Christianity [is] you can't be a Christian by yourself," and, "If I wanted to see God, I could feed people." And she does, with the help of church people and street people, starting a wildly successful food pantry in her church that has in turn seeded other pantries. While telling of her struggles and achievements, Miles is irreverent, intense, and thoughtful about God, people, and herself.

Henri Nouwen said, "Our greatest fulfillment lies in becoming bread for the world." Kate Braestrup and Sara Miles embody this in different ways, and tell their stories with grace, passion, and a good bit of humor.--Marilyn Dahl

The following were the bestselling books on AbeBooks.com in November:
 
1. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2. Paso a Paso (Addison Wesley Longman)
3. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren
4. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
5. The Everlasting Stream by Walt Harrington
6. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
7. You: Staying Young by Michael Roizen
8. How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers
9. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
10. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tze

[Many thanks to AbeBooks.com!]