A subtle reminder: SALE!!!!

Wednesday marks the beginning of our big annual blowout July sale. During the entire month virtually every book in the store will be 30% off. And this year, there's an extra added wrinkle:

** From Monday, July 6 to Saturday, July 18, buy 4 or more books in a single purchase and get 40% off! **

No fine print? Well, OK, there's a little bit:

-- Doesn't apply to magazines, cards, calendars, special orders, or books already on hold.
-- There are a few prayerbooks, hymnals, and consignment items which are not eligible.
-- You can't combine discounts; so if you have a full frequent buyer card, you might as well hold onto it until August before cashing it in.

Other than that, there is nothing stopping you from coming in and stocking up for summer reading, for the holidays, for the rest of your life. We hope to see you soon -- and often!

Digital Payola?

Evidently trade book publishers aren't the only ones anxious to get positive word of mouth about their books out onto the internet. Textbook publisher Reed Elsevier found itself apologizing for what it said was an employee's "overzealous" attempt to generate buzz for its titles. Seems this individual sent out an e-mail announcing that anyone writing a "five-star" review of any of Reed Elsevier's new textbooks on either Amazon's or Barnes and Noble's e-commerce sites would get a free copy of the book and a $25.00 Amazon gift certificate from the publisher.


Makes you wonder about the "impartiality" of some of those reviews.

It's not Paradise, just a Parking Lot...

...nevertheless, they're paving it. Specifically, the parking lot in front of Accent on Books is being repaved, as part of the general face-lift we're getting here in Grace Plaza. So, for the next several days you may have to be a bit careful where you park and walk. We are still open, however, so we hope you'll make the expedition here and pick up some of the great summer reading we have on hand.

No word yet as to whether we'll be getting "a pink hotel, a boutique and a swinging hot spot."

"Dude! Holden's so lame!"

One of the first times I became aware of Catcher in the Rye was back in junior high school when the Coolest Kid In The School -- imagine a combination of Draco Malfoy and James Dean -- was reading it. When a few of us asked him to tell us about it, he simply gave us a disdainful look which seemed to say, "There is no way I can explain to you losers the profundities contained in this novel."

Times seemed to have changed. Catcher is back in the news because last week a judge issued a temporarily injunction preventing the publication in this country of an unauthorized sequel by a Swedish writer who goes by the name of J. D. California. This event led to an article in the New York Times by Jennifer Schuessler suggesting that modern teenagers, who often have to deal with J. D. Salinger's book as assigned reading, find the misadventures of Holden Caulfield, the novel's teenage protagonist, to be, well, "phony" (to use one of Holden's favorite words). It's evidently difficult for today's adolescents to identify with a disenchanted prep school kid who runs away to New York City trying to find some way of living that doesn't require compromises with either the shallowness of his school or the conformity of the adult world. Says Schuessler: "Today's pop culture heroes, it seems, are the nerds who conquer the world -- like Harry [Potter], -- not the beautiful losers who reject it." Or, as one 15-year-old told her, "Oh, we all hated Holden in my class. We just wanted to tell him, 'Shut up and take your Prozac.'"

By the way, I don't know what ever happened to that Coolest Kid In The School who was such a Holden Caulfield fan. He probably ended up as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs and is now living off a $100 million buyout bonus. What a loser.

Marjane Satrapi on the Situation in Iran

Marjane Satrapi is the author/illustrator of the very popular graphic novels, Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which deal with her childhood in Iran and teenage years in Europe. These have sold well at Accent on Books not only to individuals but to book groups.

This past Wednesday, Marjane Satrapi and the Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf appeared before the European Parliament in Brussels to talk about the current unrest in Iran. Satrapi called the disputed election a "coup," and presented a document to the Parliament claiming that Moussavi won the popular vote.

Here is a video clip of part of their presentation. In it, Satrapi speaks in English and Makhmalbaf speaks in Farsi. Satrapi then speaks in French, giving what she says are the actual popular vote totals in the Iranian election: Moussavi, 19 million votes; Karroubi, 13 million votes; Ahmadinejad, only 5 million votes.

Apologies for the somewhat incongruous Google ads at the bottom of the video.

Forward to Fall

Working in retail involves living in a perpetual time warp. Lewis and I ordered most of the 2010 calendars months ago. Byron has been busy ordering winter holiday cards. Advent calendars need to be ordered soon. And we've been spending much of the past couple of weeks visiting with sales reps from various publishers who are presenting lineups of books due to be published this coming fall. Back in April I forwarded the announcement that Dan Brown's follow-up to The DaVinci Code is due to be published in September. And earlier this month I mentioned some of the authors who have books coming in the fall from Knopf.

Here is a -- by no means complete -- list of some other books due out in the fall which look like they could be of major interest (along with their publication dates):

South of Broad, by Pat Conroy (August).
The Year of the Flood, by Margaret Atwood (September).
An Echo in the Bone, by Diana Gabaldon (September). The seventh book in her "Outlander" series.
Traveling with Pomegranates, by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor (September).
The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova (October). The first novel by Kostova, an author with Asheville connections, was the wonderful Dracula tale, The Historian.
Last Night in Twisted River, by John Irving (November).
The Humbling, by Philip Roth (November).
Stones Into Scrolls, by Greg Mortenson and Mike Bryan (December). The follow-up to Three Cups of Tea.
U Is for Undertow, by Sue Grafton (December).
Unfinished Desires, by Gail Godwin (December). The long awaited novel based on the author's experiences growing up in Asheville and attending St. Genevieve's School.

And there undoubtedly will be more major titles which are yet to be revealed.

Off the Pages and Onto the Beach

As a kind of sequel to my item of a week ago -- about what writers want to read this summer -- the Washington Post asked a number of writers what characters from literature they would like to spend time at the beach with. In most cases the writers mentioned characters they would simply want to get to know better, for intellectual or carnal reasons or both. In a couple of cases, added safety seemed to be a factor: Arthur Phillips suggested Captain Ahab and Colson Whitehead mentioned Quint, the shark hunter from Jaws. Garrison Keillor seemed to have the physical well-being of his chosen companion in mind -- he cheated a bit and chose Emily Dickinson, feeling that it might be good to get her out of that house for awhile and into the sun. Who knows how that might change the course of American poetry.

In total, a dozen writers answered the question and their comments can be found here.