Once Governor Beverly Perdue signs the new state budget, "North Carolina will become the second state in 2009, and the third in the U.S., to enact an e-fairness provision, which will ensure that online retailers with affiliates in the state collect tax on sales made to in-state residents over the Internet," Bookselling This Week reported.

"That North Carolina has joined the ranks of states leading the e-fairness fight for equity in the collection of sales tax is outstanding news--both for in-state retailers who are already meeting their obligations and, also, for those in other states who currently are fighting for fairness and equity," said ABA CEO Oren Teicher. "It's extremely heartening to see that North Carolina's legislators and governor agree with us that it is not the role of government to pick winners and losers among competing retailers."

Teicher added that, "Once again, we've seen that legislators listen when booksellers reach out to them to make their views known."

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Cool California ideas of the day.

"First we had books. Then we had Criterion DVDs. Then we stuck 'em together with rubber bands and discounted 'em by 25%." Book Soup, Los Angeles, Calif., is selling DVD/Book Combopacks, and suggested that, if you don't believe them, you can just watch their "Animated Propaganda Video."

And Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, Calif., "is thrilled to offer personalized children's books. Now your child can be a character in his or her favorite book." If you don't believe them, they also have a video. They caution however, that "before you ask, no, we do not offer personalized books for adults. We can't make you a character in Sophie's Choice no matter how badly you might want it."

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From the department of books adapted to film, then re-adapted to bestselling books: According to USA Today, "This year, three movie tie-in paperbacks have made it to Number 1 on USA Today's Best-Selling Books list. This week it's The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, spurred on by the movie of the same name opening next week. The paperback has 2 million copies in print." The other two were Stephenie Meyers' Twilight movie tie-in edition, which "took the top spot four times this year," and Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. Also highlighted was Julie Powell's Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. That movie opens nationwide today.

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"Deb Lund and Mona Lamb took a look around Springvale [Maine] and asked each other what the village needed." According to the Sanford News, the answer was a bookstore. Village Books and Things opened in June and plans to hold a grand opening for the used bookshop in September.

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Julian Barnes may have written A History of the World in 10½ Chapters, but bestselling historical novelist Philippa Gregory plans to make her Twitter debut next week by condensing her latest novel, The White Queen, into a series of 140-character tweets, written "in the voice of Elizabeth Woodville [@ElizWoodville], the Plantagenet queen around whom her new novel is based," the Guardian reported.

In July, retail sales fell 5.1%, as measured by Thomson Reuters. This did not include figures from Wal-Mart, which has stopped providing monthly sales data.

"Retailers endured another tough month in July--the worst since January--as weaker consumer spending signaled a tough time for back-to-school sales, the second-biggest retail season after Christmas," according to the Wall Street Journal, which added that the "dismal results are partly a reflection of buyers retrenching as unemployment rises."

"A large chunk of the American population has decided not to do any discretionary spending. They're going to the grocery stores and doing very little else," said Stephen J. Hoch, a professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Among the concerns expressed in looking forward, the Journal noted that "some analysts fear the government's 'cash for clunkers' rebate program, which is driving buyers to auto dealers with up to $4,500 trade-in allowances on new-car purchases, may siphon retail dollars."

The New York Times reported that "ShopperTrak, a company that tracks shopping patterns, projected that the total foot traffic in retail stores during the coming season would fall 10% as shoppers focused on necessary purchases and targeted sales."

In a profile of Sam Weller's Zion Bookstore, Salt Lake City, Utah, on the occasion of its 80th anniversary, Bookselling This Week noted that, since the legendary bookshop's "history has been chronicled extensively, BTW asked Tony Weller for some of the lesser-known facts about the family business." These include:

• We foolishly have some 17,000 square feet of storage and workspace supporting a 20,000 sq.-ft. sales area.
• Salt Lake's first punk bar was in what is now our basement.
• We have a cozy relationship with the Scrub Oak Bindery, which does skilled restoration and binding work.
• Catherine and I met at punk rock shows and parties.
• We have one of the largest collections of USGS (United States Geological Survey) publications in the nation.
• Sam Weller built the long catwalk around the interior of our high-ceilinged main floor in 1973 because he loved the feel of the Scribner's store in New York.
• After finding the second bowling pin under our floorboards in the basement, I learned that there used to be a bowling alley there.
• The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, and Mormon murderer Mark Hoffman were customers of ours.
• Terry Tempest Williams used to work here and met her husband here.

Today on PBS' Tavis Smiley: BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay, co-author (with Claire Shipman) of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success (HarperBusiness, $27.99, 9780061697180/0061697184)

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Tonight on Charlie Rose: Meryl Streep and Nora Ephron, star and director respectively of the film Julie & Julia, based on Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Little, Brown, $7.99, 9780316042512/031604251X)

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Sunday on Weekend Edition: Rebecca Wells, author of Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (Harper, $25.95, 9780060175313/0060175311).

Liam Neeson "is negotiating to star in Unknown White Male, the Dark Castle thriller that will be directed by Jaume Collet-Serra," Variety reported. The film is adapted from Didier Van Cauwelaert's novel Out of My Head (Other Press, $12.95, 9781590511992/1590511999). Production is set to begin next January.

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Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) will direct a screen version of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. "The project has been set up at Universal, where Scott will produce the project with an eye to direct. His sometimes collaborator Leonardo DiCaprio, meanwhile, will produce with an eye to star," according to the Hollywood Reporter, which added that Farhad Safinia will adapt the novel and "much of the timing going forward will depend on the script."

Susie Bright is the editor of X: The Erotic Treasury and the Best American Erotica series. She had been writing and performing about sex, politics and erotic forensics for more than 30 years. Her latest book, Bitten: Dark Erotic Stories, was published by Chronicle Books last month. Her blog is at susiebright.com.

On my nightstand now:

My old collection of Dashiell Hammett novels under one cover; No Excuses by Sheila Van Damm; "We Help Daddy" (a Golden Book); Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; Cycling San Diego by Nelson Copp and Jerry Schad; The History of the Snowman by Bob Eckstein; the Economist.

Favorite book when I was a child:

Before I could "read," my favorites included the beautiful illustrated D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths. I so enjoyed showing my daughter those books all over again, when she was a tot. Interestingly when she became a teen and fell in love with a boy who wouldn't read anything but "comic books with superheroes," that was the book she lured him with to try reading aloud from.

On my Kindle now:

A Thousand Years of Good Prayer by Yiyun Li; The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perotta; How to Use the Amazon Kindle by Stephen Windwalker; The Chicago Way by Michael Harvey; No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July; The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin; Naked by Akiba Solomon.

When people ask me what great erotic literature is, I say:

"It's a matter of taste--and memory." But if you are looking for expert craft, you couldn't go wrong with Henry Miller and his Land of F***; Pauline Réage's Story of O; Steven Saylor writing as Aaron Travis; most of the writers you'll meet in my anthologies. They take my breath away.

Best book on pornography:

Blue Movie by Terry Southern.

Reading I hid from my mother:

I didn't want her to find the lyrics to "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" from the Beatles. I was so scared she'd take a critical look at their post-1967 albums that I hid them in a tree knot outside and would play them only when she was at work. In retrospect, I think I unjustly put my own fears and incomprehension onto her!

My top five authors:

How brutal! I'd be ashamed to list only 500, let alone five. The only way I'll make it through a handful is to be nepotistic and impetuous: My dad, William Bright; Roland Barthes, for A Lover's Discourse; Michael Herr for Dispatches; Emma Goldman for her autobiography; Edmund White for taking me through Paris last year in The Flaneur. When I was a kid, I got Louise Fitzhugh conflated with Harper Lee and was crushed to find out they weren't the same person. May I have their duality be one of my favorites?

Have I faked reading a book?

When you're a book reviewer, you become a mad scanner, searching for an original angle in record time. I love my Kindle because I can look for key words in seconds. But complete faking? Probably not. If you ask me if I've read Proust, I'd say, "Not more than a passage or two, but I'd love to hear your whole take on it." I like other people's retelling.

Book I am an evangelist for:

I'm a relentless promoter of every author I've ever published, but that's numbering in the hundreds now, so it's getting tricky!

This Christmas, I bought two cartons of Alison Bechdel's Essential Dykes to Watch Out For and gave them to every essential dyke who's been a part of my life.

Andy Griffin of The Ladybug Letter doesn't yet have his book out, but he will--and I will be running around with a brass band to celebrate it!

Book I've bought for the cover:

I'm out of control in a museum, fine print or OOP bookshop. A beautiful or intriguing cover, a genius for design, will seduce me every time. I'll just mention the LAST book I picked up and bought because of its cover: Is Clothing Modern? by Bernard Rudofsky

Book that changed my life:

A pamphlet, actually: "Wage, Labor, and Capital" by Karl Marx.

Favorite line from a book:

"Fight like hell for the living . . "--Mother Jones's autobiography.

Book I'd most want to read again for the first time:

A Born Again Virgin for a title? Wow.

I recently found a paperback from my childhood that had a great effect on me, called Mad, Sad, & Glad, a collection of poetry from high school students in the 1960s. I thought their poetry was amazing when I was 12; it was filled with a social awareness that will have you clutching your heart. And all these years later, the anthology of young writers is still remarkable. I look at their names, wondering, "Are any of you famous poets?" Because they should be!

I'm waiting for Variety to report on casting choices for Revenge of the Beach Reads, a futuristic summer movie in which downtrodden booksellers and librarians band together in a secret laboratory under the New York Public Library and train to become muscle-bound BookWarriors (with laser beam reading glasses), seeking vengeance upon alien electronic reading devices that can transform themselves into gigantic killer BiblioBots.

What is it about this season that provokes feverish high-budget action films and endless summer variations on the theme reflected in media headlines like Beach Buddies: Authors Pick Literary Partners for Fun, Sun; Audience Picks: 100 Best Beach Books Ever and Text on the beach--the 50 best summer reads ever?

It's viral, and many of us catch it, but I can offer an alternative prescription. Let's all take a deep breath of warm August air, listen to Frank Morgan's version of "Summertime," and check out some indie booksellers who are sharing their own sweet obsession with summer reads through events, blogs, websites and e-newsletters. It ain't just about putting up an endcap display with shells and fishnets anymore. Here's just a sampling of the many indies that have their reading toes planted firmly in the virtual sand.

Joe Foster of Maria's Bookshop, Durango, and Cathy Langer of Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver, talked about "Summer Reading with a Colorado Flavor" on public radio station KCFR.

From the "only in New York" department, McNally Jackson Books held its fourth annual "The Shrinks Are Away" reading and reception, with host Susan Shapiro "gathering fellow writers for a joint reading of work to soothe crazy psyches--because when the therapists go on vacation in August, we turn to literature to cure our neuroses." 

Rediscovered Bookshop, Boise, Idaho, recommends the power of being open to unanticipated summer reading possibilities: "For some reason, this summer has not really presented itself with as many awesome books as I anticipated it would, so I've been randomly grabbing books off the shelves to see what I can find. Thinking back on it, some of the greatest books I've ever read I have picked up either on accident, or begrudgingly were forced into my hands. It always makes me think at the end of a really good book that I shouldn't judge books so quickly. So, without much discrimination, here are the books that I've found in the last month that I felt iffy about, but in the end LOVED."

The blog for Skylight Books, Los Angeles, Calif., features great coverage of its Hot Summer Nights events, but I'm particularly impressed with the passionate recommendation of titles published by Archipelago Books, as well as the willingness to share customers with this fine indie publisher: "While you could get all of these books at Skylight Books, where we try to cater to all your independent press needs, what we'd really like to encourage you to do today is to go browse and purchase a few books directly from Archipelago, through their website. It is just a small way to try to help them out in these troubled times."

Both realistic and at one with the season, the Lemuria Books, Jackson, Miss., blog concedes that "summer is almost over, but there are plenty of new books to read during the upcoming 'dog days,' whether beating the heat by the pool, on that last trip to the beach, or from you favorite reading spot at home in the AC!!"

On the website for Prairie Lights Books, Iowa City, Iowa, Paul Ingram looks ahead to some favored titles in the offing: "Wonderful books are coming in the fall. If you'd like to reserve copies when they first arrive, give us a call and we'll save you one."

And what about the hot weather book? I suspect many readers have been asked for their "all-time favorite summer read." I certainly heard the question many times as a bookseller, and I'd love to know your answer.

For a long time, mine has been A Month in the Country, a smart, sweet and bittersweet novel by J. L. Carr. "Summertime! And summertime in my early twenties! And in love!" Tom Birkin--who is not an exclaimer by nature--exclaims. "No, better than that--secretly in love, coddling it up in myself. It's an odd feeling, coming rarely more than once in most of our lifetimes. In books, as often as not, they represent it as a sort of anguish but it wasn't so for me. Later, perhaps, but not then."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)

The following were the bestselling titles at City Lights Books, San Francisco, Calif., during July, as reported in the bookshop's e-newsletter:

Paperback

1. On the Road: Original Scroll by Jack Kerouac
2. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
3. San Francisco Noir 2 edited by Peter Maravelis
4. Smash the Church, Smash the State! edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca
5. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
6. When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris
7. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
8. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
9. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
10. The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon

Hardcover

1. Poetry as Insurgent Art by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
2. Poets edited by Carmela Ciuraru
3. And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs
4. 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick
5. The Beats: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar
6. This Is Water by David Foster Wallace
7. Lucky Hans and Other Merz Fairy Tales by Kurt Schwitters
8. How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer
9. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami
10. Burn This Book edited by Toni Morrison