Mount Airy book club
Members of this book club, which just finished its eighth year, range from retirees to mothers of young children. The group meets monthly at the Mount Airy library. Reading choices are eclectic, ranging from Sense and Sensibility to the Autobiography of Malcom X.
Now reading: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
Liked a lot: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
Not so much: The Corrrections By Jonathan Franzen, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Perhaps -- OK, definitely -- inspired by my viewing of WALL-E, this weekend, (go go go) I thought now would be a good time to explore the technology of books.
Today, Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library says goodbye to Joan Massel, who has worked there for 57 years. She served under seven Pratt executive directors to become the longest-serving city employee, according to the Pratt. She began in the Technical Service Department at age 17 and now is executive secretary to the deputy director.
This new from 
The original Greetings & Readings was founded in 1969, as a book (that's the Readings) and card (that's the Greetings) shop. 
Just finished The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, an Australian crime novel loaded with great writing and biting social commentary about race relations Down Under. Because Temple's rough characters speak in Aussie slang, the book included a glossary. How else would you know that Maccas means McDonald's, or a chook snag sanger is a chicken sausage sandwich? (For a more exhaustive list, try 
This book club at the Parkville library has been around for at least five years, through deaths, bouts with cancer and other trials. An international flavor (including members from Ireland and Guyana) and diversity of backgrounds "is what makes the club so rich," says Rosemary McFarland. 'We have radically different points of view." 
Our anxious friends at the Washington Post have put together a list of 
Canadian author Margaret Atwood, 68, has won Spain's Prince of Asturias literary prize. In announcing the award today, the jury praised her for work that covers several genres "with sharpness and irony" and "defends the dignity of women and denounces situations of social injustice." Atwood has published more than 25 volumes of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She won Britain's Booker Prize in 2000 for The Blind Assassin, and is also known for The Edible Woman and The Handmaid's Tale. Her works have been read by many book clubs in the Baltimore area, but I wonder whether she has been somewhat overlooked because of her affinity for science fiction? What is her best book?
We're all saddened by the 
If you are one of the estimated 6 million people who have watched the Web video of Carnegie-Mellon professor Randy Pausch's "last lecture," you know how compelling it was. Pausch, who grew up in Columbia and graduated from Oakland Mills High School in Howard County, is dying of pancreatic cancer, and he prepared this lecture - a kind of academic tradition - as a message to his three very young children about how to live their lives.
Significance and Inspiration blogger Larina Warnock has written up what I think is 
This book club began in 1993 as a way for Barnard College alumnae in the Baltimore area to socialize, says Murrie Burgan. There are about a dozen members who meet from September to May. Readings include modern literature, non-fiction and classics. They also focus on works by Barnard grads such as Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake) and Marisha Pessl (Special topics in Calamity Physics). 
This may not be the greatest movie ever (its 
In recent years, Hollywood has often forgone actual creativity and turned to bookish friends for film fodder. Books such as Atonement, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Kite Runner, I Am Legend and No Country for Old Men -- and of course the many comic book blockbusters -- were loved by readers before they were ever captured on film.
Today brings news of the passing of Tasha Tudor, a prolific author and illustrator of children's books with a style -- and lifestyle -- that harkened back to 19th-century New England. Today's 
The club, begun in the early 1980s by women who were supporters of the Howard County library, has a core of about a dozen members, mostly retirees. Over the years, there have been a number of deaths of members or their spouses. "Each time, we collect some money and ask the library to purchase books that the person was interested in. The library puts bookplates in those books. It's hard. But we talk about … what the person liked," says Nancy Berla. 
I recently caught up with the author of The Triumph of Deborah, 
Jennifer Weiner is back with a book about a teenage daughter's reaction to a scandalous book her mother wrote years earlier, which happens to be very much like the book Weiner wrote in 2001, called Good in Bed. Certain Girls is told in the voices of Candace Shapiro, the heroine of Good in Bed, and her daughter, Joy, a 13-year-old on the cusp of young adulthood. 
As if your summer reading list was not long enough, here are some audio book award-winners and others that caught the attention of the editors at People magazine. The winners of the 2008 Audie Awards, honoring spoken word entertainment and presented by the Audio Publishers Association, are:
This book club, a program of the Westminster branch library, has a "classics with an open mind" philosophy. Picks have included standards such as Homer's Odyssey, says facilitator Bryan Thomas Hissong. But the group also reads "modern" or "genre" classics. For example, a 16-year-old student led a great discussion of William Goldman's The Princess Bride. (She's not the youngest club member; that's Hissong's daughter Olivia, who's been to every meeting since she was born in January.)
As anyone who grew up with Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maya Angelou or Jane Austen can tell you, women authors rock. They've written some of the best-known and best-selling memoirs, poetry, novels and plays in the world. 
We asked for favorite bookstores you've discovered on vacation, and you really delivered. Read Street readers sent in 
"Children's specialty bookstores are a dying breed," JoAnn Fruchtman explains. "There aren't many left -- there weren't many when we started."
The old Highlandtown library branch will reopen this summer -- in a sense -- thanks to the filming of My One and Only, a romantic comedy starring Renee Zellweger. The branch, which closed last year to make way for the new Southeast Anchor Library, will be converted to a paint store for the filming, says Roswell Encina, spokesman for the Enoch Pratt.
Heather Johnson started this club in 2005, "emailing every woman in my address book." The group of friends and relatives (including her sister and mother) now numbers about 20 from the Annapolis-Baltimore area. The "Stories of the Sisters" also has a killer blog: 
At exactly 4:52 and 56 seconds, Read Street received its 100th comment from Heather, who has impeccable taste in blogs, and an 
OK, so this list is a bit specialized. But it's a good one for some light summer reading, nu? The list came to mind as I was reading Absurdistan, a farcical look at geopolitics, love and religion. Most of these picks were read in my book club, which has a Jewish theme, but not all were universally loved. In fact, some were roundly criticized, despite my praise. Go figure. The list (in no particular order):
To mark a milestone for Read Street's first month -- 100 comments -- Nancy and I are giving away a sure-fire best-seller to the person who submits #100. (We're happy to make this small sacrifice for our country, and help ease the strain brought on by a summer of $4-a-gallon gas and killer tomatoes.) We're a bit shy of the mark right now, so you still have a chance to win. 
Barbara Walters blazed a trail for women in news and in television, but it is her voice that is her signature. So it makes sense that she would be the reader on the audio version of her new book, Audition.
One of the area's newest book clubs is Lilith, which started this spring at Beth El Congregation in the Pikesville area. It was organized by Lindsay Kleiman, who had a similar club at the University of Maryland, College Park. The theme: literature by Jewish women or about Jewish women. "I'd like people to be able to develop their perspective on Jewish women outside the religious ideal ..." she says. "It's not that people have narrow views [of women], they don't have views at all. ... Women are under-represented in Jewish literature." 
Maggie Tighe! The 11th-grader at Gov. Thomas Johnson High School in Frederick was named this week as one of six national winners in the Letters About Literature contest. She directed a $10,000 grant from co-sponsor Target to the Monocacy Middle School Library. (She also pocketed a $500 Target giftcard.) 
Like many other little girls in America, I dreamt of having my very own pony, of sharing that bond that a girl can only know with her horse and maybe someday even winning the Triple Crown.
The monthly book club at 
I can't recommend that you take a cassette player to the beach so you can listen to a title from your summer reading list. 
I once confessed in my column for The Sun that if I didn’t listen to books, I wouldn’t read at all. 
This book club probably looks a bit more formal than yours, but there's a good reason. The club at 
Part of my summer vacation planning revolves around books. No trip is complete without a stop (or two) in a bookstore, the quirkier the better. I look for local authors or subjects. Makes the trip more interesting and that warm, fuzzy feeling returns months later whenever I look at my book shelves. 
That's right, I hate it. Maybe it's because I grew up in teeny tiny Salisbury, but ever since my first trip to the Big Apple in high school, I've found it to be too noisy, too crowded and way too busy. When do you get to catch your breath, anyway?
