"Follow me to Kepler's. It's our bookstore."--The new Kepler's slogan, as displayed on a T-shirt worn by Clark Kepler at the store's reopening last Saturday as reported by the San Mateo County Times.

Feeling "very fortunate" to be back in New Orleans and back in business, Tom Lowenburg, co-owner of Octavia Books, marveled that little things have changed in major ways. Remarking on the first book delivery since August, made yesterday morning, he told Shelf Awareness, "I've never felt so happy to see the UPS guy."

Located in the uptown area, Octavia was not flooded and suffered minimal damage. "Virtually nothing was disturbed," Lowenburg said. The store reopened on Saturday, the first bookstore selling new books to reopen in the greater New Orleans area. "The response has been overwhelmingly wonderful," he continued. "People are relieved and thrilled that we're back." More and more stores are opening every day, he added, and Octavia will be "part of the rebuilding. Bookstores are community oriented and so important in the exchange of ideas. We're here for the long haul."

Some of the staff have not yet returned, but Lowenburg said he has been in touch with everyone and is "taking it all a step at a time." One employee lived in the lower 9th ward and has not been allowed back to her house. Another's house was under 10 feet of water at one point; that employee "is not coming back to New Orleans anytime soon."

For their part, Lowenburg and his wife, co-owner Judith Lafitte, were lucky on the home front too. Their house suffered only what Lowenburg called "manageable damage": some water in the basement and damage to the roof. The pair evacuated first to Alabama and then Ohio and returned to New Orleans two weeks ago. The worst part of the evacuation for him was "being away, not being able to see the store," Lowenburg said. "The anxiety of it was worse than coming back. We're relieved to be able to do something."

Beating favorites Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro, Irish author John Banville won the £50,000 Man Booker Prize, the U.K.'s top literary award, for The Sea. The prize was presented last night. Knopf had planned to publish the book here in March, although now The Sea may see publication sooner.

Former literary editor of the Irish Times, Banville is the first Irishman to win the prize since Roddy Doyle in 1993. Quoted by the Times of London, judges chairman John Sutherland called The Sea "a masterly study of grief, memory and love recollected. You feel you're in the presence of a virtuoso. In his hands, language is an instrument." He added that the melancholy subject made it a "slit-your-throat novel." The Sea tells the story of Max Morden, who after his wife dies, revisits the town where as a child, his life changed forever.

Banville was on the Booker shortlist in 1989 for The Book of Evidence, but lost to Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. This year Ishiguro was on the shortlist for Never Let Me Go.

Now onto the Nobel literature award, which will be announced on Thursday.

Not your father's library.

The Downtown Journal and Skyway News has a long profile of the Central Library building of the Minneapolis Public Library, which is under construction and should open next spring. The $138 million facility will include more books, computers and seating; areas dedicated to teens and recent immigrants; reading areas around fireplaces; a 225-seat auditorium for meetings, readings, lectures, movies and more; an art gallery and café as well as a Central Commons, a dramatic multilevel open space. The library is already talking expansion: it may add a planetarium in a year.

---

Two stores are closing in part because of the loss of business from nearby campuses:

La Unique African-American Bookstore in Camden, N.J., is planning to close by the end of the year, when owner Larry Miles will sell the building, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The store, which began as a travel agency in the 1980s and morphed into a gift shop, has been a bookstore for a decade.

Miles told the paper that the store has been hurt by the greater availability of African-American titles online and in chains as well as two new nearby stores. One is a joint bookstore run by Rutgers University, Rowan University and Camden County College; the other is a sidewalk African American retailer strangely called Black & Nobel. In addition, bulk orders from schools, particularly Camden County College, have dried up.

The Carriage House Book Shop in Richmond, Va., near the Virginia Commonwealth University's Monroe Park campus, will close on Friday, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Owner Birthe Christensen, who has run the store since 1972, told the paper that the store's sales have suffered dramatically since VCU required professors to request textbooks from the VCU e2 Bookstore.

---

Today's New York Times profiles the late Gretchen Worden, longtime director of the Mütter Museum (no relation except in bizarre spirit), the museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia best known for its strange collection of medical specimens and instruments--and a popular calendar that was discontinued several years ago. The museum has opened a Gretchen Worden Room, which features the weirdest of the weird.

Today on the Today Show:

• Martha Stewart is interrogated about her new book, The Martha Rules: 10 Essentials for Achieving Success as You Start, Grow, or Manage a Business (Rodale, $24.95, 1594864705). (She's also on Larry King Live tonight.)
  
• Gloria Estefan sings praises of her own book, The Magically Mysterious Adventures of Noelle the Bulldog (Rayo, $17.99, 0060826231).
• Mark Bittman joins Today's Kitchen to be grilled on his new book, The Best Recipes in the World (Broadway, $29.95, 0767906721). He will make an additional appearance tomorrow.
• Former FBI chief Louis Freeh, Jr., gives a briefing on My FBI: Bringing Down the Mafia, Investigating Bill Clinton, and Fighting the War on Terror (St. Martin's, $25.95, 0312321899).

---

Today WAMU's Diane Rehm Show features former marine Scott Ritter, author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein (Nation Books, $26, 1560258527).

---

Today's Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC orbits around Dava Sobel and her new book, The Planets (Viking, $24.95, 0670034460).

---

Today on the View, Candace Bushnell continues the escapades of Sex and the City in her new book, Lipstick Jungle: A Novel (Hyperion, $24.95, 0786868198).

---

Yesterday on the Early Show, lung specialist Neil Schachter wheezed useful information from his new book, The Good Doctor's Guide to Colds and Flu (Collins, $14.95, 0060762497).

---

Yesterday on WAMU's Diane Rehm Show, Jon Katz yapped about his new book, Katz on Dogs: A Commonsense Guide to Training and Living with Dogs (Villard, $24.95, 1400064031).

---

Yesterday on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show:

• Haynes Johnson calmly looked back over the past 50 years in The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (Harcourt, $26, 0151010625).
• Princess Martha Louise of Norway regally introduces her children's book, Why Kings and Queens Don't Wear Crowns (Skandisk, $17.95, 1575340372).
• Primatologist Frans de Waal explains our fundamental behavioral connection with primates in his new book, OurInner Ape (Riverhead, $24.95, 1573223123).

---

Yesterday Talk of the Nation had a shaky conversation with Simon Winchester, author of A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906 (HarperCollins, $27.95, 0060571993).

---

Yesterday on the Charlie Rose Show hosted Justine Levy, author of Nothing Serious (Melville House, $15, 0976140772).

Tab Hunter Confidential by Tab Hunter with Eddie Muller (Algonquin Books, $24.95, 1565124669) goes on sale October 14. The 1950s teen heartthrob recalls the hardships of a not always A-list career and living a closeted gay life in Hollywood's spotlight.

---

Saving Fish From Drowning by Amy Tan (Putnam, $26.95, 0399153012) will be released October 18. A group of Americans traversing the Burma Road are captured and held by a tribe who believes the teenager accompanying them is a reincarnation of their god. Bibi Chen, the groups' recently deceased leader, narrates the tale from beyond the grave.

The Ambler Warning by Robert Ludlum (St. Martin's, $25.95, 0312316712) goes on sale October 18. Hal Ambler, a United States operative for nearly two decades, finds himself prisoner of his own government on an island off the coast of Virginia

---

I Have Chosen to Stay and Fight by Margaret Cho (Riverhead, $23.95, 1573223190) goes on sale October 20. Comedian and political activist Cho entertains and enlightens with rants on war, the government and various world hypocrisies.

mentions it won the Glass Key Award for Best Nordic Crime Novel. In winning, he joins the ranks of such notable authors as Karin Fossum, Henning Mankell and Peter Hoeg. However, after reading Indriđason's book, it is obvious that it shouldn't be relegated to the small (but distinguished) category of "Nordic thriller." It's just a flat-out good read, although the Icelandic setting does add a special chill and bleakness.

"Isn't this your typical Icelandic murder?" asks a detective. "Squalid, pointless and committed without any attempt to hide it, change the clues or conceal the evidence." But when Inspector Erlendur begins investigating the death of an old man in his Reykjavík flat, complexities arise as he is forced to reopen a related but decades-old case. In so doing, he opens old wounds and uncovers long-held secrets. In addition to the investigation, Erlendur must also deal with Eva Lind, his drug-addicted daughter. The inspector is exhausted and cynical, but also thoughtful and compassionate. Supporting characters are artfully described, and the dialogue is direct and often amusing.

One of the pleasures of Indriđason's prose is his reticence with lurid details of some very nasty crimes; instead, his skill with suggestion allows readers to fill in the particulars to their comfort (or discomfort) level. The greater pleasure is in knowing that there are more Inspector Erlendur novels to be translated.--Marilyn Dahl