People

Steve Almond hates coconut and despises Twizzlers, but he loves every other type of candy. And in his new book, Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America (Algonquin), which is the number one May Book Sense Pick, Almond recounts his fascinating and sweet-laden tour of eight American candy factories, from Idaho to San Francisco, Vermont to Tennessee.

A retirement for anyone is bound to be a bittersweet thing, and for Dick Noyes and his wife, Judy, the decision to close their bookstore of almost 45 years is no exception. When the Chinook Bookshop opened in 1959 in Colorado Springs, independent bookstores had a wide-open future, Dick Noyes told BTW. Now, he said, with the onslaught of big box retailers over the past 10 years and the more recent success of Internet retailers, that is not the case anymore.

On Friday, March 26, at the Small Press Center's General Society Library, Morgan Entrekin, the president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, Inc., received the Small Press Center's Ben Award (formerly known as the Poor Richard's Award) for his outstanding contribution to the field of independent publishing. The award was presented to Entrekin by Grove/Atlantic author, Francisco Goldman. Friday's Ben Award presentation inaugurated the 16th annual Small Press Book Fair, which took place on March 27 - 28.

Novelist Karen Joy Fowler "cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation" of her love for Jane Austen's novels. Like many other writers she has a hundred reasons for loving Austen, but she particularly responds to the power and invention of Austen's narrative voice.

Behind many great books are great booksellers, not just those who promote them and persuade others to buy them, but the authors of the books themselves. BTW found a number of booksellers and friends who have written books of all kinds and introduced them in "Books by Booksellers and the People Who Love Them" (news.bookweb.org/read/2326). Additions must already be made to that original list, and many others are still out there. BTW would like to know about any new books by booksellers and friends.

This profile of A. David Schwartz, owner of the Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, originally appeared in the February 22 edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Bookseller at War With Tolstoy and Cancer

By Jim Higgins

Back in the 1970s and '80s -- when there seemed to be more young people going to the movies than reading books, film schools were apparently more popular than writing programs, and the goal of an increasing number of creative twenty-somethings was not to write the Great American Novel but to craft the next hot screenplay -- a chorus of dismayed voices was sometimes heard to ask, "But where will the new authors come from?"

Booksellers constantly pass judgments on books, critically evaluating the subject matter, the treatment, the cover art, and the author's past work. Some booksellers are even driven to see if they can produce something worthy of a place on their own shelves. Bookseller and author Peter Glassman of Books of Wonder in New York posed the problem to BTW, "Can I write a book without all the mistakes that lead me to reject a lot of other books? That's my challenge."

As opening day of the 2004 baseball season approaches, BTW Senior Editor David Grogan, an admitted baseball addict, who is joined by a surprising number of ABA staff members in his love of the sport, shares some of his favorite baseball titles.

Perhaps no other sport lends itself to the form of literature than does the game of baseball.