Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: Everything Glittered by Robin Talley. I picked up a galley at NVNR and am enjoying this queer historical murder mystery set in DC during Prohibition. Next up is a reread of Shark Heart for my book club, one of the most imaginative and moving novels I’ve experienced in ages.
Listening: Healing Harmonies station on Calm, somewhat bland but soothingly perfect for this moment.
Watching: The Great British Baking Show, an hour of goodness, silliness, and inspiring bakes.

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: Just started The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark and loving it so far! I will read anything Clark writes. His writing is so compelling!
Listening: To my favorite band, Jukebox the Ghost, after seeing them in concert last week! Watching: I patiently wait all week for Agatha All Along to drop!

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading:Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad, We're Alone by Edwidge Dandicat, and Ta-Nehisi Coates' The Message, which I just started because I've gotten interested in "craft" books by writers.
Listening: Between the Covers remains my favorite "think deep thoughts" podcast (David Naiman has the perfect job!), but this week Slightly Foxed talks to Adam Sisman about, his "secret annex" followup to his biography about David Cornwell, The Secret Life of John Le Carre (the women of Hoxton Square were all aflutter). Also Katie Hessel, host of The Great Women Artists podcast, has a lovely discussion with the niece of Tove Jansson, and a more breathtaking talk with Emerson Bowyer on the sculpture and life of Camille Claudel that is just...just. I mean, I knew about her, but I didn't really know about her.
Watching: The DVD of Cold Comfort Farm is in the player.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: I am finally three whole pages into Sarah Perry's Enlightenment, which seems like a major accomplishment these days.
Listening: I am gradually finishing the Between the Covers podcast episode featuring Vajra Chandrasekera (which Nicki recommended after I went on a slight rant about a TV show), which is a completely fascinating discussion on genre, history, writing, world-building, and more. And I have just started the audiobook of Chandrasekera's 2023 fantasy novel The Saint of Bright Doors.
Watching: The clock reach 9 PM every Wednesday, which is when new episodes of Agatha All Along are released.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: All the spooky things! I'm about halfway into The Best American Mystery & Suspense 2024 (edited by the amazing SA Cosby) and it's a fabulous collection - so many of my favorites are featured.
Listening: Since it's spooky season I'm back into my true crime podcast and Generation Why is currently in my ears.
Watching: My coworker recommended Chimp Crazy and OMG it is a wild ride. Think Tiger King with chimps.

SIBA is augmenting its bookstore contact information

The recent hurricanes have demonstrated that SIBA needs to have back up contact information in place if a crisis causes store closures and bookstore owners and managers are unreachable. So SIBA is collecting emergency and point of contact information for bookstores in its region.

Weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and forest fires are a fact of life in the South. When they occur, SIBA will reach out to its members who have been impacted to offer aid and put them in touch with the resources that can help them survive and recover. When a community is suffering from loss of services, power outages, or downed wifi and cell service, then the business contact information SIBA has on file for stores may not be the best way to reach members in need.

SIBA is also frequently contacted by press, advocacy groups, and other civic organizations for information on its member stores, especially during times of crisis or newsworthy events. Having a store point of contact, spokesperson, or press liaison will allow SIBA to direct queries to the person authorized to answer questions.

SIBA invites bookstores to submit their authorized emergency and point-of-contact information here: SIBA Bookstore Contact Form

The information collected will be used by SIBA to stay in touch with its members during a crisis and provided to authorized relief organizations if SIBA deems it would be helpful to the store..

Current Newsletter: You heard it from us first: Booksellers on the National Book Awards

Bookstores with reviews in this week's newsletter:

• Mia Kilpatrick, Hub City Bookshop in Spartanburg, South Carolina
• Anne Peck, Righton Books in St Simons Island, Georgia
• Stephanie Crowe, Page & Palette in Fairhope, Alabama
• Jackie Davison, The Lynx in Gainesville, Florida
• Jessica Nock, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina
• Charlie Marks, Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia
• Heather Way, Angel Wings Bookstore in Stem, North Carolina
• Matt Nixon, A Cappella Books in Atlanta, Georgia
• Maya Shenoy, Epilogue Books Chocolate Brews in Chapel Hill, North Carolina 
• Kelley Barnes, Page 158 Books in Wake Forest, North Carolina
• Rachel Knox, Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg, Florida
• Kristen Iskandrian, Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama
• Mac Chamberlain, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee
• Monie Henderson, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
• Lana Repic, E. Shaver Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia
• Sol Johnson, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina
• Susan Williams, M Judson Booksellers in Greenville, South Carolina
• Morgan DePerno, Bookmarks in Winston-Salem, North Carolina
• Rebecca Speas, One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia

Book Buzz Feature: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Interestingly, the first voice that came to the page for me in this project was Margaret’s — the character who becomes entangled in Ivan’s life in the course of the book. It certainly wasn’t that I sat down thinking, I have to write a book where the male voice is central. I just felt my way through the story that seemed to emerge when I encountered these characters, which is what I always try to do. Of course I had moments of self-reflection and self-consciousness, because I was thinking, What do I know about this form of interiority and specifically — which is different from Connell in “Normal People” — relationships between men?

—Sally Rooney, Interview, The New York Times

Decide For Yourself Banned Book Feature:
The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee
This Grand Tour was supposed to be Monty’s last big hurrah before adulthood, but it has quickly turned into an unmitigated disaster. Instead of partying and gambling through Europe in style with his (unfairly handsome) best friend Percy, Monty is stuck with a dour chaperone who’s forbidden him from doing anything fun, his unpleasantly bookish sister, and a growing rift between him and (the still handsome) Percy. And that is before the highwaymen attack, setting Mackenzie Lee’s delightful characters on a swashbuckling caper from the highways of France, through Barcelona’s darkened alleys, to the sparkling (and sinking) islands of Venice. A Room with a View meets The Goonies in waistcoats and cravats, The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue is charming, witty, and heartfelt, and it’s bound to become an instant classic!
― Rebecca Speas, One More Page Books in Arlington, Virginia

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NEW REVIEWS | SUBSCRIBE | SUBMIT A REVIEW | FOR PUBLISHERS

SOUTHERN INDIE BESTSELLER LIST
For the week ending 10/6/2024

Edelweiss Collections:
(sort by "Catalog Order" to see each list according to rating)

Hardcover Fiction | Hardcover Nonfiction | Trade Paperback Fiction | Trade Paperback Nonfiction | Mass Market | Children's Illustrated | Children's Interest | Children's Series

SIBA has created a page dedicated to information and resources for booksellers who have been affected by Hurricane Helene or would like to help provide relief:

Hurricane Helene Relief and Resources

Booksellers can find links to local on-the-ground relief agencies and fundraising efforts sponsored by SIBA bookstores. There are also some tools available from the Peer Booksellers Resource Library on emergency preparedness, and a list of stores in the path of Helene with notes where we have information about their status.

If you have a resource or information you would like to have included, please email nicki@sibaweb.com

Hello SIBA friends!

Last week, Hurricane Helene tore through SIBA territory with devastating effects. About 200 SIBA stores in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia were affected, with some losing utilities like power, internet, and water, and others sustaining wind and flood damage. Stores in Florida and North Carolina seemed to be hit the hardest by the storm. 

SIBA is reaching out to stores in areas affected by the hurricane, and we’re monitoring social media as well. Fortunately, the majority of stores that have contacted SIBA to check in are physically intact, although most are without power, internet, water, cell service, or some combination of those. Some stores are still trying to reach staff members who are scattered, and cell service is spotty.

Blinking Owl Books in Fort Myers, FL, posted to their Instagram account that the store flooded and will need major renovation, and they have started a GoFundMe campaign to raise the cost of repairs. Sassafras on Sutton in Black Mountain, NC, posted in their newsletter that their stores are physically intact; however, staff cannot make it in, and utilities have mostly not yet been restored. They are also seeking donations to help cover costs while the stores remain closed. Macintosh Books and Paper posted on Instagram that they took on some flooding but were fortunate enough to have minimal loss.

SIBA has also heard about stores organizing within their communities. Firestorm Books in Asheville, NC, posted on Instagram that their store is undamaged and their workers are safe, and they have begun organizing with other groups in the community to get aid and supplies to where it is most needed. They are also offering daily meetings at the store as a space for neighbors to receive updates and coordinate mutual aid efforts. Main Street Books in Davidson, NC, is coordinating hurricane relief drives and has delivered up to 14 loaded trucks and SUVs of donations to western areas of North Carolina. Read Spotted Newt in Hazard, KY, has teamed up with Pathfinders of Perry Co. to collect supplies and donations, and they’re selling t-shirts to raise funds for the Appalachian Helene Impact Fund.

Many SIBA stores have contacted us to see how they can help their fellow booksellers affected by Hurricane Helene. It’s truly inspiring to see our Southern indie bookstore community come together in the face of such devastation. If you or your store would like to help, SIBA has created a dashboard that we will continuously update that includes links and donation requests. If you know of a store that has a fundraiser or needs support, please e-mail Candice Huber, Membership Coordinator, the details at candice@sibaweb.com.

You can also reach SIBA at siba@sibaweb.com with any news or requests. Responses to queries sent directly to Executive Director Linda-Marie Barrett will be delayed as she is based in Asheville, NC, and without power or cell service. 

If your store needs support or you want to offer support, SIBA highly recommends Binc as your first call. Binc is there to help stores and booksellers, and donating to them is one of the best ways to support booksellers. 

Important Links from Binc: Apply online (mobile friendly form) | Email Binc | Call: 866.733.9064 | Donate

Linda-Marie Barrett / Executive Director:
Reading: In a stroke of incredible timing, just read The Art Thieves by Andrea L. Rogers, a novel of Cherokee futurism set in the near future when the effects of climate change, pandemics, and international sabotage turn the world upside down. Just started The Sentence by Louise Erdrich and it is delightful.
Listening: To the sounds of Red Cross, military, and medical helicopters crossing the sky above my home rescuing folks and bringing supplies, and to the heart-lifting conversations of neighbors sharing resources and emotional support.
Watching: A community coming together during the most difficult of times.

Candice Huber / Membership:
Reading: Bored Gay Werewolf by Tony Santorella. So far, it's entertaining!
Listening: The sounds of squirrels scrambling up trees and birds flitting through the bushes.
Watching: I love silly, completely unrealistic action movies and have never seen The Fast and the Furious franchise, so I've started watching those, and they do not disappoint!

Nicki Leone / Communications:
Reading: I finished Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner while Helene was raging through the Carolinas. Amazingly, not by candlelight. Yalo by Elias Khoury is still an ongoing project.
Listening: For most of the week, the sound of hammers, because we had the roofers on site to replace the entire roof. So hammers, and also the dog, who was dedicated to warning me every time one of them walked by a window.
Watching: Reruns of House, MD.

SP Rankin / Website Administrator:
Reading: A difficult reading week, again, as I imagine it was for a lot of people. But Enlightenment (Sarah Parry) still awaits.
Listening: Tami Neilson's latest Neilson Sings Nelson, and Willie's Willie Nelson Sings Kristofferson from a long time ago. Not recommended unless you feel like crying. Which you probably do.
Watching: A Room with a View. Merchant Ivory plus Forster at their dreamiest. Plus Maggie Smith's tart, tragicomic, brilliant turn as Miss Bartlett.

Andrea Richardson / Sales:
Reading: I have approximately 40 books downloaded for my upcoming vacation, and I have no idea where to start.
Listening: A friend of mine just guested on an episode of Bash Pinball podcast and that was a fun listen.
Watching: There's a new season of The Circle out on Netflix, so I'm waiting with bated breath for each Wednesday release of episodes.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
October 3, 2024 

The Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance is pleased to announce the results of its 2024 Board elections. Julia Davis, owner of The Book Worm Book Store in Powder Springs, Georgia has been re-elected for a second term. Davis currently serves as SIBA's President.

Also elected were Rayna Nielson, Events Manager at Blue Cypress Books in New Orleans, Louisiana, Cristina Nosti, Director of Events and Programming at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, and Melissa Taylor, co-owner of E. Shaver Books in Savannah, Georgia. The elected slate will start their terms January 1, 2025, after completing training. SIBA's Board is run on the Carver Method.

"This was in many ways a historic election," says SIBA Executive Director Linda-Marie Barrett. "It was our first election under our new bylaws with its expanded definition of bookstore membership. It is also the first time we have voted to expand the board in over tweny-five years." In 2024 SIBA increased its board from five to seven members to better represent the organizations wide spread geographic territory and increasingly diverse range of bookstore business models.

The election was also a milestone for the organization in member participation and engagement. 74 bookstores in total voted, representing 33% of SIBA members. Barrett noted that voting percentage is the highest SIBA has seen in a decade, more than doubling the average turnout since 2014 and especially significant as SIBA's membership numbers have climbed steadily from 130 stores in 2014 to a peak of 225 in 2024.

She also noted that all the candidates on the slate received substantial numbers of votes and that it was a very tight race right up to when voting closed.

"That so many bookstores voted is a sign that they are engaged and invested in SIBA," said Barrett. "We are very pleased with the turnout."

SIBA booksellers can meet with their current board members and be introduced to the incoming slate at the SIBA Annual Meeting to be held on Zoom on October 23, 2024 at 4:00 PM ET/ 3:00 PM CT.

For more information, visit sibaweb.com or contact SIBA's main office at siba@sibaweb.com.

Incoming Board Bios:

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JULIA DAVIS

Julia R. Davis (she/her) was elected to the SIBA Board in 2021 and is currently serving as SIBA's President. In that capacity she has guided the organization through major changes, included the adoption of SIBA's revised bylaws in 2024. She was born and raised in New York. She spent over 15 years in the legal profession with 7 of those years managing law firms. Davis took ownership of The Book Worm Bookstore, located in historic Downtown Powder Springs, Georgia, in November 2020 when the former owner retired. Ms. Davis’ passion for promoting self-love and literacy has become the foundation that The Book Worm stands on.  The store's motto is "Where love is shared as much as stories!"

Julia also hosts a series of children’s events, appropriately titled “I Love ME!” designed to encourage children to love themselves as they are. In February 2014, Ms. Davis published her first children’s book “I Love me because….I’m DIFFERENT.” Currently, there are eight published picture books, one Chapter Book, and various self-love items in the continually growing I LOVE ME! Book Series.

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RAYNA NIELSEN

Rayna Nielsen’s formal training is in travel and tourism but her lifelong career is bookselling. She began her bookselling career in her home state of Florida then continued after moving to Louisiana in 2005. She has spent over a decade as a bookseller at independent bookstores in New Orleans, including her current position as Event Specialist at Blue Cypress Books. She is the creator and host of Book Banter, a virtual event series and she currently serves as President of the Independent Bookseller Association of Greater New Orleans.

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CRISTINA NOSTI

Cristina Nosti is Director of Events and Programming at Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida. She programs and helps to market over 600 events a year. As a Latina-identified person, her approach is community-centric and interdisciplinary and stems from her background in the arts. Before coming to Books & Books, Cristina worked as Development Director for the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami. She was the Executive Director of the Cuban Museum of Art & Culture, in the early 90s, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Oscar B. Cintas Foundation to award fellowships in the arts to creators of Cuban descent. She has also worked as General Manager of Miami Dade College’s Department of Cultural Affairs and as Author Liaison for Miami Book Fair. She has also worked in Hollywood, California as a reader of screenplays and in the television industry (her father was a pioneer of Spanish-language programming in the United States). She lives in Coral Gables, Florida with her partner, the ghost of their beloved dog and lots and lots of books.

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MELISSA TAYLOR

Melissa Taylor is a bookseller with over 20 years of industry experience. She is currently the co-owner of E. Shaver, Bookseller which was named Best Bookstore in the South by the readers of Southern Living and is also included in the book 150 Bookstores You Need to Visit Before You Die. She is the cohost of the podcast Pull Your Shelf Together and serves on the Binc Finance Committee. She lives in Savannah with her husband (a former bookseller) and their two rescue dogs.

SOUTHERN INDIE BESTSELLER LIST
For the week ending 9/22/2024

Edelweiss Collections:
(sort by "Catalog Order" to see each list according to rating)

Hardcover Fiction | Hardcover Nonfiction | Trade Paperback Fiction | Trade Paperback Nonfiction | Mass Market | Children's Illustrated | Children's Interest | Children's Series

Current Newsletter: Banned Books Week Around the South

Bookstores with reviews in this week's newsletter:

• Leah Jordan, Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, Arkansas
• Jan Blodgett, Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina
• Doron Klemer, Octavia Books in New Orleans, Louisiana
• Megan Bell, Underground Books in Carrollton, Georgia
• Kate Snyder, Plaid Elephant Books in Danville, Kentucky
• Charlie Williams, Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi
• Winter Goldsmith, E. Shaver, Bookseller in Savannah, Georgia
• Adam Fall, Underbrush Books in Rogers, Arkansas
• Kim Brock, Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, Kentucky
• Elizabeth Walker, Sassafras on Sutton in Black Mountain, North Carolina
• Angie Tally, The Country Bookshop in Southern Pines, North Carolina
• Michelle Weiler, Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina
• Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

Book Buzz Feature: Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White
Horror will always be the genre that feels the most like home to me, largely because it’s the only genre that will let me get away with the sort of stuff I want to write. It’s messy, and visceral, and gut-churning! (Plus, once you include a single horror element in, say, a romance novel, it becomes a horror-romance by definition; horror infects everything it touches, and isn’t that wonderful?) –Andrew Joseph White, Interview, F(r)iction

Decide For Yourself Banned Book Feature:
Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison
What Jonathan Evison has done in Lawn Boy is give us an unlikely hero in Mike Muñoz, who tells it like it is and just wants a fair shake. Only twenty-two but already beaten down, Mike knows what it means to go hungry, to share a house with too many people, to never get ahead. Lawn Boy covers issues like racism, immigrant rights, and homophobia in the same breath as dating misadventures, Mike’s fledgling topiary carving artistry, and the pretentious writing MFA candidates produce. It is just this type of book (relatable, funny, entertaining) that could get us talking about social justice.
― Rachel Watkins, Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia

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NEW REVIEWS | SUBSCRIBE | SUBMIT A REVIEW | FOR PUBLISHERS