BTW News Briefs

South Carolina's Booksmith Subjected to Politically-Charged Verbal Attacks

Upstate Today reported that Booksmith in Seneca, South Carolina, and store owner Tricia Lightweis have recently been the center of "politically-charged verbal attacks." Lightweis told the newspaper: "You can put your thumb right on when it started. It was the week of the Democratic National Convention. Since then there have been at least 30 people who don't want to see anything that goes against their opinion."

Lightweis has owned the bookstore for 20 years and has seen heated elections cycles before. But this year, she told Upstate Today, the level of animosity directed at her and her employees is unprecedented. The books that are primarily inciting the attacks are at Barack Obama's Change We Can Believe In, and Joe Quint's 72 Things Younger Than John McCain.

Lightweis said that the overwhelming majority of those who shop at her store are regular customers and know that she carries books that represent a wide spectrum of beliefs. It is only a small, but vocal, percentage that is demanding censorship and harassing her employees.

NRF Survey Confirms Holiday Shopping Season Will Be Challenging

According to NRF's 2008 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, U.S. consumers plan to spend an average of $832.36 on holiday-related shopping, up only 1.9 percent over last year's $816.69. This represents the lowest increase in planned consumer spending since the survey began in 2002. According to the survey, 40.2 percent of consumers will start their holiday shopping before Halloween. This figure is consistent with numbers from previous years and demonstrates that bargain hunters are looking for ways to spread out spending over a period of time.

Forty percent of survey respondents said that sales or promotions are most important to them when determining where to shop, while another 12.6 percent stated that everyday low prices are most important. Other consumers rated selection (21.5 percent) and merchandise quality (13.4 percent) as the primary factor. Only a handful of consumers said they are making buying decisions based on a convenient location (5.6 percent) or helpful customer service (5.2 percent) this year. And, although the number of people buying gifts online is expected to remain flat over last year (44.2 percent in 2008 vs. 44.3 percent in 2007), shoppers said they will rely on the Internet more than ever to browse for holiday gifts and research products.

The White Tiger Wins the 2008 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

On Tuesday, October 14, Aravind Adiga was named the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The White Tiger (Free Press). Adiga was one of two first-time novelists on the 2008 Man Booker shortlist of six. The other was Steve Toltz. Only three other debut novelists have achieved this in the past -- Keri Hulme in 1985 for her novel The Bone People, DBC Pierre in 2003 with Vernon God Little and Arundhati Roy in 1997 for The God of Small Things.

Thirty-three year old Adiga was born in Madras and now lives in Mumbai. He is the fourth Indian born-author to win the prize, joining compatriots Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, and Kiran Desai who won the prize in 1981, 1997, and 2006 respectively. A fifth winner, V.S. Naipaul is of Indian ancestry. In addition, The White Tiger is the ninth winning novel to take its inspiration from India or Indian identity.

University of Nebraska Press Goes to Lightning Source for Two Le Clezio Titles

On Wednesday, October 15, the University of Nebraska Press announced that it had selected Lightning Source Inc. to print and distribute two books by the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. At the Frankfurt Book Fair this week, the University of Nebraska Press will exhibit two of Le Clezio's titles through its European distributor, Combined Academic Publishers, Ltd. Two Le Clezio titles, The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts and Onitsha (both Bison, an imprint of University of Nebraska Press), both published in English, are in increased demand since the Nobel announcement last week.