New Pulitzer Prize Winners announced

2009 Pulitzer Prizewinners were announced Monday, April 20 at Colombia University.
Fiction - Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout (Random House)
General Nonfiction - Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon (Doubleday)
Biography - American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham (Random House)
Other winners and the full list of categories here

Bookstores & Cats - a good match

With the popularity of "Dewey" a recent bestselling book about a cat adopted by a library in small town Iowa, we thought you'd like to take a look at these bookstores and their resident cats in St. Louis, MO. If you know of a cat residing in a library or bookstore please email us:

Bookstore Cats @ Yahoo! Video

Check out this Bookstore in the Netherlands!

Erected inside a former 800 year old Dominican church, this bookstore, Selexyz, is said to hold the largest stock of books in English in Maastricht, one of the oldest cities in the country.
Amsterdam based architects Merkx + Girod who designed the space, to stay true to the original character and charm of the church, whilst also achieving a desirable amount of commercial space. Taking advantage of the massive ceiling, both have been achieved through the construction of a multi-storey steel structure which houses the majority of the books. This is one giant bookshelf, with stairs and elevators taking shoppers and visitors alike, up to the heavens (mind the pun), to roof of the church.
To maintain a sense of symmetrical balance in the space, lower tables of best sellers and latest releases have been added to either side, and of course a small cafe at the back for readers to relax and enjoy a hot drink.

LA Times Festival of Books April 25 & 26 at UCLA

What is it?
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.
Who attends the Festival?
People of all ages from across Southern California and even other parts of the country. The festival is a free public event, and includes exciting author events, storytelling, cooking demonstrations and poetry readings. The Festival of Books also includes nearly 300 exhibitor booths representing booksellers, publishers, literacy and cultural organizations.

Great event for all lovers of books! Author Speaking Panels, Q&A sessions, book signings, and general fun.
More info on their website.

"The Thoreau You Don't Know" - but would probably like to...

The Thoreau You Don't Know: What the Prophet of Environmentalism Really Meant" by Robert Sullivan endeavors to free Henry David Thoreau from his calcified reputation as a cantankerous hermit and nature worshipper. Sounding like your favorite teacher who manages to make history fun and relevant, Sullivan vibrantly portrays the sage of Walden as a geeky, curious, compassionate fellow of high intelligence and deep feelings who loved company, music, and long walks. An exceptional writer mad for puns, Thoreau was also a bold social critic and—the crux of Sullivan’s stimulating argument—a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek humorist. Sullivan, himself plenty saucy, also elucidates Thoreau’s radical focus on “man’s interaction with nature.” In command of a great diversity of fascinating material, Sullivan succinctly illuminates the striking parallels between Thoreau’s time and ours—foreclosures, lost jobs, and rapid technological change. Thoreau remains vital and valuable because of his acute observations, wit, and lyricism and his recognition that the “force of life is everywhere,” a perception even more essential now that the consequences of the societal choices Thoreau prophetically critiqued have reached staggering proportions.

(review reprinted in part from BookList)

Shanghai Moon - Missing Jewels plot re-deux

"Moon' With an Irresistible Pull

by Maureen Corrigan

(Republished from The Washington Post)

Shanghai Moon

by S.J. Rozan

Many years ago, I realized a girlhood dream: I joined the ranks of those anonymous contract writers known collectively as "Carolyn Keene" and wrote a Nancy Drew mystery. With visions of blue roadsters and unsavory hooligans dancing in my head, I sent the manuscript off to the publisher.
It was rejected. The reason? My plot, an editor told me, was "too sexually suggestive." I was mortified. I thought I'd crafted a thrilling but at the same time decorous and educational tale in which Nancy, Bess and George chased after a stolen antique infant feeding instrument (a "pap boat") that had once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. It turned out, however, that according to the keepers of the Nancy Drew flame, the mention of infant feeding instruments brought up -- I kid you not -- the "uncomfortable suggestion that Nancy herself has breasts." As Bess Marvin, Nancy's ultra-femme friend, might say, "Eeek!"
The plots of the classic Nancy Drew mysteries focus resolutely on the safe topic of stolen jewels, especially jewels with interesting histories. I never got around to substituting pearls for pap boats, but no matter. Whether intentionally or not, in "The Shanghai Moon" S.J. Rozan has written a far more ambitious and absorbing riff on the classic Nancy Drew mystery than I ever could have.
Ethnicity aside, Rozan's Lydia Chin is a private investigator very much in the Nancy mold (that is, if Nancy were grown up and Chinese American), carrying forward -- in this, her 11th outing -- the young female detective's brisk approaches to crime-solving and complications of the heart. Let's begin with the latter. Lydia's occasional partner in crime-fighting, Bill Smith, has been AWOL for months, trying to get his sense of perspective back after a particularly devastating case. When someone else very close to Lydia is murdered, Bill abruptly reappears to help solve the mystery. As ever, the sparks between the two could ignite a Chinese New Year firecracker, and Lydia's old-school mom's disapproval of Mr. White Bread just stokes their relationship. Despite her longings, however, ladylike Lydia keeps Bill at a chaste distance, allowing only the kind of hugs that Nancy Drew would permit from Ned Nickerson.
If Lydia and Bill's dance of attraction/distraction is a staple of this series, so are Rozan's exquisitely crafted plots. (She's won the Edgar Award twice, the Shamus, the Anthony and on and on.) "The Shanghai Moon" is a standout in this series in terms of narrative sweep and the lush aura of romance. Here's the gist: Lydia is hired to help trace a cache of jewels (girl sleuth alert!) that's recently been unearthed in a garden in Shanghai and swiped by a corrupt Chinese official who's now believed to be hiding in Lydia's home turf: New York's Chinatown. Lydia's client tells her that the box containing the jewelry had been buried since World War II. It may or may not include a brooch called the Shanghai Moon, which has become the stuff that dreams are made of. Even Bill claims to have heard of it while serving in the Navy in Asia. Learning of her latest case, he scoffs to Lydia: "It was the Pacific seaman's equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. If you were particularly clueless, some guy would always offer to sell you the Shanghai Moon."
Lydia's race to find the stolen gems -- and possibly even the legendary brooch -- before various plug uglies can lay their paws on the treasure constitutes one plotline here. There's also an even more tumultuous background narrative that comprises a series of letters taking readers back to wartime Shanghai. Reading the letters as her investigation grows more desperate, Lydia clearly feels a connection to a spunky World War II counterpart. Such is the power of Rozan's engrossing storytelling that readers, even the most hard-boiled among us, will feel that connection, too.
Turns out that the Nancy Drew purists know what they're talking about, after all. As "The Shanghai Moon" demonstrates, there's plenty of possibility lurking in the old missing-gems plot. It just takes a master like S.J. Rozan to restore the luster of a classic.
Corrigan is the book critic for the NPR program "Fresh Air." She teaches a course in detective fiction at Georgetown University.

Vampires still rule bestseller lists

Vampires rule:Twilight author Stephenie Meyer continues to dominate USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list. Sales of her novels accounted for about 16% of all book sales tracked by the list in the first quarter of 2009. That's about one in seven books. Top 20 sellers for the quarter:
1. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
3. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
4. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw by Jeff Kinney
6. The Shack by William P. Young
7. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey
8. The Associate by John Grisham
9. Watchmen by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons
10. Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide by David Zinczenko, Matt Goulding
11. The Reader by Bernhard Schlink
12. The Love Dare by Stephen Kendrick, Alex Kendrick
13. The Appeal by John Grisham
14. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
15. Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
16. Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan by Suze Orman
17. Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
18. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
19. Marley & Me by John Grogan
20. The Yankee Years by Joe Torre, Tom Verducci

The bookstore to end all bookstores, at least in South America, is the majestic and stunning El Ateneo Bookstore in Buenos Aires.

http://argentinastravel.com/268/el-ateneo-in-buenos-aires-a-bookstore-to-end-all-bookstores/
The bookstore to end all bookstores, at least in South America, is the majestic and stunning El Ateneo on Avenida Santa Fe in Buenos Aires. Where else can you sit in a theater box and leisurely read a volume of Neruda, or sip a cortado where Carlos Gardel once performed? In a city with a rich literary history and excellent bookstores, this theater cum bookstore is a historical and beautiful building to visit, and a great place to stock up on books and music.

The Local Library - popularity increases as ecomony decreases

(Reprinted from The Wall St. Journal)
THE SHORT STORY:
Libraries are a free, cozy environment for unemployed workers to congregate. The free internet, popular books and DVDs is drawing crowds in increasing numbers.

TRACY, Calif. -- The financial crisis has caused a lot of withdrawals at the public library.

A few years ago, public libraries were being written off as goners. The Internet had made them irrelevant, the argument went. But libraries across the country are reporting jumps in attendance of as much as 65% over the past year, as newly unemployed people flock to branches to fill out résumés and scan ads for job listings.

Other recession-weary patrons are turning to libraries for cheap entertainment -- killing time with the free computers, video rentals and, of course, books.

Last Friday, there was a particularly long waiting list of 157 to check out the popular vampire novel "Twilight," by Stephenie Meyer, from a branch of the Stockton-San Joaquin County Library here in Tracy. This central California town has been ravaged by mortgage foreclosures, and area libraries report a surge of traffic. Shamika Miller huddled over a laptop at the Tracy branch. Laid off from her job as a bookkeeper at Home Depot more than a year ago, Ms. Miller, 29 years old, says she has visited the library "if not every day, every other day" since October to check job listings with her computer.

"I come here, first of all, because it's a free Wi-Fi spot," says Ms. Miller, who supports a 10-year-old daughter on her unemployment compensation. And, she says, "there's something about the library that helps you think, at least for me."

At the Ferguson Library in Stamford, Conn., "it's not unusual for us to have 40 or 50 reserves on a popular book," says spokeswoman Linda Avellar. At the Randolph County Public Library in Asheboro, N.C., a 25% increase in visitors over the past six months from a year ago has been hard on 14-year-old carpeting that officials say needs to be replaced now rather than in six years, as planned.

This isn't the first time library attendance has spiked in a downturn. The 1987 and 2001 recessions saw similar jumps, librarians say. But few people thought that libraries would again be in such favor after so much information flooded the Web.

One big draw: Most libraries have put in free computer and Wi-Fi service. And they've begun stocking DVDs and videogames. With the recession weighing on them, "people recognize what a great value the public library is," says Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association in Chicago.

Librarians are turning into job counselors -- and even social workers -- as they have to deal with a sometimes-desperate new class of patrons. "They are frustrated, overwhelmed and thought they would not be job hunting again in their lives," says Jan Perrier, head of reference and adult services at the Roxbury Public Library in Succasunna, N.J. "I had one woman just so overwhelmed she sat in front of the PC and cried."

Glenn Moore/Tracy Press A patron browses the science fiction and fantasy section of the Tracy library, which has seen an increase in the number of people using their materials.

Many jobless people are reporting to the library as they used to report to the office. Career books are in particularly great demand at the Morris County Library in Whippany, N.J. "The shelves are bare," says Lynne Olver, chief librarian there. She says attendance in "Career Resource Seminars" that the library has held for many years jumped to 745 in 2008, from 472 in 2007.

Others come in to escape their troubles for a while. Wesley Martin on Friday tapped his hands to the beat of a hip-hop video he was watching on one of the Tracy library's computers. "This is just a chance for me to get out of my house," said the 33-year-old, who lost his job at a discount store a month ago.

The sheer numbers of jobless visitors are overwhelming some libraries at a time of funding cuts by cash-strapped local agencies. The library in Winter Park, Fla., reports a 25% increase in checkouts of its books and other materials over the past 15 months, even as its budget for stocking new items has been cut 12%.

Some libraries are cutting their hours, reducing staff or even being closed altogether because of budget problems. The Schenectady County Public Library in Schenectady, N.Y., says it has had no money to replace four librarians who have left in the past two years. "As a result, we recently found that it is taking up to five days to reshelf books, as just one tiny example of the impact," says Karen Bradley, a reference librarian there.

The Randolph County library in North Carolina can't afford to replace those rugs: "We are just going to have to live with the worn carpet for now," says Suzanne Tate, the library's director. An average of 230 people a day line up to use the library's 27 computers. To help manage the traffic, the library has taken to bumping users off if they try to stay on for more than the one-hour limit.

But the patrons keep coming. "Many times a day there is a line of people waiting to get on one of our three computers," says Mary Wright, director of the Marks-Quitman County Library in Marks, Miss., who says many of the new patrons are laid-off workers from nearby casinos.

Tracy library officials have ordered nine more Internet-access computers. For now, patrons have to line up at a kiosk to make a reservation to use one of the 11 existing terminals, says Kathleen Buffleben, the supervising librarian.

At a checkout counter nearby in the Tracy library, Brandon Perry, 24, and his fiancée, Chardenac Van Rooter, 21, were applying for library cards Friday to aid in their job searches. The couple, who were with their 1-year-old daughter, said they support themselves largely on part-time restaurant work by Mr. Perry, who was laid off as a heavy-equipment operator at a ski resort a year ago. On top of their other troubles, the couple said they were forced to move into a homeless shelter a few weeks ago after a relative's home where they were staying was foreclosed on.

"Now," says Mr. Perry, "we just want to go to Hawaii. We don't have a computer, so we'll start coming here to find a job there."

New in paper: Jhumpa Lahiri

"Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri (Vintage, $15, fiction, reprint). "Never before has Lahiri mined so perfectly the secrets of the human heart," USA TODAY said of this collection of stories examining the immigrant experience.
Lahiri also wrote the multi-award winning "Interpreter of Maladies" and "The Namesake".

Kindle - start your own fire with this digital reading device

Kindle 2, the latest wireless reading device, is available from Amazon. But will "reading" with this flatscreen, digital "machine" catch on with readers. It's light weight (10 oz.) and convenient. It can store up to 1500 "books" and allows the owner to quickly download an entire book in less than 60 seconds. Reviewers indicate they quickly get lost in the book they're reading and forget they are actually not holding a physical book. And, the "books" are generally much less expensive than a traditional book purchased at a book store. ($9.99 is the average for new releases and bestsellers) Will you be a convert?
More on Kindle here.

Read "First Chapters" of recent book releases

Did you know The New York Times Book Section online offers readers the opportunity to read many, many new releases' "first chapters"? Check out the offerings:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/chapters/index.html

Stay Tuned

Thanks for joining us as we discover what's new in the book universe.