Chicken Spaghetti

Southern Bookstore Blog

Lemuria Books, my favorite bookstore, now has a blog, and I didn't even know about it until recently. Yay—blog roll update time. If you're ever in Jackson, Mississippi, you absolutely must stop by the store. Driving down I-55 from Memphis to New Orleans? It's right on your way. Travelling from Dallas to Atlanta on I-20? It's just a quick little detour north.

Some years ago when Eudora Welty was still alive, I saw her shopping at the store. The blog features an update on her home in Jackson's Belhaven neighborhood, which you can now tour by appointment. (I know I've mentioned that before. I think I keep talking about it to remind myself to schedule a tour for my next visit to Jackson.)

When I was at Lemuria last week, a couple of the booksellers told me about Poor Man's Provence: Finding Myself in Cajun Louisiana, by Rheta Grimsley Johnson (NewSouth Books 2008). Here is how the publisher describes the book:

For over a decade, syndicated columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson has been spending several months a year in Southwest Louisiana, deep in the heart of Cajun Country. Unlike many other writers who have parachuted into the swampy paradise for a few days or weeks, Rheta fell in love with the place, bought a second home and set in planting doomed azaleas and deep roots. She has found an assortment of beautiful people in a homely little town called Henderson, right on the edge of the Atchafalaya Swamp.

Right now on the blog, Lemuria recommends a children's book, The Fish Who Cried Wolf, by Julia Donaldson. Sarah Dessen's young adult novel Just Listen also gets a shout out.

Amazonia

Here's a fascinating conversation about Amazon, started by Betsy B. at A Fuse # 8 Production; be sure to read the comments in this post, including the ones by Andy Laties. The Horn Book's Roger Sutton weighs in, too. Els at Book Book Book picked up the thread, providing more interesting commentary on the matter. From all of this talk, I realize that I need to read the book The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, which concerns business and the Internet.

I had some reviews posted at Amazon a while back, but once the news came out that some of the reader-reviewers had actually been paid, I removed my blurbs, thinking it was not the right place for my writing to appear. I did not want to sell books for the company, either, and I was giving away my writing. I do that here on the blog for fun!  I still link to Amazon, Powell's, and occasionally Barnes & Noble, but right now receive no commissions from any of them. In general, I prefer the independents like Powell's and Lemuria, but my friends at the local B&N store couldn't be nicer and more helpful.

So, hmm, dilemmas, dilemmas.

Wednesday Coffee Break, Dec. 13

The Diamond of Drury Lane, a début novel by Julia Golding, has won the Nestlé Children's Book prize. See the Guardian for details. Julia Golding has a blog, too.

Recommended reading: "Dividing Lines: Why the Book Industry Still Sees the World Split by Race," by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, at The Wall Street Journal. (Hat tip to La Bloga for the link.)

MotherReader suggests "21 Ways to Give a Book." Awesome list.

Cool broadcasting idea: Favorite holiday books at BookTalk: The Podcast, a venture by Renee of Shen's Blog. (Scroll down when you get to BookTalk.) You can hear one of the voices behind Seven Impossible Things.

Relaxed Homeskool reviews (and recommends) Baby Kong, a new picture book that stars homeschooled children.

Terrier: Beka Cooper # 1, by Tamora Pierce, is 30% off at Powells.com. The Cybils award fantasy/sci-fi nominee is even less expensive (this morning, at least) at Amazon. The blog Wands and Worlds says, "[Terrier] is a prequel to Pierce's Tortall series, but it quite stands on its own and you can enjoy it without having read any of the other books. I highly recommend this book; adults as well as teens will enjoy it."

Happy St. Lucia Day, everyone! As soon as I finish this post, I'm going to try blogger Karen Edmisten's  recipe for braided orange bread. Now, if only I had Melissa Wiley's book to go with it... (Thank you to By Sun and Candlelight for the link.)

Lessons from B & N?

On the heels of the closing of several prominent independent bookstores, Paul Collins asks in the Voice Literary Supplement, "Do bookstores have a future?" I haven't made my way through the entire article, "Chain Reaction,"  yet, but the following caught my eye:

Like milk in a grocery store, the kids' section of a Barnes & Noble is almost always placed far from the entrance. Why?

Simple: B&N children's sections are a customer magnet, and possibly the most child-friendly and parentally designed spaces in the history of retailing. There are low shelves, allowing good sight lines so that you can see your kid. There's carpeting for inevitable toddler face-plants. A train table to play at. Comfy chairs for the parents. A single exit in sight of those chairs, so that your kid can't bolt. Sit in the Barnes & Noble kids' section, and their populist rhetoric makes sense. Some indie bookstores are not just figuratively exclusionary: If you have a stroller or a wheelchair, you literally cannot get inside some of them.

Pinkwater's Choices

Whoo, boy. Customers. They're sometimes too glued to their radios.  Are Daniel Pinkwater's kids lit recommendations on NPR causing trouble for bookstores? Click on Publishers Weekly to find out.

And for a full list of Mr. Pinkwater's choices, go to this NPR page. The book scheduled for tomorrow's spot on Weekend Edition is Jellybeans, written and illustrated by Sylvia van Ommen. (Scroll down and look on the right.) So, now that you know ahead of time, dash over to the bookstore or library.

Have a great weekend, everyone! Happy reading, Harry Potter fans...and everyone else.

Secrest out,
Susan

The Down Side of Harry Potter?

With less than a month to go before the new Harry Potter meets the world, bookish blogs could go all-Potter, all the time—if they wanted to. Hop over to MobyLives for the latest commentary, via a Boston Globe piece.

Although it has become standard to look upon the release of a new Harry Potter book as a good thing for the book industry, a time that reinvigorates traffic to bookstores and, more importantly, generates a lot of sales, there is a dark side to the now–institutionalized mega–phenomenon, observes Alex Beam [of the Boston Globe]...

Overheard in a Bookstore

“Jeffrey, come here! I found a book for you,” a woman bellows across the children’s section at a suburban B & N.

“No!” from somewhere in Teens.

“You’ll like this. You like science fiction.” The mom is still yelling.

Jeffrey appears. He’s about 11. “I won’t even look at it.” He turns his back.

“H.G. Wells. The War of the Worlds. I know you’ll enjoy it.” Mom holds up B & N cheapie edition.

“I said I’m not looking at it.”

Sigh. “What is it you want then?”

“I don’t know. It’s here somewhere.” Jeffrey walks away.

Thirty seconds later. “This is it!” Jeffrey emerges from stacks and carries off Brian Jacques’s Martin the Warrior like a trophy, with a smile across his face.

Blue Light Special in Portland

Attention, shoppers. There's a sale at Powell's. The sixty kid-related items include  The Little Engine That Could, Michael Chabon's Summerland, Mike Lupica's Travel Team (about basketball), and Corduroy Goes to School.

Networking with Junie B. Jones

Here's a neat  little profile of a twenty-eight-year-old children's bookseller by the name of  Erin Taylor. Her store, Wonderland Books & Toys, in Rockford, Illinois, will be  honored at BookExpo America, which starts today in New York. From the article in the Rockford Register Star:

Q: What's the most fun thing about your job?
A: Seeing joy and excitement on children's faces when we have concerts or author visits. We just had book character Junie B. Jones here as part of a national tour. Some fans were so in awe, they couldn't even speak. Knowing that a memory of that moment will be with these children forever is beyond rewarding.