Book News, In Brief

Obama chose poet Elizabeth Alexander to speak at his inauguration. Clinton chose Maya Angelou, then Miller Williams. JFK apparently kicked the whole trend off when he picked Robert Frost to recite The Gift Outright. Oh, and George W. Bush didn't have a poet at either of his inaugurations. So what does a president's pick of poets say about them? The Guardian UK speculates.

It's time to move your steamy Gavroche/Jean Valjean fanfic off of Slashfic.org and onto Xlibris Print On Demand. A French court court ruled Friday that unauthorized sequels to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables are legal. (Note to local authors: Don't even think about it...)

Authorities have accused a 43-year-old woman of embezzling $350,000 from a Raleigh, NC independent bookstore between 2001 and 2008. $350K? In seven years?! We wish our bookstore was successful enough to make such crimes possible.

Ah, here's something more a bit more realistic: A what-to-do-with-your-books-when-your-bookstore-goes-out-of-business-article. (Thanks to RareBookNews.com for the link!)