News & Notes

October 17, 2011 Maybe the tide is finally turning: after losing six bookstores across the state last winter and spring, Tennessee has four new stores open or on the way this fall: Union Ave. Books in Knoxville, Parnassus Books and Barnes & Noble at Vanderbilt in Nashville, and now The Grumpy Bookpeddler in Murfreesboro. The Daily News Journal has the story of Alan and Carol Wollard, an Illinois couple who followed their dream to own a bookstore to Middle Tennessee. Read more about them and The Grumpy Bookpeddler here.

October 12, 2011 Thanks to her almost preternaturally canny use of social media, conventional media, and real-live human connections, Rebecca Skloot had a bestseller on her hands the very day The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks hit shelves last year. The book has since gone on to make the former University of Memphis science writer virtually a household name, and today a press release from Random House explains why:

October 10, 2011 Novelist Jay McInerney’s small, recurring role on the teen television show Gossip Girl is not a cameo performance. Although the character he plays, Jeremiah Harris, is also a novelist with some very McInerneyish characteristics, the resemblance has become less clear as the character has evolved: “All I can say is I’m really glad that I did not let them name the character Jay McInerney, because the character increasingly diverges from me,” the former Nashville resident told New York magazine in an article published today.

October 7, 2011 In good news for the state’s bricks-and-mortar bookstores and other local retailers, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam announced yesterday that Amazon.com has agreed to begin collecting sales taxes from buyers in the state on January 1, 2014.

October 6, 2011 Ann Patchett’s novel, State of Wonder is one of six finalists for the 2011 Wellcome Trust Book Prize. The award, which will be announced at a ceremony in London on November 9, honors a literary work about health, illness, or medicine. In addition to State of Wonder, finalists this year include two works of nonfiction and three novels. The award carries a prize of £25,000 (about $40,000).