HARVARD BOOKS OF THE MONTH

The annual Christmas deluge of books has arrived, and the high pressure measures attendant on their sale have turned the Cambridge bookshops into roaring centers of trade compared to their usual placid atmosphere in the other eleven months of the year. The season for gift books is on, and all the more attractive editions are now the easiest to sell. This explains the present popularity of "N. by E." and "Moby Dick" which have been made so desirable by Rockwell Kent's fine illustrations. A survey of Cambridge bookstores also discloses the Harvard man's predilection for the sophisticated brand of humor displayed by Peter Arno in his "Hullabaloo" and the same thing by other artists in the "Third New Yorker Album." Those desiring more substantial reading are now concentrating on "Charles W. Eliot" by Henry James and on such bulky tomes as Priestley's "Angel Pavement" and Arnold Bennett's "Imperial Palace."

An interesting feature of the book market in Harvard Square is the apparent lack of activity in the dollar new fiction field. Although sales of cheap reprint editions continue to run high, the demand for novels is confined almost entirely to those which are in the two dollar and two-fifty class. In other words the announcement made last spring by certain publishers cutting their fiction, prices in half has had little effect on Cambridge buyers.

People interested in watching American publishing and merchandising in general have been speculating as to the final outcome of the experiment with low-priced new fiction. At the present time it looks as though the low-priced novels will be largely confined to such titles as readily lend themselves to large volume sales in a drug and cigar store market. If this is the case, the new distribution of books will cut into the magazine territory, without greatly affecting the class of buyers who have steadily been absorbing the literary output of American publishers.