Here on Read Street, we love to give away books to thank our loyal readers, and what better occasion than our upcoming 200th comment! (That's way better than what you got -- nada -- for watching the Simpsons' 200th episode)

Nancy and I have compiled a stack of new releases. There are guilty pleasures: Rogue, by Danielle Steel and Married Lovers, by Jackie Collins. Or thrillers: Foreign Body, by Robin Cook and The Whole Truth, by David Baldacci. Or more weighty books: Golda, by Elinor Burkett or The Forger's Spell, by Edward Dolnick.

Whoever makes the 200th comment (we're almost there) gets first choice, #201 gets the second choice and so on, until the stack is gone.

Illustration courtesy of Fox Broadcasting Co.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

 Recently, Geppi's Entertainment Museum curator Arnold Blumberg was kind enough to answer a few of my burning comic questions: In specific, what is the difference between comic books and graphic novels? His verdict: Not a thing.

"... The division between 'comic books' and 'graphic novels' is a false one largely created from a marketing point of view," he says. "All comic books and graphic novels are comics -- a literary art form created by the blending of words and pictures (and frankly sometimes just sequential art with no words at all)."

Continue reading "Comics get serious" »

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Rick Bragg's final book in the trilogy of his family life that began with All Over But the Shoutin' demonstrates perfectly the quandry faced by those of us who love audiobooks.

Bragg narrates The Prince of Frogtown, the story of the drunken, abusive, abandoning father that is only a malevolent ghost in his first two books. It is amazing and wonderful to hear this Southern tale told in his Southern drawl. You begin to feel as if you are sitting on the steps of a rough-hewn cabin in the Alabama woods while he spins his tale from the rocking chair on the porch.

But it is Bragg's way with language that is his gift - he never went to college but he earned a Neiman Fellowship at Harvard and a Pulitzer Prize. And listening to this book does not allow you to savor slowly his tremendous ability to describe things and people and a way of life - working in the cotton mills of Alabama - long gone. He rumbles on in his thick Southern baratone and there is no chance to read a section over again and draw out the pleasure.

Continue reading "The Prince of Frogtown audiobook" »

Posted by Susan Reimer at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Wordle! Not only is it fun to say, it's fun to use!

This site takes any collection of words -- a blog entry, an article, an entire book, or a single sentence -- and visualizes it into a "word cloud."

Here, I plugged in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. If there were any questions that Elizabeth is the hero of the story, I think they're squashed now.

After the cloud is generated, you can pick the font and color scheme you like, and then share your cloud with the world through the site's gallery, or just print it out for your own enjoyment.

So go, have fun! And if you're so inclined, come back and share your Wordles with us.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
                    

I hope everyone had a fantastic Fourth of July weekend, and that the return to work isn't too jarring for you. Celebrating truth, justice and the American way (that means barbecuing, right?) is tons more fun than sitting in the office.

But don't let go of that patriotic fervor yet. I want to get back to our roots with a little comic book revival -- although for some of us, it's less revival and more of a revelation. Whether it's rifling through your old Marvel and DC comics, checking out that gorgeous graphic novel, or dragging your friends out to the dozens of comic adaptations that are popping up in theaters lately, it's clear that comic books aren't just kid stuff.

Speaking of kid stuff, whatever happened to the Saturday morning X-men cartoons? Talk about good role models for our youth! Much better than that soggy trilogy they unleashed on us at the movies recently. So join me in celebrating (or mocking) comics this week, whether you read them 20 years or 20 minutes ago.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

A Baltimore-bound convention for mystery writers -- which will feature Lawrence Block and Laura Lippman -- is taking heat from a hotel workers union. The Bouchercon gathering will be based at the Sheraton City Center, where workers and managers have been squabbling over a new contract since 2006. The union has pressed  for a boycott, and has been contacting convention attendees to ask that they not "sleep, meet or eat" at the hotel.

Convention organizers aren't budging. "We are not willing to break the law, dismiss contracts signed in good faith, or jeopardize Bouchercon to do this," says a statement on the convention blog. And Barbara Peters, who with husband Robert Rosenwald will receive a lifetime achievement award, charges the union with harrassment. She told me in an e-mail that union lobbying of attendees "cuts right to the heart of redefining Right to Privacy plus regulating the practices of labor unions who are aggressively seeking to claim or reclaim power. It is wonderfully ironic that the convention they are currently targeting is a gathering of crime and mystery writers, no? This stuff is meat and drink to us, not poison!"

Yolanda Carrington, a boycott organizer, says the union used the convention's publicly available online list of attendees to make contacts. "Nobody is using underhanded methods. ... We have not stolen information. We have not stalked people."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Coming on Thursday:

Heart Full of Soul, by Taylor Hicks (Crown, $24.95). American Idol winner Hicks recounts his childhood, his passion for soul music and his years of playing to nearly nonexistent roadhouse audiences.

Killer Weekend, by Ridley Pearson (Putnam, $24.95). The best-selling author’s new thriller series begins with a weekend business conference at an Idaho resort and a sense of impending danger in the form of a threat on the life of a politician who’s about to announce her candidacy for U.S. president.

The Dark River: Book Two of the Fourth Realm, by John Twelve Hawks (Doubleday, $24.95). The Brethren continue to control civilization through a computerized information system, the Vast Machine, and a host of offshoot surveillance technologies.

Continue reading "New releases: 'American Idol' and thrillers" »

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
                    

A reader named Patrick noticed my column about blogging in today's Ideas section and sent a poem for Read Street. I probably would published it simply because it was from a book lover, but he also invoked the Boston Celtics, whose championship I am still savoring, and I was hooked. We all know the feelings that he writes about -- reading for duty vs. reading for joy.

Here's Patrick's intro: At a bookstore, a friend had stumbled onto a book about the Boston Celtics. Knowing I loved the team, he told me, "You should buy this." I heard myself respond, "Ah, I'd just read it." I was going through a lengthy period of buying books that were chores to finish. They were books I wanted to have read. Realizing how stupid I was not to buy a book that I would immediately sit down and read front to back, I wrote this poem.

BOOKSTORE EYES

My bookstore eyes are bigger than my brain.

They gravitate to gray tomes that explain,

with gnarled abstractions and legerdemain,

all that is known of the human terrain,

or would if my mind could make the words plain.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 3:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
                    

Congratulations, Hokku Kireji! Your entry has won you this week's prize. I particularly enjoyed the invocation of our blog, which wasn't too over the top (see Dave's shameless pandering to the judge). As a bonus, I believe you'll find your haiku printed in the pages of The Sun in tomorrow's Ideas section.

You can now claim one of these tech-related books as your prize:

Leonard Susskind's The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics; Greg Melville's Greasy Rider: Two Dudes, One Fry-oil-powered Car and a Cross-country Search for a Greener Future; Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like; or Fritjof Capra's The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance. Just e-mail me with your address, and the chosen tome is yours.

Man, book titles are getting long! Anyway, thanks for all of the inspired entries, and to those who weren't so lucky, fear not! Next week, (and hopefully every week hereafter) you could win your very own Read Street prize. No, I'm not above bribing you people to continue paying attention to us.

Posted by Nancy Johnston at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
                    

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)