September bookstore sales of $1.45 billion were down 2.9% from $1.493 billion in the same period a year ago, according to preliminary estimates from the Census Bureau.

The figure, in part reflecting Hurricane Katrina and energy price disruptions, marked the sixth month of the year that bookstore sales in a particular month were lower than the same month a year earlier.

For the year to date, bookstore sales are $11.78 billion, down 2.3% from $12.059 billion for the first nine months of 2004.

Despite difficult conditions in September, general retail continued to do better than bookstores. General retail sales in the month were $308.6 billion, up 7.1% from $287.9 billion in the same period a year ago. For the year to date, general retail sales are $2.8 trillion, up 7.7% from $2.6 trillion in the same period a year earlier.

Although book sales at the company's superstores were "solid, led by strength in backlist titles," generally Borders Group had a disappointing third quarter, ended October 22. Music sales were offkey, and the news from the U.K. was dreary. "Overall sales trends" and the cost of remodeling several hundred stores, now complete for the year, dragged down earnings. But the remodeled stores outperformed other stores by several percentage points.

Total consolidated sales rose 0.5% to $837.2 million, and the net loss was $14.1 million compared to a net loss of $1.1 million in the same period a year ago. The company had previously revised estimates of earnings downward, and yesterday's results came in slightly below analysts' estimates.

Still, Borders CEO Greg Josefowicz looked ahead positively, commenting that "with this year's remodel activities behind us, a solid inventory position in our stores and a promotional program in place, we are prepared for the upcoming holiday shopping season."

For the fourth quarter, the company expects earnings to be near or above last year's. At Borders superstores open at least a year, sales should be flat to down in the low single digits. At Waldenbooks Specialty Retail, which includes Borders Express, Borders Outlet, airport stores and seasonal business, comp-store sales will likely decline in the low to high single digits. International sales are expected to rise 6%-12%.

The Divisions

During the quarter, comp-store sales at Borders superstores fell 0.2% while overall sales rose 1.6% to $572.9 million. At the superstores, comp-store book sales rose 3% while comp-store music sales fell 15%. The company remodeled 55 stores during the quarter, finishing the remodeling program, which involved 100 superstores altogether. On a comp-store basis, the remodeled stores outperformed the rest of the superstores by about 2%. The company opened two superstores in the quarter and plans to open nine more in the fourth quarter--for a total of 17 superstore openings during the year.

At Waldenbooks Specialty Retail, comp-store sales fell 5.2% and sales dropped 8.1% to $138.4 million. The company converted 50 Waldenbooks to Borders Express, for a total of 98 conversions during the year to date. Like the remodeled superstores, the converted Borders Express stores outperformed the overall Walden chain by about 2.5% on a comp-store basis.

International sales increased 6.2% to $125.9 million, a less-blistering pace than in some quarters. In the U.K., comp-store sales at Borders superstores dropped 5% and at Books etc. stores fell 10%. In the third quarter, Borders opened three more stores abroad, for a total of 50 stores outside the U.S. In the fourth quarter, Borders will open six superstores, for a total of 15 new stores for the year, which includes two franchise stores in Malaysia.

The company continued its repurchasing program, buying back 2.5 million shares of its common stock for $55.2 million. During the nine months, Borders has bought back 8.5 million shares for $199.1 million.

Acting on behalf of the Phoenix and Dragon Bookstore in Sandy Springs, Ga., and the former president of the Georgia Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit arguing that a Georgia law exempting the Bible from sales tax should be expanded to all publications dealing with the meaning of life, according to the AP.

Enacted in the 1950s, the law also protects "Holy Scripture" from taxation. Phoenix and Dragon owner Candace Apple told the AP, "If they're not taxing someone's holy scriptures, they shouldn't be taxing anyone's. I'm not willing to stand at the counter and tell someone, 'Oh, sorry, your religion is wrong.' " She has found it bewitching that she has to charge sales tax on A Witches' Bible, a book for Wiccans.

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Books-A-Million is opening a 15,500-sq.-ft. store in Alabaster, Ala., near Birmingham, the company's headquarters. The store is in the Colonial Promenade on I-65 near U.S. Highway 31. It is BAM's first store in Alabaster and eighth in the metropolitan Birmingham area.

The new BAM will offer more than 85,000 titles, including books, magazines, collectibles, gifts and more. The grand opening celebration will be held from Friday, December 2, through Sunday, December 4.

The shortlist for the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards, honoring the "most enjoyable books of last year" by writers in the U.K. and Ireland, was made public yesterday. Among the fiction nominees are Salman Rushdie for Shalimar the Clown and Nick Hornby for A Long Way Down. A full list of nominees in the five categories is available at the awards Web site.

Winners in each category will be announced January 4; the overall winner is made public January 24.

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Jon Stewart, David Javerbaum and Ben Karlin, authors of America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy in Action (Warner), have won the 2005 Thurber Prize for American Humor. The $5,000 prize is presented by Thurber House, the Columbus, Ohio, center for writers and readers with headquarters in the boyhood home of the dryly humorous James Thurber. Established in 1996, the prize began being awarded annually last year.

The runners-up for the prize were Andy Borowitz, author of The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers (S&S), and Firoozeh Dumas, author of Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America (Random House).

Concerning the winner, Rachel Cline, one of the judges, said, "When the really smart extra-terrestrials finally locate the fused wreckage of our planet, I hope they are able to retrieve a copy of this book. It catalogs the follies of faith, greed, idealism and idolatry that animated a great nation. Added bonus: if they happen to have had Seventh Grade Civics on Krypton, the ETs will also bust a thorax laughing."

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Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, among many other SF books, has been awarded the Sri Lankabhimanya award, Sri Lanka's highest civilian award, Reuters reported. Clarke has lived in the country for many years.

Walk the Line, the new Johnny Cash movie, opens this Friday, November 18, in theaters nationwide. A few titles are noted here to capture and enhance the interest of moviegoers.

Cash: The Autobiography (HarperSanFrancisco, $7.99, 0061013579), written with Patrick Carr, a veteran music industry writer, is one of the best music biographies ever written. Told in Cash's voice--Bob Dylan said it "comes from the middle of the earth"--the book gives us the full story from his humble beginnings as an Arkansas share-cropper's son listening to a pre-teen June Carter on the radio to his later struggles with fame, god, drugs and alcohol.

Music fans (and yes, not just country music fans) will tell you that Cash's Folsom Prison album is still considered by many to be one of the greatest live albums ever recorded. In the previews of the movie, we see the scene in which Cash, about to perform at Folsom, is asked by a prison official to "refrain from playing any songs that will remind the inmates that they're in prison." An utterly cool Cash replies, "You think they forgot?" Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece (Da Capo, $15.95, 0306814536) is a riveting account of that day and the story that surrounds it.

We're hearing Oscar buzz for Reese Witherspoon who plays June Carter Cash and does all of her own singing in the movie. For a deeper understanding of June and her family, often named the first family of American music, I highly recommend the bittersweet saga Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music (S&S, $15, 074324382X).  

Finally, Cash by the Editors of Rolling Stone (Crown, $29.95, 140005480X) takes us a bit further in Cash's story. Published posthumously, it features many moving essays by his friends and family that remind us why the world is slightly less colorful without our "man in black." In its wonderful introductory essay comes this gem: " 'Johnny Cash was out of line all his life,' Merle Haggard said during the late years of Cash's life. ' "I Walk the Line" was kind of a ludicrous song for him to sing:  "I walk the line."  He never walked any line.' Which is true. But Cash was good for one promise he made in that first hit:  He kept a close watch on his heart. He had to. After all, he knew what it was capable of."--Jenn Risko

Speaking of music, this morning Imus in the Morning riffs with Willie Nelson, who wrote the foreword for Farm Aid: A Song for America (Rodale, $35, 1594862850), published on the 20th anniversary of the first Farm Aid concert. The organization that developed out of the concert continues to help farmers.

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This morning on the Early Show:

• Jerry Lewis, author of Dean and Me: A Love Story (Doubleday, $26.95, 0767920864).
• Frank McCourt, author of Teacher Man: A Memoir (Scribner, $26, 0743243773).

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Today All Things Considered talks with Kent Nerbura, author of Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy (HarperSanFrancisco, $24.95, 0060513012).

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WAMU's Diane Rehm Show speaks with that character, Senator John McCain, co-author of Character Is Destiny: Inspiring Stories Every Young Person Should Know and Every Adult Should Remember (Random House, $23.95, 1400064120).
The show also features a Readers' Review of Kurt Vonnegut's classic Slaughterhouse-Five.

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On WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show today:

• Word maven Patricia T. O'Conner, who teaches Internet etiquette and grammar rules in You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online (Harcourt, $17.95, 0151005931).
• Vikram Seth, author of Two Lives (HarperCollins, $27.95, 0060599669).
• Uzodinma Iweala on his debut novel, Beasts of No Nation (HarperCollins, $16.95, 006079867X).
• Jerome Karabel, author of The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale (Houghton Mifflin, $28, 0618574581).

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The View speaks Southern with Jeff Foxworthy, the comedian whose new book is Jeff Foxworthy's Redneck Dictionary: Words You Thought You Knew the Meaning Of (Villard, $16.95, 1400064651).

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One fact: tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise (Dutton, $22, 0525949089), an almanac of useful "facts," all of which have been made up by the author and include, for example, 700 most common names for hoboes, shortened words used on submarines to save oxygen and seven presidents who had hooks for hands.