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Tillie Olsen, the feminist, socialist writer whose work focused on the lives of working-class women, died Monday night. She was 94.

Her titles included Tell Me a Riddle, a collection that contained the well-known short story, I Stand Here Ironing; the novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties; and a nonfiction work, Silences, about the difficulties writers face.

Olsen's texts were particularly popular on campuses, and she was a longtime advisor to the Feminist Press.

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Sadly it's that time of the year: we've learned of several more bookstores that are closing.

Baileywick Books, New Milford, Conn., is shutting its doors at the end of the month, according to the Danbury News Times. Blanchette Bailey, a retired English teacher and former middle school administrator who founded Baileywick Books 14 years ago, is 75 and is retiring for the second time, as she put it.

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Shakespeare Beethoven & Company, Dallas, Tex., has closed--on almost the same day as Black Images Book Bazaar (Shelf Awareness, December 10, 2006).

One of the original tenants of the Galleria, Shakespeare Beethoven & Company was founded 25 years ago by Vivienne Surtees, who died earlier this year. Her daughter, general manager Katie Surtees, told the Dallas News, "I think after 9/11 people realized it's much easier to buy things off the Net, and they just stopped coming to the Galleria. I've just seen such a decline in traffic here, in my end of the mall."

Surtees added that she would like to find another location. "I'm hoping to open a different version of this store in summer to fall. But I can't promise. Rents are high everywhere."

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As libraries add more audiobooks, DVDs, computers and other electronic equipment, pressure to cull books increases. Yesterday on its front page, the Washington Post browsed the issue, using the Fairfax County Public Library in Virginia as an example.

Relying on a software program that identifies books that haven't been checked out in at least two years, the library system has culled titles by Aristotle, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker and more at some branches (although other branches may keep the titles).

"We're being very ruthless," library director Sam Clay told the paper. "A book is not forever. If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that's a cost."

 

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Today we begin a look back on 2006, our first full year in existence. For starters, we have to note the scandals that marked the past year, many of which seemed like plots for bad novels. Appropriately we will borrow the words of someone else, in this case Josh Getlin of the Los Angeles Times:

"It started off with bestselling author James Frey admitting his memoir, A Million Little Pieces, was in fact a work of fiction, and ended with celebrity publisher Judith Regan getting fired for allegedly making anti-Semitic comments after her proposed O.J. Simpson confessional book-TV deal got shot down.

"In between came charges that 19-year-old Harvard novelist Kaavya Viswanathan had lifted passages from a rival chick-lit author, and hotly disputed allegations that Ian McEwan, one of the most respected names in modern literary fiction, may have been guilty of plagiarism."

In addition, it turned out that "J.T. Leroy--a bestselling author believed to be an HIV-positive teenage prostitute--was in fact a 40-year-old San Francisco woman who had concealed her identity for years."

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As some of today's news emphasizes, bookselling is more competitive than ever, and during 2006, a range of bookstores were saved, supported or created by what might be called bookstore angels.

In September, Cody's Books, which had been stretched financially by its new store in San Francisco and its long-struggling flagship in Berkeley, Calif.--which closed in June--found a savior in Yohan, Inc., the Japanese company that distributes English-language books and magazines in Japan, operates 18 bookstores in Japan and owns publisher IBC Publishing and Stone Bridge Press in Berkeley (September 6). After Yohan bought Cody's, longtime owner Andy Ross stayed on as president.

Prairie Home Companion's Garrison Keillor founded Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minn., at the end of October. Besides some of Keillor's works, the store features fewer sections than the common good bookstore.

Turnrow Book Co., which opened in August in Greenwood, Miss., and is managed by Jamie and Kelly Kornegay, was helped into existence by Fred Carl, the founder and CEO of Viking Range and a native of Greenwood who has singlehandedly revitalized much of the Mississippi Delta town's downtown (October 3). High-end kitcheware turned out to be the key ingredient in the creation of this elegant store.

College store operator Follett opened the first of a new type of store on the Drag, across from the University of Texas in Austin (March 22). Unusually the school is contributing money to the company, and the store, called Follett Intellectual Property, will not sell textbooks or UT clothing and memorabilia--products that will be staples of the University Co-op.

In another unusual college store shuffle, Micawber Books sold its business to Princeton University and will close in March; this fall, Labyrinth Books, which has scholarly stores near Columbia University and Yale University, will open a store called Labyrinth Books at Princeton, which will be near but not in Micawber's location downtown; and the U-Store, Princeton's coop, will phase out its book business by next fall--leaving book retailing to Labyrinth--and will open a satellite store selling apparel next to Labyrinth (December 5). In other words, Princeton is helping Labyrinth continue the high book service that Micawber was known for.

One angel turned out to be a grinch. Last week Doug Dutton closed his Dutton's Beverly Hills branch because the current mayor and city council--not the same ones who lured him to open in that pricey area with below-market rent--wouldn't reconsider the deal after Dutton found he was losing money (December 20).

[Tomorrow and Friday, more about last year, including promising new stores, healthy changes in the business, milestones, etc.] 

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