Time for a break. Shelf Awareness is taking a long weekend. We'll see you again bright and early on Monday, August 31.

Obituary note: Author and journalist Dominick Dunne, "who chronicled the misdeeds of the rich and famous with wicked glee," as the Los Angeles Times put it, died yesterday. He was 83.

In its obituary, the L.A. Times observed that "Dunne--with his silver hair, tortoiseshell glasses and Turnbull & Asser finery--became a celebrity in his own right, who openly sympathized with crime victims, skewered the perpetrators and rode in limousines to his front-row seat at their trials."

The New York Times noted that Dunne "never hesitated to admit that his sympathetic stance stemmed from the murder of his daughter, Dominique, by John Sweeney, her ex-boyfriend, in 1982."

"He never pretended to be objective in covering trials," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "He was always writing from the point of view of the victim because of what happened to his daughter, and he had a riveting way of knowing, almost like Balzac, what to tell the reader when."

Dunne's last novel, Too Much Money, is currently scheduled for publication in December.

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Google is adopting the ePub digital book format for distribution of more than one million public domain books that Google has digitized, "giving the standard a significant boost in the ongoing tussle for a dominant digital book format," the Los Angeles Times reported. In recent months, "ePub has emerged as one of the dominant formats for digital books."

Brandon Badger, Google's product manager, observed: "We're excited to now offer downloads in ePub format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format."

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Aspen Book Store, Aspen, Colo., "the little bookstore tucked into just under 300 square feet at the Little Nell Hotel," plans to close September 8, the Daily News reported. The decision by owner John S. Edwards "is based on a range of reasons. On a personal level, he is ready after working six to seven long days per week for 20 years to try something else in life--perhaps in publishing, perhaps in the hotel business--and take some time off to get to his own pile of books he's been meaning to read."

"I'm fortunate to have spent as many years as I have in Aspen," said Edwards. His current lease is up for renewal next month, and, since the hotel is shutting down this fall for renovations, he observed that "it is a good transitional point."

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Noting that even bookstore appearances are being crowdsourced now, GalleyCat reported that Melinda Blau co-author of Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don't Seem to Matter . . . But Really Do, is trying an alternative to the traditional bookstore event: "Instead of going to those bookstores and talking about the book, however, Blau is inviting her Facebook friends (and other potential fans) to go into stores and have strangers take a photo of them with the book, then send her the picture for an online collage."

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Random House has created a Facebook group called "I have more books than Facebook friends" to help promote E.L. Doctorow's new novel, Homer & Langley, which chronicles the curious lives of the Collyer brothers, who accumulated so many books and newspapers over the years that they were literally killed by their accumulated clutter. Random House calls its Facebook page "a celebration of all who hoard literature," and is sponsoring a contest there: "Post a picture of your literary clutter. Best photo wins a prize (um, not that you need a prize . . . it's all about bragging rights). But a first edition signed copy of E. L. Doctorow's new book Homer & Langley could be in your future if you play your cards right."

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The companion website for Get High Now (Without Drugs) by James Nestor was named one of Time.com's Best Websites of 2009. "Get High Now is a science site disguised as mind-expansion. There are 40 audio and visual illusions (or, if you must, 'hallucinations') to be experienced and, after reading about the brain science that explains them, understood."

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Dan Brown update: International edition. Gulf News reported that in Dubai, The Lost Symbol's September 15 release date is highly anticipated: "Local bookstores Magrudy's and Jashanmal Bookstores started accepting pre-orders for the book in May and June respectively, and have registered approximately 300 orders already."

"We have 200 pre-orders for our Dubai store already and are expecting more closer to the launch date," said Narain Jashanmal, general manager of Jashanmal books. According to Gulf News, the "store is expecting to order a total of 10,000 copies of the book for its stores in Dubai and Bahrain."

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British publisher Kraken Opus "plans to release a book on wine that will retail for a whopping £640,000 [US$1.04 million]," according to CBC. The "850-page book, titled The Wine Opus, will feature a list of the 100 best wineries in the world. . . . With the purchase of the book, readers will also receive six bottles of wine from every winery listed."

Sean Concannon of Parson Weems, the book rep firm, offers the following notes (with a slight ad) about the Great American Bargain Book Show, held for the first time in Boston, Mass., last weekend:

GABBS was a fantastic show for us and for our core remainder house, Symposium Books Wholesale. Keynote speaker Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., attracted some of our New England customers who are interested in exploring the bargain book business. Bargain books are a proven traffic generator, and that is precisely what all of trade stores need at this point.

Gayle Shanks repeated an idea I've heard (especially from Sue Little at Jabberwocky): booksellers should stock single copies of bargain titles. They represent a lower inventory risk than trade books, fill the same niches and encourage customers to browse since they may find hidden, inexpensive gems in the store's inventory. When customers find a bargain, they're likely to look for more, which results in a higher average ticket per customer.

For stores that don't have the time, money or staff to allow two to three days off for a remainder show, Parson Weems and some other rep groups and remainder reps can help buyers give remainders a try. Parson Weems reps are in stores anyway presenting essential frontlist, and we carry a full remainder presentation that a buyer can get through in the normal course of business.

The show was semi-busy Friday and dead Saturday, but most people I talked to seemed happy with it and confident it would be better next year. Here's who I ran into or met:

Lorna Ruby, Wellesley Booksmith, who is planning on getting started with remainders but is not sure how she wants to do it. She'll chat with Alie Hess, remainder buyer at Brookline Booksmith, who is on maternity leave.

Rob Lee, ToW Distribution, a branch of comics website Tales of Wonder, who was peddling Diamond hurts and lots of other graphic novel stuff. It has 300-plus titles and plans to grow.

Steve Fischer and Nan Sorensen from the New England Independent Booksellers Association, who were at Gayle Shanks's address Friday morning and reiterated that trade stores should stock remainders with general inventory "Powell's style."

Bridget Kinsella, a regular contributor, remembers a telling moment with the late Senator Edward Kennedy:

I met Senator Kennedy on one of my first assignments working at Publishers Weekly. It was John Kenneth Galbraith's birthday and Houghton flew me up to Boston for the party. Kennedy had just re-married and said to me, "Oh have you met Vicki?" as though we mingled in the same circles all the time. He had a way of making the little people (like me) feel seen and heard.

A couple of years ago at a BEA Hyperion party, I had the privilege of meeting Caroline Kennedy whose A Family Christmas was due that fall. I recounted meeting with the Senator, adding that my father wished I had told him that my grandma's maiden name was Kennedy. But I had been too green and shy to think of saying something like that at the time. Caroline laughed and told me Uncle Teddy would have gotten a kick out of it.

Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Bryan Jepson, author of Changing the Course of Autism: A Scientific Approach for Parents and Physicians (Sentient Publications, $18.95, 9781591810612/1591810612). He also appears on Dateline on Sunday.

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 website.

Saturday, August 29

10 a.m. Kari Lydersen, author of Revolt on Goose Island: The Chicago Factory Takeover, and What it Says About the Economic Crisis (Melville House, $16, 9781933633824/1933633824), presents an account of workers who refused to vacate a Chicago factory that closed after Bank of America terminated a line of credit to their employer. (Re-airs Monday at 2 a.m.)

6 p.m. Encore Booknotes. For a segment that first aired in 1993, Douglas Davis, author of The Five Myths of Television Power, explored commonly held assumptions about Americans and TV.

9 p.m. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, co-authors of Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, $35, 9780300123906/0300123906), discuss the history of Soviet spy activity in the U.S. 

10 p.m. After Words. Sergei Khrushchev interviews Peter Carlson, author of K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America's Most Unlikely Tourist (PublicAffairs, $25.95, 9781586484972/1586484974). (Re-airs Sunday at 9 p.m., and Monday at 12 a.m. and 3 a.m.)

11 p.m. Sally Satel talks about her book, When Altruism Isn't Enough: The Case for Compensating Kidney Donors (AEI Press, $25, 9780844742663/084474266X).

Sunday, August 30

7 p.m. Chris Mooney, author of Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (Basic Books, $24, 9780465013050/0465013058), argues that science needs a larger presence in the media and public discourse.

8 p.m. Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream (Doubleday, $27.50, 9780385521307/0385521308), talks about Cheng Chui Ping, who ran an illegal immigration ring during the 1980s and 1990s. 

10 p.m. David Wessel, author of In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic (Crown Business, $26.99, 9780307459688/0307459683), claims that Bernanke's response to the recession effectively made the Federal Reserve a fourth branch of government.

Winners of the 2009 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Regional Book
Awards are:

• Adult Fiction: Another Man's Moccasins: A Walt Longmire Mystery by Craig Johnson (Penguin)
• Adult Nonfiction: American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella (Random House)
• The Arts: Colorado's Wild Horses by Claude Steelman (Wildshots, Inc.)
• Regional Reference: Staking Her Claim: Women Homesteading the West by Marcia Meredith Hensley (High Plains Press)
• Children's Chapter Book: Go Big or Go Home by Will Hobbs (HarperCollins)
• Children's Picture Book : The Illuminated Desert by Terry Tempest Williams, illustrations by Chloe Hedden (Canyonlands Natural History Association)

The recipients will be honored Friday, September 25, at a luncheon during the MPIBA Trade Show in Denver, Colo.

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Steven Amsterdam's apocalyptic novel, Things We Didn't See Coming, won the A$20,000 (US$16,546) Age Book of the Year award, as well as the fiction category prize. Published by Sleepers, a small Melbourne house, the book was described by the judges as ''suspenseful and involving, it succeeds both as a compelling vision of the future and as a study of human resourcefulness and endurance," acocording to the Age. Guy Rundle won the $10,000 non-fiction prize for Down to the Crossroads, and Peter Porter won the $10,000 poetry prize for Better Than God.

Philippa Gregory was an established historian and writer when she delved into the Tudor period and wrote the novel The Other Boleyn Girl, which was made into a TV drama and a major film. Six novels later, she has turned her attention to the family that preceded the Tudors on the English throne: the Plantagenets, a family of complex loves, rivalries and hatreds. The first in the new Cousin's War series, The White Queen was just published by Touchstone. She lives with her family on a small farm in Yorkshire, where she keeps horses, hens and ducks. The progress of ducklings as well as updates of historical research are available on her website, PhilippaGregory.com. Another great interest is the charity that she founded nearly 20 years ago, Gardens for the Gambia, which has paid for 140 wells in the primary schools of this very dry and poor African country. Thousands of school children have learned market gardening and drunk the fresh water in the school gardens around the wells.

On your nightstand now: 

It's an eclectic mix: Kim by Rudyard Kipling, Perkin by Anne Wroe, Margaret Pole by Hazel Pierce and The Great Crash 1929 by J.K. Galbraith.

Favourite book when you were a child:

I was a fanatical reader when I was a child, borrowing the maximum from the library (four) and reading each every week. One of my all-time favourites was The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, a story of the other world told in a way of absolute matter-of-fact realism.

Your top five authors:

It's always so hard to choose! For historical fiction: Georgette Heyer. For the U.S.: John Steinbeck because of his tremendous compassion and sense of humour. Finest exponent of the English drawing room novel (and that is not a criticism of scale but admiration of scale): Jane Austen. Lyricism, compassion, understanding: E.M. Forster (and like all English novelists he's great on snobbery too). Massive social canvas and realism and passion and tragedy! Good lord, the tragedy!: Leo Tolstoy.

Book you've faked reading:

Apart from hoping to bluff through the occasional English seminars where I just didn't do the work I should have done (students, now I am a teacher and I can tell you, the teachers always know), I can't read something when I truly can't. A lot of Salman Rushdie comes under this heading, for which I refuse to apologise. Reading should be a pleasure, a joy, and if I am not entranced and delighted then I don't bother.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Middlemarch by George Eliot. It tells you everything: about men and women, about Victorian society, about wealth, about courage, even about railways. It's a huge, great book.

Book you've bought for the cover:

I've never bought a book for the cover, but I did once buy a pop-up book on British architecture for the fantastic paper engineering. It was truly lovely.

Book that changed your life:

I think Virginia Woolf. A Room of One's Own did not exactly change my life, but it gave me a perspective on the achievement of women and an understanding of the obstacles we face that formed my thinking and informs me still. It is a wonderful book.

Favourite line from a book:

I am surprising myself. The one that comes to mind is hidden in a short story by John Updike, and I don't even own a copy so I can't look it up. If someone wants to trace it for me, they can write and tell me on my website. It says that this lonely woman sleeps at night with the light on and it is something like--oh, but it is not a very bright light. It's incredibly small and poignant.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

This implies that the wonder of reading for the first time is greater than the pleasure of recognition and remembering, and I'm not sure of that. But I had a wonderful time reading Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. I started at this mountain of an 18th century novel, which appears in many, many volumes, and found that I was absolutely absorbed and wouldn't have missed a single word. It was like climbing Mount Everest in a series of lovely Sunday afternoon hikes.

The Last Day by James Landis (Steerforth Press, $14.99 trade paperback, 9781586421656/1586421654, September 1, 2009)

Opening lines of books we want to read:

I meet Jesus on the day I get home from the war. I'm on the beach, but I don't know how I got here. My mind is as dark as the night.

I walk, but only back and forth. New Hampshire has a tiny coastline. A lot of it is rock, sent down from Maine when God made the Earth, to keep us on our toes down here. I walk where the sand is wet and hard and cold. It holds my toes, and my toes hold it. In the desert, where I fought, the sand was inhospitable.

The darkness is a gift . . . Things become clearer the darker it is.

Out here, on the beach, I'm alone. I always have been. Or as long as I can remember. As long as since my mother died.

I'd come here in the middle of the night to find myself and to get away from others. The beach is a place of memories. When you come here, you take your life with you. When you go other places, like the city or the desert, you leave your life behind.

I remember everything.

Except how I got here.

--Selected by Marilyn Dahl

In retrospect, it turned out to be easier than anyone could have imagined.

Historians disagree about the timing, though most acknowledge the key moment occurred when Alain de Botton became writer-in-residence at London's Heathrow Airport in August, 2009, after signing a one-book deal with BAA. An article in the Guardian at the time observed that he was "the latest artistic figure to tread the precarious line between creative independence and commerce."

De Botton, however, insisted on creative control: "One of the first things I said when they offered it to me was that I should be allowed to say what I want to say."

As the prescient Mike Brown, chief operating officer at the airport, observed: "Opening Heathrow to literary critique is a bold and adventurous step for us."

And so it was . . . for all of us.

There are theorists who contend that the true precedent is Fay Weldon's 2001 novel, The Bulgari Connection, sponsored by the Italian jewelry firm "with a requirement in her contract for at least a dozen mentions of its products."

At the time, her agent claimed the "door is open and now the sky is the limit. I've suggested that in her next book she includes a whole string of top companies, Disney, Levis, McDonald's, the lot, and we write to all of them and say Ms. Weldon is including a mention of your fine company in her next book, what do you reckon?'"

It didn't quite work that way. Ultimately, the credit for launching a new era in literary sponsorship must rest squarely on the shoulders of one author, a man for whom de Botton's Heathrow adventure provided the spark that soon became a promotional flame, thanks to some notably unbookish sources of inspiration.

I don't have to remind anyone of this former midlist author's name. He now stands as a commercial icon for our brave new book world. We will call him Mr. R here, due to his status as a trademarked entity, his formidable legal team and the fact that mentioning his name in print now, even with permission, can become a very expensive proposition.

Through unnamed sources, I have recently learned the true backstory of Mr. R's professional genesis, which began on a quiet Saturday afternoon in August, 2009. Relaxing in his home, Mr. R first read about the de Botton deal while catching up on a few days worth of accumulated newspapers and listening to a Yankees-Red Sox game on his radio.

After one of the early pitches, he heard John Sterling, the Yankee's play-by-play announcer, say something that was at once in and decidedly out of context: "Road Runner High Speed from Time Warner Cable; the fastest way round the Internet. That pitch came in at 90 miles an hour." Mr. R had heard the promo dozens of times, but on this day he listened and kept listening.

Occasionally, during commercial breaks, former Yankee manager Joe Torre, who had moved on to the Los Angeles Dodgers after being fired, turned up hawking Bigelow Green Tea on the Yankees radio broadcast.

He considered de Botton again, recalled Fay Weldon and was perhaps in a more receptive mood than usual later that day as he watched the Sharpie 500, a NASCAR race from Bristol, Tennessee.

When it was over, winning driver Kyle Busch emerged from a Toyota Camry that was plastered with logos, including a large decal for his primary sponsor, M&Ms, on the hood. His multi-colored firesuit and baseball cap also sported the M&Ms logo.

"I really gotta thank M&Ms," said Busch, appropriatety enough, in the post-race interview, then added "Toyota, Interstate Batteries, everybody at Sprint . . . DIRECTV, Gillette, Marquis Jets." Mr. R paid close attention this time, perhaps because the race was sponsored by Sharpie, a writing implement.

You know the rest. His next book found six sponsors outside the industry, and became his breakout novel, Last Southwest Flight to the Bellagio.

Within five years, writers were mega-stars. Even traditional celebrities--once the financial backbone of the publishing world--couldn't get a book deal. When the reality series, American Yaddo, premiered on ABC in 2011, millions of people--readers and nonreaders alike--tuned in to watch unknown authors spend weeks living and feuding together in a possibly haunted mansion in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., vying for major sponsorships and the chance to be the next great American novelist.

Money was on the writing table at last.--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)

The following were the bestselling titles at independent bookstores in the Chicago area during the week ended Sunday, August 23:

Hardcover Fiction
 
1. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
2. That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo
3. South of Broad by Pat Conroy
4. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson and Reg Keeland
5. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
 
Hardcover Nonfiction
 
1. Mastering The Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck, and Sidonie Coryn
2. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
3. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
4. Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi by Timothy Pauketat
5. I'm Down by Mishna Wolff
 
Paperback Fiction
 
1. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
2. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
3. A Mercy by Toni Morrison
4. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
5. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
 
Paperback Nonfiction
 
1. My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'Homme
2. Julie & Julia by Julie Powell
3. The Family by Jeff Sharlet
4. Julia's Kitchen Wisdom by Julia Child
5. Tunnel and the Light by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
 
Children's
 
1. The 39 Clues Book 5 by Patrick Carman
2. Little Polar Bear by Hans de Beer
3. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
4. The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan
5. Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko

Reporting bookstores: Anderson's, Naperville and Downers Grove; Read Between the Lynes, Woodstock; the Book Table, Oak Park; the Book Cellar, Lincoln Square; Lake Forest Books, Lake Forest; the Bookstall at Chestnut Court, Winnetka; and 57th St. Books; Seminary Co-op; Women and Children First, Chicago.

[Many thanks to the booksellers and Carl Lennertz!]