Congressional negotiators appear close to an agreement on extending the Patriot Act that will disappoint most of the people in the book world who have labored hard to loosen some of its provisions, particulary those relating to library and bookstore records. As it stood late last night, 14 of 16 provisions of the Patriot Act would be made permanent, and Section 215, the one applying to libraries and stores, would be renewed until 2012.

Reports indicate that the government would be required to give an accounting of how it uses its power to make requests and issue national-security letters, and recipients would be allowed to contact an attorney and challenge the orders. But as the Wall Street Journal noted, "the agreement would also make it a crime to disclose to anyone whether a national-security letter had been issued."

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Where there's smoke, there's a story. Today's New York Times features the Goodnight Moon cigarette controversy, which we've been puffing on intermittently during the past 10 days. Among the paper's revelations: Thacher Hurd "reluctantly" gave permission for HarperCollins to airbrush out the cigarette held by his father, illustrator Clement Hurd. Also someone voted thousands of times for the new picture on the Web site that is dedicated to fighting the revisionism. Excluding those votes, the trend has been 200 to 10 against the alteration.

Larry Portzline, who created the concept of bookstore tourism and has promoted it around the country for several years (see his Web site), is starting the National Council of Bookstore Tourism, a nonprofit 501(c)3 corporation. "Until now I've done it on my own," he told Shelf Awareness. "It's time to take it to the next level."

Portzline has led a dozen tours of book lovers to several cities to visit bookstores and has inspired others to try it, most notably the Southern California Booksellers Association, which is conducting its third bookstore tour this coming Saturday. "There is so much interest," Portzline said. In addition to bookstores, he noted that tours can go to libraries and literary sites and authors can be involved.

Portzline emphasized the many advantages of bookstore tourism. "There is a huge economic development benefit to bookstore tourism," Portzline said. Areas with a strong tourist trade can easily add bookstores to the mix of attractions and help promote cultural heritage. There might be an educational angle, too: "High schools could do this," Portzline said.

An immediate goal of the foundation will be to apply for grants, possibly from the NEA, state arts organizations, agencies and others, which will commence when the articles of incorporation are accepted. Portzline also wants to create partnerships with appropriate groups, including bookstores, libraries, educators, publishers, the travel industry, cultural tourism organizations and economic development groups. The National Council of Bookstore Tourism will have a board, a kind of steering committee and advisory panel. So far, the board consists of:

• Cindy Dach, Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz.
• George Eberhart, American Library Association
• Kevin McFadden, Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, Va.
• Donna Paz, Paz & Associates
• Len Vlahos, American Booksellers Association

Other members will be announced.

Bookstore tourism has "no down side," Portzline said enthusiastically. And if all goes well, someday he would love to take the idea to an even higher level and organize a month-long bus trip to bookstores across the country. "Thirty stores in thirty days!" he said. "We could bring authors along and do events with them in stores."

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday 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 Web site.

Saturday, November 19

11:15 a.m. Miami Book Fair International live coverage. (Re-airs Sunday at 12 a.m.)

7 p.m. Encore Booknotes. In a segment first aired in 2002, Zig Ziglar, president of Zig Ziglar Corporations and author of Zig: The Autobiography of Zig Ziglar, among other titles, sketches the zigs and zags of his career path from a struggling direct salesman to head of his own companies and international motivational speaker.

8 p.m. After Words. Andrew Carroll, director of the Legacy Project and author of Behind the Lines: Powerful and Revealing American and Foreign War Letters--and One Man's Search to Find Them (Scribner, $30, 0743256166), interviews former Marine Corps Captain Nathaniel Fick, a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq whose new memoir is One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (Houghton Mifflin, $25, 0618556133). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.)

9 p.m. The National Book Awards ceremony from Wednesday evening. (Re-airs Monday at 12 a.m.)

Sunday, November 20

11 a.m. More Miami Book Fair International live coverage.

Robert Sabuda pops up this morning on the Today Show. His Winter's Tale (S&S Children's, $26.95, 0689853637) will likely be one of the major titles of the holiday season.

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Today on WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show: poets Ted Mathys, author of Forge (Coffee House Press, $15, 1566891787), and C.K. Williams, who won a Pulitzer in 2000 for his Repair (FSG, $12, 0374527067), wax poetic.

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WAMU's Diane Rehm Show cheers up with Charles Burns, author of Black Hole (Pantheon, $24.95, 037542380X).

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KCRW's Bookworm gives voice to Richard Howard, author of Inner Voices: Selected Poems 1963-2003 (FSG, $16, 0374529906) and Paper Trail: Selected Prose 1965-2003 (FSG, $16, 0374529892). As the show describes it: "Richard Howard's extraordinary urbanity and sophistication are evident as he explores his influences: Henry James' winding syntax, Proust's evocation of a lost past, Whitman's teeming democracies. All of these sources lead him to his essential themes--desire and loss, love and lack."

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The theme for Oprah today is When I Knew I Was Gay. Participants include:

• Alan Downs, a clinical psychologist and author of The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay In a Straight Man's World (Da Capo, $23, 0738210110), in which he outlines three stages of the path to emotional health for gay men.
• Robert Trachtenberg, editor of When I Knew (HarperCollins, $22.95, 0060571462), which includes the stories of more than 80 men and women about their first realization that they were gay.

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Tonight on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart: Richard Clarke, the former National Security Advisor whose new book is a novel, The Scorpion's Gate (Putnam, $24.95, 0399152946).

Time for Thursday-morning quarterbacking.

Last night the National Book Foundation announced the winners of the National Book Awards, which have been roundly criticized in recent years. This year's list includes some more recognizable names, although the "loss" by E.L. Doctorow for The March was considered by some to be a surprise. The winners, who each receives a $10,000 prize and a crystal sculpture:

• Fiction: William T. Vollmann for Europe Central (Viking).
• Nonfiction: Joan Didion for The Year of Magical Thinking (Knopf).
• Poetry: W.S. Merwin for Migration: New and Selected Poems (Copper Canyon Press).
• Young People's Literature: Jeanne Birdsall for The Penderwicks (Knopf Books for Young Readers).

The Canada Council of the Arts has announced the winners of this year's Governor-General Literary Awards. Each winner receives C$15,000 (about US$12,580) and a copy of the winning book bound by Montreal bookbinder Lise Dubois. The English- and French-language honorees are:

Fiction

• David Gilmour for A Perfect Night to Go to China (Thomas Allen & Son, 0887621678).
• Aki Shimazaki for Hotaru (Leméac Éditeur/Actes Sud, 2760924300).

Nonfiction

• John Vaillant for The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness and Greed (Knopf Canada, 067697645X).
• Michel Bock for Quand la Nation Débordait les Frontières: Les Minorités Françaises dans la Pensée de Lionel Groulx (Éditions Hurtubise HMH, 2894287070).

Poetry

• Anne Compton for Processional (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1550413449).
• Jean-Marc Desgent for Vingtièmes Siècles (Les Écrits des Forges, 2890469107).

Drama

• John Mighton for Half Life (Playwrights Canada Press, 0887548164).
• Geneviève Billette for Le Pays des Genoux (Leméac Éditeur/Actes Sud, 2760924297).

Children's Literature--Text

• Pamela Porter for The Crazy Man (Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, cloth 0888996942, paper 0888996950).
• Camille Bouchard for Le Ricanement des Hyènes (Les Éditions de la Courte Échelle, 2890217671).

Children's Literature--Illustration

• Rob Gonsalves for Imagine a Day, text by Sarah L. Thomson (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 0689852193).
• Isabelle Arsenault for Le Cœur de Monsieur Gauguin, text by Marie-Danielle Croteau (Les Éditions Les 400 Coups, 2895401837).

Translation

• Fred A. Reed for Truth or Death: The Quest for Immortality in the Western Narrative Tradition (Talonbooks, 0889225095). The original: Raconter et Mourir: Aux Sources Narratives de l'Imaginaire Occidental by Thierry Hentsch (Les Presses de l'Université de Montréal).
• Rachel Martinez for Glenn Gould: Une Vie (Les Éditions du Boréal, 2764603428). The original: Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould by Kevin Bazzana (McClelland and Stewart).

Celina Spiegel and Julie Grau, founding editors and co-publishers of Riverhead Books, are leaving the Penguin imprint to create a new division at Doubleday Broadway. The as-yet-unnamed new division will begin publishing in 2007. Among the pair's Riverhead titles are the longtime bookstore favorites The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Color of Water by James McBride.

One suggestion for a division name: Gray Mirror, a translation of the principals' names from the German.