1. "Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch (Hyperion, hardcover)
2. "Tuesdays with Morrie" by Mitch Albom (Broadway, paperback)
3. "You Can Heal Your Life" by Louise L. Hay (Hay House, paperback)
4. "My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey" by Jill Bolte Taylor (Penguin, hardcover)
5. "He's Just Not That into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys" by Greg Behrendt (Simon & Schuster, hardcover)

Source: Barnes & Noble.com (bn.com), New England sales, June 29-July 5

Book sales overall are flat for the year, the American Association of Book Publishers reports, which is no surprise to booksellers. But the news for hardcovers is even worse. Adult hardcovers were down 14.5 percent. Adult paperbacks were up 18.2 percent, while children's/young adult was down 19 percent. Adult mass-market -- essentially the drugstore/airport bookrack paperback thrillers -- was up only 1.2 percent.

What's going on? Prices are up a bit in recent years; $25-27 list prices are typical for hardcovers, though bestsellers are usually discounted as much as 40 percent through the big retailers. Books aren't up as much as gas, or a lot of other things.

It's a commonplace to say that people aren't as interested in reading for pleasure as they used to be. Or, could it be that they just can't find books they like? That publishers are putting out the wrong books?

By Judith Maas
SUNDAY: Poets Rafael Campo and Maria Mazziotti Gillan read at 4 p.m., at the East Lawn, Longfellow National Historic Site, 105 Brattle St., Cambridge. ... Darin Strauss (‘‘More Than It Hurts You’’) and Salvatore Scibona (‘‘The End’’) read at 2 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ... Betsy Block reads from ‘‘The Dinner Diaries,’’ at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord.
MONDAY: Salman Rushdie discusses ‘‘The Enchantress of Florence,’’ at 7 p.m., at Memorial Church, 1 Harvard Yard, Cambridge; for tickets ($5), call Harvard Book Store at 617-661-1515. ... Perri Klass reads from ‘‘The Mercy Rule,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge. ... Marcie Hershman (‘‘Tales of the Master Race’’) and artist Constantine Manos speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl St., Provincetown ($5).
TUESDAY: Wendy Johnson discusses ‘‘Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Darin Strauss reads from ‘‘More Than It Hurts You,’’ at 6 p.m., at Borders Back Bay, 511 Boylston St. ... Jason Brown (‘‘Why the Devil Chose New England for His Work’’) and Liza Monroy (‘‘Mexican High’’) read at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, Brookline. ... Stephanie Schorow signs ‘‘East of Boston,’’ at noon, at Barnes & Noble, Prudential Center. ... Poet Jean Valentine, novelist Martha Southgate, and artist Linda Bond speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center ($5).
WEDNESDAY: Linda Greenlaw discusses ‘‘Fisherman’s Bend,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Peter Gosselin discusses ‘‘High Wire,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge. ... Stephen L. Carter discusses ‘‘Palace Council,’’ at 7 p.m., at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave, Cambridge. ... Ethan Canin reads from ‘‘America America,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, Brookline. ... Poet Carl Phillips and printmaker Andrew Mockler speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center ($5).
THURSDAY: Don Lee discusses ‘‘Wrack and Ruin,’’ at 7 p.m., at Newtonville Books. ... Josh Barkin reads from ‘‘Blind Speed,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Norman Fischer discusses ‘‘Sailing Home,’’ at 7 p.m., at MIT Chapel, Bldg. W15, 44 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ... Jim Holt discusses ‘‘Stop Me If You’ve Heard This,’’ at 7 p.m., at Harvard Book Store. ... Maggie Jackson discusses ‘‘Distracted,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ... Gary Braver signs ‘‘Skin Deep,’’ at noon, at Barnes & Noble, Prudential Center.
FRIDAY: Salvatore Scibona reads from ‘‘The End,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport.

Events are subject to change.

On the same weekend in which the Globe Northwest Weekly reported that North Reading bookstore Got Books is opening a new store in Lawrence (and closing its old store), another Massachusetts bookseller had a sadder fate.

Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard, was ruined on Friday, July 4, by unplanned pyrotechnics -- a fire that burned out most of a business block at Main and Centre streets. According to the Vineyard Gazette, the store is structurally damaged and has lost most of its inventory to the fire and associated water and smoke damage.

Ann Nelson, owner of Bunch of Grapes, reportedly told selectman Denys Wortman that "It's all gone," and the store website bears a single woeful message: "The bookstore is closed for the foreseeable future."

Larry McMurtry's new memoir, "Books," is a pastiche of moments from his life as a book dealer. Near the end of his memoir, he mentions a technique that has saved him a lot of time and travel over the years. He asks book dealers putting a collection up for sale to make a video showing their wares. It was in a video from a bookshop in Lincoln, Nebraska, that McMurtry noticed a greenish book nestled in with some boys' books. "I looked at the greenish book several times and determined that it was definitely not a boy's book. Instead, it was a legendary New Yorker book: Joseph Mitchell's "My Ears Are Bent": his early journalism, most of it pre-New Yorker. It cost me $18, $3 of which was postage."

Coincidentally, Vintage this month has published a new edition of "My Ears Are Bent,'' originally published in 1938. This collection of Mitchell’s early newspaper pieces has been reissued in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of his birth. Mitchell wrote for New York’s World-Telegram from 1930-1938, and nearly 400,000 people read his columns daily, enthralled with his tales about evangelists, voodoo conjurers, burlesque performers, and a racing cockroach salesman.

A judge yesterday blocked an Indiana law passed earlier this year that would have required bookstores to pay a $250 fee and register to sell "sexually explicit materials." The law was to take effect July 1. Details are here in this Indianapolis Star story. The text of the ruling is available at www.abffe.com/bighatbooksopinion.pdf.

On a complaint filed by bookstores, the state chapter of the ACLU, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, U.S. District Judge Sarah Evans Barker ruled the law was so broad as to violate the First Amendment to the Constitution. "Sexually explicit" was defined to include materials that "describes or represents in any form, nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or sado-masochistic conduct."

The plaintiffs contended that the law would have applied to sex guides for married couples or such works of literature as Lolita. It appears, indeed, that it would have applied to an art book that showed the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or publication of a conservative Christian sermon condemning "sexual conduct" if it described the offending conduct.

Barker wrote that "the likelihood of confusion and the resultant self-censorship is very high, creating a chilling effect on otherwise free speech."

Now here's an interesting pairing for a reading: On July 18 at 7 p.m., the Litchfield County Writers Project at the University of Connecticut’s Torrington campus will host a poetry reading with Charles Van Doren, the noted scholar, editor and author (you may remember him from the TV quiz show scandal of the 1950s), and his daughter-in-law Sally Van Doren.

Charles Van Doren will turn his attention to Emily Dickinson in his readings, “Poems of love, poems of loss.” Sally Van Doren will read from her poetry collection, "Sex at Noon Taxes," winner of the 2007 Walt Whitman Award by the Academy of American Poets.

Jon Krakauer

Publisher Doubleday announced last week that "The Hero," Jon Krakauer's much-anticipated book about Pat Tillman, the NFL footballer who volunteered for army duty and was killed in Afghanistan in 2004, will not appear in October as scheduled. Doubleday had planned a 500,000-copy first printing.

Publisher's Weekly online reported that Krakauer, author of previous bestsellers "Into the Wild" and "Into Thin Air," is said to be dissatisfied with the manuscript, which presumably means he doesn't think it's ready, and that he's holding on to it "indefinitely."

That's annoying for Krakauer's fans, but perhaps speaks well of him, unless he's had some sort of change of heart and doesn't want to do the book, or unless there is some problem with members of the Tillman family, which had cooperated with the project.

By Judith Maas
SUNDAY: Zoë Ferraris reads from ‘‘Finding Nouf,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge. ... Poet Kimoko Hahn and artist Peter Madden speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl St., Provincetown ($5).
No MONDAY events.
TUESDAY: Jennifer Haigh reads from ‘‘The Condition,’’ at 7 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ... Robin Messing (‘‘Serpent in the Garden of Dreams’’) and Joan Silber (‘‘The Size of the World’’) read at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Writer Alice Mattison and artist Joel Janowitz speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center ($5). ... D.G. Fulford discusses ‘‘Designated Daughter,’’ at 6 p.m., at Borders, Downtown Crossing.
WEDNESDAY: Jennifer Haigh reads from ‘‘The Condition,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Poet Mark Conway and writer Pamela Painter speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center ($5). ... Erin Murray discusses ‘‘The Daily Candy Lexicon,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, Coolidge Corner, Brookline.
THURSDAY: Ron McLarty discusses ‘‘Art in America,’’ at 7 p.m., at Newtonville Books. ... Laurie Edwards reads from ‘‘Life Disrupted,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Christian Lander discusses ‘‘Stuff White People Like,’’ at 7 p.m., at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ... Willy Vlautin (‘‘Northline’’) and Ross Raisin (‘‘Out Backward’’) speak at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ... South African authors Sindiwe Magona and Elinor Sisulu speak and read from their children’s books at 11 a.m., at the ReadBoston Storymobile, Boston Common Tadpole Playground (next to the Frog Pond) and at 7 p.m., at the Central Square Branch Library, 45 Pearl St., Cambridge; for latter event, RSVP to Daryl Mark at 617-349-4409; for more information, visit www.sapartners.org.
FRIDAY: Dennis McFarland reads from ‘‘Letter From Point Clear,’’ at 7 p.m., at Jabberwocky Bookshop, 50 Water St., Newburyport. ... The Dire Series literary cookout, featuring music and readings, takes place at 6 p.m., at Out of the Blue Gallery, 106 Prospect St., Cambridge (donation, $7). ... Johnny Diaz reads from ‘‘Miami Manhunt,’’ at 7 p.m., at Calamus Bookstore, 92B South St.
SATURDAY: Paul Sherman discusses ‘‘Big Screen Boston,’’ at 7 p.m., at Cornerstone Books, 45 Lafayette St., Salem.

Announcements must arrive at globebookmaking@hotmail.com two weeks before publication date. Events are subject to change.

1. GALLOP!, written and illustrated by Rufus Butler Seder. (Workman, $12.95.) Animals seem to move when you flip the page. (Ages 4 to 8)
2 ALPHABET, by Matthew Van Fleet. (Wiseman/Simon & Schuster, $19.99.) An interactive safari ABC. (Ages 2 to 6)
3 READ ALL ABOUT IT!, by Laura Bush and Jenna Bush. Illustrated by Denise Brunkus. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) A boy is surprised to discover that he loves story-books. (Ages 4 to 8)
4 LADYBUG GIRL, by Jacky Davis and David Soman. Illustrated by David Soman. (Dial, $16.99.) Creativity and the right outfit let a little girl feel bigger. (Ages 4 and up)
5 DON’T BUMP THE GLUMP!, written and illustrated by Shel Silverstein. (HarperCollins, $17.99.) His first collection of nonsense verse, originally published in 1964. (Ages 5 and up)

SOURCE: N.Y. Times, week of July 6

1. Three Cups of Tea
By Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. Penguin.
2. Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert. Penguin.
3. The Audacity of Hope
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
4. The Omnivore’s Dilemma
By Michael Pollan. Penguin.
5. Dreams From My Father
By Barack Obama. Three Rivers.
6. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
By Barbara Kingsolver. Harper.
7. A New Earth
By Eckhart Tolle. Plume.
8. I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
By Tucker Max. Citadel.
9. Skinny B****
By Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman. Running Press.
10. Zagat Boston Restaurants 2008/09
Edited by Naomi Kooker and Ruth Tobias. Zagat Survey.

SOURCE: Boston area bookstores

1. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
By Michael Chabon. Harper.
2. The Friday Night Knitting Club
By Kate Jacobs. Berkley.
3. On Chesil Beach
By Ian McEwan. Anchor.
4. Out Stealing Horses
By Per Petterson. Picador.
5. Water for Elephants
By Sara Gruen. Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
6. In the Woods
By Tana French. Penguin.
7. The Kite Runner
By Khaled Hosseini. Riverhead.
8. The Last Summer (of You and Me)
By Ann Brashares. Riverhead.
9. The Gathering
By Anne Enright. Grove.
10. The Maytrees
By Annie Dillard. Harper Perennial.

SOURCE: Boston area bookstores

1. When You Are Engulfed in Flames
By David Sedaris. Little, Brown.
2. What Happened
By Scott McClellan. PublicAffairs.
3. The Last Lecture
By Randy Pausch. Hyperion.
4. The Post-American World
By Fareed Zakaria. Norton.
5. The Secret
By Rhonda Byrne. Atria.
6. Counselor
By Ted Sorensen. Harper.
7. Are You There Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea
By Chelsea Handler. Simon Spotlight.
8. Audition
By Barbara Walters. Knopf.
9. Deep Drive
By Mike Lowell. Celebra.
10. The Last Fish Tale
By Mark Kurlansky. Ballantine.

SOURCE: Boston area bookstores

1. Fearless Fourteen
By Janet Evanovich. St. Martin’s.
2. Unaccustomed Earth
By Jhumpa Lahiri. Knopf.
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
By Junot Díaz. Riverhead.
4. The Spies of Warsaw
By Alan Furst. Random House.
5. Sail
By James Patterson and Howard Roughan. Little, Brown.
6. Chasing Harry Winston
By Lauren Weisberger. Simon & Schuster.
7. Nothing to Lose
By Lee Child. Delacorte.
8. Love the One You’re With
By Emily Giffin. St. Martin’s.
9. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
By David Wroblewski. Ecco.
10. Netherland
By Joseph O’Neill. Pantheon.

SOURCE: Boston area bookstores

By Judith Maas
SUNDAY: Poet Carolyn Forche reads at 4 p.m., at the Longfellow National Historic Site, 105 Brattle St., Cambridge.
MONDAY: Josh Emmons discusses ‘‘Prescription for a Superior Existence,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Poet Cynthia Huntington and artist Richard Baker speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center, 24 Pearl St., Provincetown.
TUESDAY: Salvatore Scibona reads from ‘‘The End,’’ at 7 p.m., at Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ... Wilford Welch discusses ‘‘The Tactics of Hope,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge. ... Poet Catherine Bowman and artist Lauren Ewing speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center.
WEDNESDAY: Paul Fisher discusses ‘‘House of Wits,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop. ... Novelist Jayne Anne Phillips and artist Rebekah Tolley speak at 7 p.m., at the Fine Arts Work Center. ... Al Kooper reads from "Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards," at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge.

Events are subject to change.

A couple days ago I heard Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos talking with Tom Ashbrook on "On Point" about the Kindle and the future of books. None of what he says is really new but the conversation underscored for me that there's no turning back. The genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. It's definitely worth a listen.

So much of what we buy these days is no longer of the material world. We download music and movies and books. And the shift is changing the landscape. Record companies are faltering. Movie theaters even on a Friday or Saturday night don't attract the crowds they once did. So it seems inevitable that the book business will go that way, too.

If you don't mind reading a book on a Kindle or one of the other e-book devices, it's much cheaper. But the long-term viability of the industry has got to be a worry. Just look at what's happening with newspapers. It's a lot cheaper -- as in free -- to read the paper online, as long as the paper itself remains a viable business.

Lech Walesa in 1989
(Reuters/Leszek Wdowinski/Archive Photos)

A new book published in Poland is alleging that Lech Walesa, a founder of the Solidarity movement that helped bring down the communist government, was a secret police informer from 1970 to 1976. "The State Security Service and Lech Walesa," by historians Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, addresses directly allegations long rumored but always denied by Walesa, the former electrician who went on to become president of Poland and winner of the Nobel peace prize.

According to this story on the news site Deutsche Welle, Walesa has hotly denied the allegations and has threatened to sue the authors.

Close to 100 people stuffed themselves into the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge tonight to listen to a reading of poems written by the late Grace Paley.

It was a tender night, but the wry humor in Paley's poems (with lines such as "Before I was nobody I was me" and "Thank God there is no God or we'd all be lost") seemed to keep the mood a notch above all-out sad.

The best part came last when her husband, Bob Nichols, and her daughter, Nora Paley, each took a turn. Nichols, read two love poems: the "Anti-Love Poem" and "Here" in which she longs to kiss his "sweet explaining lips" as she watches him talking to the meter reader across the yard.

Nora read a lovely reminisce her mother wrote 10 or so years ago that started out: "Just as I was getting a handle on this business of ending I was invited to say a few words about beginning." She recalls getting slapped in the face by a best friend when she was 9 years old, her first love as a teenager, and her introduction to the concept of pacifism. [Addendum: Nora didn't know where the piece by her mother had been published, but a little detective work has revealed that it ran in the Globe. Click on the link for the full text.}

Cody's now-closed Stockton Street location in Berkeley, in 2005 (Melissa Schneider photo)

It's a long way from here, but I thought worth noting even so that another landmark big-city independent bookseller has closed its last store. It's Cody's Books on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, Calif. It's almost a postscript, since Cody's two stores in San Francisco and one other in Berkeley (pictured above) closed some time ago.

As with other independents, it seems the culprits, if you could call them that, are the Internet (i.e., Amazon.com and various other online booksellers), big-box chains, and the decline of reading as entertainment. As this San Francisco Chronicle online story explains, the old flagship on Telegraph Avenue in San Francisco, which closed in 2006, might do as much as $30,000 in business on a Saturday in the 1980s. In recent years, gross receipts had fallen as low as $10,000. Meanwhile, lease and personnel costs had risen.

The way things are going, we're beginning to wonder if independent bookstores will have to be nonprofit organizations, and have periodic fund-raisers, like NPR radio stations.

I've read that the Latin phrase on Barack Obama's presidentialesque new seal means "Yes, we can." But I found myself wondering if it's a reference to Pogo Possum, whose famous phrase was, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Not many people can look up a Latin phrase to find out what it means, or would want to. If I had to guess, I would swear it had something to do with opossums, or something that sounds like oppossums. Some possibilities:

"I am very sleepy."

"It sure is fun, hanging upside down by my tail."

"It's impossible here in Vero Beach."

"Fried possum is very tasty."