Romania is populated with technological entrepreneurs, hard-working young people and plenty of art, music and culture, Rosapepe and Kast said. Tourists might not put Bucharest at the top of their list, but a visit to the Romanian capital and the rest of the country is worth undertaking.

“Americans who visited Romania got entranced with the place,” Rosapepe said. “They speak English, they’re pro-American, they’re nice people. It’s a very interesting culture and history.”

Perhaps Romania’s most persistent myth revolves around Vlad Dracul, the basis for Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” Also known as Vlad the Impaler, the Transylvanian prince is revered by Romanians several centuries after his death, Kast and Rosapepe write. Though Vlad’s preferred punishment was impaling his victims, the legend of him being a blood-sucking demon helps boost Transylvania’s tourism trade.

“I do think since Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula,’ the vampire legend has made Romania seem really exotic,” Kast said. “People think it’s a real adventure to go there. It is an adventure — but not a scary one.”

Photo of Romanian Athenaeum in downtown Bucharest

The mega-retailers have been battling for an early share of holiday spending, in a war that makes indie bookstores shudder. For one local bookseller’s take on the issue, check out this blog post by Lauretta at Constellation Books in Reisterstown. An excerpt: "My personal opinion as a bookseller is that this price war is not sustainable and will eventually shrink the pool of available publishers and authors. Publishers pay attention to what sells - and if all that is selling are the 5-10 different $8.99-priced titles, they won't accept or print the new authors. They can't afford to. So we get a reduction in titles, a reduction in authors, and eventually a reduction in publishers."

[S]ome half-dozen speakers will take to the podium Saturday to discuss "A Gallery of Rogues," the roster of bad guys and ne'er-do-wells Holmes was constantly running up against as he tried to make Victorian London a safer place. They'll be talking about the thugs, the schemers, the traitors, the suave evildoers who were always meeting their match in Holmes.

Die-hard Holmesians love to dissect the world Conan Doyle created, to try to extract tiny bits of information about the characters. (Did Holmes, for example, attend Oxford or Cambridge? Conan Doyle never said, but fans have their opinions.) And they love to try and rationalize the occasional inconsistencies that creep into the narrative. The wound Dr. Watson received while fighting in Afghanistan, for instance: Was it in his leg, as one story says, or in his shoulder?

"Conan Doyle was not a stickler for continuity," says Abdrew Solberg, in a tone more amused than critical.

But the public wanted more from Holmes, and Conan Doyle brought him back after a hiatus of nearly a decade. He's been with us, in one form or another, ever since, most notably in an early-20th century stage play starring and written by William Gillette, in a 1940s movie series starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, and in a series of British teleplays starring Jeremy Brett, whom most fans consider the definitive Holmes.

Except for an appearance on Oprah the day before release, she'll skip the largest U.S. cities, and appear in reddish small towns across the nation, the AP reports. The tour starts Nov. 18 at a Barnes & Noble in Grand Rapids, Mich., and includes other stops in Noblesville, Ind.; Washington, Pa.; and Rochester, N.Y.

ABC News also plans a huge sendoff for the book -- similar to the Today shows recent touting of Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Barbara Walters' interviews of Palin will air in five parts on Good Morning America, Nightline and 20/20.

Not surprising that ABC -- and many others-- would want to take advantage of Palin's book, which was on best-seller lists well before the release date.

You read that right -- that's one thousand two hundred dollars.

At first, I was completely flummoxed. Sure, it's made of fabric and handsewn, but what's the big deal? Then I saw the photo of the little boy with the book -- and the book is nearly as big as him!

It's a ginormous tome about everyday household monsters that move remote controls, steal socks and generally do all those pesky things sometimes kids are blamed for. In other words, perfect for your favorite little hellion.

Or, you know, me. I wouldn't mind taking a nap with that beauty.

However, I'm betting that no one I know -- or that you know, for that matter -- is going to lay down more than a grand for what amounts to a children's book, no matter who awesomely huge it is.

But someone, please, prove me wrong. If you've got a copy of "Monsters of the Household Variety," do send me some pictures!

Amazon Technologies has applied for a patent for a process that would slightly alter each copy of an e-book. That way, if someone spread it around the Internet illegally, the version could be tracked. And presumably, the offender could be shipped to a cold, distant planet.

But the best part is the way the e-book is altered: by having a computer use synonyms to alter the text ever so slightly. Sure some fussy authors might complain. But does it really matter if the sky is described as blue or azure?

As the application says: "A synonym substitution mechanism may programmatically replace selected words in textual data with synonyms for the selected words. The modification to an excerpt performed by the synonym substitution mechanism may not significantly alter the meaning of the excerpt to a human reader. By replacing one or more selected words in an excerpt with synonyms for the words, illicit copies of the excerpt may be recognized by comparing a copy of the excerpt to the original."

So, as some snarky commenter noted, the opening of Moby-Dick might become, "Phone me Ishmael."  Or the opening of "A Tale of Two Cities" might read, "It was the best of intervals, it was the worst of intervals." There's a certain ring to it, eh?

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch, who lives right here in Baltimore of course, will be at the Central Library Thursday night to discuss his behemoth of a book, "The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President."

(The evening is an installment of the library's Writers Live series, with upcoming authors including Sheila Kast, Michael Salcman, Jon Franklin and Terry Teachout.)

"The Clinton Tapes" is the result of seven years worth of conversations with President Bill Clinton, during which they discussed everything from Kosovo to Monica Lewinsky. And Thursday evening, you'll be treated to Branch's reactions and observations during these talks, leading to what is sure to be an unusually intimate account of a man who led our country for eight years.

And I hear the guy's pretty knowledgeable about Martin Luther King Jr., too.

Mattie, from Rockville, wrote six best-selling books before dying on June 22, 2004. Among his fans were former president Jimmy Carter and author Maya Angelou, who admired his message: seeking world peace. Now, his mother Jeni -- who lost four children to the disease she also suffers from -- has written "Messenger," about Mattie's slife. (An excerpt from the book is avaiable at the GMA website.)

Here's a photo gallery of the Stepaneks, including some touching images from Mattie's funeral. And for more on this extraordinary child, here's an excerpt from a 2006 Baltimore Sun story by Joe Burrirs:

Stepanek watched as her son handled going from sometimes struggling with Jamie's death (Mattie's two eldest siblings, Stevie and Katie, died before he was born) to coping with his own mortality to crafting words that would help others cope with grief. But she would discover that fame often comes with detractors, even for someone like Mattie.

"Someone once asked him, `If everything in life has choice, did you choose to have a dying body?'" she said.

"And Mattie said, `I have not chosen to have a disability, but I will choose how to live my life with a disability, and peace is a choice because being peaceful is an attitude.'"

She beat retiring TV anchor Sally Thorner to advance to the final round of The Baltimore Sun's Celebrity Smackdown, where she'll compete in a one-week runoff with seven others. Most -- Nestor Aparicio, Tom Tasselmyer, Stan Stovall, Stacy Keibler and Dave Durian -- have made their names on TV or radio. But who would have thought Tyler, BSO conductor Marin Alsop and former Gov. William Donald Schaefer would still be in the running?

So who should represent Charm City? Keibler, who's best know as a leggy pro wrestler, or Tyler, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer? Maybe we can offset Keibler's pyrotechnic personality by reviving that stirring 1840 election slogan: Tippecanoe and Tyler Too (for William Henry Harrison, hero of the battle of Tippecanoe, and John Tyler, his Vice President).

You know the drill: Vote Anne, early and often.

Photo by Diana Walker courtesy of Random House

According to the Wall Street Journal, Walmart has limited online customers to two copies of certain bargain books, Amazon.com has a three-copy maximum on certain discounted titles and Target Corp. has a five-copy limit online. The price war involves the top 10 hottest book pre-orders.

Taking a closer look at book pricing, Publishers Weekly says that "based on the published discount schedules of the major publishers, there is no way Amazon and Wal-Mart can profitably sell the 10 titles that are being discounted. The highest published discounts offered by publishers for new titles is 48% for books shipped to retail distribution centers; retailers can earn a 50% discount for books bought nonreturnable. The discounts offered by Wal-Mart to customers for books it prices at $8.98, however, range from 74% (Under the Dome, list $35) to 59% (Ice, list $22), which would mean Wal-Mart is losing $8.52 on Dome and $2.02 on Ice."

The price war has led an association of independent booksellers to call for a Justivce Department investigation of alleged "predatory pricing."