Another black-owned bookstore is in trouble.  

I’m sad about so many black-owned bookstores closing. Truly, I am. I even encourage others to support them.

But I’m realizing that I’m something of a hypocrite on that front. We’ve established that I read a whole lot, right? Still, I don’t do much of my book shopping at black-owned bookstores — or much of my spending at black-owned businesses, period, to be frank.  I do patronize black medical and legal professionals, for the most part, but since I don’t always know where to find other black businesses, that’s about it.

So I’m struggling with how guilty to feel when a black-owned bookstore closes.  

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In The New Yorker, Caleb Crain suggests that book reading may be, well, dead — or at least on life support. 

This decline is not news to those who depend on print for a living. In 1970, according to Editor & Publisher International Year Book, there were 62.1 million weekday newspapers in circulation—about 0.3 papers per person. Since 1990, circulation has declined steadily, and in 2006 there were just 52.3 million weekday papers—about 0.17 per person. In January 1994, forty-nine per cent of respondents told the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press that they had read a newspaper the day before. In 2006, only forty-three per cent said so, including those who read online. Book sales, meanwhile, have stagnated. The Book Industry Study Group estimates that sales fell from 8.27 books per person in 2001 to 7.93 in 2006. According to the Department of Labor, American households spent an average of a hundred and sixty-three dollars on reading in 1995 and a hundred and twenty-six dollars in 2005. In “To Read or Not to Read,” the N.E.A. reports that American households’ spending on books, adjusted for inflation, is “near its twenty-year low,” even as the average price of a new book has increased.

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Coming Summer 2008. [h/t Tananarive Due]

Casanegra‘s been named, as has that dreary New England White by Stephen Carter. The entire list is here. 

Alice Walker has decided to donate her archives to Emory University in Atlanta.

Am I a Bad Person if I recognize Walker’s importance but am left absolutely cold by her actual writing?

Still, I can appreciate what a coup this is for Emory, and I’m glad the archives of a writer who means so much to so many people won’t be completely lost.

Her papers will join the archives of Salman Rushdie, Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney at Emory.
Librarians will go through the materials for about a year, and they’ll then be available to the public and scholars.

I don’t remember much about Hardware. That’s not a judgment about Dwayne McDuffie’s talent, BTW.

It has more to do with the fact that I was in college, broke and trying to avoid spending what little money I had back when these books were released. I do remember picking up one of the Static books to read, but I just had neither the mental energy nor the resources to spend much time seeking out the mid-1990s Milestone products back when they were current. 

Plus, the metal pants looked chafe-y and make me giggle. 

Anyway, Hardware’s being remembered fondly in some quarters:

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• “Comic Book Club” at the People’s Improv Theater in Chelsea is a talk show of sorts for comic-book lovers 
• What’s going on with Luke Cage and Jessica Jones?
• Steel yourself in preparation for the Zadie Smith publicity juggernaut. She’s edited an anthology of short stories coming out in early 2008 
• The actor Morgan Freeman says his adaptation of Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama may be a go
• Get ready for the 19th National African American Read-In
• Apparently I wasn’t alone in choosing David Anthony Durham’s Acacia as one of the best books of 2007

Looky here: Author Kayla Perrin is on the cover of the January issue of Romantic Times Book Reviews. 

The interview’s not online. 

[h/t Monica Jackson]

The newest Romance Slam Jam newsletter has an excerpt from an interview with Affaire de Coeur founder Louise Snead. 

She talks about how race plays out at conferences for romance authors — and in what readers choose to buy:

If you poll the average romance reader, they don’t read African American romance. Why? Romance readers indulge passionately in this genre because they want escape and fantasy. They want to believe there is a partner out there for everyone. They want to fantasize about who this person is. If you can have a heroine with all her foibles be loved by the end of the book, then there is hope for the reader. Many readers accept and love romance with vampires, werewolves, ghosts, witches, faeries, elves, and the like, yet cannot accept a hero and heroine of color.

The full interview with Snead is here.

[h/t Seressia Glass]

Today’s New York Times Book Review: 

There are no reviews of books by black authors. No black authors or critics reviewed other books.

There are two reviews of books by nonblack authors that include significant references to black people:

There’s also an essay about South African writer J.M. Coetzee and whether his move to Australia and subsequent books are a reaction to accusations that his 1999 book, Disgrace, was racist.

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