Twin Cities bookstores trashed by looters

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/06/2020 (2255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The oldest independent science fiction bookstore in the U.S. was burned to the ground May 30 during the rioting in Minneapolis in the aftermath of the killing by a police officer of George Floyd.

Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore, in the city’s Midtown area, was destroyed along with its sister business, Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore. Nearby Dreamhaven Books, a comic book store, was also broken into and trashed.

Another Minneapolis bookstore emerged unscathed after staff placed a sign in the window reading “Abolish the Police.” While many businesses near the Third Precinct police station, which was set on fire early in the rioting, were damaged, Moon Palace Books was spared.

● ● ●

While the world was focused on protests, riots and police brutality in the U.S., the organization that gives out the U.K.’s most prominent award for a first novel announced an all-black three-person shortlist.

Since 2008, the Desmond Elliott award, worth about $17,000, has been bestowed on the book declared the best first novel in English published in the U.K. This year, the judges selected from a 10-book longlist that included five titles by people of colour.

Shortlisted this year: The Girl With the Louding Voice by Abi Daré, which tells the story of a teenage Nigerian girl trapped in servitude and determined to get an education; That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu, a novel in fragments about a Ghanaian British boy’s struggle for peace of mind; and The Private Joys of Nnenna Maloney by Okechukwu Nzelu, a comic novel about a half-Nigerian Manchester girl who seeks to connect with her Nigerian culture.

The winning book will be announced July 2.

● ● ●

Meanwhile in Canada, the massive focus on racism and police brutality has led to a boom for books on those topics.

BookNet Canada reports that stores across the country have seen sales spikes and boosted their orders from publishers. While many of the top-selling books deal with the black experience in the United States, several Canadian titles have also been lifted by the increase in attention, including Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In (up 185 per cent in the week following the beginning of protests) and Robyn Maynard’s Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada (up 172 per cent).

● ● ●

A few years ago, Canadian kids’ book author Eric Walters was honoured for publishing his 100th book (he’s topped 105 now) — so it’s not surprising that he’s already produced a book on the coronavirus pandemic.

Don’t Stand So Close to Me (Orca Books) was written, edited, designed and marketed in 41 days, and is now available in a digital version from Walters’s publisher.

The novel, for middle-years readers, focuses on two friends learning about exponential growth, social distancing and how to make the most of a changed world.

● ● ●

Jesse Thistle’s memoir of homelessness and addiction, From the Ashes (Simon & Schuster Canada), which was a finalist in this year’s Canada Reads competition on CBC, is nominated in the English-language prose category in this year’s Indigenous Voices Awards — along with two other books touching on addiction, trauma and the urban Indigenous experience.

Sharing the prose shortlist are In My Moccasins (University of Regina Press), by Helen Knott, a memoir of addiction, intergenerational trauma and sexual violence by a great great-granddaughter of one the signatories of Treaty 8, and ?bédayine (Metratron Press), a novella about an Indigenous woman in the city, touching on addiction, self-discovery and the search for love, written by University of Calgary PhD student Kaitlyn Purcell.

Awards are presented for poetry and prose in English and French and for works in Indigenous language. All the shortlists are available to view atindigenousvoicesawards.org.

The winners will be announced online June 21.

booknewsbob@gmail.com