Book News

Based on reporting from hundreds of independent bookstores across the country for the eight week period ended October 17, 2004.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

DIESEL, A Bookstore, in Oakland, California, has been busy. Co-owners John Evans and Alison Reid recently opened a second DIESEL, in Malibu, which is about a 400-mile commute from the first DIESEL, and in September, they became publishers.

The October Book Sense Red Box is full of useful information, marketing aids, and value-added items for your customers:

Your initial quantity of November Book Sense Picks fliers, along with a pad of the Top Ten Political Title Picks, co-sponsored by the History Channel. If you receive more than 200 Picks fliers each month, the balance will be shipped separately. If you need to adjust the number of fliers or specialty pads you are receiving, please contact Linda Ford at [email protected].

On Wednesday, October 13, the 20 finalists for the 2004 National Book Awards were announced by Garrison Keillor at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota. The winners in each of four categories -- Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People's Literature -- will be announced on November 17 at a ceremony at the Marriott Marquis in New York City to be hosted by Keillor. Each winner will receive $10,000 and a bronze statue; each finalist will receive a $1,000 cash award and a bronze medal.

The finalists are:

"Bookstore Tourism," a term copyrighted by Larry Portzline, is a grassroots effort to promote and support independent bookstores by marketing them as tourist destinations and thereby creating a new travel niche for book lovers.

Based on reporting from hundreds of independent bookstores with Book Sense across the U.S. during the 2004 baseball season (April 2 through October 12).

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.

Given the bucolic setting, poetic prose, and transcendental themes of The Green Age of Asher Witherow (Unbridled) -- a book that takes place in the late-19th-century coal-mining region of Northern California -- it comes as no surprise to learn that M.

Nationally televised debates; overnight polls; dueling talking heads; partisan Web logs -- the Election Season is in full bloom, and consumers' interest in titles concerned with current politics is rapt. With that in mind, Book Sense and The History Channel present the Autumn 2004 Book Sense Top Ten Political Picks, which focuses on all things presidential and the contemporary political scene.

A new crop of films based on books -- and books based on films -- provides booksellers with plenty of opportunities for cross promotions now and in the coming months.

Claude Anshin Thomas recounted the meditation retreat he attended in 1990, a gathering for Vietnam War veterans led by the renowned Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. It was a profound experience for the decorated combat vet. "When I first heard Thich Nhat Hanh speak about Buddhist practice and principles, it was clear that the Vietnamese were no longer my enemy," Thomas told BTW in a recent interview. "If I had still seen the Vietnamese as my enemy, then I was still an enemy to myself and separate from my own humanity.

Based on sales from many hundreds of independent bookstores for the four-week period ending September 26, 2004.

Past Category Bestseller lists are available at www.bookweb.org/read/5677.

Attention Media: Please contact Meg Smith at [email protected] for reprint guidelines for your newspaper or magazine.