"It's as if Terry has taken notes on every step of life. It's why readers love her."--Marva Allen, owner of the Hue-Man Bookstore, New York City, talking with the New York Daily News about Terry McMillan, who is touring--with some distractions and interruptions--for The Interruption of Everything (Viking, $25.95, 0670031445).

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In the wake of a second round of bombings in London, last night the House voted to extend the Patriot Act indefinitely and to limit to 10 years two parts of the law that have caused considerable debate: the ability to search library, bookstore and other businesses' records--fought strenuously by many librarians, booksellers and civil liberties groups, including the ALA, ABA and ABFFE--and the use of wiretaps applied to a person rather than a phone, according to the Associated Press and other reports.

Earlier in the day the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a similar extension of the bill, set to expire at the end of the year, but would extend the two controversial sections just four years. It also tightened requirements for searching library and bookstore records, allowing people to challenge the search warrants and requiring that people be notified of searches under certain circumstances. The full Senate will vote on the bill in the fall.

Complicating matters in the Senate, the Senate Intelligence Committee last month passed a bill stricter than the House version.

The House came close to enacting four-year limits to the parts of the bill that many librarians and booksellers find so chilling. A group of Republican representatives sided with Democrats but the initial tie vote was later broken.

One amendment that passed overwhelmingly requires the FBI director personally to approve any request for library or bookstore records.

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Olsson's, which has seven book and music stores in and around Washington, D.C., is closing its relatively new Rosslyn, Va., branch. The store will have a two-week special clearance sale on selected items starting on Monday.

In a general announcement, the company said that it opened the store three and a half years ago "at the beginning of the 'Rosslyn Renaissance,' as the area was starting to create an urban environment to attract new development--offices, hotels, restaurants and retail. Unfortunately, the Newseum closed three months after we opened and, while some new buildings and businesses have come in, the pace of development has not been sufficient to support our book and music store. We are actively looking at new locations in other neighborhoods."

Several staff members are moving to other Olsson's stores. Store manager Douglass Hatcher is becoming manager of Olsson's Bethesda, Md., store while Andrew Getman and John McDonnell are transferring to Olsson's nearby Arlington/Courthouse store. That store is managed by Alexis Akre, who used to manage the Rosslyn store.

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Blackwell Ltd., which had considered selling its 60 bookstores in the U.K., has instead brought in a team from the Body Shop Ltd. to do, well, a makeover. New CEO Vince Gunn, finance director Martyn Osborne, retail director Sue Townsend and marketing director Adam Devey-Smith have spent "six months studying the Blackwell retail business in depth and in detail," Gunn said in a press release. No word yet on new looks at Blackwell.

Chairman Philip Blackwell said that after much discussion, the board "concluded that bookselling is in our collective DNA and we remain passionately committed to it. . . . The board firmly believes that additional funding and fresh management provides the right solution for the future."

Blackwell's Book Services division, the retail and library supply part of the company that is based in the U.S., was not affected by the change.

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San Diego City Beat chronicles the short graceful life of R. Spot Barber and Books, a black bookstore/barber shop in the city's North Park area that also hosted many events and creative groups. The store has been open just two and a half years and is closing because the rent is doubling--thanks to new landlords. Owner James Richards hopes to reopen elsewhere in the next eight to 10 months.

Believe it or not, R. Spot is not the only bookstore/hair care outlet. Kathy Patrick in Jefferson, Tex., famous for hosting the Pulpwood Queens book group, has a bookstore/beauty parlor.

One painter who will miss R. Spot explained the attraction of the combination by saying, "The barbershop and the beauty salon has always been a place where black people can go and interact with other people and hear each other's stories. When you come here, you're at peace and you are inspired to create."

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While many booksellers continue to be happy with the amount of Harry Potter books they've sold, a few have reported in the last few days that they might have ordered too many copies in response to a glut of last-minute reservations, some of which were not picked up. Customers might have remembered the sold-out weekends of the last two Harry Potter books and reserved copies at several places or reserved at a bookstore and bought it at a grocery store or drug store when they chanced upon it there on Saturday.

Several of those booksellers said that sales of Harry Potter have equaled or been slightly below the previous Harry Potter. For them, sales at the midnight party equaled sales all day Saturday while sales on Sunday and the first full week were a third of Saturday's. The impression is that while Scholastic's increased printing succeeded in avoiding immediate shortages a la Harry Potter IV and Harry Potter V, it might have gone a bit overboard and that sales are declining quickly. One bookseller expressed some dismay at how widely available the book was and in such quantities--even in outlets that carry only token selections of books--and didn't think there were enough new Potter readers to justify the number of copies in the market.

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No surprise on today's Wall Street Journal bestseller list: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince tops the fiction list. Amusingly the book blows the Journal's sales index out of the water. Usually the leading title has a number near 100, which is equivalent to the median number of copies of the No. 1 fiction bestselling titles of the previous year. On this list Harry Potter VI's sales index is 6,665.

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Must Love Dogs, directed by Gary David Goldberg and starring Diane Lane and John Cusak, opens a week from today. The romantic comedy is based on the book by Claire Cook, who has also written Ready to Fall (Bridge Works, $14.95, 1882593480), her first novel, and Multiple Choice (NAL, $14, 0451214889), one of this summer's paperback Book Sense picks. The story is about a pre-school teacher who finds the perfect man; however, he loves dogs and she doesn't. The result is a charming and hilarious struggle to achieve a satisfying relationship. The tie-in trade paperback version of Must Love Dogs ($13.95, 0451217217) was released by NAL in June.

Diane Lane has already begun promoting the movie, having appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno this past Tuesday. Yesterday's Boston Globe has a long profile of Cook, a native of Scituate, and mentions that director Goldberg first saw a copy of Must Love Dogs in a Vermont bookstore three years ago.--Tobias Mutter

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Yesterday Fresh Air's lineup included Howard Bryant, Boston Herald sports columnist and author of Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball (Viking, $24.95, 0670034452), which chronicles baseball's steroid scandal.

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Last night Larry King Live spoke with Kirk Bloodsworth, the falsely accused inmate freed in 1993 and the subject of Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA by Tim Junkin (Algonquin, $24.95, 1565124197).

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Jonathan Karp, who resigned as editor-in-chief of the Random House and Villard imprints last month, will become v-p, publisher and editor-in-chief of a new imprint at Warner Books. Called Warner Twelve, the new imprint will publish one book a month.

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