The Baltimore Sun is shifting the platform for its blogs, so Read Street is moving to a new address: http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/books/read-street. Don't forget to update your bookmarks and your RSS feeds (the new feed is http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/books/read-street/rss2.0.xml).

The new platform will give Read Street a different look. And it may be a bit disconcerting at first, because the archives won't be moved over, leaving the blog with an empty feel.

But it won't change my approach to presenting daily news and views about books.

See you at the new place! If you have a question or comment about the new look, email me at dave.rosenthal@baltsun.com.

For your viewing pleasure, the official trailer for "The Hunger Games," the movie drawn from the popular dystopian novel of Suzanne Collins. The related works in the trilogy are "Mockingjay" and "Catching Fire." The movie is scheduled for a March 23, 2012 release.

The Instructables website says Oobleck is "a non-newtonian fluid. That is, it acts like a liquid when being poured, but like a solid when a force is acting on it. You can grab it and then it will ooze out of your hands. Make enough Oobleck and you can even walk on it!" (Or run, as in this YouTube video.)

Oobleck is named for the goo featured in Dr. Seuss' book, "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" (1949). It's a sequel of sorts to "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins," (1938) and features King Derwin of Didd and his young subject. The King asks his magicians -- "men of groans and howls, mystic men who eat boiled owls" -- to summon something other than snow and rain from the sky, so they oblige with the green-ness that threatens to ruin his kingdom.

Not one of Dr. Seuss' most memorable books, but its impact lingers today, in kitchens around the world.

It's hard for me to imagine the thoughtful, soft-spoken man I grew up with as a warrior. But he was like most of the men and women who fought in World War II and other wars -- he never made a big deal about his service to the country. I've visited some of the places his division passed through in France and Belgium, but he never showed much interest in going there himself. In recent years -- he'll celebrate his 90th birthday this month -- he has talked about it a bit more, but only when pressed with questions.

So in that same spirit, on this Veteran's Day, I'll recommend the documentary "Restrepo," or the companion book "War" by Sebastian Junger, both very human looks at soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. To a one -- even a future Medal of Honor recipient -- they showed a selflessness and dedication that is remarkable under such grueling conditions.

Bil Keane, whose Family Circus cartoon about a family with four cute little kids is carried in nearly 1,500 newspapers, has died at age 89.

According to the Los Angeles Times' obit, Keane mined his own family for material. He admitted to modeling the bespectacled and often befuddled Daddy on himself. His wife, Thelma, was the inspiration for the always-loving and ever-patient mother, also named Thel.

"I don't just try to be funny," Keane told The Times in 1990. "Many of my cartoons are not a belly laugh. I go for nostalgia, the lump in the throat, the tear in the eye, the tug in the heart."

The Philadelphia-born Keane was a self-taught artist, and had his first cartoon published in the Philadelphia Daily News in 1936, earning a dollar, according to his website. During World War II,he was stationed in Australia -- where he met his future wife -- and his drawings touted war bonds and safety among the soldiers.

King Features, which distributes the cartoon, said William Aloysius Keane started out imitating the styles of some of The New Yorker magazine cartoonists of the late 1930s, such as George Price, Richard Decker and Peter Arno. At the time, he and some friends were putting out a satire magazine, The Saturday Evening Toast, when he decided to drop the second L in "Bill." "I really did it just to be different," he said. "I thought it was a little more distinguished and started signing my cartoons that way, and it stuck."

King said the first Family Circus cartoon, which ran on February 29, 1960, showed Mommy surrounded by a roomful of toy clutter, answering the door to a survey person who asked, "Any children?" Keane's son, Jeff, will keep Family Circus going, the syndicate said.

By lining up more than 16,000 retail outlets, Amazon will give consumers a chance to handle the Kindle in all its flavors, as well as to get assistance if something goes wrong. That puts the Kindle on a more equal footing with the Nook, which is sold through Barnes & Noble stores. And it should be particularly helpful for test-driving the Fire, a tablet version of the Kindle -- just as the Apple stores are convenient places to try out the iPad.

Amazon said that the Kindle line would be sold, starting November 15, "in any Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Staples, Sam’s Club, RadioShack, Office Depot, as well as several other retailers." It noted that the $79 Kindle has been available in stores since shortly after it was introduced. Mike McKenna, vice president for Amazon Kindle, said in a statement, “We’re excited to be working with popular retailers across the country to offer their customers Kindle Fire as well as Kindle, Kindle Touch and Kindle Touch 3G this holiday."

I'm excited to see what's next in the seasonal battle. It reminds me of the great scene in "Miracle on 34th Street," when the executives of Macy's and Gimbels are trying to outdo each other with Christmas promotions. Classic.

News that Penn State football coach Joe Paterno is resigning, in the aftermath of a sex abuse probe involving a former assistant, marks a sad end to a long-running legacy. Paterno, 84, had been head coach at the school for nearly a half-century, and had built a reputation as a guy with integrity, one who avoided the recruiting scandals that hit other big-time football programs.

So what's he doing in a book blog? Well, for one thing, Paterno was an English major at Brown University, before building a career in football. And for another, he may be the most-written-about college coach in America. (Though all those autobiographies will have to add a sad coda.) Lastly, I've always admired Paterno from afar, and for the past several years, have made a trek with friends to Happy Valley to watch a game. We were foiled in the last attempt by the freak October snowstorm -- I got as far as Harrisburg before having to turn back. Maybe that was a bad omen.

To read about the pre-scandal Paterno, here are some options:

"Pride of the Lions: The Biography of Joe Paterno" by Frank Fitzpatrick

"No Ordinary Joe: The Biography of Joe Paterno" by Michael O'Brien

"Playing for Paterno: One Coach, Two Eras: a Father and Son's Personal Recollections of Playing for JoePa" by Charles Pittman and Tony Pittman

"This is a tragedy," Paterno said in a statement Wednesday. "It is one of the great sorrows of my life. With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more."

Yesterday, I noted the arrival of the Nook tablet, which will go head-to-head with the Amazon Fire, and also offer some competition for Apple's iPad. For those who are already looking forward to Black Friday, here are excerpts from the latest reviews and commentary about the Nook tablet, which will cost $249 -- about $50 more than the Fire -- and be available Nov. 18.

Christian Science Monitor: Perhaps the biggest difference between the Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire? Because Barnes & Noble is more focused on selling e-books and other digital reading content, it’s less restrictive than the Kindle Fire, allowing users to access content from other suppliers. Amazon, by contrast, is reportedly selling the Kindle Fire at a loss so it can make profits selling Amazon services.

PCWorld: Double the amount of RAM and storage alone would justify the extra $50. ... The price might be as low as half...of one of Apple’s tablets, but you won’t get any cameras for video chatting...and the selection of third-party apps is minimal, as both Barnes & Noble and Amazon curate their own app portals.

Wired:[O]n a 7-inch tablet with proper hardware inside, gaming feels just right. In fact, an emphasis on gaming, video and digital comics (a new media category for Barnes & Noble, thanks to a big new partnership with Marvel) suggests to me that the Nook Tablet’s target audience (or one of them, at least) isn’t so much the middle-class career moms who snapped up the first-gen Nook Color, but rather their offspring, who love games, comics and Harry Potter.

Computerworld: [T]he Kindle Fire offers 8GB of storage with no SD card expansion -- however, it does offer streaming media via Amazon Prime, an advantage that makes the Fire as much a media source as an e-reader.

Just in time for holiday shopping, Barnes & Noble has intruduced its Nook tablet, jumping into the high-level tablet competition with Amazon's Kindle Fire and Apple's iPad (which was always touted as more than an e-reader).

The Fire, which will be released Nov. 15, sells for $199. That's lower than the Nook tablet's $249 price, and the iPad 2's entry-level $499.

CNET broke down some of the differences between the Nook tablet, which comes out Nov. 18, and Kindle Fire. It gave the nod to the Nook for more memory and storage, as well as bricks-and-mortar stores for customer support. The Kindle Fire, meanwhile, has a lower price and Amazon's broad content offerings to choose from.

We'll revisit the topic as holiday shopping starts in earnest, because both of the new tablets are sure to be big sellers -- and a big problem for consumers struggling to choose.

Andy Rooney, who died Friday at age 92, was a favorite TV curmudgeon, that wacky uncle who sometimes had trouble confronting change -- like the e-books he discusses here.

The Baltimore Sun's TV blogger, David Zurawik, notes that Rooney "wrote for television since its birth, spending nearly 60 years at CBS, 30 of them behind the camera as a writer and producer, first for entertainment and then news programming, before becoming a household name – a role he said he was never comfortable in. He preferred to be known as a writer and was the author of best-selling books and a national newspaper column, in addition to his 60 MINUTES essays. But it is his television role as the inquisitive and cranky commentator on 60 MINUTES that made him a cultural icon. For 33 years, Rooney had the last word on the most watched television program in history. "

Rooney leaves behind a long list of entertaining video clips, which we can relive via YouTube. And for those with a curmudgeonly streak, there are always his printed words, in "Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit ," "My War" and other books.

R.I.P. Andy. I bet God's getting an earful right now.

Look out libraries, Amazon may have you in its sights with the new Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.

The new program allows Kindle owners to borrow up to one book a month, with no fixed return date. The perk is being bundled with Amazon Prime membership, which includes free shipping and streaming movies for the $79 annual fee. So for pure reading, it isn't a better deal than a library card at the Enoch Pratt or another area library.

Amazon is touting the service with titles such as "Water for Elephants," "Moneyball," and "The Finkler Question." But that masks one of the short-comings: a lack of hot, new best-sellers. The Wall Street Journal noted: “None of the six largest publishers in the U.S. is participating. Several senior publishing executives said recently they were concerned that a digital-lending program of the sort contemplated by Amazon would harm future sales of their older titles or damage ties to other book retailers.”

It would be foolhardy to predict the impact of Amazon's service on the program's first day. That would be like making an Opening Day prediction that the St. Louis Cardinals would win the World Series. Hah! But with Amazon's marketing might, and its broadening lineup of Kindles, I bet the new program will eventually gain a big consumer base -- even if it doesn't hurt libraries.

According to the Associated Press, court documents accused the men of trying to obtain an explosive device for the attacks, and of seeking out a formula for the highly lethal toxin ricin.

Vanderboegh told AP his novel was a "useful dire warning" about what could happen if the federal government encroaches too far on the rights of armed citizens. On the Sipsey Street Irregulars blog, he offered a more detailed disavowal: "My as-yet-unpublished novel Absolved, for the uninitiated, begins with the premise that the ATF, for political agenda reasons of their own, has staged a deadly raid on the wrong Alabama good old boy from Winston County and what happens in the unintended consequences of that stupidity. There is nothing in there about ricin, or terrorist attacks on civilians (unless you count the forces of the federal government) or deliberate targeting of innocents. ... Absolved is fiction. I hope it is a "useful dire warning." However, I am as much to blame for the Georgia Geriatric Terrorist Gang as Tom Clancy is for Nine Eleven."

For a closer look at Absolved, you can check out the chapters gathered at the Gun Rights Examiner website.

If you need a good read, the folks at b, which is a part of the Baltimore Sun, have assembled a great photo gallery of recommendations from area libraries. leading off is "The Night Circus" by Erin Morgenstern, which has been praised in reviews.

I jus finished Erik Larson's "In The Garden of Beasts," which was disappointing. I'll provide a more detailed review later this week, but in general, I found the characters uncharismatic, and the historical drama strangely undramatic. And that's saying something for Nazi-era Germany. I really wanted to like it, but found myself plodding through it.

To get you started on the gallery, here's an excerpt, courtesy of publisher Random House: " The circus arrives without warning.

"No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

"The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No color at all, save for the neighboring trees and the grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colorless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.

"But it is not open for business. Not just yet."

For a holiday treat, here's a Halloween Google Doodle, 41 seconds of spooky entertainment. This evening, I'll be editing stories instead of trick-or-treating, unfortunately, so I'll miss Super Mario, Blueberry Muffin and the other costumed kids in the neighborhood.

For me, the most important aspect of the holiday is strategizing over candy: Do you buy cheap candy, so you won't be tempted to pig out on the leftovers? Or get the good stuff -- Mounds and Almond Joy, in my case? And how many candies can you eat before the trick-or-treaters arrive -- is there a proper etiquette?

Have a spooky night!

The Columbia Flier has a fascinating story about the boyhood home of Randy Pausch, the college professor who gained fame for confronting questions of life and (his impending) death in "The Last Lecture."

The ranch house in Columbia, Md., is being sold, but before any remodeling took place, the artwork that Pausch and his sister created in his bedroom was saved. Some of it will be placed in a studio at Carnegie Mellon University, where he taught, according to David Greisman's article. It's quirky -- just what you'd expect from a future computer science teacher: A silver elevator door reaches nearly from floor to ceiling, the numbers above indicating that the bedroom is on the third of six floors. A green and red box informs the reader that "at the bottom of Pandora's box was hope," and on the ceiling are letters, written backward, that read: "Help! I'm trapped in the attic."

In the article, James David Whitewolf of the university's Entertainment Technology Center, explained the push to save Pausch's work: "Randy was an important person to a lot of people, and what he said and the way he lived his life affected a lot of people. We want to take the few remaining artifacts that we have from his actual living existence and preserve them so that other people can be affected as well."