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Quotation of the DayAn Introduction to Books"As a child, my parents would take me to the local library and I'd come
back with grocery bags full of books. The public library really
introduced me to books as a kid."--Tim Green at a signing done with river's end bookstore, Oswego, N.Y., at which 20% of sales of his new American Outrage went to the capital campaign project of the Oswego Public Library, as quoted by the Oswego Palladium-Times.
NewsNotes: Hudson's Extra Edge; Rallying for Elaine VietsSeveral national organizations covered the protest yesterday in
front of the headquarters of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution against
the newspaper's decision to let go its book editor, Teresa Weaver.
Check out CNN and Fox for more. --- Hudson and CNN take their partnership a step farther. When the paperback edition of Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival
by CNN star Anderson Cooper appears next Tuesday, Hudson News and
Hudson Booksellers will be offering an exclusive edition that includes
a new afterword and a bound-in DVD that contains an interview with
Cooper and video from Cooper's Reporter's Notebooks. On the Saturday before Mother's Day, the
Southern California Independent Booksellers Association will be on the
road again. Its newest bookstore tourism tour, focusing on Orange
County bookstores, will start at Vroman's in Pasadena and visit
Martha's Bookstore at Balboa Island, Latitude 33 and the Laguna Beach
Bookstore in Laguna Beach and Compass Books in Anaheim. Lunch will be
at La Casa del Camino hotel in Laguna Beach. --- The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission voted 4-0 with one abstention to consider declaring the building housing Dutton's Brentwood a historic-cultural monument, according to the Los Angeles Times. The applicant is the daughter of the architect of the building, which dates from 1950--a prehistoric time in L.A. Building owner Charles T. Munger, a lawyer and local philanthropist, has said he wants to redevelop the site as a mixed-use development that would include luxury condos and a ground-level bookstore. --- --- Friends of Elaine Viets are rallying to help the
author, who suffered a stroke several weeks ago, to promote her first
hardcover, Murder with Reservations, part of the Dead End Job
series. The aim is to hold events by proxy. Among the
suggestions: authors can place a stack of Viets's books on their tables
during their own tours and post an image of the book and a note on
their website or blog; and booksellers can set up a party for Viets.
For more information, go to breakthroughpromotions.com/elaine.html. We hear that another Barnes & Noble (in addition
to the one in Astor Place in New York City) is closing sometime in the
next few months because the company doesn't want to pay a higher rent
that would come with a lease renewal. This one is on the Main Line, in Bryn
Mawr, Pa., and is near a Borders. Ironically the B&N has always
been busy and our source said that the CRM, Kathy Siciliano, put on
events more days than not. --- In July 2008, Barnes & Noble plans to open a store in the Harrisburg Mall at I-83 and Paxton Street in Harrisburg, Pa. --- You might call this one Harry Potter and the Green Mountain Revitalization. According to the Associated Press (via the Rutland Herald), a Gilman, Vt., paper mill has won a $2.5 million contract to provide recycled paper for Canadian and Australian editions of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. "We're not wizards but we like to think we've done a pretty good job," said Peter Hanson of Dirigo Paper Company, which had been closed from 2002-2004 after its previous owner declared bankruptcy. --- Bookselling This Week
profiles the Bookworm, Omaha, Neb., owned by Beth and Phil Black. For
the third year in a row, the store will run Berky Books, the official
bookstore at the annual meeting weekend of Berkshire Hathaway, which draws thousands of shareholders (Shelf Awareness, May 10, 2006). --- The Portland, Ore., Bee profiled Looking Glass Bookstore and toured its new location in "the red caboose next door to Grand Central Bakery on Antique Row in Sellwood." Owner Karin Anna said she was pleased with the move and that "the caboose conceals a shop far larger than it looks from outside." --- In a Salt Lake Tribune article on the "Local First" movement among Utah small business owners, King's English Bookstore owner Betsy Burton said, "We're not anti-chain. But we want people to know: Every time you're spending a dollar, you're making a decision to shape your community. Think what you want your community to look like." --- In the same vein, the San Francisco Chronicle
reported on a study by the San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants
Alliance that found that the city by the bay "remains a stronghold of
locally owned retail businesses" that "recycle much more of their
revenue in the surrounding community than do their chain competitors." --- Anarchy thrives north of the border. "You won't get any Starbucks coffee at Exile Infoshop, Ottawa's first anarchist bookstore," reported the Ottawa Citizen. "And don't try to pay with your capitalist credit cards, either." The shop will be staffed by volunteers and "decisions about the shop are made by the eight-member collective, based on a model of non-hierarchy where every member has an equal say." Sarah Armstrong, a Collective member, offered a concise version of plans for the shop: "We shouldn't just rock the boat--we have to sink the f-----!"
Your Best Church Bookstore Now: Osteen's Store Wins AwardThe bookstore of the Lakewood Church, Joel Osteen's megachurch in
Houston, Tex., has been named Church Bookstore of the Year by the
Gathering of Church Bookstores, if we take the word of the Christian
Post. The bookstore was cited "for outstanding contributions in the
development of Christian retail in the local church." Osteen is the author of the Your Best Life Now books.
The bookstore has nearly 10,000 square feet of space and sells 2,000
titles as well as gifts, jewelry, cards, toys, music and Joel
Osteen Ministries products. "A large-screen television broadcasts
videos of Osteen's sermons and at the edge of the store is a giant
aquarium next to 12 cushioned bamboo chairs," the Post wrote. The
store's sales are projected to be $3.1 million this year. Most sales
occur on weekends when the church holds four services, drawing nearly
40,000 people. "Eight cash registers, plus 13 more at resource centers
scattered around the church, help ring up the thousands of customers." BEA NYC: Making the Most of Your TimeBEA 2007 (May 31-June 3) is in New York City! Whether you're a
native or just visiting, New York is a tough city to tackle. So from
now until BEA Shelf Awareness and Frommer's are offering tips on how to make the most of
your long weekend in the Big Apple. This week Pauline Frommer, creator of Pauline Frommer's Travel Guides, offers her list of "must-see" attractions if you have only one day to tour the city that never sleeps.
For more great NYC travel tips check out your official BEA travel guide, Pauline Frommer's New York City
(Wiley), celebrating 50 years of world travel. Listen to Pauline and
other Frommer's writers share their travel stories and tips at frommers.com/podcast/. Media and MoviesMedia Heat: Looking Your BestThis morning on the Early Show: Patricia Wells, whose new book is Vegetable Harvest: Vegetables at the Center of the Plate (Morrow, $34.95, 9780060752446/0060752440). --- The weekend on CBS Sunday Morning, in a segment taped at the New Mexico Museum of Space History, Bill Geist talks with Michelle Cromer, author of Exit Strategy: Thinking Outside the Box (Tarcher, $12.95, 9781585425051/1585425052).
Books & AuthorsImage of the Day: Eta Gamma's Alpha Welcome Are they all named Tiffany? The Eta Gamma chapter of Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of
San Diego recently welcomed Marjorie Hart at its weekly chapter meeting
to discuss her book, Summer at Tiffany. (The 83-year-old debut author was chair of the fine arts department at USD.) Summer at Tiffany
is a memoir of summer 1945 in New York, when Hart and a friend, another Iowa
Kappa, became the first women to work on the sales floor at Tiffany
& Co.Hart will do a signing at Warwick's in La Jolla next Tuesday and at Rakestraw Books in Danville on Saturday, May 12. She invites readers to submit stories of the best summer of their lives to summerattiffany@harpercollins.com or on MySpace at myspace.com/bestsummerofyourlife. Book Review: Fat, Forty, and FiredFat, Forty, and Fired: One Man's Frank, Funny, and Inspiring Account of Losing His Job and Finding His Life by Nigel Marsh (Andrews McMeel, $19.95, 9780740764332/0740764330, May 2007) How about fat, fifty, and fired? Or at least a bit overweight, fifty, and fired? 
That is to say that this new book by Nigel Marsh, now chairman of Leo
Burnett Australia, an Englishman who has lived in Australia with his
family since 2001, resonates with us. But there's no need to be fired
to find this book both witty and helpful. It should resonate with most
anyone--male or female--trying to balance work and the rest of life.
Certainly Fat, Forty, and Fired has already resonated in Australia, where it was a bestseller.In early 2003, when Marsh was approaching 40, he was CEO of the Australian subsidiary of a multinational company being merged into another, and the Aussie outfit was shut down. Given the choice of taking whatever job could be found for him in the corporation in any of a number of countries, Marsh realized that he didn't want to uproot his family again--and that his life was painfully out of whack. He was more than 35 lbs. overweight, he drank prodigiously, much of his limited interaction with his four children under the age of nine consisted of shouting at them, he was obsessed by work and he and his wife seemed merely to coexist. So he decided to take a year off and try to reconnect with his family, find more meaning in life than what he achieved in high-powered marketing and advertising--much as he loved that work--and rekindle neglected interests such as drawing and running. In a heart-to-heart conversation with his wife about his desire to take a break--one that gives a taste of the book's humor and directness--she asks what would happen at the end of the year off. Marsh responds: "We'd be screwed. All our savings would be gone. I'd be a forgotten, forty-year-old advertising executive who hadn't worked for a year. Unemployable."The answer is that he'll try, and one of his first steps, mentioned almost casually, is giving up alcohol, which makes it much easier to do the many other things he wants to accomplish. And there's a lot to work on! Marsh chronicles his battles and achievements--such as learning to swim freestyle--with wit, humor and poignancy. After all, this ad man has a soul, as befits someone who appreciates art, reads the Bible in Greek and has adopted Quakerism as his religion of choice. Most important, during his year off, which actually turned out to be nine months, Marsh learns many beautiful lessons about the people closest to him. After earlier trying to connect with his parents in forced ways, Marsh relaxes enough to go with the flow, and he and his mother cross an emotional divide when they recount a highly embarrassing event from his childhood and wind up giggling "like teenagers." And after many false starts and frustrations with his children, Marsh begins to find that by easing up and going at their pace, "I could get the most enormous joy out of the simplest things. Harry would stand next to me in the mornings and mimic me shaving. The girls would lie on either side of me when I was doing situps and raise their arms and legs while shouting, 'Look at us, Mommy. We're exercising.' Alex and I would sit on the same armchair together and watch The Simpsons most evenings--all the time with him impersonating the characters and making unflattering comparisons between Homer and me." If there is any flaw to this book, it is that Marsh repeatedly makes the reader laugh out loud and want to read paragraphs at length to any nearby willing listener. We'll stifle an urge to quote yet another story and say simply get a copy of the book.--John Mutter |
Ask New Yorkers about their feelings for their city, and they will
often respond, "There's just one New York." By that they mean: one city
so full of museums (more than 40 major ones); historical sites;
world-famous institutions; parks; zoos; universities; theaters for
opera, musicals, drama, and dance; architectural highlights;
presidents' homes; and kooky galleries, that its diversions are
limitless.