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Okay, I really intended to try to write up some book reviews today (it's been a long time, have you noticed?) -- but that may have to wait until next week, as time is of the essence as usual. But I can't resist pulling this data from today's Shelf Awareness:

Bookstore sales in November were $1.186 billion, up 7.5% from $1.103 billion in sales in November 2006, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. For the year to date, bookstore sales have been $14.654 billion, up 0.8% from $14.532 billion in the first 11 months of 2006. This marks the fifth month in a row that bookstore sales were up over the same period last year--and the second month in a row that year-to-date sales have topped last year's comparable figures.

Okay, it's a small increase, and a short-term trend. But it does seem to me to challenge the idea that things are just eternally spiraling downward for the book industry, and especially for bookstores. Note that "under Census Bureau definitions, bookstore sales are of new books and do not include "electronic home shopping, mail-order, or direct sale" or used book sales." So this is just brick and mortar stores, with sales this year better than the year before. Hooray!

Friday I'm in Poughkeepsie at BookStream (and keep an eye out for some cool announcements from there soon!) I'll be back with some book reviews on Monday. Happy reading!

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My occasional column in Shelf Awareness on "graphic lit" ('cause they're not all comics, and they're not all novels) ran yesterday, with my suggestions for gift-worthy graphic lit. There's an abundance of delicious new and collected comics out there this season, and this is just a small sampling. One of the titles I didn't get to include is the first and second collection of Moomin, the comic strip by Tove Jansson featuring an endearing hippo-like creature and friends. Whimsical and surreal, childlike and socially conscious, bizarre and totally intuitive, the strip has tremendous appeal -- but since I've only read it in bits and pieces (while I probably should have been doing other things) on the sales floor, I can't say I've experienced the whole thing. But since this is one of the few that works for kids and adults, I wanted to throw it in as a bonus for you blog readers.

Speaking of brilliant gift books -- I was gifted the new Poetry Speaks Expanded by a pal at SourceBooks, and the ALP and I spent a lovely evening trolling through the CDs and the book listening to our favorite serious and silly poets reading their work. There's a lot of overlap with the original Poetry Speaks (which was one of the ALP's first gifts to me, back in 2001), but the new edition has a lot more poems printed and recorded. What an incredible gift for a poetry lover, I think.

Off to work, for tomorrow we feast! A very happy Thanksgiving to everyone -- and here's hoping Friday is very black in all indie bookstores.

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