Book Sense

River City Books of Northfield, Minnesota, open as of March 2002, is a direct descendent of two highly regarded educational institutions in Northfield: Carleton College and St. Olaf College. River City Books is technically a branch of the Carleton College Bookstore, and a close friend of the St. Olaf College Bookstore.

Three July/August Book Sense 76 picks will be featured in print ads in the coming weeks.

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Harcourt) will be featured in an ad in the July/August issue of The Atlantic (on newsstands the week of June 18).

The July 1 issue of The New Yorker (on sale June 24) will include a Book Sense ad featuring Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs (St. Martin’s Press), and the July 8 issue (on sale July 1) will feature Perma Red by Debra Magpie Earling (Blue Hen/Putnam).

by Carl Lennertz

It is a credit to the independents who have put their heart and soul into the Book Sense program that publishers have recognized its impact on sales and are, more and more, mentioning a book’s Book Sense 76 status in national advertising. Time Warner even put the Book Sense logo in EVERY ad they ran for a year.

Sarah Zacks, owner and founder of Books on the Square in Providence, Rhode Island, remembers the difficulty of toting one or more of her five children to downtown stores with few parking spaces and child-unfriendly sales people. That’s why, when she opened her bookstore 10 years ago, she selected a spot with good parking that was six blocks from the crowded Brown University area and away from the congested downtown.

Announcing the July/August 76 Top Ten.

News of the full 76 next week.

Thank you for all the great nominations!

Carl

[email protected]

1. THE SOLACE OF LEAVING EARLY, by Haven Kimmel (Doubleday, $23.95, 0385499833; June)

2. LIFE OF PI, by Yann Martel (Harcourt, $25, 0151008116; June)

While the outskirts of Brockport, New York have taken on the typical accoutrements of modernization -- shopping malls, large supermarkets, and bookstore chains -- the village retains a satisfying sense of history, with its Victorian architecture, Main Street, Strand Theater, and, yes, even its literary tradition.

Book Sense selections were again the feature of a USA Today "Snapshot" when the May 29 edition of the national newspaper featured five top selections of the Book Sense Summer 2002 Paperback 76.

By Carl Lennertz

Whodunit? You did. Thank you for the great recommendations you’ve been sending in and I’ve been tallying. A neat Top Ten, yes? The pad of 100 fliers goes to press momentarily, headed for the June white box mailing to you.

Book Sense is pleased to welcome World Almanac Books as the program’s newest Publisher Partner.

Headquartered in New York City, World Almanac Books is the publisher of The World Almanac & Book Of Facts and The World Almanac For Kids.

The June 17 issue of The New Yorker -- on newsstands the week of June 10 -- will feature two ads highlighting Book Sense 76 selections. One ad will feature the 2002 Book Sense Book of the Year adult fiction winner, Peace Like a River (Atlantic Monthly Press), and Gould’s Book of Fish (Grove Press), a May/June 2002 Book Sense 76 pick.

The other ad in the issue will feature The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint (Vintage), which was a July/August 2001 Book Sense 76 selection.

In 1894, on a bluff overlooking Mobile Bay, Fairhope, Alabama, was established. It was the dream of Fairhope’s founders to put into practice the utopian ideals of Henry George, who, in his late-19th century work, Progress and Poverty, outlined his philosophy on how a society could evolve without poverty. Some 108 years later, Fairhope (population 12,000), is a thriving artistic and literary community, a tourist attraction, and home to many retirees.

Book Sense is pleased to welcome the Humanics Publishing Group as its newest Publisher Partner. Founded in 1976 by Gary Wilson, chairman, the company has three divisions including: Humanics Trade, Humanics Learning, and Humanics Psychological Test Corporation. Humanics is also the managing partner of the Limited Partnership of Humanics, publisher of children's fiction. All Humanics titles encourage growth of the human mind and spirit and, to continuously reach this goal, they recruit authors who are authorities in their fields.

In Gracefully Insane: The Rise and Fall of America’s Premier Mental Hospital (PublicAffairs), a Book Sense 76 May/June title, Alex Beam tells the story of McLean Hospital, refuge of the rich, famous, and deeply troubled for almost two centuries. McLean is a mental hospital-cum-luxurious estate set in acres of rolling New England parkland just outside Boston. The picturesque asylum also looms large in the American imagination.

On the surface, Marcus Stevens’s new novel, The Curve of the World (Algonquin), is an adventure novel. A New York businessman is stranded in the Congolese rainforest, desperately running from a rogue militia, all the while trying to survive a cruel and unknown environment. But dig deeper, and Stevens’s first novel is about the human mind, and how our own perceptions can create or remake the world in which we live.

In an atmosphere described by attendees as buoyant and energized, greater numbers of booksellers and industry professionals than in recent years returned to New York for the city's first national booksellers trade show in over a decade. Scheduling considerations placed the show a full month earlier than usual, but few complained about an early spring visit to New York, particularly when the weather turned perfectly sunny and balmy and so many unique activities were within reach.