I've been a fan of Kenneth Branagh for years, ever since I read his autobiography and learned that he was born two days and two and a half hours before I was. He's taken a number of Shakespeare's plays and turned them into successful films, and though they're now divorced, he was once married to Emma Thompson, my favorite British actress.
Kenneth Branagh
"is in discussions" to direct an adaptation of Agatha
Christie's Murder
on the Orient Express
for 20th Century Fox,
the Wrap reported, noting that Ridley Scott of
Scott Free and
Simon Kinberg of Genre Films are producing with Mark
Gordon. The novel
was previously adapted as a 1974 movie starring Albert
Finney as Poirot,
and there was also a 2001 TV version that aired on
CBS.
This is a well written eulogy for a bookstore that close in Paris recently, written by the brilliant Robert Gray of Shelf Awareness. It makes some cogent points about what a loss this is to any society.
A bookshop closed
this week.
This is how France
24 reported the end: "La Hune, the iconic Parisian
which was the
focal point for intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre,
Simone de Beauvoir
and Albert Camus for more than 60 years, closed for
the last time on
Sunday after a long struggle to make ends meet."
Calling La Hune
"one of the French capital's most loved bookshops, famed
for its vast
collections of French and international literature,
history, art and
design," France 24 also noted that it was "founded by a
group of
resistance fighters in 1949" and had been "originally located
between the famed
Cafe de Flore and the equally frequented Les
Deux Magots in
Paris's sixth arrondissement, [where it] became a
landmark meeting
place for France's intelligentsia."
The challenges La
Hune faced in recent years were variations on a
familiar theme:
Olivier Place, director of La Hune's previous owner
Librairies
Flammarion, which sold the bookseller to Gallimard three
years ago, said
sales had fallen precipitously. The bookstore also fell
prey to
ever-increasing rents in the fashionable
Saint-Germain-des-Pres
neighborhood. In 2012, La Hune "was forced
to move from its
emblematic address on 170 Boulevard Saint-Germain to
the nearby 18 Rue
de l'Abbaye to make way for a Louis Vuitton store,"
France 24 wrote.
A bookshop closed
this week.
"I walked
through La Hune one last time, sniffing the books and looking
at the posters,
and found myself far more distraught than I expected to
Adam Gopnik
recently wrote in the New Yorker. "I felt a deep sense of
loss, more than
mere regret, and ever since I have been trying to decide
why I felt this
way and whether the feeling was mine alone or might have
resonance elsewhere."
Acknowledging that
bookstores worldwide "open and they close, following
the path of bright
young people as migratory birds follow the sun,"
Gopnick observed
that in Paris, "good bookstores have opened in, or
migrated to, the
popular quartiers of the 15th and 19th arrondissements,
just as a few
independent bookstores in this city have migrated to the
sunnier climes of
Brooklyn."
In conversations
with his Parisian friends about La Hune, he "found they
shared my sense of
something that it would be indecent to call grief but
inadequate to call
sadness. At a minor level, once a bookstore is gone
we lose the
particular opportunities for adjacency it offers, determined
by something other
than an algorithm. It is rarely the book you came to
seek, but the book
next to that book, which changes your mind and
heart."
A bookshop closed
this week.
"If we try to
protect small merchants, or mourn their disappearance, the
last thing we are
being is nostalgic," Gopnick concludes. "Books are not
just other luxury
items to be shopped for. They are the levers of our
consciousness.
Every time a bookstore closes, an argument ends. That's
not good." Robert Gray on Shelf Awareness
Kudos to Todd Hulbert for finding a way to save Finally Found Bookstore, which was the former Baker Street Books in Black Diamond. His struggles have been heartbreaking, all the more so because I so rarely am able to get to Auburn to visit the new store. Now that it is a non profit Literacy Center, I sincerely hope that things will be looking up for WLO.
Finally Found
Books Becoming Nonprofit
Finally Found
Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz25541424,
Auburn, Wash.,which has
struggled financially since opening in 2013, has formed a
nonprofit called
the Washington Literary Organization
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz25541425
that aims to buy the store as well as
promote literacy,
support schools, educators and libraries, and help the
less fortunate
receive books. Owner Todd Hulbert considers it "a viable
model that other
struggling bookstores can follow."
In January,
Hulbert put the store up for sale
it "a very
difficult and personally emotional decision." But he found no
buyers and told
the Auburn Reporter: "We started to see revenues go down
http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz25541427
substantially from
the previous year,
and things didn't get any better in February, March
or April. I
finally said, 'It's either time to shut it up, or we can
look at forming a
nonprofit.' "
Hulbert emphasized
the advantages of a nonprofit: it can engage in
tax-deductible
fundraising, apply for grants, offer tax deductions for
book donations,
use volunteer staff, work with schools and libraries
directly and
network with other nonprofits.
Already, Hulbert
told the paper, volunteers have taken on
responsibilities
"in the business and [to] support existing and upcoming
literary
programs" and a 13-member board has been formed.
The Washington
Literary Organization's initial goal is to raise $10,000
for interim
funding to form the nonprofit and offset the store's
operating expenses
while doing the secondary fundraising of $250,000.
One-third of the
secondary funding raised will be used as operating
capital for the
store while the other two-thirds will be used to
purchase Finally
Found Books's furniture, fixtures, equipment, inventory
and goodwill.
Hulbert plans to
stay on as interim store manager until a replacement is
funded and
trained, serve on the WLO board if elected, volunteer in the
store several
hours a week and be on call to consult.
The Reporter said,
too, that various Finally Found Books programs will
also be
"beefed up," including training and internships that have
included
developmentally disabled interns; more gift certificates for
teachers; more
book and gift certificate donations to such causes and
organizations as
shut-in seniors, PTA auctions, fundraisers, Friends of
the Library, the
Veteran's Administration and churches.
New programs will
include the collection and distribution of some
100,000 books in
the first year for schools, libraries and other
organizations and
200,000 in the second year; Traveling Story Time,
which will offer
readings at preschools and other children's gathering
places; in-house
events such as tutoring, reading hours and sign
language classes;
and providing meeting space for literary events.
In 2014, Finally
Found Books had net revenues of $140,307.21, and in the
first quarter of
this year, net revenues were $32,364.93. The store's
annual fixed
expenses are about $70,000, and the proposed beginning
annual payroll
expenses are about $40,000. Other discretionary expenses
include
advertising, purchase of new books and inventory, professional
trade groups and
conferences, etc.
In early 2012,
Hulbert bought Baker Street Books
Diamond, Wash.,
closed it to install new shelving, reconfigure the store
and absorb some
100,000 volumes he had in storage. In July, he reopened
the store as
Finally Found Books. In September 2013, Finally Found Books
sales were too low
in Black Diamond. The store sells new and used
titles.
My husband, son and I are all taking our annual pilgrimage to Powells next week, where we'll be staying at the Mark Spencer Hotel by night and shopping by day at the BEST indie bookstore in the world! AMEN to that!
Ore., named
"the best independent bookshop
in the world"
by the Guardian, with help from its readers. The entry
reads:
"This
legendary Portland shop is the world's largest used book
store--the jewel
in the crown of what is claimed to be the largest
independent chain
of bookstores on the planet. Powell's even provides a
map for customers.
'It is amazing! It is a whole city block with several
floors of books.
Unlike ordinary bookstores, Powell's has a huge
selection of every
book imaginable. I took my retired English teacher
father there and
he went crazy. It also has a cafe and a selection of
antique computers.
It is an absolute paradise for bibliophiles!' said
John R. Ewing
Jr."
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