I buy Coke and Mounds candy bars from a vending machine (don't let my wife see that), so why not Moby Dick or Tom Sawyer? That day is closer than we think. A New York-based company called On Demand Books is marketing the Espresso Book Machine, which can access books from an online database, print and bind them on demand. Consider it Amazon minus FedEx.

This Boston Globe story (and video) looks at Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vt., the first independent bookstore in the United States to install the machine. Employees there have nicknamed the ungainly machine “Lurch.’’ On Demand Books has started a pilot program making 85,000 book titles from major publishers available; the machines can also access thousands of titles in the public domain and available on the Internet, the Globe reports.

The Espresso offers indies such as Northshire a chance to fight back against fierce competition from Amazon and other online retailers. The machines also are a boon to self-publishers. Of course, there's the issue of cost -- recouping thousands of dollars in investment for the machine (that's a lot of Tom Sawyers). Some libraries such as the University of Michigan's also have bought the Espresso to boost offerings to borrowers. Michigan prices  books less than 150 pages at $6 and books from 151-440 pages at $10.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Do any of you remember The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales? How about The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs?

My teacher read both in elementary school, and they quickly became class favorites. And it never really hit me then, but the best part was that everyone -- boys and girls alike -- agreed that they were just plain funny.

So I guess it wasn't too surprising to find that the mastermind behind Guys Read, a literacy program decided for both young and older boys, was author Jon Scieszka himself.

Maybe today's grown men are a lost cause for reading, but Scieszka is here to make sure that we don't lose another generation of potential readers. So if there's a boy in your life who needs a little guidance in the book department, I suggest you check out the Guys Read site for suggested readings, such as The Adventures of Sparrowboy, Bunnicula and Ender's Game.

There's also a list of authors, titled "People who Inspire Guys to Read," including Avi, Tom Clancy, S.E. Hinton and Shel Silverstein.

I'm just going to ignore the fact that I find those authors to be gender-neutral, and celebrate the fact that Scieszka has taken the time to put this comprehensive list together in the first place.

So ladies AND gentlemen: Get reading!

(Baltimore Sun photo)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Disasters such as high-seas piracy or a Hudson River jet landing might inspire publishers to rush a book into print, but when the King of Pop dies? Get ready for the sounds of a hundred rumbling printing presses. Among the books being scheduled or considered:

-- Transit Media, a small Montreal publisher, plans this week to start printing a hardcover biography by Ian Halperin. The company's president said the book had been prepared in the run-up to Jackson's series of London concerts. The book had already been titled Michael Jackson: The Last Days. 

-- Independent publisher John Blake has commissioned a new biography, Michael Jackson – King of Pop: 1958-2009 by long-time fan Emily Herbert. It's scheduled for release August 24, according to The Bookseller.

-- A reprint of 85,000 copies of J. Randy Taraborrelli's Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness.  

-- Random House's Vintage/Anchor Books has ordered another 20,000 copies of On Michael Jackson by Pulitzer Prize-winnning critic Margo Jefferson, says Publisher's Weekly.

PW also notes that while Jackson's tunes were huge sellers last weekend, there hasn't been a huge run on books. The most popular titles about him on Amazon were Michael Jackson Conspiracy by Aphrodite Jones (sales rank 228) and Michael Jackson: For the Record by Chris Cadman (298).

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

I didn't get a lot of reading done this weekend, and this is why.

 His name is Murphy, and he is the most wonderful puppy ever. Even my Kindle loses some of its allure when he's in the room.

But I promise, Margaret Atwood, I will return to your delightful book as soon as possible.

Questions, comments and your own puppy stories and suggestions are welcome!

(Photo courtesy of Pat Knight)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

I'm not a huge reader of Ask Amy or other advice columns (though I do completely order my life according to the daily horoscope). But I was drawn to this recent topic about a book club member who used the group's email list to drum up business for her husband.

Is this an isolated problem, or have others suffered such bad behavior? Now's the time to discreetly suggest to wayward members that some behavior modification is in order.

For the record, here's Amy's column: Dear Amy: I have a neighbor who is part of our book group. She doesn't often come to the meetings, but she has used our e-mail addresses to promote her and her husband's businesses and a student-exchange program. I only e-mail my neighbors about the next meeting. I am uncomfortable about this and would like to address the issue with her. Any suggestions?

Dear Concerned: In situations such as this, it is best to ask oneself, "What would Jane Austen do?" An Austen character would no doubt dispatch this issue with her customary rapier wit, all the while creating something of a commotion, which would be nicely and neatly resolved in about 200 pages.

Receiving a group e-mail three times over six months sounds tolerable to me, though it's obvious that you don't like it. Bring up these solicitations at your next book club meeting. If there is a consensus within your group, send your neighbor a group generated e-mail reminding her that these are private e-mail addresses, not to be used for sales purposes.

Otherwise, if you are on your own in objecting to this, reply to your neighbor yourself, asking her to please remove your e-mail address from her group e-mails. You needn't go into chapter and verse about her infractions and how they affect you -- keep it simple.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Book Clubs
        

As someone how has played baseball, golf and tennis for decades, I have a soft spot for sports books. And as a long-time editor, I have little tolerance for hyperbole. So, as I noted last week, I was torn while reading The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever, which recounts a wager on a 1956 golf match between two young amateurs and pro legends Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan. Although I liked author Mark Frost's story-telling, I was irked by the subtitle.

I recognize that certain moments — D-Day, 9/11, Waterloo — changed or accelerated historic trends, at least for a time. But the "pivotal moment" theme ought to be retired. (Hey, maybe then I could write a book on The Read Street Post that Changed the Publishing Industry.) It has been used to tout books on topics ranging from battles to plagues to the 1960 Olympics to Galileo’s telescope. Another example: Sealing Their Fate: The Twenty-Two Days That Decided World War II, in which author David Downing argues that the German failure to take Moscow, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the British launching of Operation Crusader in North Africa established the conditions for Axis defeat.

Maybe it’s just a way to start an argument, like a guy in a bar saying Cal Ripken shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame. As for The Match, a strong argument can be made that nothing changed on that day. The intriguing competition occurred as market forces were boosting the popularity of pro golf, and gentleman amateurs were vanishing. But the match decided nothing, and the hype sapped some enjoyment from an interesting book.

And don’t even get me started on books that promise “The Untold Story... .”

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Artists competing for this year's $25,000 Janet & Walker Sondheim Prize at Artscape have found artistic potential in dirt, recycled materials, barren parking lots and a polar bear’s heart rate, says Baltimore Sun reporter Tim Smith. One entry really caught my eye: Molly Springfield's reconsideration of Marcel Proust. Here's how Smith (who also writes the Clef Notes blog) describes it in a story about the six finalists:

Proust’s multivolume novel À la recherche du temps perdu — commonly known in English as Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time — is daunting enough to read. Consider what Springfield has done in a 28-drawing art work called “Translation.” The 31-year-old D.C.-based artist gathered copies of the existing English editions of the first book in the Proust series, Swann’s Way, and photocopied the first chapter of each one, two pages at a time.

“Then I put together my own translation,” Springfield says. Mixing the photocopies from the various editions, she painstakingly re-created those pages by hand in graphite, like a monk copying a book in the Middle Ages. Each distinctive typeface is captured; underlining or notes penciled in the margins by Springfield in any of the books used before the photocopying are, in turn, reproduced again in the final art work.

“I tried to create the actual experience of recollection, in the way the novel does,” the artist says. “Repetitions and omissions that happen from page to page parallel the experience of remembering.”

The winner of the Sondheim Prize will be named by a jury on July 11. The finalists' works are on display at the Baltimore Museum of Art now through Aug. 2

Baltimore Sun photo by Lloyd Fox

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Marylandia
        

So you've picked up Infinite Jest in the past, maybe many times. And it's beaten you into submission each time with its sheer size, right?

Have no fear, Infinite Summer is here.

With the help of guides such as the project's "thinker-upper" Matthew Baldwin and surprise guests including The Decemberists' Colin Meloy, Infinite Summer will get you through all 981 pages, with commentary and discussion to help your understanding along the way. Not to mention a Facebook group and Twitter feed. That's what I call support!

While the official start date was Sunday, I'm sure practiced readers such as yourself should have no trouble catching up to the first 63 pages, right?

Posted by Nancy Knight at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Happy Friday to all, and condolences to all you Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett fans out there. Yesterday was rough on our pop icons.

So let's do our part to make today a bit more cheerful, and announce a winner. A parent, you've won yourself Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures.

I hope you enjoy it, and all the books it recommends.

Meanwhile, I'm itching to begin my advanced reading copy of Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood. It's a dystopian (go figure) future, following the lives of the few who survived a devastating flood.

So help anyone who bothers me during lunch today...

Next week's prize: I Am Not Sidney Poitier, by Percival Everett. Everyone has praised both this book and its author, from Publishers Weekly to The Boston Globe, and I don't think you'll be disappointed. While society tries to figure out what to do with a rich young man who looks like Sidney Poitier, even though his name is clearly Not Sidney.

So let us know what you're reading!

Posted by Nancy Knight at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Freebie Friday
        

Here's a side of the late pop king Michael Jackson that you might not have heard about: He was a huge fan of comic book heroes. A 2009 catalog from Julien's Auctions -- "King of Pop: A Once in a Lifetime Public Exhibition Featuring Property From the Life and Career of Michael Jackson and Neverland Ranch" -- has an amazing array of items. Included are lifesize costumes, statues, photos and artwork of Batman, Superman, Captain America, the Hulk and Spiderman. Makes for some interesting browsing.

Jackson could have had an even bigger impact in the world of comics. According to an 2005 article in The Comics Journal, he once met with Stan Lee and Peter Paul to discussed the possibility of buying Marvel Comics. But the deal never happened.

p.s. My favorite songs (split between the J5 and later works): "I Want You Back" and "Billie Jean".

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

It's finally beginning to feel like summer, and I can't think of a better way to enjoy the warm nights than a picnic at Evergreen Museum. Tonight the museum opens up its galleries, including an exhibit of the First Folio of Shakespeare, while you wait for the 8 p.m. performance of Hamlet. Picnickers are welcome!

Saturday afternoon, Michael Gesker will be at the Barnes & Noble Johns Hopkins to sign copies of his Orioles Encyclopedia: A Half Century of History and Highlights. It's just in time for you to go pick up a copy before you head to the ballpark to watch the Orioles cream the Nationals.

Later Saturday, former crime scene supervisor at the Baltimore Police Crime lab, and current author of crime and horror stories John L. French will be at Red Canoe to sign copies of his books, including The Devil of Harbor City, Souls on Fire and Past Sins, and discuss the upcoming anthology he edited, Bad Cop, No Donut.

You can end a book-filled Saturday with a trip to the Creative Alliance at Patterson, where 10 Minute Plays will be shown, in cooperation with Write Here, Write Now. Rich Espey, Leo Horrigan, Terry Kenney, Lindsay Reed, Mark Scharf, Michael Stang and Rosemary Frisino Toohey's productions will be shown, with musical interludes by singer/songwriter Adam Trice of Red Sammy. The whole shebang starts at 8 p.m. and costs $12, or $10 for members.

Got any other bookish activities for the upcoming week? Let us know what you're doing!

Posted by Nancy Knight at 1:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Book It
        

Dan Brown's blockbuster-in-waiting, The Lost Symbol, won't be released until Sept. 15, but you can start flexing your mystery-solving skills now. Publisher Random House is tweeting mini-puzzles that might -- or might not -- be related to the plot.

A sample: Codes of ethics? T 10 C; 6 P O T SOD; 12 S O T Z

Of course, Brown also has a Facebook page, where fans and detractors can have their say.

For more fun, try this Dan Brown Plot Generator, or Read Street's Dan Brown quiz. (Answers here.)

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Bill Wasik, who's probably best known as the creator of flash mobs and more recently wrote And Then There's This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture, has succeed where many "tech" writers fail. He has taken a highly dorky subject: the lifespan of "memes" -- or stories that spread like wildfire on the Internet, and just as quickly die down -- and written a book that you don't need a technical manual to understand.

But first a little background: According to the book, Wasik got bored in the summer of 2003. But instead of getting a drink with friends, or even going on a road trip as most people would do, he created a phenomenon: the flash mob.

One of my favorite examples of a flash mob is this event at Grand Central Station, coordinated by Improv Everywhere, in which more than 200 people simply freeze en masse in the terminal, like living statues. After a few minutes, they then "unfreeze" and continue on their way.

While Wasik's book touches on flash mobs and their popularity, the book goes into more detail about our 15-seconds-of-fame culture, and how silly, frivolous "nanostories" capture everyone's attention for a month or two, before being completely forgotten.

"There was the flash mob project, which I had done semi-anonymously and never intended to write about," Wasik explained during a phone interview Monday. "But when Ford sort of co-opted the flash mob idea for a series of concerts in 2006, I just thought it was too funny not to go and write about it in a sort of tongue in check way, to tell this story."

"I had book editors asking me if I wanted to expand this into a book, and I wouldn't, if it was just flash mobs," he continued, "but instead as an exampe of, and a metaphor for, everything that's going on online. ... We seem to encourage a culture of quick-hit successes, and so I thought that if I could write that kind of book [which explores that phenomenon], I would do that."

But as a writer and editor at Harper's Magazine, an "old-fashioned" print magazine as he puts it, Wasik decided he wanted to write this book so that the average person would enjoy it.

"I hope that the book can speak to anyone who engages with the Internet in some way," he said. "It's definitely not written for the superuser, for someone who is completely obsessed with this stuff and knows all about it already. I'm not a 'technologist,' I think most books about the Internet, up until now have been written by technologists."

Posted by Nancy Knight at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Meet the Author
        

Add former VP Dick Cheney to the list of politicos earning big money for memoirs. In the Bush administration, the upcoming deluge includes books by the president himself as well as wife Laura, and the ex-secretaries of State, Treasury and Defense. Of course, the Democrats are cashing in too, with President Obama and anyone remotely connected to his campaign or family getting a book deal.

Cheney's deal is worth a reported $2 million, according to The New York Times. It will focus on the past 40 years of his life, mostly in Washington, and will be published in the spring of 2011. The Times also noted that Cheney has been working occasionally on the memoir at his home on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

File under: Author behaving badly. And: Irony of ironies. 

Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail described how the Internet is shaking up the distribution model of established companies, and won him a following as an astute observer of business trends. But now he has acknowledged lifting large chunks of material for his follow-up book, Free, which argues that companies may ultimately profit by giving products away.

The source of the material: Wikipedia.

The problem was spotted -- and described in meticulous detail -- by The Virginia Quarterly Review. Anderson says the problem was inadvertant (where have I heard that before?) and due to a last-minute decision to eliminate footnotes. He told VQR that he tried to add attributions or rewrite passages where needed, but did not get them all.

Maybe this is just an inevitable outcome from the mind-meld that gave us The Long Tail. While writing that book, Anderson used an online audience to vet his findings, so he already had a pretty fluid take on the concept of authorship. Watch out for that slippery slope, Chris!

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Read Streeter Gail Farrelly, an author who lives in New York, was struck by the news that Jeffrey Archer plans to rewrite and re-issue a best-selling novel. We asked her to write about literary do-overs. Here's her guest post:

There’s renovation for old houses, rehabilitation for addicted psyches, and nips and tucks for less-than-perfect bodies. Is it time for reconstructive surgery on old novels?

One publisher thinks so. The Guardian reports that, in mid-October, Pan Macmillan will be releasing an updated version of Archer’s 1979 best selling novel, Kane and Abel. Here’s how the book (the plot's the same in the revision, it's just the style of writing that's updated) is described by The Guardian: "It follows the lives of Boston money man William Lowell Kane and penniless Polish immigrant Abel Rosnovski, born on the same day, through the first world war, the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the bitter rivalry that develops between them.” Timeless themes, no? And particularly relevant in a 2009 world in a financial crisis.

According to The Guardian, “The rewrite, which took Archer nine months . . . saw him slashing around 40,000 words from the original novel, and putting back in around 27,000, leaving himself with a leaner, shorter novel in which the pace increases from breakneck to warp speed.”

But do we really need "warp" speed? Also, I wonder how smart it is to give a novelist the right of "do-over." I'm reminded of growing up in the Bronx and playing a game of hopscotch in which every once in a while a kid demanded a do-over. But in the case of Kane and Abel, we're talking about a book that's sold 34 million copies worldwide and was a #1 New York Times best seller. Maybe it's better to leave well enough alone?

For me, "well enough" translates to "absolutely fabulous." It's one of the best novels I've ever read. With the right publicity and a renewed sales push to celebrate its 30th anniversary, perhaps it could have sold tons more copies, even without a do-over. For a novelist, though, it must be a fantasy fulfilled to get the opportunity to improve upon an earlier work. In a sense, that makes every work a work-in-progress, since it could be rewritten and improved at a later date.

The Guardian article concludes by pointing out that the author's do-over act may not end with Kane and Abel: "Archer may also take a fresh look at the book's sequel, The Prodigal Daughter, which tells the story of the feud from the perspective of Kane and Abel's children." I especially enjoyed this last sentence: "Whether he'll also provide a new perspective on his prison diaries wasn't mentioned."

While Archer is pondering future revisions, I’m wondering: Are you interested in reading do-overs of novels? Do you have suggestions for specific novels to be revised?

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

At the U.S. Open golf tournament, book lovers could be forgiven if they were rooting against crowd favorites Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, and for the relatively unknown Lucas Glover. Why? Because Glover is one of us.

After winning the Open, which was extended until Monday because of rain delays, Glover noted that he had read four books while in New York for the tournament. The best of them, he said, was The Lost City of Z, about explorer Percy Fawcett.

Earlier, he had told golf.com: "I read about a book every three or four days. ... Murder mysteries, thrillers — it might be more of an addiction. I sit down and two hours later I'm going, Oh, man, I've got to go to sleep."

Luckily, Glover plays a sport that has produced lots of excellent books -- among my favorites are the golf stories of P.G. Wodehouse. As they say: "the smaller the ball, the better the writing."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Just finished reading The Match: The Day the Game of Golf Changed Forever. It recounts an 18-hole match between young amateurs Ken Venturi and Harvie Ward and legends Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan (shown here) -- played at the suggestion of two millionaires who were betting on the outcome. Author Mark Frost nicely entwined the match with profiles of the golfers and the history of the sport.

But I bristle at books that purport to be about "THE DAY/WEEK/MONTH THAT (insert weighty topic here) CHANGED FOREVER." It's usually just so much hype. Maybe authors need to do that sort of thing in pitching an idea to editors, or maybe it's a sign of a marketing department run amok. Whatever, it usually amounts to false advertising, and with The Match, a strong argument can be made that nothing changed on that day -- except some money changed hands. The hype sapped some enjoyment from an interesting book.

I'll be writing about this in my Sunday column in The Sun, so let me know if you have other examples.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

There's a new children's book from the Michael Phelps/Alan Abrahamson team, whose No Limits chronicled the swimmer's record-shattering performance at the Beijing Olympics. Here's an excerpt from a review of How to Train With a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals, a book that Sun sports reporter Kevin Van Valkenburg approached  cynically:

"I wanted to make a bunch of jokes about a cartoon version of Phelps telling a cartoon Ms. California that everyone deserves the right to get married, and reminding kids that cell phone cameras will be confiscated every time he and his cartoon posse walk into a room. But the truth is - and maybe this is the result of having a kid of my own on the way - I kind of liked it. There isn't exactly a narrative there, and the inclusion of a Tyrannosaurus Rex makes very little sense, even in the illogical world of children's books. But it has a nice message and some cool illustrations by Ward Jenkins. ...

"The main lesson ... is that you need to work hard to achieve your dreams, but it's really a book about math. From 1998 to 2003, Phelps swam 60,000 meters a week, which amounts to 12,480 miles over six years. How does Phelps help kids understand how far that is? With a picture of him swimming to the North Pole and back, and then his coach telling him to do it again. And a picture of him swimming the length of the Great Wall of China three times.

"All this builds to the revelation that in Phelps' last individual race, the 100-meter butterfly, he won by one one-hundredth of a second. The length of a finger nail. It's a nice lesson to teach kids, that you can work ridiculously hard for a long time and accomplish your goals by the slimmest of margins.

"And as Phelps can attest, only the cynic who doesn't work hard enough would dare suggest that childhood fantasies can't become a reality."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

If any of you have read The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie, I'd love to have you weigh in on this debate.

The English Department at Antioch High School, in the Chicago suburbs, assigned the book for the incoming freshman class to read over the summer. The book, which follows the misadventures of a 14-year-old American Indian boy attending an all-white high school, won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature, and was recognized by both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times in the children's book category.

The book is described as having vulgar language and describing sexual situations, and these parents want it pulled, even though there is a second option for the assignment, Down River, if parents don't approve of Alexie's work.

I thought one school official, John Whitehurst, described the parents' charge of the school condoning such language and behavior most succinctly:

"That is like saying that because Romeo and Juliet committed teen suicide, we condone teen suicide," Whitehurst said. "Kids know the difference. Like it or not, that is the way 14-year-old boys talk to each other."

And of course, the need for a warning label on explicit books is brought up again. Any thoughts, Read Streeters?

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Read Streeter Kelly Hager will start us off this week with an issue that has touched so many here: Book hoarding.

 "It's not that I don't like people. It's just that when I'm in the company of others -- even my nearest and dearest -- there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book."

That's as far as I've gotten into Maureen Corrigan's Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading. It's one of the many books I have living in my apartment, berating me for buying them and then leaving them to gather dust on the shelf (okay, shelves).

I'm not sure how it happens.

OK, that's not at all true. Here's an example of how it happens. I read an article on spelling bees and thought, "Wow, that's an interesting topic." Fifteen dollars later, James Maguire's American Bee was on its way to my door. That's also how I managed to acquire books on crossword puzzles, obituaries and an English teacher at West Point (all still unread).

Or there's this: friends will recommend a book to me, most recently, two different people have raved about Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. That was enough to get me to buy the book but not quite enough to get me to read it. (But I will!)

I don't know why some books get read right away and some are ignored for months (and, in some cases, years). I'm pretty sure I'll eventually get around to everything. (I hope.)

I'm also not sure why I hoard books the way I do. I may be waiting to get some sort of mono-type illness, where I have to be at home for months, too sick to work but well enough to read. I'm pretty sure that's a fine line, though, and probably not a good thing to wait for illness.

It could definitely be because of that Twilight Zone episode, "Time Enough at Last," the one where there's a nuclear disaster and everyone dies except for one person. Except I wear glasses, too, and that didn't work out too well for him.

Does anyone else do this, buy more books than you can possibly read, just because someday you'll want to read them?

I would also like to note that I do actually read, too; it's just that I tend to buy more books than I should. Possibly I need an intervention. In any case, if you hear about someone being found suffocated under hundreds of unread books in northwest Baltimore, it's probably me.

(Photo by lusi at stockxchng)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 3:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (17)
        

To update our summer reading list of dirty books -- those that capture the feel of sand and sea -- here are recommendations from Read Streeters. (I have my eye on Satchel, Larry Tye’s new biography of Negro League legend Leroy “Satchel” Paige, whch promises the grittiness of a hot, dusty infield.)

Before the Wind, edited by David Gowdey. This compilation of 25 true sailing stories covers everything from Joshua Slocum setting out to sail around the world to Ted Turner on racing strategy. (From Lauretta Nagel, Constellation Books, Reisterstown)

Fisherman’s Bend, by Linda Greenlaw. The best-selling author of stories set on the Maine coast tells the story of a former Miami homicide detective who moves north, only to be confronted by the mystery of a missing lobster boat. (Greg Szczeszek, Ivy Bookshop, Baltimore)

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, by Christina Thompson. The author, an American who married a Maori man, uses her own experience to describe the often tragic cultural clashes between colonists and the Maoris. (MrAndrew)

The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, by George Howe Colt. The summer home in question is on Cape Cod. The former Life magazine reporter writes a love song  to the rambling, Cape Cod summer home where his family vacationed for decades. (AMQS)

Evil under the Sun, by Agatha Christie. This Hercule Poirot murder mystery takes place at a vacation resort off the coast of England and is one of Christie’s best books. (Gail Farrelly)

The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost. An engaging tale written by a globe-trotter who moves with his wife to a tiny island in the South Pacific. (emaestra)

Arabian Sands, by Wilfred Thesiger. True story of the Brit’s mid-19th-century journey through Arabia, where he encountered the vanishing Bedouin lifestyle. (Lisa)

Notes from the Shore, by Jennifer Ackerman. An exploration of the seacoast’s natural rhythms and beauty, based on the author’s time in Lewes, Del. (jjlong)

The Beach, by Alex Garland. A young man’s mad race to find paradise along the Gulf of Thailand. (Stephmo)

Good Dirt: Confessions of a Conservationist, by David E. Morine. Skinny-dipping, poodles and other amusing highlights in preservation, from the man who headed land acquisition efforts for The Nature Conservancy. (sandydog1)

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

For those who can't get enough of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series, a cruise company is offering a seven-night themed trip to Alaska -- with the possibility of a side trip to Forks, Wash.

Linda Wolf's cruise-only travel agency has organized voyages for Trekkies, clowns and Beatles fans, the Los Angeles Times reports. But the Twilight Fans Cruise -- which won't start until August, 2010 -- may end up breaking a record, she says.

 The cruise will offer a costume ball, a Q&A session with Twilight actors, movie viewings and more. Film stars Kellan Lutz and Ashley Greene are slated to be aboard. But it doesn't come cheap: Fares start at $1,049 per person and there’s a $150 registration fee for Twilight passengers. For an extra charge, there's an optional three-night, pre-cruise package tour of Forks, where Bella and Edward met.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
        

Tasha Tudor lived her life in the simplicity of 19th-century New England, raising children in a home without electricity or running water -- a style reflected in her charming illustrations for The Secret Garden and other books. But the aftermath of her 2008 death at age 92 (New York Times obit here) has been anything but simple and charming.

The Boston Globe reports that her four children have been fighting in Vermont Probate Court over an estate worth more than $2 million, and cannot even agree on a proper burial ceremony (she was cremated.)

Her will left most assets to son Seth and his son, who have been involved in strengthening her legacy through Tasha Tudor & Family, which offers tours or her Marlboro, Vt., garden as well as crafts workshops. But her other three children, who were estranged frm her, are challenging the will.

A sad ending for the artist, who, the Globe reports, "asked to be put to rest beneath the Mystery Rose in her garden in Marlboro, Vt., along with the remains of her beloved dogs and her pet rooster, Chickahominy."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

While we're on the topic of libraries and my foibles therein, here's an idea from San Francisco that the locals might want to copy. It would save me a pile of money.

According to SFGate.com, borrowers were allowed to return overdue books without paying fines -- which max out at $5 per book -- but had to tell the library why they were tardy. A group of second-graders said they were too busy rescuing marine mammals. One woman said she just couldn't part with a beautiful early 20th-century book with good-feeling paper and plate illustrations -- it looked so posh on her shelf.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

It's Friday, and the sun has returned. What could possibly make this day better? How about a list of fantastic books that Read Streeters are enjoying, so I can add to my own collection?

I'm reading Irish author Sarah Rees Brennan's first novel, Demon's Lexicon. It follows a teenager and his family, who while being hunted by magicians, attempt to help a couple of teens with their demon problems. If you're looking for swords, mystery, a magical Goblin market and puppy love, this book was made for you.

While last week's freebies have already been mailed off, so they can be (hopefully) be enjoyed by Father's Day, I did come across a little gem that Potter fanatics are going to love: Harry Potter's Bookshelf: The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventure, by John Granger.

Granger has written several books about Harry's world, including Looking for God in Harry Potter, but this one is exceptionally fun for die-hard readers.

Who can resist a suggested reading list including the books that influenced J.K. Rowling? Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, Stoker and Tolkien (of course) are just a few of the authors listed who devotees can begin exploring -- or just examine anew.

So let us know what you're reading, and it could be yours!

Posted by Nancy Knight at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Freebie Friday
        

Ever had brain freeze at a bookstore or library, totally blanking on the name of the book you were looking for? Well, a couple of days ago, my wife asked me to get her book club pick from the Towson library but as soon as I hit the door, my mind went blank. I tried jogging my memory with the best seller list -- nope.

I told a librarian what little I could recall: It was a novel by a popular female author. (That should narrow it down, eh?) She gave me a pleasant smile (God bless librarians for their patience) and escorted me to the new fiction shelves. She rattled off about a dozen popular female authors -- nothing. I told her, "My mind keeps coming back to Maeve Binchy, but I know it's not her." Another pleasant, patient smile. She had probably read our post about categorizing bookstore customers and was trying to decide whether I was an "idiot" or a "time-suck." After a few minutes, I surrendered and thanked her.

That evening, I humbled myself and asked my wife: "What were the names of that author and book again?" Yet another patient, pleasant smile. (I was pretty tired of those smiles by now.) The answer: Anita Shreve's Testimony. I was pretty close with Maeve Binchy, wasn't I?

Sun photo by Algerina Perna

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Marylandia
        

So you wanna be the next Dashiell Hammett? Dennis Tafoya may be able to help.

Tonight at 7 p.m., Ukazoo Books is hosting their Crime Writing Workshop, led by Tafoya, author of Dope Thief. Tafoya will provide tips on writing in the genre, as well as provide samples of of works from Elmore Leonard, Cormac McCarthy and others. The event is free, but you should RSVP at 410-832-BOOK or ukazooforum@hotmail.com.

Westminster's own Jeri Smith-Ready will be at Constellation Books on Saturday afternoon to talk about the latest in her Maryland-set vampire series, Bad to the Bone. Besides conversation, there will be tea, coffee and cookies.

And while the Iranian election is still disputed, in the streets and online, it seems the perfect time to discuss Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes. Author Elizabeth Losh, a scholar of digital rhetoric at UC Irvine, examines how people, corporations and governments have presented themselves online, and what it means for the future.  Losh will be at Red Emma's Monday at 7 p.m.

Got your own event you want to let people know about? Let us know! And check out plenty of other goings on in the area at the Read Street calendar.

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Book It
        

Score one for Holden Caufield and J.D. Salinger. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the U.S. distribution of an unauthorized sequel to Catcher in the Rye, as she contemplates the complicated issues in the case.

 Judge Deborah Batts is considering whether 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye transforms Salinger's original creation enough that it is a "fair use" of a copyrighted work, the AP said. A ruling was anticipated in the next 10 days. The book, by Swedish author Fredrik Colting, was scheduled for U.S. release on Sept. 15 but the court dispute was likely to delay that.

Among the related questions in the case: Is Caufield himself entitled to copyright protection? Does this amount to a book ban? Judges are very reluctant to halt publication of books and newspapers, because that action runs counter to First Amendment guarantees of freedom of expression. In one of the most well-known cases on that issue, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected govenment efforts to halt newspaper publication of the "Pentagon Papers," a critical review of U.S. policy in Viet Nam. But here the issues are murkier, because of the 60 Years Later is so closely linked to a copyrighted work.

One sad note in this mess: Salinger's agent says he is now deaf, and is recovering at a rehabilitation facility from surgery for a broken hip suffered in late May.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

When we discussed 10 reasons to Hate the Kindles, one topic that came up was the device's uselessness at book signings. Who's going to let an author -- even a famous one -- scribble all over their $350 e-reader?

Well, leave it to someone in New York -- where it's the custom to deface buildings, subway cars, Broadway musicals and everything else with graffiti -- to prove me wrong. The New York Times notes that at a recent reading by David Sedaris at Manhattan's Strand bookstore, a man -- identified only as "Marty" (is Ernest Borgnine still around?) -- asked the author to autograph his Kindle. On the back, Sedaris, in mock horror, wrote, "This bespells doom.”

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

Need a little more guidance of what to get dear old dad this Father's Day? Look no further!

I've taken a (highly) unscientific poll of The Sun's own fatherly contingent, and they were kind enough to share their favorite books.

Reporter Nick Madigan: "Joseph Heller's Catch-22. I read it when I was about 15, and I remember it just made me laugh out loud."

Head of Maryland News David Nitkin: "My favorite book? I can tell you right now. The Great Gatsby. Period."

Reporter Joe Burris: "Five of my favorites, in no particular order: Sports in America: James Michener; Things Fall Apart: Chinua Achebe; The Pearl: John Steinbeck; Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison; Krik? Krak!: Edwidge Danticat."

Reporter Bob Little: "The Confederacy of Dunces. That's the book, where if I meet someone who hasn't read it, I buy it for them."

Editorial writer Peter Jensen: "The Adventures of Huckleberry Fin, by Mark Twain. It's one of those books that was fun to read before you got old enough for it to become required reading in school. Twain's attack on racial prejudice was ahead of its time."

Deputy opinion editor Michael Cross-Barnet: Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings; Robertson Davies' The Deptford Trilogy; Jonahan Franzen's The Corrections; Larry McMurtry's The Last Picture Show; and Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

And I'll leave it to Dave to tell us what his favorite book(s) is.

Meanwhile, John wins Freebie Friday, taking home Edward Monkton's The Wonderful Man and Kevin Alan Milne's The Nine Lessons. I hope you (or your dad) enjoys them immensely.

Have you got  your own bookish Father's Day gift ideas? Let us know! Father's Day is fast approaching...

(Photo by adassel on stock.xchng)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Today, we're starting a new feature at Read Street, opening up the blog to readers. (If you'd like to do a guest post, send Nancy or me an email with a topic.) Patrick Lackey, who invented the Tentative Hyphen, starts us off with this post, poignant in a time of library cutbacks: Do you use libraries?

I suspect that a lot of book lovers, even ones who strongly support the idea of libraries, don't use them a lot. While I believe that libraries are one of the most successful and important communal efforts ever, I enjoy reading a book I own more than reading a book I've checked out and must return fairly soon and in good condition. I like being able to mark up a book -- either highlighting parts I might want to find later or, more rarely, scribbling in the margin. Also, when I've finished a book, it feels more accessible on a shelf in the basement than back at the library (though it might be easier to find at the library). Furthermore, an accumulation of books feels like an accumulation of knowledge, even if I've forgotten much of what's in them. Also, as my wife once put it, "What else do we own?" Our books are our past.

 As I increasingly feel the constraints of being a fixed-income retiree, my guess is that I'll read more fiction from libraries but still try to buy nonfiction books. One of the great things about public libraries is that visiting one puts you among readers. Somehow they seem more serious that the people you rub shoulders with at bookstores, maybe because libraries are still more hushed than bookstores. And I'll never forget touching Mencken's typewriter and desk at the downtown library. Libraries also are indispensable for parents of small children who read (or have read to them) 10 books a week, and for researchers, computers notwithstanding.

Actually, my admiration for public libraries and librarians is total. I just don't use libraries much. Do you?

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (20)
        

Now that the City Council has approved Mayor Sheila Dixon's 2009-10 budget, get ready for reduced services at the Enoch Pratt.

Beginning July 1, hours will be reduced across the Pratt system, with most libraries closing one day a week. the new schedule for the Central Library: Monday to Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Thursday to Saturday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sunday (October to May): 1 to 5 p.m.

These branches will close on Fridays: Hamilton, Herring Run and Light Street. Sunday hours will be eliminated at the Southeast Anchor Library. 

The changes, which resulted from a tight city budget, could also affect the Pratt's stellar programming. The library attracted standing-room crowds for Junot Diaz and Michael Pollan this year, and brought many other authors to Baltimore. Let's hope that can continue.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Marylandia
        

As per Dave's post yesterday, we attended the Baltimore Metro Literary Arts Summit on Saturday morning, to join with editors, poets and writers in the area.

It was heartening to see the 30 or so members invited from the literary community, knowing that they represented scores more, and discussing how to make our diverse scene even better. Also, there were snacks!

But the one aspect I found particularly dismaying was their almost complete dismissal of social networking, and the Internet in general.

Don't misunderstand me: Mass mailings, fliers and radio spots all have their place in advertising the many bookish events in our area, and we should use every tool at our disposal to bring attention to the literary arts and grow.

But that also means that Web sites, blogs, Facebook and Twitter need to be used to further the conversation and build our community. And with free Internet access at libraries and coffeeshops throughout the country, there's really no excuse for not engaging your audience where they are: online.

In the past, the Internet was seen as a refuge for the young, the nerdy, the misanthropes of the world. But today, it's used as a way to connect with friends old and new; to communicate with companies with love and hate; and to rally others around our goals and ideals.

So let's get our acts together! If there's a literary organization, a bookstore, an author who you want to see better represented online (whether through our site, or their own), speak up!

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

June 16 is the day to celebrate James Joyce's Ulysses, by marking the date that protagonist Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus wandered around Dublin. It's also a convenient excuse to dress up, get drunk and eat various organs. As James Quinn of the James Joyce Centre was quoted in one news report: "People wander around and turn up at locations throughout the day for events like the lunch that Bloom had of a gorgonzola sandwich and glass of burgundy."

Sounds like Dublin's version of Honfest. So hoist a Guinness or Harp or burgundy for great literature today!

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Saturday, Nancy and I reached the literary summit (no additional oxygen required). We were invited to the Baltimore Metro Literary Arts Summit -- quite a high-powered title for a soft-spoken, unassuming bunch of poets, writers and editors. The idea: find new ways to take advantage of the area's literary richness, and foster cooperation among the many individuals and groups that love the written/spoken word. Christine Stewart of the Maryland State Arts Council and Gregg Wilhelm of the CityLit Project threw the party.

There's already a lot going on -- just look at Read Street's calendar -- and folks at the summit are responsilble for most of those events, including the annual CityLit Festival at the Enoch Pratt (shown here). The summit also included editors of local journals such as Smartish Pace, jmww and the Little Patuxent Review. 

Still, there was a sense that more could be done. Group members worry about issues such as advertising, funding and recruiting artists. As a first step, the group will work on sharing resources and coordinating publicity for events. That should lead to a stronger literary arts community.

So what do you think literary Baltimore is missing?

Sun staff photo

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

There's a blog post that's been making its way through the Internet recently in which a big-box bookstore employee characterizes the many types of readers who stop by the store, and how each of them can drive a bookseller crazy.

Author Matt Blind places customers in seven categories: seekers, idiots, grazers, browsers, campers, independents and time-sucks.

On a side note, while I sincerely hope I'm not one of the idiots, I'd like to point out that I've seen many a movie whose meet-cute premise would have completely fallen apart without the "idiot" genre of customer.

Blind, who's named his blog Rocket Bomber (I am a huge fan of the tagline: If it explodes, we like it!), has since written an explanation/apology/defense since his original post blew up -- pun intended -- with enraged or just slightly miffed readers.

I understand the need to vent after a taxing day/week/month at work, but insulting your customers -- and telling them to just buy stuff on the Internet so they don't bother human beings -- hardly seems like the way to fix the problem. Unless your problem is "employment" and you're purposely trying to convince everyone to stop going to bookstores. I don't care if you do work at a big-box chain and not the Cheers equivalent of bookstores, that's just not good business sense.

But, if you're just in it for the fun, it is a good question. What kind of customer are you? I've determined that I'm a seeker who nearly always evolves into a browser. Who leaves a bookstore with just one book, after all?

(Photo by lhumble at stock.xchng)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Traveling around the United States, I'm always interested in the regional slang that I hear. Even in little New England, where the states are jammed together, objects often have several names. For example, a milk and ice cream blend is called a milk shake in my home state of Connecticut, a frappe in Massachusetts and a cabinet in Rhode Island. Moving further afield, a sandwich on a long roll is a grinder in Hartford, a hoagie in Philly and a sub in Baltimore. Go figure.

A group of linguists has worked for decades to record these regional anomallies, and now is wrapping up the final volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English. NPR's Weekend Edition took a look at the DARE project, which began in the 1950s. Frederic Cassidy sent workers in "word wagons" to interview Americans people; they talked to nearly 3,000 people over six years, making recordings along the way to capture pronunciations, NPR said. Four volumes -- A through Sk -- were published from 1985-2002, and the last volume is scheduled for release next year. While you wait for volume five, check out DARE's site for words and phrases such as "duck on a rock," "pinkwink" and "feest."

And let me know if you have a favorite regional slang, or a combo like shake/frappe/cabinet.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Can someone write too well? Can a prose style be too gorgeous?

Those questions came to mind as I read All the Living, the first novel of C.E. Morgan, a writer who, from her photo, looks to be about 22. Boy can she write.

The novel, which was released earlier this spring to much praise, is set in rural Kentucky in the 1980s, and is about a 19-year-old named Aloma who comes to live with her farmer fiance after his mother and brother die in a car crash.

Aloma was orphaned and sent to boarding school at an early age. She's a gifted pianist, but she doesn't know what she wants out of life, or how to figure it out, and she doesn't have a clue how to connect with anyone else. She can be prickly and spoiled and unlikable without ever being unsympathetic.

Morgan has a great eye. The book is full of unexpected images, such as bats in flight "sloping" down a shaft of air. Here's Aloma's response to a church choir: "Then came her own shuddering response to the sound of their hollered singing, the mismatched pitches rubbing and abrading against one another, the static of imperfect voices. It was not perfection that moved her, only that rub, what others found ugly. She sought the joy of misshapen things."

Wow.

A friend to whom I raved about this book had an interesting reservation. She said she was so aware of the painterly quality of Ms. Morgan's imagery, that it interfered with her ability to immerse herself in the world of the novel.

So I ask again: Can someone write too well?

Having posed this question, I have to 'fess up that I'm about to depart for a vacation in the U.K. for two weeks, and -- gasp! -- away from a computer for much of that time. (I am, however, planning a Surprise Post from the road, topic TBA.)

But, opine away. I'll look forward to reading your comments when I return.

Posted by Mary McCauley at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)
Categories: Reviews
        

This is every guy's dream for Father's Day. Not Eva Longoria-Parker. I mean the tray full of milk shakes. With the big day just a week away, here's how the conversations have been going in my house:

Me (pointing to item in catalog) -- That would be a great gift.

Wife and daughter (exchanging incredulous looks) -- How about something nicer?

Me -- I don't want something nicer. What's wrong with this?

Them -- We're just trying to save you from yourself.

Me -- Can I help it if I have simple tastes? 

Them -- Let's keep looking.

And so on ... Meanwhile, Read Streeters have had interesting comments on the question: Why don’t men read novels? Here’s what some readers said on the issue, and what they recommended as a fix:

Except for the silly manly ones, novels are about emotions — not the long suit of most males. The same two words — “Let’s talk” — grab a woman’s attention but send a man scurrying in search of a place to hide, unless the talk is about business or sports. Novels, of course, are filled with emotion-laden talking. — Patrick Lackey

Recommend Fidali’s Way by George Mastras, with male main character and manly wartime situation in Kashmir on the Pakistani-Indian border. With some romance thrown in, of course. – Harvee Lau

Books these days seem to be created specifically for a market. Oh, you’re a recent divorcee? Read this book about getting back in the dating scene? Going through menopause? Read this humorous self-help book with tips no one has ever heard before! ... Ugh. – lilisin

I know very few men who read fiction books. ... They are shocked to see my apartment walls lined with full bookcases. However, back in my Navy days, sailors loved reading books like James Bond novels when we were at sea. – John Bohnert

I think a deeper problem is the attitude toward reading that young men grow up with. Culturally, reading fiction is an acceptable pastime for little girls, but it isn’t for the vast majority of boys. – SarahAbroad

It used to be that some men said (back when most women didn’t work), women had more time to read. Bull! – stacey-deanne

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

No, I don't think the alliteration is too much, why do you ask?

Happy Friday, everyone! And it's an especially happy Friday for Rachel! You're the lucky new winner of Robin Hemley's Do-Over!

Meanwhile, I've been reading The Collected Stories of H.P. Lovecraft. That man's prose is maze-like, and I'm having fun getting lost in it. But I've been careful not to read any of his short stories right before bed; I don't even want to think about what kind of dreams they'd inspire.

And on to this week's giveaway, and it's another two-fer: The Nine Lessons: A Novel of Love, Fatherhood and Second Chances, by Kevin Alan Milne; and The Wonderful Man, by Edward Monkton. And in order to ensure that these fatherly tomes can get to you before Father's Day (which is next Sunday, for you slackers out there) I'll be announcing the winner on Wednesday.

So you can impress Dad, or just keep the books yourself. I'll never tell.

Posted by Nancy Knight at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Freebie Friday
        

John Grogan's phenomenal success with Marley & Me, the tear-jerker about life with a mischievous labrador retriever, has led to a new 13-book deal. HarperCollins announced yesterday that it plans the litter of children's books, including a picture book called Marley Goes to School. 

According to HarperCollins, the deal expands a children's book program that already includes the middle-grade Marley: A Dog Like No Other (an adaptation of Marley & Me) and the picture books Bad Dog, Marley! and A Very Marley Christmas. All three titles were  bestsellers.

The memoir that started it all became a million-seller and was adapted into a movie starring Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston (here's the trailer).

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Good news for folks who are hungry for good food -- and a good read.

Baltimore Reads, a literacy group, is opening a book exchange at the farmer's market held each Sunday under the JFX. The organization will be there from 8 a.m. to noon, every Sunday through December 20. Shoppers can buy new and used books, or drop off donations. Proceeds benefit the organization's book bank.

I think it's a great way to raise awareness of the organization -- and raise money. In Portland. Ore., Powell's Books hosts monthly book signings at a  farmer's market -- an innovative way for an indy store to build business amid pressure from online booksellers and big box stores.

Full disclosure: The Baltimore Sun has a long relationship with Baltimore Reads, which gathers books from individuals, libraries, publishers and other sources, and distributes them to teachers, families, schools and other institutions. The organization's book bank is located in the Sun's Calvert Street building, and Read Street often donates children's books to the group.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Marylandia
        

An article in the New York Times caught my eye this week: A federal judge sentenced a white-collar criminal to write a book about his experiences related to the case. The criminal/author, a former Bristol-Myers Squibb exec, pleaded guilty to making false statement to federal investigators. In Monday's hearing, Judge Ricardo M. Urbina said the book could be a cautionary tale for other executives. (The exec, Dr. Andrew G. Bodnar, must also pay a $5,000 fine.)

Urbina is not the first to dispense literary justice. Baltimore Circuit Judge Wanda Heard has required probationers to write book reports. She keeps a large binder of the completed reports in her office.

All of which leads me to imagine a suitable literary punishment for James von Brunn, the Annapolis man who killed a guard at the Holocaust museum Wednesday. Write a book? It would likely be filled with the twisted, anti-Semitic and racial comments of his other writings. Assign a book report on Night, Elie Wiesel's touching Holocaust memoir? Unfortunately, no amount of writing on the Holocaust is likely to change the minds of von Brunn and fellow deniers.

Require him to sit through hours of a closed-loop showing of The Diary of a Anne Frank -- along the lines of the desensitizing given to violent youths in A Clockwork Orange? That's pretty twisted and probably wouldn't work either. In fact, I doubt that any judicial order can adequately punish or rehabilitate von Brunn, leaving him in his own private, paranoid hell.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Do you think you've got a wide-open week coming up? Let's help fix that.

Friday night, Geoff Brown, former Baltimore magazine editor, will be at Atomic Books in Hampden to talk about his new book, Moon Baltimore. The book is a guide to Charm City, and Brown's sure to share some of his own discoveries about Mobtown, as told from the perspective of a nationwide traveler who fell in love with Baltimore. 

On Saturday, the Creative Alliance hosts "Book Arts with Lori Thompson." Thompson, a book artist and teacher, will teach you how to create bindings, pop-ups, and other page design techniques: everything you need to know to create your own masterpiece. Advanced registration is $125, ($110 for members); walk-ins pay $140, ($125 for members).

And Second Sunday poetry is back. PoetryInBaltimore.com presents Gimme Shelter Productions Community Harvest Benefit for Hearts Place Shelter. For $3, or any donation you can give, including nonperishable foodstuffs, you can take advantage of the open mic, as well as enjoy featured poets Alan Barysh, Ron Williams, Suzanne X, Rabbi Liz Bolton, Julie Fisher, Miriam Botwinik and Marcus Colasurdo.  For more information, e-mail julie@poetryinbaltimore.com or call 443-418-4762.

Finally, on Wednesday, Constellation Books hosts Baltimore Free Writers. The local writing group, which is open to new members, meets every Wednesday to share their poetry and prose and socialize with fellow writers. All you have to do is sign up. 

Posted by Nancy Knight at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Book It
        

People have been squabbling about the pleasures and pitfalls of Wikipedia since its creation: Sure it's completely democratic and the knowledge of the ages can be at your fingertips. At the same time, you're never quite sure who's writing and editing those entries, and what their motives are.

But here's a new take: Printing out the entirety of Wikipedia proves that is a bad resource.

I'm assuming the author of this post is talking about aesthetics alone, and sure, printing out and binding all those entries into one book looks ridiculous. As would the Encyclopedia Britannica. That's why it's published in volumes.

With all of the credibility issues this site already has, do we really have to make up new, silly ones?

Posted by Nancy Knight at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As the recession keeps its hold on America, I've seen more and more bookstore casualties. Today's newsletter from Shelf Awareness, notes two more: Shaman Drum Bookshop, an Ann Arbor, Mich., institution for nearly 30 years, and Conkey’s Bookstore, which has been in Appleton, Wis., for 113 years. We've also seen the trend in Maryland, as Vertigo Books in College Park closed in April.

In addition to the recession, the stores are being hurt by the digital revolution. Online stores such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble are ferocious competitors. And sales of ebooks are growing faster than any other category, as the Kindle and other ebook readers spread.

Many stores host events to compete. Constellation Books often hosts wine tastings, music and other events. The Ivy Bookshop and Greetings and Readings, like many others, attract authors for readings. Minas Gallery is a regular host for the 510 reading series. (You can find events in the Read Street calendar.)

Among the other innovations by stores around the nation: opening a temporary outlet at a farmer's market, or adding children's clothing to the mix of merchandise. Even Shakespeare & Co., the venerable Parisian bookstore where writers can get a bed to flop in, is modernizing, with  plans for a cafe and theater.

Still, the storm won't break any time soon. So give your local store some love -- and let us know if you have other creative suggestions for local stores to lure shoppers. I'd hate to see the day when online sites, big chains and ebooks are our only options.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

As I was watching the 2009 Tony Awards Sunday night, an odd question came to mind. I don't know the answer, so I thought I'd turn to my fellow Read Streetians for help:

Why are there so many more terrific new books than there are new plays?

It seems that I can almost always find some new book that I'm pushing on my unwilling friends and family. It's rarer for me to be as strongly enthusiastic about a new play (though there are exceptions -- for instance, I'd nominate Michael Frayn's "Copenhagen" as the best play of our generation and will urge you all personally to see it when you have the chance.)

There are, of course, a gazillion new books published every year, while the number of new plays staged annually in the U.S. must be in the low three figures, if that. So, maybe it's just a numbers game: the more of a genre that sees the light of day, the easier it will be for any one of us to find specific examples we like. And, because theater tickets are considerably pricier than the average novel, most of us probably read more books than we see shows.

But, I'm not sure if that's the whole story. I wonder whether there might be something in the constraints of playwriting (i.e., all dialogue, no omniscent narrator, except for Thornton Wilder) that makes that form a riskier proposition, and tougher to pull off.

And this, in its turn, lead me to another question, about consumer habits: When it comes to books, the new is more desirable than the old. But when it comes to plays, the opposite is true. Audiences will sit through a thousand productions of "A Christmas Carol" while new plays generally are considered to be box office poison. But, though there may be one or two well-loved classics that some of us will read all our lives, it's the hot new novel that flys off the shelves.

What do you guys think?

Posted by Mary McCauley at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Whatever
        

Get ready for the linguistic equivalent of New Year's Eve. Tomorrow morning, the English language will add its one millionth word, according to the Global Language Monitor, a Texas-based firm that tracks language trends. (I picture it as a group of men and women wearing green eyeshades, surrounded by the works of Shakespeare, busily hammering their calculators.)

Estimating that the English language adds an average of 14.7 words a day, GLM says the million-word moment will come at precisely 10:22 am (Stratford-on Avon Time).

GLM's finalists for the One Millionth English Word illustrate the worldwide sweep of the language. From Australia: alchopops – sugary-flavored mixed drinks. From Chinglish: Chengguan – urban management officers, a cross between mayors, sheriff, and city managers. From Hindi: Jai Ho! — “it is accomplished," a phrase that became popular through the film Slumdog Millionaire.

Call me a chauvinist, but I like the words that can be claimed to originate in America, even though they highlight some of the worst elements of our culture. Words such as "recessionista" – fashion conscious who use the economic slowdown to their financial benefit; "Octomom" -- for the mother of the octuplets; or "green washing" – re-branding an old product as environmentally friendly.

My own choice of the One Millionth: 4eva!

p.s. Before you buy baloons and champagne, read the comment by fact-checker extraordinaire John McIntyre, who casts a skeptical eye on GLM's claim.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Longtime Baltimorean Steve Luxenberg has been writing for all of his adult life, a process that began, he says, when he went to the library as a kid and absorbed lessons about character, plot and style from such masters as Charles Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson. Luxenberg is a former reporter and editor for The Sun, and currently, for the Washington Post. His memoir, Annie's Ghosts, about his efforts to find out more about the life of a disabled aunt whom he hadn't known existed, received favorable reviews when it was published last month. (You can learn more about the book here.)

He recently spoke to Read Street about the "free, lifelong turorial" he's getting from the printed page.

  Q: How did he learn to read? My mother liked to tell this story. She claims that when I was three or four, I would bring her the paper and I'd read to her from it, and she thought someone had just told me the words. So one day, she brought me the newspaper and gave me an article to read that I couldn't possibly have seen. According to her, I read it, though I'm sure it wasn't with any comprehension.

Q: First influential book? The Secret Garden, which I read in the first grade. There's no way I could have understood it then, as you need to hear it in a Yorkshire accent. That showed me that a reader doesn't need to understand everything about a book to get something out of it. You can read it at one level at age 6, at another level at age 12, and another as a mature adult.

Q: How did you become a writer? I came to writing through reading. If I didn't have a book in my hands, I had a ball. When I read, I was on Treasure Island. I was the one who was being kidnapped. I sank the winning basket. 

Q: A reading experiment: I consider audio books to be reading. I listened to the first half of Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin on audio, and then read the second half to test my comprehension. I found that I, personally, read slower and more carefully when I'm holding a book in my hands. Reading allows me to flip to the back at any time to read the notes and find out how she knew something.

And by the way, Team of Rivals deserves all the accolades it has received.

Q: Another memoir you recommend? Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett. It's about her relationship with her best friend, Lucy Grealy, a talented writer whose face had been disfigured in an accident. If my own writing ever comes close to Ann Patchett's level of honesty, I will have accomplished something. 

Posted by Mary McCauley at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Meet the Author
        

Read Streeter Patrick Lackey, a former newspaper grunt who hasn't lost the journalist's curiosity, e-mails: "A [Washington] Post book review the other day said that only 20 percent of novel readers are men. Have you heard that?"

Patrick was referring to Ron Charles' review of The Signal, in which he proposed building a memorial for the novel-for-men. An excerpt: "Chuck Palahniuk and his Pygmy vibrator gags notwithstanding, polls suggest that only 20 percent of fiction readers are male. Ian McEwan warned in the Guardian that 'when women stop reading, the novel will be dead.' " Charles elaborated on a Post blog, stating that men have dropped novels (if they ever held them to begin with) for narrative nonfiction such as The Perfect Storm and Into Thin Air.

I'm an exception to the rule. I flip between novels and nonfiction -- right now, I'm reading the novel House of Leaves and a nonfiction golf book called The Match. But I find that in conversations with friends, women are usually flush with recommendations about novels, while men usually talk about books relating to a) business, b) sports and c) the business of sports.

Here's the question: What do men want? They must be looking for something different from books. Practical knowledge? A sense of accomplishment? Vicarious adventure?

Maybe it's time to make a statement, and give novels for Father's Day. Some new releases that look promising: Between Assassinations by Aravind Adiga, the author of White Tiger; Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard; and My Father's Tears by John Updike. (If you want to play it safe, there's always Satchel, a biography of Satchel Paige by Larry Tye.)

To help achieve our lofty goal, I'll pledge to give my dad a novel this year. (I can't say which one -- don't want to spoil the surprise.)

I'll also give away one of the novels noted above to a Read Street reader. Just leave a comment with your take on this issue -- or another recommended novel for guys -- and I'll choose a lucky winner.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (47)
        

As if the list of things I want couldn't get any longer, my friend Mary sends me this photo post of card catalogs.

My vote for best use of a retired catalog cabinet? Wine bar!

Although a shoe closet comes in close second. And those hooks are the perfect place to hang a few pictures. Oh! And for you sewing enthusiasts, it'd be pretty handy to keep all your little bits organized.

I could clearly go on and on.

Of course, you could also use it as a, you know, card catalog. But it seems that most libraries gave up the paper system, as Ruth Ann Brown is shown doing here at Liberty High in Eldersburg, 16 years ago. 

Got any of your own ideas for these little beauties? Better yet, do you have one of your own?

(Sun photo: Barbara Haddock)

Posted by Nancy Knight at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As I noted on Read Street last week, the reclusive J.D. Salinger recently emerged from his self-imposed exile to try to stop publication of an unauthorized “sequel” to The Catcher in the Rye. In challenging 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, Salinger argues that he has the exclusive rights to any sequel and to the character of Holden Caulfield.

These days, it’s a wonder there aren’t more battles like this over Bella Swan, Robert Langdon, Kay Scarpetta or other well-known characters.

After all, our entertainment culture loves nothing more than a hit that can be extended with sequels, spinoffs and one-offs — not to mention tell-all books and ice shows. So what if few (any?) sequels live up to the original? There’s money to be made, and some clever marketing can keep risk-averse consumers interested for at least two sequels.

With the ability to share information at light-speed, distribute books online (and even publish inexpensively in print)  how long will it take for someone to write Twilight-lite, a book about Ella and vampire Ned? Or Leonardo’s Code, with Roberto Langdonelli?

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

George Pelecanos has won praise for his hard-edged novels, and his work as a producer for HBO's The Wire. Here is Sarah Weinman's review of his new book, The Way Home, a softer approach to story-telling:

There comes a point in a writer’s career when reviewers start to look not just at the book on the “New Releases” table in the bookstore, but at the body of work as a whole. For crime writers, such summary judgments focus either on specific characters — Chandler’s Marlowe, Christie’s Marple and Poirot, Highsmith’s Ripley — or indelible one-offs, like Eric Ambler’s A Coffin for Dimitrios and Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place. Characters inspire loyalty, passion and debate among readers; one-offs spur re-examination, depending on the time period of discovery.

George Pelecanos, however, is a different breed, because his work is less about specific characters and more about discrete periods. Certainly, all his novels share certain attributes: chronicling urban Washington, D.C., as it was then and now, paying attention to the nuances of racial tensions and togetherness, examining masculinity against the backdrop of criminality, all set to musical soundtracks. But the three early ’90s novels featuring accidental P.I. Nick Stefanos crackle with a youthful energy that sobers up in two subsequent period-heavy quartets, and disappears entirely starting with 2006’s The Night Gardener.

To use art-class terminology, the Stefanos trilogy represents Pelecanos’ student days, the D.C. Quartet is early (when he’s more or less found his voice), the novels starring Derek Strange and Terry Quinn (especially 2004’s Hard Revolution) are early-late, and now, in his early 50s, it is only right that Pelecanos is thick in his middle period. The prose isn’t as loose but the edges aren’t as sharp. The musical soundtrack plays, but it blends better into the scene. Urban D.C. remains the setting, but with history dispensed with, social concerns are contemporary and do not resort to a younger man’s righteous bombast.

The strongest example of this quieter approach in Pelecanos’ new novel, The Way Home, appears early on,the turning point that transforms Chris Flynn from a trouble-prone, pot-smoking teenager into a youth-detention statistic: “He drove west on Livingston, the street where he lived, and a car turned off 41st and fell in behind him. The car was a big square sedan and it was then that he knew.” By the end of that paragraph, Chris has been cuffed by a policeman ready to recount his recent transgressions: “The woman who hit our cruiser at Morrison, where you blew that stop sign? Mother of three. She’s in Sibley’s emergency room with severe injuries. They collared her and taped her to a gurney.”

Act 1 finished, Pelecanos gets to work on the meat of the story: how Chris’ juvenile incarceration strips away folly and transforms him into a hardworking man on the cusp of redemption. He is ready to settle down, yet the prospect of returning to his old ways dangles over him with far greater potential costs. The scenes at juvenile hall bring to mind Don Carpenter’s 1966 tome Hard Rain Falling (to be reissued this fall with an introduction by Pelecanos), especially in its depiction of emerging masculinity within detention walls.

During the redemptive phase, a chance discovery underneath a floorboard provokes a series of cascading moral dilemmas that puts Chris on the same path as a couple of sociopaths straight out of a Charles Willeford novel. Even then, as he does with a middle-class matron, a quietly seething waitress and Chris’ fellow Pine Ridge mates, Pelecanos passes no judgment, depicting them with an understanding of their character.

The Way Home remains true to its titular purpose; as a result, the structure is perhaps less weighted toward a classic narrative arc and more toward the journey itself. As with his last two novels, Pelecanos demonstrates that redemption, if it comes at all, is hard-won.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Reviews
        

Happy Friday, everyone! I hope your week flew by, and that you have wonderful weekends ahead of you. I, for one, will spend mine reading. I was hoping to indulge in this 48-hour readathon, but I eventually decided that staying up for 48 hours straight may just result in my death at this point in time. But you better believe I'm coming back to this idea when I'm better rested!

(Also, for you mystery lovers, there's a whole different readathon for you! This is clearly the weekend for reading!)

Anyway, I have just begun reading The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin, which I was inspired to pick up because of Supreme Court Justice David Souter's impending retirement. Those justices may not be hard partiers, but the innerworkings of the court sure do make for a compelling story!

And how about our Freebie Tuesday winner? It's Jenn! (Not to be confused with Jen Forbus, who won last week. I hope the number randomizer hasn't developed a fancy to Jen(n)s, because I will be forced to pick names from hats again.) I hope Beowulf on the Beach helps you find a book you can get through.

Next up, Do-Over: In Which a 48-year-old Father of Three Returns to Kindergarten, Summer Camp, the Prom and Other Embarrassments. Just let me know what you're reading, and this hysterical memoir by Robin Hemley could be yours.

Posted by Nancy Knight at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Freebie Friday
        

Somewhere, James Joyce and Sylvia Beach are smiling. The Guardian reports that a rare first edition of Joyce's Ulysses sold Thursday for £275,000 (nearly $450,000), the highest price recorded for a 20th-century first edition.

The book was remarkably well-preserved, according to the news report -- mainly because the original owner only read the last part, which contained the sexy innuendo that led authorities to ban it in the U.S. and other countries.

I can only wonder about that owner. Was he/she a daring reader (probably)? A legal scholar researching the First Amendment (doubt it)? The book itself might not have been published without the intervention of Beach, a Baltimore-born woman who opened a Paris bookshop called Shakespeare & Co. between the wars.

She became a one-woman support group for Hemingway, Joyce and other talented writers who populated the city. And when none of the big publishing houses would touch the salacious Ulysses, she published it. p.s. I love the Guardian's cheeky prose. In a previous article about Joyce, the paper states: "The novel, first published in Paris on February 2 1922, in the teeth of a threatened prosecution for obscenity, is regarded as one of the most influential, and most half-read, of the 20th century."

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Are you free tonight?

If so, you should stop by the Pratt at 7 p.m., where author and PBS anchor Gwen Ifill and civil rights lawyer and University of Maryland professor Sherrilyn A. Ifill will discuss race in America. The library is partnering with Open Society Institute - Baltimore for the event, and considering how often I've seen both of these women on the news lately, talking about President Obama, Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor and the general state of the country, I can bet you're going to be interested in what they have to say.

And if you're in the market for some cheap books (who isn't?) you're going to want to drop by Belvedere Square to take advantage of Daedalus' "Gigantic Clearance Sale." Held Saturday and Sunday, the store promises 50 percent discounts on hundreds of books -- many of which are heavily discounted in the first place. Not a bad way to spend a weekend, I say.

Saturday evening, Cyclops Bookstore, formerly The Baltimore Chop, is throwing a party for jmww's third print anthology launch, featuring readings from the second and third anthologies. Editor Jen Michalski will be joined by Jessica Anya Blau, William Duell, Pete Pazmino, Justin Sirois, Joseph Young, Savannah Schroll Guz and Erik Goodman; with copies of the third anthology on sale for $7.

And even if you don't make it Saturday night, you should check out Cyclops. The store is huge, and the owners promise books, shows and a good time for all at the new location on North Avenue. Not to mention, Joe Squared pizza is right across the street!

Looking for more great events? Check out the Read Street calendar. If you have a few of your own events you want to let us know about, send us an e-mail!

Posted by Nancy Knight at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Book It
        

J.D. Salinger's legal battle to halt publication of 60 Years Later: Coming through the Rye, an unauthorized sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, has received a lot of attention. I was amazed to see Salinger and related search terms listed in Google's hot trends yesterday, along with the usual pop culture chaff: Kate Gosselin in bikini, Kathy Griffin and the latest reality TV finale. For more readings:

-- Read the lawsuit at The Smoking Gun. -- The publisher of 60 Years Later, Fredrik Colting, told Swedish newspaper the Local that the Salinger challenge was "completely ludicrous." He admitted that 60 Years Later is "written in Salinger's style", but said "words and imagination belong to everyone. You can't copyright a style. Otherwise, we wouldn't have any books left."

-- Susan Weissman, On Huffington Post, says the "sequel" will ruin memories: "I don't want to think, let alone read, about Holden Caulfield aging in a senior home any more than I want to consider where or who Mr. Hubner is right now. Whether J.D. California wrote his sequel, 60 Years Later: Coming Through The Rye as a tribute or for personal gain, isn't my question. Rather, why would a writer want to mar the once perfect love of any true readers?"

-- The Wall Street Journal has a Q&A with Marc Reiner, a copyright lawyer and partner at Dorsey & Whitney in New York.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Any Charlaine Harris fans out there? A Read Street commenter, Cindy, is asking for help. She asks: Are the Sookie Stackhouse series novels written for teen-agers or adults. I am a city librarian and don't know where to shelve them.

I'm no help here. I've watched some of the HBO adaptation, True Blood, but haven't read any of Harris' books. So I'm hoping others can provide an answer. Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal interview with Harris, in which she discusses how sex has been ratcheted up for the TV audience:

WSJ: What did you make of the show's racy material? Ms. Harris: The sex scenes startled me very much. There are sex scenes in the book, but not as many as in the show. The books are all written in the first person, so when Sookie's brother leaves a scene [for a romantic encounter], you don't see what goes on. But you do with the show, and that took some getting used to at first.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

In preparation for buying our house (I promise, I'll stop talking about it soon), Pat and I gave each other housewarming gifts.

I bought him cool octopus plates, which I love because the poor thing looks slightly worried that he's going to be eaten along with the food.

And he got me this gorgeous print by Beth Barker White, whose work you may remember from The Monsters of Templeton.

Notice how the cat in the design closely mirrors my own kitty, Cleo.

Man, she loves staring at the birds -- although I'm pretty sure she'd have no idea what to do with one if she could catch it.

Anyway, I sent Ms. White a quick e-mail to let her know how much I appreciate her art, and the Baltimore native (she attended the Bryn Mawr School) was kind enough to respond.

"I recently did another book that just came out last month called The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate," she said. "It is a children's book that you might like to look for."

So has anyone seen this one on the shelves yet? I'd love to hear what you think of the book, and its cover illustration, of course.

Posted by Nancy Knight at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A while back, as the second generation Kindle was being introduced, I noted 10 Reasons to Hate the Kindles and asked readers to suggest more. Lauretta, Eve and others noted the joy of loaning books, or toting a good read to a sick friend. At The Millions, Edan Lupucki has written a similar, compelling post, which laments the inwardness of ebooks. An excerpt: "For a period, novelist Katherine Taylor brought The Mystery Guest by Gregoire Bouillier to dinner parties. 'Wine is boring,' she told me. "Books last longer." ... Now Ms. Taylor has moved onto handing out Maurice Sendak's The Nutshell Library."

Meanwhile, author Sherman Alexie hit a nerve at Book Expo America, by saying that the Kindle is elitist and that he wanted to hit a woman sitting on a plane who was using a Kindle on her flight to New York. Judging by the all-smiles photo on his website, he isn't involved in much hand-to-hand combat, but I applaud his bomb-throwing. Apparently lots of folks took issue, figuring that a $350 pricetag is nothing these days. Edward Champion has an interesting interview with Alexie, allowing him to expand on his BEA comments. An excerpt: "I consider the Kindle elitist because it’s too expensive. I also consider it elitist because, right now, one company is making all the rules. I am also worried about Jeff Bezos’ comments about wanting to change the way we read books. That’s rather imperial. Having grown up poor, I’m also highly aware that there’s always a massive technology gap between rich and poor kids." (p.s. You may need an oven mitt to handle some of the comments by Kindle-ites.)

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

Maybe you've never written a book, but that doesn't mean you can't make one. Our fellow bloggers over at B'more Green suggest trying the book-making classes at Tilt Studio’s gallery in Charles Village. The classes are held three Saturdays in June, and cover the art of paper making, bindings and paste papers. The price is $35 per class.

The schedule is June 13, paste papers; June 20, covers; and June 27, rebinding, including making old books into working journals. Get more details here or contact Jessica Pegorsch at jmp@tiltstudioinc.com.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Marylandia
        

In the midst of an exhausting, exhilirating weekend moving into our new house, I realized I had failed to post last week's Freebie Friday! To make it worse, we haven't had Internet access for the past four days, making it a bit more difficult to fix that problem

But now, I'm back! And we're going to do this giveaway right.

First of all, what I've been reading: Mostly, settlement papers. And when we weren't reading those papers, we were just blindly signing them. I'm glad that's over. I hope you've all had infinitely more rewarding reading experiences.

Jen Forbus is our latest randomly selected winner! Congratulations, Jen, and I hope you enjoy Sag Harbor!

To make up for my tardiness, we're going to have a two-fer today: Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits, by Jack Murnighan, should help cull your selections this summer; and "Don't Forget to Sing in the Lifeboats," a collection of quotes to quell your inner pessimist.

So let us know what you're reading! And don't mind me while I continue to unpack all these boxes...

Posted by Nancy Knight at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)
Categories: Freebie Friday
        

J.D. Salinger, who perfectly captured the theme of teenage, preppy, male angst in The Catcher in the Rye, is suing to halt the publication of a "sequel" by another author.  

The new book, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye by J.D. California, picks up Holden Caulfield's story decades later. It is already available in the UK and is due to be published in the US in the autumn, according to The Times of London. But Salinger's lawsuit in federal court in New York, says that he has exclusive rights to a sequel and the Caulfield character (who in the new book is called only Mr. C). It calls the sequel "a ripoff, pure and simple," according to AP.

So who owns Caulfield -- or Elizabeth Bennet or Ishmael? That's an interesting question, particularly in light of the recent hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, which has triggered a rush of like-minded supernatural sequels to literary masterpieces. Whenever a book, movie or TV show becomes a hit, our entertainment culture tries to stretch that success with sequels and spinoffs -- until it snaps. (Rocky XX, anyone?)

At last week's Book Expo America, Perseus allowed anyone to submit first sentences to imagined sequels, and published them as a collection. (One example:  "How 'bout them apples?" the Tree cried triumphantly, throwing the Boy off her stump. — From The Giving Tree Benefits from a Self-Esteem Workshop, a sequel to Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. That was a good-natured stunt to show the power and immediacy of crowd-sourcing. But it also highlights the potential dangers of a world where information can be shared and spread at light-speed. I doubt the courts are fast enough to provide a real remedy.

The U.S. courts will provide a legal answer to the Catcher sequel issue. But I think there should be a separate, socially based response from readers: Ignore the new book. 

The Times article noted that Salinger, a 90-year-old recluse, has resorted to the courts before to protect his literary rights. In 1982 he sued a man who allegedly tried to sell a fictitious interview with the author to a national magazine; the supposed interviewer agreed to desist and Salinger dropped the suit. Five years later, another legal action resulted in an important decision by the US Supreme Court, when it refused to allow publication of an unauthorised biography that quoted from Salinger's unpublished letters. Salinger had copyrighted the letters when he learned about Ian Hamilton’s book, which came out in a revised edition the following year. 

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

All the news of GM's bankruptcy filing today triggers some great memories of growing up in the 1950s and '60s, when big American cars -- and fins -- ruled the road. It's hard to imagine these days, when we're strapped in with seat belts and protected by air bags, but in the big Chevies that my parents favored, I often read while curled up on the floor of the rear seating area.

One of my fondest memories is being given some money as we prepared for another drive from central Connecticut to New York, where my father's relatives lived. I'd head to the drug store to buy comic books -- Batman, Archie, etc. -- and lose myself for hours as my parents guided our Biscayne down the highway.

By modern safety standards, it is unthinkable. (I mean the sitting on the floor -- not reading comic books.) But the solidity of those cars gave off an aura of invincibility. I guess that was part of GM's problem.  

Photo courtesy of Chevrolet  

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 12:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Last weekend, publishers, booksellers, authors and corned beef makers came together in New York for Book Expo America, the industry's big trade show. I wasn't able to make it, but it seems everyone was hunkering down to wait out the recession and bracing for the coming storm of digitized books. I've already seen that hurricane hit the newspaper industry, and it's a safe bet that it will be a rough ride for publishing, too. In the meantime, everyone is dying for the blockbuster that can bring sales -- like Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, which is set for a Sept. 15 release. Some quotes from BEA:

 "If you read a book on paper, you're going to be definitely stamped as retro. This is not going to be a fashionable thing to do." -- Mike Shatzkin of Idea Logical Co. in The Washington Post.

"We're all waiting for the next thing — whatever that is." -- Novelist Richard Russo in USA Today.

“It is good for us to come to remind them as they are seeing those 10 Kindles on the subway on the way to work what value we feel we bring to the industry.” -- Independent bookseller Robert Sindelar in The New York Times.

Posted by Dave Rosenthal at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)