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Wait, wait! I have one more thing! I’m not trying to have the last word. Frank had all the best last words (and I’m jealous, Frank. YOU got to see Keir). But I just read this intriguing little biblio-tidbit while in the car to Joplin, MO today. It’s from Service and Style: How the American [...]

Never one to rest on her considerable laurels, J.K. Rowling is reportedly haunting the coffee shops of Scotland and working on a post-Harry Potter mystery novel. Never one to rest on my not-quite-so-considerable laurels, I’m heading back to my two blogs and podcast in anticipation of Keir’s imminent return. I enjoyed seeing him last weekend in [...]

Two books to consider: Rengen by Patricia Martin Natural Born Charmer by Susan Elizabeth Phillips Besides having a flat-out fantastic name, Patricia Martin’s book explores a very interesting idea about a cultural shift in America: the creation, rise, and influence of a cultural consumer. … individuals who are hungry for innovative ideas and ways to [...]

I don’t have a lot of patience for those crepe-hangers who like to bemoan the fate of the book. Faced with the looming onslaught of technical devices with which to read, they wring their hands and clutch their beloved copies of Great Expectations to their heaving bosoms, vowing never to let ear buds invade their [...]

In my readers’ advisory (RA) class, I often include an assignment that asks students to visit any book store they wish and look around. What I hope they will see are examples of RA in action – in a different setting than their library. The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, N.C. offers some great RA moments [...]

The Financial Times examines how the estates of late authors pump out new ghostwritten works and otherwise keep their brands alive. I found this quote particularly telling: “Often an author already has an extensive literary canon to exploit. Dahl and Dahl Ltd, which handles the estate of the children’s author Roald Dahl, has refused to [...]

That’s the sense one gets from reading this Seattle Weekly piece on the trouble inmates have getting books from the outside unless they come from “approved vendors”: “While Washington state isn’t alone in only allowing new books (Oregon also only allows books from publishers and major national distributors like Amazon.com), its adherence to the approved [...]

That’s the question I had after reading the New York Observer article on James Wood’s move from the New Republic to the New Yorker, in which the critic states: “In recent years… I had felt that I was repeating myself, that the pieces were becoming a bit automatic, a bit inevitable.” If the beat stays [...]

The O.J. Simpson book that proved too hot for tabloid titan Rupert Murdoch has been picked up by New York-based Beaufort, a publisher that’s served as a vanity press in the past. As Publishers Lunch reports today: “…as of recently Beaufort described themselves this way: ‘Beaufort offers an intriguing alternative to the traditional publishing model. We [...]

I was looking over all the reality television offerings and realized that aside from C-SPAN’s BookTV (a televised book report), there are no “real” shows that appeal to the bards and scribblers among us. Every other art form has secured its own small screen showcase, how about one for writers? Here are my pitches for [...]