Continuing our review of major cultural news in the first year of the new millennium, today we're going to look at some significant trends in the book biz.

Extra! Extra! Read All About It! In the middle of a hot summer, there was a very telling sign in the book business ... a subtle shift in the marketing tactics of the big-name bookseller Chapters. In many of its urban outlets, store managers moved the magazine rack from the front-door, street level to a less accessible spot on the second floor of the big box stores.

What did this mean? To my eye, it was at first glance simply a method of discouraging the loiterers and freeloaders who ripped apart Vanity Fair at the newsstand, instead of buying it and taking it home. But on second glance, it could mean that Chapters was having to re-thing a critical part of its image and strategy. The store used to encourage people to linger -- hoping we would all think of it as some kind of high-class library, and then gratefully buy a membership and purchase a couple of books on the way out.

In the subsequent months, we've learned much more than we ever wanted to about the messy business behind Chapters. The upstart chain, with 71 superstores and 221 other stores, some under the Coles and Smithbooks banners, appears to control at least one-quarter of the retail book biz in Canada. Chapters is trying to unload its distribution company, Pegasus, which controls maybe 50 per cent of the wholesale biz.

This wholesale side of things came under pressure from the federal government, after hearings earlier this year Then, the retail side of Chapters began to look more unsavory, crumbling with news that they'd actually been supplying orders from Amazon.com. Stock prices dropped and layoffs followed. The stores began to look like ghost towns, without the crowds milling around the magazine racks. And now takeover artists Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz are making a play, via their competing Indigo chain, to buy up Chapters and run it differently.

But all this is back story. The fact is, mood-setting stores like Chapters and Indigo have provided a big boost to the book-selling industry and Canadians are buying and reading more than ever. What remains to be seen is if this country can support two such big chains -- especially in the face of borderless competition from online booksellers like Amazon.com, plus all the small, independent shops, who are snapping to attention and getting fiercely competitive in this new mega-era.

Other notable events of the year:

Boom Times: Books of all kinds sold well this year, with a revival of interest in literature right across the board. Michael Ondaatje did well on the global stage with Anil's Ghost, his much-anticipated follow-up to The English Patient. But there was re-discovery of formerly minor authors, such as Alistair MacLeod, Fred Stenson and Catherine Bush. Even more encouraging are revivals of old classics by guys like Al Purdy and Leonard Cohen. This is a country enjoying its past and present.

Blind Luck: No matter what your feelings about The Blind Assassin, you've got to be pleased for Margaret Atwood that she won the Booker Prize this year. She probably deserved it more for some of her earlier works, rather than this heavy-handed, humourless doorstopper, but as happens so often in the awards game, she got a lifetime achievement trophy instead.

The Saddest Thing: We must note the untimely passing of Carole Corbeil, who had published two novels to great acclaim and was working on a third that, in this hot book market, probably would have earned her the recognition she so richly deserved. The loss of Corbeil was felt profoundly in Toronto's literary and theatrical community -- she was a sort of den-mother to many young and established writers, reading early drafts of Ondaatje, giving advice on scripts to filmmakers like Sturla Gunnarson, and passing on countless kindnesses to hundreds of unknowns.

A Reason to Look Forward to 2001: Mordecai Richler isn't the only famous Canadian novelist spawning a new generation of writers. Margaret Atwood's daughter is cranking stuff out for art magazines, and next spring McClelland and Stewart will publish The Lives of Mothers and Daughters, "a remarkable account by Sheila Munro on life with Alice Munro, her mother and world-famous fiction writer."

Got anything to add? What do you think was the biggest book story of the new millennium? Come on, share with the group in our Literature forum

More from our year-end review: