Powell's Future in Danger, Blue Peter Awards JK Rowling, Amazon Hires More Workers, Quote of the Day, GRRM Blogs About COVID 19 Virus, The Absinthe Earl by Sharon Lynn Fisher, and A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn

The COVID 19 virus continues to sweep through the nation, killing many (including playwright Terrance McNally) and filling hospitals and nursing homes with more patients than they have beds or equipment for. So now it becomes a matter of who you choose to get that respirator or oxygen, the 20-something with a compromised immune system or the 60 year old who has asthma? A vast majority of Doctors are going to choose the younger patient, thereby letting the person who is my age die. So to say that I am terrified of getting the virus is an understatement. The governor of the state of Washington has declared a quarantine emergency and shut down all but "essential" services, such as hospitals and pharmacies and grocery stores. Even then, people have been told to stay indoors except to grocery shop once a week, and while outside they are to stay 6 feet away from all other people and practice good handwashing and cough/sneezing into your elbow (not your hands) techniques. Many restaurants and bookstores are closed, or only selling books and food online for pick up or delivery. My husband continues to go out shopping nearly everyday, though I've asked him not to, and my son goes to work 5 days a week, because his boss refuses to shutter their computer repair business. My son has planned to tell his boss that he's taking the next two weeks off, but I fear that he will catch the virus this week just by being in contact with people through their coming into his workplace. Also, because he's young, I think most people assume that he would survive the virus, when that's not a given at all, and he would bring it home to me, meanwhile, thereby dooming our whole family. Here's what is going on in the book world:

Emily Powell on Closings and Layoffs: 'The Path Ahead Is Dark and Scary'

Earlier this week, Powell's Books closed its five stores in and around Portland, Ore., and laid off at least 340 union employees. Yesterday owner Emily Powell sent this letter to staff.

These are unprecedented and grievous times. Only a few days ago we had reason to hope that we could continue with our meaningful work of bookselling and maintain some small semblance of normalcy. Now we see the path ahead more clearly: it is dark and scary.

I have always described Powell's as resilient: lumbering sometimes, full of quirks and personality, but always resilient. We are having that resilience tested as never before. As you all know, we made the decision, with only a small amount of time to act, to close all of our stores over the weekend. We felt we could not wait a moment longer for the sake of the health of our community. We had hoped to find some way to consider this a short-term closure. Today, only one more day out from that decision, we now understand what we all must face: an extended, difficult period of significant measures to protect public health. We don't expect we will be able to open our doors for at least eight weeks, and very likely longer. When we do open our stores again, we expect the landscape of Oregon, and all of our abilities to spend money on books and gifts, will have changed dramatically. I wish we could have planned more and prepared you more; the situation simply moved too quickly and our responsibility to act quickly to protect public health felt too dire.

When we closed our doors, we also closed off the vast majority of our business without any prospect of it returning soon. As a result, we have been forced to make the unthinkable decision to lay off the vast majority of you in the coming few days. Many people have spoken publicly demanding we pay our employees and extend health insurance for the duration. No one can possibly know how much I wish I could make that happen. We are simply not that kind of business--we run on duct tape and twine on a daily basis, every day trading funds from one pocket to patch the hole in another. We have worked hard over the years to pay the best possible wages, health care and benefits, to make contributions to our community, to support other non-profits. Unfortunately, none of those choices leave extra money on hand when the doors close. And when the doors close, every possible cost must stop as well.

I am doing everything within my power to keep Powell's alive for the next generation of readers and writers, for the next generation of Portland and Oregon. And yet Powell's is also where I grew up and have spent most of my life, and I cannot imagine attempting to move forward without so many of you, colleagues who feel like family. Please know none of our choices were made lightly, and our slow communication has masked our desperate efforts to find a different possible path.

My heart breaks for all of us. Our stores are meant to be full, our city bustling, our minds at ease. And for a time, none of those will be true. I know for many of you, your lives will be forever altered by our decision to close our stores and you will never think of Powell's the same. For all of that and more, I am deeply sorry. I can only hope we might find a way to come back together on the other side of these terrible times.

 This is a nice award for JKR, whose books I've loved, though I am dismayed that she's a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF, who is prejudiced against trans people.

Awards: Blue Peter Book 20th Anniversary Winner

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone won the Blue Peter Book Awards 20th Anniversary Prize http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43640660. The British children's TV program asked its audience to vote for their favorite Blue Peter Book Award book from the last two decades, and thousands of viewers voted.

Blue Peter editor Ellen Evans commented: "Through the Blue Peter Book Awards we want to show how reading is fun and enjoyable, can help you feel better, can help you empathize, find out new facts and, through imagination, experience something beyond everyday life! J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is truly a wonderful and worthy winner. I loved reading our audience's comments online talking about their favorite books and sharing their love of reading."

 Even buying books online is fraught with peril these days:

Amazon Prioritizing 'High-Demand' Items, Hiring 100,000 Workers

Amazon will prioritize household staples, medical supplies, pet supplies and other high-demand products at its fulfillment centers, resulting in reduced purchase orders and extended delivery windows for low priority items such as books, as outlined on its Seller Central page http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43669070. This will be in effect through at least April 5.

The company added: "For products other than these, we have temporarily disabled shipment creation. We are taking a similar approach with retail vendors."

At the same time, Amazon plans to hire 100,000 additional workers to help keep up with the surge in online orders brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, the AP reported

The new job openings are for a mix of full-time and part-time positions, including everything from delivery drivers to warehouse workers. Amazon also plans to temporarily raise pay for its hourly employees by $2 per hour through the end of April, with hourly workers in the U.K. and parts of Europe set to get similar increases.

The announcement comes after Amazon adjusted its time-off policy for hourly workers last week, allowing them to take as much time off in March as desired, with the caveat that they would be paid only for earned time off. Amazon announced, too, that it would pay hourly workers for up to two weeks if they become ill with the virus or needed to be quarantined.

The surge in online shopping has put significant strain on Amazon's operations, with an Amazon higher-up saying that current demand is "unprecedented" for this time of year.

Reading Out the Window

Patricia Nelson, a sales representative with University Press Sales Associates who is based in Santa Fe, N.Mex., sent the following note to her booksellers Monday under the subject line "Reading out the Window":

As we take in the impossible news of bookstores cancelling their calendars and closing their doors for a prudent interim, I feel the hum of book hives quieting. Extraordinarily dear places. As a sales rep, my GPS is bookstores--I triangulate any travel by proximity to bookstores, those in my circuit and those I know elsewhere. All are virtually present in a memory palace, how they are laid out, an odd corner, an intriguingly curated category, what I found there.

Hardly a week ago, in San Diego, I recognized a book was waiting for me on a lovely table at the Book Catapult http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43669130. Fenton Johnson's At the Center of All Beauty, on "solitude and the creative life." I found Fenton Johnson a while back, intertwined with Thomas Merton and Kentucky. He asks, apropos of the solitaries he studies here, "But does ascetic practice require bricks and mortar?"

Even at the very precipice of this sudden abyss, I did not realize we would face immediate social distancing. At the CALIBA Spring Meeting in San Diego, I enjoyed being with booksellers together, appreciating authors, sharing the struggles and rewards of small business concerns, not recognizing so incipient a threat. Now, finding ourselves at home, separated from our ordinary lives out and about, I am thinking about our reading practice beyond brick and mortar. 

Finding books is a kind of wayfaring. With our experience of favorite book terrains, we comfortably and trustingly can "virtually" visit our bookstores. We can share the enthusiasms of our favorite booksellers, their staff picks and book news, we can imaginatively search their shelves, even write or call for distance bibliotherapy. At home, hunkering down, we more deeply recognize the gift of gathering so generously bestowed. As we recognize the myriad ways bookstores animate our community, and offer the astonishing presence of writers, let us recognize the actual object of these unique encounters.  That we can actually bring home the book, possess the object. I am reading through postponed events calendars which literally picture a season of delights unfolding. As a rep, the reply to "what are you reading now?" is always something out ahead. I'm looking at my notes. Order the book!

Let us find ways to sing our reading out the window together. All of us, as publishers and book travelers, as booksellers, as readers, can share in the generosity of bookstores as places in mind. May you all stay safe and well.

 Excellent Quote for this time, because books aren't in a hurry, they will always be there no matter what.

Quotation of the Day

"We see print and books as a through line or continuity that people can rely on when things get weird or it feels like the world is ending. Books aren't in a hurry."

--Camden Avery, a manager at the Booksmith http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43670845, San Francisco, Calif., speaking with KQED

Island Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43729989, Mercer Island, Wash., shared a photo of its sidewalk chalkboard, featuring the word of the moment http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43729990 (and, it appears, the unforeseeable future): "essential."

Many authors have had to cancel their book tours or even their book debuts. Sounds like the famed  George RR Martin is doing his best to make the sheltering in place order a way to move forward with his latest writing.

GRRM Blogs about COVID Virus

"Strange days are upon us http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43697888.  As ancient as I am, I cannot recall ever having lived through anything like the past few weeks," bestselling author George R.R. Martin wrote on his blog. While he temporarily shuttering several of his enterprises in Santa Fe, N.Mex., Beastly Books http://www.shelf-awareness.com/ct/uz3642037Biz43697889 will remain open for the time being, though author events have been canceled or postponed. "If it seems best to shut the bookstore too, we will do that."

Martin added: "Truth be told, I am spending more time in Westeros than in the real world, writing every day. Things are pretty grim in the Seven Kingdoms... but maybe not as grim as they may become here.... Let us hope we all come through this safe and sound. Stay well, my friends. Better to be safe than sorry."

The Absinthe Earl by Sharon Lynn Fisher is a paranormal fantasy romance that sounded like it would be a fun and light read, which is something a lot of people are looking for right now, myself included. Unfortunately, it was terribly overwritten, with almost "baroque rococo" style prose that was dense and dull. The plot was slow as molasses in January and the characters stiff and often silly or stupid. Here's the blurb:

Miss Ada Quicksilver, a student of London's Lovelace Academy for Promising Young Women, is spending her holiday in Ireland to pursue her anthropological study of fairies. She visits Dublin's absinthe bars to investigate a supposed association between the bittersweet spirit and fairy sightings.

One night a handsome Irishman approaches her, introducing himself as Edward Donoghue. Edward takes absinthe to relieve his sleepwalking, and she is eager to hear whether he has experience with fairies. Instead, she discovers that he's the earl of Meath, and that he will soon visit a mysterious ruin at Newgrange on the orders of his cousin, the beautiful, half-mad Queen Isolde. On learning about Ada's area of study, he invites her to accompany him.

Ada is torn between a sensible fear of becoming entangled with the clearly troubled gentleman and her compelling desire to ease his suffering. Finally she accepts his invitation, and they arrive in time for the winter solstice. That night, the secret of Edward's affliction is revealed: he is, in fact, a lord in two worlds and can no longer suppress his shadow self.

Little does either of them realize that their blossoming friendship and slowly kindling passion will lead to discoveries that wrench open a door sealed for centuries, throwing them into a war that will change Ireland forever.

Though it is obvious the main characters Ada and Edward will end up together, there's a great deal of hand-wringing that goes on on both sides, with one trying to protect the other or thinking they aren't good enough for one another, for whatever reason. Rinse and repeat. This goes from charming to tedious after the first few chapters, so I could hardly wait for the book to end. SHOW, DON'T TELL, Ms Fisher! At any rate, I'd give this book a C, and only recommend it to those who like overwrought Irish romances.

A Murderous Relation by Deanna Raybourn was the 5th Veronica Speedwell Mystery that I've read and enjoyed, populated by the wonderful Veronica and the dark enigmatic Stoker, who is minor royalty and a major hottie. Here's the blurb: Autumn 1888. Veronica Speedwell and her colleague Stoker are asked by Lady Wellingtonia Beauclerk to stop a potential scandal so explosive it threatens to rock the monarchy. Prince Albert Victor is a regular visitor to the most exclusive private club in London, and the proprietress, Madame Aurore, has received an expensive gift that can be traced back to the prince. Lady Wellie would like Veronica and Stoker to retrieve it from the club before scandal can break.

Worse yet, London is being terrorized by what would become the most notorious and elusive serial killer in history, Jack the Ripper—and Lady Wellie suspects the prince may be responsible.
Veronica and Stoker reluctantly agree to go undercover at Madame Auroreʼs high-class brothel, where a body soon turns up. Secrets are swirling around Veronica and the royal family—and it is up to Veronica and Stoker to find the truth, before it is too late for all of them.

The only thing I didn't like about this zingy mystery, (written in lovely prose that keeps you turning pages unto the wee hours) is that they never hold forth with whom they think actually is Jack the Ripper, or why he stopped killing young impoverished women when he did. I would have liked to have seen the protagonists take a crack at this ancient mystery and come up with a credible suspect. However, despite that small flaw, this is a wonderful and engrossing novel that I'm giving an A, and recommending to anyone who has read the other Veronica Speedwell mysteries. I sincerely hope that Stoker and Veronica end up entwined together both physically and in another mystery soon! I could read this kind of book every day, especially now,to keep my mind off of the grim reality of the coronavirus.