Drugs for the body. Books for the mind and soul.

I'm often frustrated by the lack of selection in my local book shops. Sadly, my local book shops (Borders, Barnes & Noble) are your local book shops.

"If you want proof that a cultural divide separates Europe and America," the New York Times observes, "the book business is a place to start. In the United States chain stores have largely run neighborhood bookshops out of business. Here in Germany, there are big and small bookstores seemingly on every block."

How do the Germans do it? "Germany’s book culture is sustained by an age-old practice requiring all bookstores, including German online booksellers, to sell books at fixed prices. . . . What results has helped small, quality publishers like Berenberg. But it has also — American consumers should take note — caused book prices to drop. Last year, on average, book prices fell 0.5 percent."

Although I'm not sure I agree w/ Germany's solution to this problem--price fixing--I'm jealous of its selection--Last year 94,716 new titles were published in German. In the United States, with a population nearly four times bigger, there were 172,000 titles published in 2005.

Here is a link to the full article, "German Border Threat: Cheap Books."

Now Read This

Here are two new publications worth reading:

BYU Studies special issue on Mormons and Film. Mine arrived today. It includes a 100+ page History of Mormon Cinema and an article by Terryl Givens titled "'There is Room for Both': Mormon Cinema and the Paradoxes of Mormon Culture." In this article, Givens argues that Mormon film has come into its own to a large degree because of its engagement with certain paradoxes in Mormon culture. The article is about how artistic culture is the exploration of “tensions, rather than the glib assertion or imposition of a fragile harmony.” It looks like this article explores themes similar to those in Givens' latest book People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture.

A Secular Age by Charles Taylor. In a world where blow-hard atheists (and antitheists) like Christopher Hitchins dominate the New York Times' Best Seller List, Charles Tayor is a breath or fresh air. I've put his latest offering, A Secular Age, at the top of my "To Read" list. In this book Taylor "takes up the question of what these changes mean--of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is only one human possibility among others."