Joseph McElroy appeared at Skylight Books on Sunday, reading from his new collection "Night Soul and Other Stories" from Dalkey Archive Press. The 80-year-old McElroy will be in Portland on Tuesday and San Francisco on Wednesday; while in L.A., he was interviewed by Michael Silverblatt for an upcoming broadcast on KCRW's Bookworm.

Silverblatt, he said, had helped him warm to the cover of his book, which includes a light wallpaper pattern. This suggests the possibility of design, as design is implied by McElroy's work, particularly "my novels," he said, "which have tended to be very ambitious and long."

Case in point: his 1986 novel "Women and Men," which ticks in at nearly 1,200 pages long. Here on Jacket Copy, Garth Risk Hallberg lauded the novel and its complexities:

Plot here means both story and conspiracy, and in the intricacy of the enjambment, McElroy makes few concessions to his readers' limitations. On the level of story, "Women and Men" follows apartment-house neighbors Jim Mayn and Grace Kimball, who never quite manage to meet. On the level of conspiracy, it traces the nearly infinite connections between the two, uncovering personal and political intrigue stretching from Pinochet's Chile to Cape Kennedy to the New Mexico of the Pueblo Indians.

McElroy chooses to elide key terms in these connections, which means that important plot points are left unresolved, like circuits that are simultaneously on and off. It also means that the novel overwhelms — intentionally, I think — the reader's memory. This is frustrating at first. Eventually, though, it makes the book come peculiarly alive; by the final episodes, every detail McElroy mobilizes — seemingly every word — resonates with half-remembered associations.

That write-up was from our PoMo Month, which focused on postmodern literature, but at Skylight, McElroy mused that he did not, in the end, consider himself a postmodernist. The stories in "Night Soul and Other Stories" are either the political -- facing "outward to the public life that we'd like to think we share" -- or the familial, in which "the mysteries of home and future and time," he said, "can be intricately woven."

When he considered whether the family-oriented stories are autobiographical, McElroy replied that yes, they were in part. But then he pushed back: "Who knows what autobiography really is?" He may reject the label "postmodernist," but he's still playing with the assumptions we make about what we read. "The story of my life is what I want to tell," he said. "Anything I say is a lie, or partial lie." 

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Joseph McElroy signs books at Skylight Books, Jan. 30, 2011. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

American fans of Japanese author Haruki Murakami can celebrate -- his next novel is coming to American bookshelves in the fall.

The much-anticipated "1Q84" was released in Japan in 2009 in two 500-plus-page volumes. The book's plot was kept largely under wraps, causing a flurry of advance orders and quickly launching it to the top of the Japanese bestseller lists.

The English-language translation will be published in the U.S. by Knopf on Oct. 25 as a single volume, GalleyCat reports.

Murakami's works, such as "Kafka on the Shore" and "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle," have earned him an avid following of readers who crave smart and challenging literature. They've been waiting some time for a new novel from the writer, who some consider among the world's best. It's been close to four years since his most recent novel, "After Dark," was published in the U.S.; a short memoir, "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" came out a year later. Both were L.A. Times bestsellers.

"1Q84" is said to be a pun on George Orwell's "1984" -- the Japanese word for "Q," apparently, being a homonym for the number 9.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Haruki Murakami in 2008. Credit: Random House

Adrian Tomine's "Scenes from an Impending Marriage: A Prenuptial Memoir" was first conceived as a party favor for guests at his wedding, or at least that's what we're supposed to think. Whether or not this is really true is beside the point, since either way, it offers a useful strategy for thinking about the book.

Tomine has always been a master of the small gesture, as anyone familiar with his work knows. Such encounters motivate the deceptively informal stories in his series "Optic Nerve," as well as his graphic novel "Shortcomings," which explores the limits of identity and intimacy. With "Scenes from an Impending Marriage," though, he seems almost willfully understated, tracing, in a series of offhand comics, the peculiar rigors of the wedding dance, from guest lists to seating charts to invitations and beyond.

That this is the perfect approach to an event that has become fetishized in our culture should go without saying: Tomine's point is not to play into (or even against) perceptions about marriage so much as to particularize his account. It's not even the wedding that's important (it does not appear here), but rather the interaction between Tomine and his fiancée Sarah as they try to create a ceremony that will have meaning for them.

"You need to stop approaching this like you're doing people a favor by not inviting them," Sarah tells Tomine about his reluctance to add to the guest list. "Okay," he replies, "but I also think you shouldn't use this as an opportunity to make amends or re-connect with everyone you've ever known." It's a vivid interaction, made moreso by its kicker -- "Boy ... People would really be appalled if they ever heard some of these discussions," which, of course, suggests the irony and revelation of the autobiographical form. And yet, for anyone who's ever made up such a guest list, the details resonate, highlighting the ability of such a story to extend beyond itself. That's what Tomine does so beautifully, here as in his other work, using his experience to create a portal into our own.

"Scenes from an Impending Marriage" is a short book, barely 50 pages, but it reverberates with an unexpected depth. This is a function not only of content but also of form, which, at times, reflects some unlikely antecedents. A one-panel strip called "Exercise" is reminiscent of the syndicated strip "The Family Circus," with its circular frame. Elsewhere, Tomine and Sarah cry out, "WAAAAAAAHH!!" in exasperation, their heads back and mouths open like Charlie Brown and Sally in "Peanuts."

That's part of the fun of the book, finding the points of reference, as it were. But more essential, Tomine has created a heartfelt, recognizable portrait of the anxiety that surrounds the public declaration of love. "My hero!" Sarah declares on their wedding night, after he goes out at 4 a.m. to bring back food. The two of them sit on their hotel bed, eating and looking at each other. "Holy ....," Tomine says. "We're married."

-- David L. Ulin

No one ever gave me books. It used to bother me. But I also understood. Who would give a critic a book, entirely for pleasure? This has changed. There is now a young man who gives me books. Not just any books, but amazing, beautiful objects -- rare objects, printed in Brooklyn basements, in studios in Berlin, in Zurich and Amsterdam. He has sources, he knows of bookstores and websites, workshops and ways of thinking about books that I never dreamed of, locked in my own tidy model of the process of publishing.

The first book MacGregor gave me was hand-sewn, with a lime green linen cover, beautiful heavy paper and no copyright page. Inside: 22 stories by J.D. Salinger, many of them never before published. A Brooklyn publishing house called True True True  made a limited number of copies, sans marketing machine, and I intend to have it forever. There is something simple and thrilling about it, as though the stories had escaped a maximum-security prison to find a haven and safe passage in my underground railway of a library.

This Christmas, MacGregor gave me a small book with a rag paper cover -- clean, strong type with small purple accents (reminiscent of the cream-colored Gallimard editions in France, but lighter, cleaner and less expensive). The book is called “Of Walking in Ice: Munich -- Paris 23 November -- 14 December 1974” by Werner Herzog, translated from the German by Marje Herzog and Alan Greenberg, published by Free Association Press. In November 1974, a friend from Paris called Herzog in Munich to tell him that his friend and colleague, filmmaker Lotte Eisner, was dying. Herzog walked from Munich to Paris to see her, "believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot."

Each edition represents both the intended vision of its author as well as "a facet of our own belief system," we are told in a little note to the reader that is inserted in the front of the book, a reminder that this publisher honors the words the writer chose and the spirit of the project. They would also like the book to be read as well as valued, and so publish books in an affordable way.

This is a good way to feel about the printed word in these times when it seems to be under siege: Perhaps if we come on foot it will stay alive.

-- Susan Salter Reynolds

In Egypt, protestors gathered in large demonstrations Friday, including Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, as riot police and armored vehicles began taking them on in the streets. "We are deeply concerned about the use of violence by Egyptian police and security forces against protesters, and we call on the Egyptian government to do everything in its power to restrain the security forces," Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said in a news conference at the State Department.

The demonstrations in Egypt did not begin in isolation. They were preceded immediately by demonstrations in Tunisia that ousted authoritarian President Zine el Abidine ben Ali, and tens of thousands are protesting against oppression in Yemen. Some have begun to speak of an "Arab Spring," akin to the wave of protests that began with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and spread across Eastern Europe, bringing down one authoritarian government after another.

In 2009, to coincide with the 20th anniversary of those protests, a number of books were released addressing those events. Critic Carlin Romano looked at four of them: "The Year That Changed the World: The Untold Story Behind the Fall of the Berlin Wall" by Michael Meyer, "Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment" by Stephen Kotkin with a contribution by Jan T. Gross, "There Is No Freedom Without Bread! 1989 and the Civil War that Brought Down Communism" by Constantine Pleshakov and "The Fall of the Berlin Wall: The Revolutionary Legacy of 1989," edited by Jeffrey A. Engel. Do those books have anything to teach us about how to understand what's going on in Tunisia, Yemen or Egypt? Romano wrote:

All these writers force us to ponder how Americans think about not only Europe, but the rest of the world today. With many news outlets reducing foreign coverage of anything but catastrophes and terrorism, Americans know less than ever about the routine life and politics of any nation in which we don't have troops. To be sure, the fascistic capitalism now operating in China and Russia challenges the inevitability of democracy's triumph over authoritarianism.

The books suggest how surprised Americans were by 1989's events. (The changes surprised Europeans too, but not to the same extent.) We'll keep being caught off balance -- in Europe, in Afghanistan, in Central America -- until we learn to pay attention as the rest of the world pays attention to us. Perhaps the virtue of anniversaries is that they enable us, a la Kierkegaard, to live forward while understanding backward. In an age of journalistic crisis, we need excellent, incisive nonfiction books more than ever to understand the world.

Since Internet connections in Egypt all but disappeared early Friday, making communications difficult, it will likely be some time before a clear picture of what is happening there emerges. But it does seem that there is something that 2011 shares with 1989 -- that world events are, again, surprising.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Egyptian protestors on an armored vehicle in Cairo, Egypt. Credit: Mohamed Omar / EPA

The book "O" is a novelized, imagined account of the Obama 2012 campaign, one that our reviewer Tim Rutten found "dispiriting and, ultimately, irritating." But Rutten had no one to hold to account: When it hit shelves earlier this month, the author of "O" was listed, tantalizingly, as "Anonymous."

But the authorial mystery may be over. On Thursday, Time magazine reported that sources confirmed that Mark Salter is the author. Salter was a chief aide to John McCain and his speechwriter during the 2008 campaign.

Salter was considered a likely candidate by both the New York Post and Politico.

Apart from following in the footsteps of Joe Klein, who wrote "Primary Colors," a fictionalized account of President Clinton's 1992 campaign as Anonymous, Salter may have had other reasons for keeping his identity secret -- it's just not that good. Rutten found little to like about the book: 

Perhaps this dreary book's largest shortcoming is its implacably earnest tone. Politics can be raffish, ribald, antic, chaotic and mind-boggling, but an authentic account never reads quite like something pulled out of a newspaper's pile of unsolicited op-ed page submissions from assistant poli-sci professors at the local state college, as this novel too frequently does.

Is Time right -- is Salter the author of "O"? Neither he nor his publisher is saying.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Mark Salter at a John McCain news conference at Republican National Headquarters in March 2008. Credit: Gerald Herbert / Associated Press

The struggling Borders Group, known to shoppers as Borders Books and Music, has secured $550 million in financing from G.E. Capital Corp., as long as certain requirements are met. However, some of those requirements may not be acceptable to publishers.

Borders has been meeting -- so far, inconclusively -- with publishers' representatives in an effort to persuade them to turn back payments into loans. The N.Y. Times reports:

The goal has been for publishers to take up one-quarter to one-third of Borders’ reorganized debt, but the exact percentage has not yet been determined, people briefed on the matter previously said. These people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

But publishers said this week that they remained hesitant to accept Borders’ preliminary offer. Several publishers that have negotiated with Borders as a group said that the bookseller had still not presented a viable plan to move the company forward.

Publishing industry watcher Publishers Weekly notes that Borders' latest statement -- which mentions "the possibility of an in-court restructuring" -- indicates that bankruptcy may be a possibility.

In a statement, CEO Mike Edwards said that while Borders believes refinancing is the most practical route to revitalize the company “given the current environment surrounding Borders, and in order to assure that the company can pursue its efforts to position itself to properly implement its business plan, it is prudent as well for Borders to explore alternative avenues, including the possibility of an in-court restructuring.”  Borders wasn’t commenting beyond the release, but the wording suggests that a  prepackaged bankruptcy is a possibility.

Borders, which has not turned a profit in four years, has been closing stores in an effort to cut costs. Closures include Borders stores on La Cienega Boulevard and in Westwood.

ALSO:

What's going on with Borders?

Westwood's Borders takes a bow

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Borders Books and Music in Glendale. Credit: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times

Author Amy Chua's controversial ode to parenting, detailed in her bestselling book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother," was predicated on her being a "Chinese mother."

So now that her book has arrived in China, is she just called a "mother"?

Not quite. The Yale law professor's memoir about rearing her two daughters by strictly denying them everything from sleepovers to computer games is being marketed in China as something more foreign than familiar.

The book's title has been translated into Chinese as "Being a Mom in America." The book's publisher, CITIC Publishing House, describes Chua, the daughter of Filipino-Chinese parents, as "overseas Chinese."

"When copyright agencies approached us last summer, we foresaw her book would be controversial," Wang Feifei, acquisition editor at CITIC Publishing House, told the Xinhua News Agency. "We don't take it as a traditional parenting book, largely because it involves intense cross-cultural collision and conflict."

The book has been available online since mid-January and ranked No. 80 in sales as of Thursday on Joyo.com, a Chinese version of Amazon. It is to receive wider distribution at bookstores after the Feb. 3 Chinese New Year holiday.

Despite the publisher's spin, it's unclear if Chinese parents will be drawn into reading about Chua's perceived advocacy of regimental learning –- be it hours of piano playing or hundreds of math problems at the expense of fun and games.

The news that Chinese mothers and fathers impart strength over affection is nothing new.

But the book actually arrives at a time when the Chinese are doing some soul-searching about the merits of rote learning.

"The making of superb test-takers comes at a high cost, often killing much of, if not all, the joy of childhood," wrote Chen Weihua, an editor at the state-run China Daily, around the time students in Shanghai had made headlines by besting the rest of the world in standardized math, science and reading exams.

Xiong Bingqi, an education expert at Shanghai's Jiao Tong University, told The Times' Megan Stack earlier this month that Chinese students lacked imagination and creativity.

"In the long run, for us to become a strong country, we need talent and great creativity," Xiong said. "And right now, our educational system cannot accomplish this."

-- David Pierson in Beijing

Photo: The cover of Amy Chua’s book in China. Credit: CITIC Publishing House

Is there a place for ebooks in libraries? To start things off Wednesday at the Digital Book World panel "The eBook Ecosystem: Where Do Libraries Fit?," moderator Josh Hadro of Library Journal referenced an ebook feasibility study for public libraries. It included quotes from librarians and library administrators, including "I worry that we don't have a seat at the table," and "the boat left without us."

But this panel, like so many at the conference being held in New York City this week, wanted to stay positive. The panelists were Christopher Platt of the New York Public Library, Ruth Liebmann of Random House, George Coe from the book distributor Baker and Taylor and Steve Potash from Overdrive, a software company that provides ebooks to vendors and libraries, including the Los Angeles Public Library.

Libraries have adopted a model referred to in this session as one-book, one-lend. Under this model, a book is licensed by the library; a patron comes in and downloads that book for a set circulation period. When the period is over, the file is no longer accessible. Readers who want to read a popular book get into a queue and wait until the previous patron's checkout time has finished.

Platt noted that librarians are already immersed in reading communities, something publishers are trying to figure out how to build. And library patrons are rapidly adopting ebooks: The New York Public Library had a record-breaking 36,000 ebook checkouts in December, particularly in the week after Christmas.

Random House's Liebmann countered a misperception: "A library book does not compete with a sale," she said. "A library book is a sale."

"Public library sales total $850 million," said Coe of Baker and Taylor. Although libraries are often thought of as a place to find a book that's been around for a while, Coe explained, "98% of budgets are spent within 18 months of a book's publication." He thinks libraries will learn more about their patrons who check out ebooks, and may change their acquisition patterns.

The idea that libraries can provide both outreach and publicity for publishers came up more than once. "Public libraries are more important than some blogger," said Potash from Overdrive. "The library is the best way to elevate your sales. The data is starting to prove it."

Although most publishers have made ebooks available to libraries, some have not. Platt noted that two recent bestsellers -- Keith Richards' "Life" and Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom" -- were not available, although the New York Public Library's patrons wanted them.

Potash said this won't last. The goal, he said, is for "the consumer to have too much road rash trying to get at the book."

And the panel ended on a positive note: Go to the next American Library Assn. meeting and share as much enthusiasm for ebooks as was shared here.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Christopher Platt from the New York Public Library and the other panelists of "The Ebook Ecosystem: Where Do Libraries Fit?" panel at Digital Book World. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg / Los Angeles Times

Overheard at Digital Book World: "The leads are great. Nothing else matters."

Some publishing conferences -- particularly 2009's Book Expo -- left the impression that publishing was in a deep and irreversible decline. This is not a repeat of that conference.

Digital Book World has attracted those who think that publishing has a future, and there is money to be made. Some are vendors of back-end systems; others have developed new e-book-related products geared to consumers. There are longtime players and absolute newcomers.

We'll have more about them this week, hotel wi-fi willing. Because when more than 1,200 eager, technologically inclined publishing professionals arrive at a conference, the wi-fi falls victim to a traffic jam.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Welcome desk at Digital Book World on Tuesday in New York. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Four of publishing's leaders filled a massive ballroom to capacity and then some in New York City on Tuesday morning as Digital Book World kicked off in earnest. David Steinberger, CEO of Perseus; Michael Hyatt, Chairman & CEO of Thomas Nelson; Jane Friedman, formerly of HarperCollins, now CEO, Open Road Integrated Media; and Brian Napack -- who pointed out that he's president, not CEO, of Macmillan -- were interviewed by David Nussbaum, CEO of F+W Media, which is presenting Digital Book World.

The CEOs (and president) on the panel were upbeat about publishing's future. "I think the industry is vibrant, vital," Friedman said, setting the tone. Napack went even further, saying, "I'd like to think we are entering the golden age of publishing."

The reason for all this optimism, of course, are e-books. In the session immediately prior, the numbers looked positive: 10.5 million people own a dedicated e-reader; one-third of iPad owners also own a Kindle; there were close to $1 billion in e-books sales in 2010, and those sales are forecast to rise to $1.3 billion in 2011.

"Amazon did us a great favor proving that there was a market for e-books," Napack said. That was a gesture of public reconciliation: Napack's company, Macmillan, had a famous showdown with Amazon during which Amazon removed the "buy" buttons from all Macmillan titles.

But things have changed significantly as e-books' popularity has grown. Amazon once made up 95% of Macmillan's e-book sales; now, Napack says, it's closer to 60%. That change is because there is a diversity of retailers -- major e-book sales venues include Apple's iBook store, Barnes & Noble and Google.

What's interesting about this is that publishers are now moving into the role of selling to readers. Publishers have predominantly been in the business of selling books wholesale to retailers -- in other words, they're a B-to-B business. With e-books, they are moving closer to a B-to-C model; increasingly, as there are more online e-book retailers, publishers need to build new models of marketing books directly to consumers.

The CEO panel talked about the general browsing that has traditionally been part of the bookstore model. "If you drop a couple hundred thousand books in bookstores, you can sell a bunch of them," Napack said. "Simple, razor-focused Internet retail is not going to do it."

How will people find books? And are publishers ready to be the ones to connect readers to the books they want? Every year, 290,000 books are published, Napack said, and another 750,000 are self-published. Meaning that there are more than a million new books each year. Finding the right e-book may not be easy.

Can independent booksellers help? "The independent booksellers have a real chance of coming back," Friedman said. But there was some skepticism from the other panelists, as well as the others in the room.

And yet with more and more e-books on the way, and more than a billion dollars in sales coming this year, the question remains: How will readers get what they want, and how will publishers best get it to them?

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: More than a thousand people listen to the DBW publishing CEOs panel, Jan. 25, 2011, in New York. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg

Digital Book World's official opening cermonies Monday night in New York City included an announcement of the first Publishing Innovation Awards winners and photos of the romance novel cover boy Fabio. There were also cocktails.

Award winners were selected in five categories; three finalists in each had already been named. The work of the finalists that earned them the awards was not described, so many of the 600-plus people in the overfull ballroom at the Sheraton Towers were left wondering what made those ebooks and apps so special.

The winners were:

Fiction: "Dracula: The Official Stoker Family Edition," created by PadWorx Digital Media

Non-Fiction: Logos Bible Software, created by Logos Bible Software Inc.

Children's: "A Story Before Bed,"  created by Jackson Fish Marke

Reference: "Star Walk for iPad," created by Vito Technology Inc.

Comics: "Robot 13," created by Robot Comics

After the awards, which were straightforward and serious, there was an installment of the multiperson presentation series 7x20x21, which has been featured at the two most recent Book Expo America conferences. Each of seven presenters focused on telling a different story about ebooks, using just 20 PowerPoint slides. Sarah Wendell, from the popular romance novel blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, described her ideal "digital book boyfriend" as photos of Fabio flashed on the screen. Despite the multiple formats and multiple e-readers, she explained, she just wants to get at "what's under the clothes" -- not Fabio, but the text of the book. Which indeed might include someone who could be imagined as Fabio.

The event wrapped up with a name-that-audiobook game show presented by Audible.com.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Sarah Wendell presents at Digital Book World 2011. Credit: Carolyn Kellogg / Los Angeles Times