• The Stranger reports on a reading by Junot Diaz in Seatlle the other night. Diaz  recommends reading Out by Natsuo Kirino, The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa, and anything by Edwidge Danticat.
• Here’s an interesting article in North by Northwestern on why independent bookstores have so much trouble. The author really tries to get at the heart of the problem.
• The New York Times covers Europa Editions, whose The Elegance of the Hedgehog has hit bestseller lists all over the place. The sales on this book increase so much each week at my store, it amazes me.
• E-Books! Both Rich at Malaprops (his blog is personal and does not represent the store. I just know he works at Malaprops.) and Patrcick at Vromans have posted about e-books. I’m going with the hyphenated spelling for “e-book” because I really like hyphens.
• I really liked this post on The Millions about literature in lieu of the tour guide. I’m off to Mexico next week. Can anyone recommend me some books about Mexico?

Just read in Publishers Weekly that Richard Nash is stepping down as editorial director of Soft Skull Press.

He said he was grateful for the reprieve Counterpoint gave to Soft Skull’s writers and readers, but said, “It is time to let Soft Skull move onto the next phase of its existence, and to allow me to take on the new challenges our industry is facing.”

I wish Richard luck in whatever new venture he begins. He’s a literary light as far as I’m concerned.

Did everyone catch Jeff Bezo hawking the Kindle 2 on the Daily Show last night? (Why can’t I figure out how to imbed video!) I can’t decide if Jon Stewart loved it or thought it was really stupid. I laughed when he made fun of the Amazon Prime membership–pay $79 a year and get free shipping! Uh, that’s not free. The Kindle 2 is still $359 plus the $9.99 per book. That’s a lot of money. I’m not against e-readers or digital formats at all. I just think something else will come along that make the Kindle look like the MP3 players that came before the iPod. The New York Times likes it. They call it “the most successful electronic book-reading tablet so far” but add that it’s not saying much as so many have failed before. I personally like the looks of the Plastic Logic reader. I’m hoping to see some of these electronic readers at BookExpo in New York later this year.

How can February almost be over? I’m not ready for March—it involves lions and lambs. Usually it rains here for about 4 weeks straight. Can’t wait. I’ve been reading Flying by Eric Kraft for the past week or so. It’s slow going as I have to stop to think about what he’s really trying to say after each short section. Plus I’m in the middle of the Summer buying season—7 appointments this week. What was I thinking?

Everyone should run out now and buy Marlon James’s The Book of Night Women. It’s that good. Read the Washington Post’s review. I liked it so much I asked for it to be the Signed First Edition Club pick for March.

Speaking of my store, one cool thing we started today was using green delivery. Now customers can get their books same or next day depending on where they live delivered via bicycle. How cool is that?

They’ve installed a completely new and fancier fire alarm system in the building here in Harvard Square. Sounds great, except they’re testing it over the next few days. I’m sitting here with earplugs trying to work, but since I never know when the alarm is going to sound, I’m finding it hard to concentrate. I spent most of the weekend trying to catch up on magazines: Harper’s, New Yorker, Cook’s Illustrated, The Atlantic. I’m almost there. I’m savoring The Book of Night Women by Marlon James. Apparently Maud likes it too.Not that I need her validation to read a book, but she’s got such good taste in books, I like to know what she likes. Speaking of Maud, you should read her piece on her father over at Granta.

This morning at the Tools of Change conference, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos revealed the Kindle 2.0, with the help of shill author Stephen King. The whole thing was live blogged by about a million people, but I Wired magazine has a thorough version. On a side note, is live blogged hyphenated? Anyway, the 2.0 version has a lot of new bells and whistles, some sort of text to speech thing, not to mention being smaller and lighter. It’ll even change your kitty litter! Kidding. I’m still not sure how all this is going to affect traditional book sales. Seems like it should all be open source somehow, not a closed loop format. Condalmo has a similar, if not the more elegantly expressed opinion. Is the Kindle the Betamax of e-readers?

Alison Morris posted this video of Stephen Colbert and Steve Martin reading Danielle Steele. Terribly amusing… especially when they go to a banjo duel.