The Selected Poems of Donald Hall is the No. 1 Indie Next choice for December. The rest of the list includes: A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding, by Jackie Copleton A Wild Swan: And Other Tales, by Michael Cunningham, Yuko Shimizu (Illus.) Boys in the Trees, by Carly Simon The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto, by Mitch Albom Year of the Goose, by Carly J. Hallman Time of Departure, by Douglas Schofield What She Knew, by Gilly Macmillan Oh the Moon: Stories From the Tortured Mind of Charlyne Yi, by Charlyne Yi Tightrope, by Simon Mawer Paradise City, by Elizabeth Day His […]
Bookstores
Amazon Books — The Bookstore — to Open in Seattle’s University Village
Amazon is indeed opening a 5,500-square-foot bookstore, carrying a modest 5,000 to 6,000 titles — all face out — in Seattle’s University Village on Tuesday, with 15 employees under the direction of Amazon Books vp Jennifer Cast. Store stocking is based on “data with heart,” she tells the Seattle Times. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.” That data includes such categories as top pre-orders and “most wished for cookbooks.” And “below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site.” The staff favorites selection begins with […]
Indie Next Lists Will Feature Highlighted Backlist “Revisit & Rediscover” Picks
The ABA announced a new initiative “to showcase and support favorite backlist titles,” as selected by panels of independent booksellers. Starting with the December picks, the Indie Next monthly and kids’ lists will feature the Revisit & Rediscover selections. For December’s Indie Next List, they are touting: Wild Swans, by Jung Chang (Touchstone) About Grace, by Anthony Doerr (Scribner) Lost in the City, by Edward P. Jones (Amistad) The January 2016 list features: Plainsong, by Kent Haruf (Vintage) The Devil’s Highway, by Luis Alberto Urrea (Back Bay Books) Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese (Vintage) And February will highlight: The Fire Next Time, […]
People, Etc.
Longtime vp, director of publicity at Viking Penguin Carolyn Coleburn is stepping aside from her duties on December 1. She will take on the new role of vp, executive publicist, in order to “allow her to concentrate her full-time energies and expertise on individual publicity campaigns, while allowing more flexibility with the commute between her home in Philadelphia and our Hudson Street offices.” Succeeding Coleburn as director of publicity on December 1 is Lindsay Prevette, about whom Brian Tart said in the announcement: “She is highly respected by, and collaborative with, editors, authors, media, and booksellers. I am looking forward […]
Bookselling: Barnes & Noble To Close Downtown DC Location; Sherman’s Buys Maine Coast Book Shop; and More
Barnes & Noble will close its downtown Washington, DC location by the end of the year, the Washington City Paper reported. Company vp, development David Deason told the paper: “Despite our best efforts to come to an agreement with the property owner to extend the lease, they have decided to move forward with another tenant and the store will close at the end of December.” Maine Coast Book Shop and Cafe has a new owner in Sherman’s Books & Stationery’s Jeff Curtis, who will make the store the sixth location of Sherman’s as of January 1. “Putting what amounts to […]
People: Alexievich Wins Nobel, and More
Belarus journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, cited by the Swedish Academy for “her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.” Though Alexievich had been installed as the bettors’ favorite over the past few weeks, she is another instance of an under-translated Nobel winner in the English language: her oral history Voices From Chernobyl (1997) was published in 2005 by Dalkey Archive Press and then in paperback the next spring by Picador — and the book (with Keith Gessen’s translation) won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Earlier, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the […]