The Atlantic Bookshelf: Conclusion

As I sum up the Christmas trade it is good to report that booksellers within my ken sold considerably more books this year than last. The Christmas rush begins officially the day after Thanksgiving. A sizable shop may sell $5000 worth a day. In the fat years publishers had a hard time estimating in advance how many thousand copies of their leading titles would be needed. Bad business to BE ‘out of books.’ This year the fast movers were Anthony Adverse, Within This Present, by Margaret Ayer Barnes, and Galsworthy’s One More River. . . . Of the juveniles The Three Little Pigs, the ‘Pop-Up’ books, and Scribner’s Illustrated Classics, in twenty handsome volumes, won the money.

To signed the New Year, I fire a salute in honor of W. W. Norton, who a decade ago inaugurated his policy of publishing excellently informative books of non-fiction, well bound and reasonably priced. Norton’s best books have positively stimulated our national zest for self-improvement. . . . Another salute for the English house, Longmans, Green, who two hundred years ago began their publishing career. . . . Hear my lament for the most disappointing book of the season, Winner Take Nothing, by Ernest Hemingway (Scribners, $2.00). Reader Take Nothing is a better title. Only two stories approach (and they fall short of) his best work. The rest are rough sketches, fragments and echoes of his earlier writing. Once he even repeats himself line by line. Slim, coarse fare for a man capable of superlative work. . . . Hear also of my pleasure in After Such Pleasures, short stories by, as the New orkers say, ‘The Incomparable Dorothy Parker’ (Viking, $2.25). I ’ll bet on her first piece, ‘ Horsie,’ in any race this year.