Top 5 Prison Books(because even the most relaxed rectum won't hold six)

Cast the First Stone
Chester Himes
From enotes.com: Cast the First Stone (1952) is another of Himes's semi-autobiographical novels. The main character, Jim Monroe, is a white man, but seems to represent Himes as is evidenced by their similarities: both attended college, suffered a serious back injury, and were sentenced to 25 years for armed robbery. The novel focuses on the growth that Monroe experiences while in prison, and is notable for its direct treatment of homosexual relationships in prison.

Escape from Colditz; The two classic escape stories: The Colditz story, and Men of Colditz
P. R Reid
From Iron Gumby: Escape from Colditz is a factual book which reads like a fictional work. P.R. Reid who wrote the book is the main character who is narrating, and participating in the story. The book tells how the Prisoners of war during World War Two lived in confinement and how they used their surroundings to make their escape using replicated German uniforms, and a glider constructed of bed frames and fabric hidden in the attic of a chapel. The prisoners are all bent on escape and the story is how these men plan to flee to Sweden.

Papillon
Henri Charriere
From dooyoo.co.uk: In a nutshell, this book is a tale of Papillons many escape attempts to get away from the penal settlements in French Guiana (many of which were sucessful in the short term) and the amazing lengths he went to to avoid spending the rest of his life repenting a crime he was innocent of. In the end he only served 13 years of his sentence, but to survive 13 years in the environment he found himself in was an accomplishment it itself. He continually escaped, was re-captured, escaped again, was re-captured again and it goes on and on. His escape attempts were daring as he said he'd rather die trying to be a free man than carry on living in the living hell he was in. His final escape was made from Devil's Island, riding the biggest wave that hit the island chained to a sack full of coconut shells.

Are Prisons Obsolete?
Angela Davis
From Political Affairs Magazine: Just a little over 30 years ago the entire prison population stood at 200,000 in the US; that is a tenfold jump in just one generation. In California alone, 3 prisons were built between 1852 and 1952; from 1984 to the present, over 80 facilities were constructed that now house almost 160,000 people. While being jailed or imprisoned has become “an ordinary dimension of community life,” according to Davis, for men in working-class Black, Latino, Native American and some Asian American communities, it is also increasingly an issue women of these communities have come to face.
Davis points to the increased involvement of corporations in prison construction, security, health care delivery, food programs and commodity production using prison labor as the main source of the growth of the prison-industrial complex. As prisons became a new source of profits, it became clear to prison corporations that more facilities and prisoners were needed to increase income. It is evident that increased crime is not the cause of the prison boom. Davis writes “that many corporations with global markets now rely on prisons as an important source of profits helps us to understand the rapidity with which prisons began to proliferate precisely at a time when official studies indicated that the crime rate was falling.”

Arkham Asylum: Living Hell
by Dan Sloott and Ryan Sook
From Jorge: This book is good, creepy fun! Much like the old HBO show OZ, this is the story of all the inmates in a prison, but this time around it's the prison for all of Batman's villains. We follow an all new character, the Great White Shark (a white collar criminal), as he is thrown into the loony bin with the rest of Batman's bad guys. Will he make it out alive? How will this experience change him? Or is he possibly a new Bat-villian in the making? Those are the questions that keep you flipping page after page in this book.
The first half of the book is some of the best Batman/Gotham City stories I've read in a long time. What makes it even more impressive is that Batman is barely in it! And most of the characters (Humpty Dumpty, Death Rattle, Jane Doe, and Junkyard Dog) are new. But they FEEL like they've been Batman characters for YEARS. That's where this book really excels. I had to go online and make sure that there weren't Batman stories that I'd missed over the years. And that, right there, is something very special that the writer and artist pulled off effortlessly. I bought that these were longstanding Bat-villains. And they are SO good, that I hope future Batman writers incorporate them into future stories.
The second half of this book takes a drastic and sudden turn into, what I feel, is a wrong direction. The rug gets pulled out from under us and the prison drama we were reading suddenly turns into a horror film. It's the same drastic turn like the movie Dusk Till Dawn. And, in this case, it really doesn't work.
However, even in the later half of the book, there are STILL priceless Bat-villain moments-- like the Joker's escape, his subsequent palindrome crimes, and his eventual "run in" with Batman. With that in mind, I'd recommend buying this book. Because even though it takes a wrong turn and slightly stumbles, even then it's still better than most of the Batman books out there. And the first half of the book (especially the Humpty Dumpty issue) when everything's working, Arkham Asylum: Living Hell is some of the best Batman work I've ever read!

Book News, In Brief

Everybody knows that having a prominent politician name drop your book will give sales a boost. But what happens when an aw-shucks Alaskan VP candidate attempts to ban your book? The online auction asking price skyrockets to $500+!

Hmn...I wonder what Palin's gonna think of Bible Illuminated: The Book. It's a Swedish repackaging of the so-called 'Good Book' which pairs "intense photo essays" -- including shots Martin Luther King Jr. and Angelina Jolie -- with passages from the New Testament. In Sweden, where Bible sales average 60K per year, Bible Illuminated has already sold 30K. A US release is due later this month.

The folks on the Nobel literature jury suspect that the name of this year's pick -- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio -- was leaked early. Why? The surprising number of online bettors who picked Le Clezio to win. For those of you us who have never heard of J.M.G.L.C., click here for his Wikipedia entry. For those of us you who didn't know you could bet on the Nobel prizewinners, click here.

Two brothers created two online bookstores. One bookstore was a "wide site," featuring links that kept browsers close to the homepage. The other bookstore was a "deep site," which allowed browsers to navigate through countless links, bringing them further and further away from the homepage. The point of this? To find out if the ol' 'hunter/gatherer' stereotypes about men and women proved true on the internet. To read the results, both men and women may click here.

I've Gone To Canada to Visit Librairie Premiere-- My Fourth Favorite Combination Comic Book Shop/Used SF Bookstore in The World!

I'll be back on Monday the 13th.


Until then, entertain yourselves with this...
Blog-Jacking: IO9
Scientists Pick The Greatest Books And Movies Of All Time
Originally posted Oct 1 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
At last, the most important works of science fiction are being determined scientifically. New Scientist magazine is doing a special science fiction issue on Nov. 15, and the magazine is polling its science-boffin readers as to the greatest books and movies in the genre. The magazine's own staff have already voted, and you might not be surprised by the books they put first. But you may have some issues with their most hated movies and books.

It's hard to quibble with their picks for best movies and books. Being mostly Brits, the New Scientist group put Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy at the top of the novel heap. Iain M. Banks would have won, but his vote was split among a few of his books. (Including Feersum Enjinn. Really?) Frank Herbert's Dune also came close to winning. The best movie, according to the NS crew, was Blade Runner, followed by 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris and Serenity.

To read the picks for Worst SF, click here.

Book News, In Brief

The home of The Jewel of Medina's English publisher was firebombed this weekend. While the the US publishers have temporarily closed their offices ("a precautionary measure"), they're still planning to release the book on October 15.

The Guardian UK makes this bold statement: Respect for religion now makes censorship the norm. When publishers are too intimidated to print even novels that may offend, it shows how far we've lost our way on free speech. To read the screed, click here.

John Bemelmans Marciano, grandson to Madeline author Ludwig Bemelmans, has announced his plans to write and draw the first new Madeline book in over fifty years. Yes, this is clearly a case of cashing in, but considering yesterday's announcement from the granddaughter of Anne of Green Gables author, who's gonna complain?

Got A Half Hour To Kill?

Check out The Comics Reporter's super-enjoyable The 50 Things That Every Comics Collection Truly Needs.
(Hell, even if you're not a comics fan yourself, you can use it as a cheat sheet for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa presents this holiday season!)

Book News, In Brief All Bad

When life (or the current financial crisis) gives you lemons (or a 30% drop in book sales), make lemonade (or an overly sunny PR piece that reads well with the elderly and mentally infirmed, but holds nothing but laughs for those of us sadly in the know).

Over at Penguin Books, bad news abounds. Well, books about bad news, anyway. The orange tinted imprint has just purchased the rights to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. This is the third book about the current financial crisis that Penguin has bought in the past week.

To be fair, bad news abounds everywhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, if Borders doesn't find a buyer soon, "the chain must grant Pershing Square Capital 5.15 million warrants to purchase additional shares in the company, a move which will give the hedge fund an even greater stake in the chain." Wait. That might be good news...for some of us.

On a seriously somber note, the family of Anne of Green Gables author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, has come forward with a shocking revelation regarding the esteemed writer's death: It was a suicide, via an intentional drug overdose. Montgomery's granddaughter explains: "I have come to feel very strongly that the stigma surrounding mental illness will be forever upon us as a society until we sweep away the misconception that depression happens to other people, not us – and most certainly not to our heroes and icons...The fictional Anne went on to happiness and a life full of love and fulfilment. My grandmother's reality was not so positive, although she continues to inspire generations of readers with her books, which reveal her understanding of nature – both in matters of the heart and the world...I hope that by writing about my grandmother now there might be less secrecy and more awareness that will ease the unnecessary suffering so many people experience as a result of such depressions."

Book News, In Brief

Having garnered the ire of every bookstore, Amazon is hoping to make a brand new enemy: Apple/iTunes.

I'll admit it. I'd been purposefully avoiding linking to the dozens of different 'Text Books Are Too Expensive for College Kids!' articles littering the web. Every other book blog was posting them, so I figured, why bother? But this new angle -- Textbooks are bad for your health -- well, I've gotta give the kids credit for coming up with this one.

Damn. If I'd seen this ten minutes ago, I'd have blog-jacked the whole page and saved myself a 'Book News, In Brief' post. Via The Guardian UK:
Antonia Fraser on writing biography
Wendy Cope on writing poetry
Robert Harris on writing novels
Simon Jenkins on journalism

Blog-Jacking: Boing Boing (again!)

Book-spines turned into stories
Originally posted by Cory Doctorow, September 25, 2008 9:59 AM
The Sorted Books project picks books out of collections whose spines, when placed in sequence, can be made into a sentence or story. (There's plenty more pics at Sorted Books)
Blow Boing Boing a kiss.

Phew!

The stock market crashing...the skyrocketing price of fuel...my pudding induced impotence...
We'll worry about those some other day.
For now, let's celebrate the following, via the AP:
Purr-fect ending to battle over Hemingway's cats
KEY WEST, Fla. - The famed six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's island home aren't going anywhere.
The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum announced Thursday it reached an agreement with the federal government that lets the 50 or so cats continue roaming the grounds, ending a five-year battle that could have resulted in them being removed or caged.
I repeat: Phew!

The Dirty/Literary Joke of the Day

As told by The Office's B.J. Novak:
With all due respect to Edgar Allen Poe and Lord Byron and Franz Liszt...there is simply no such thing as a 'romantic period.'
Thank you. Goodnight.

Blog-Jacking: Boing Boing

Burning Bookmark
Originally posted by David Pescovitz, September 23, 2008 8:47 AM
Just in time for Banned Books Week (9/27-10/4), the good folks at Gama-Go are taking orders for this new "Burning Bookmark." It's $6.
Link: Burning Bookmark/Gamma Go
Hit up Boing Boing here.

Recommended Viewing:Bookslut Interviews Eddie Campbell

Visit the Bookslut website by clicking here.

Book News, In Brief

S'funny, I was just having a similar discussion with Inkwell Michelle the other night: Humor Books - They Don't Get No Respect.

It's not nearly as lurid as Franz Kafka's porn stash, but it's still worth a look: Charles Schulz' bookshelves.

When I first read the following headline, I thought it said, Barbarians Still Turning to Books. That would've been awesome. But Barbadians Still Turning to Books? Zzz...

Jonathan Lethem on The Dark Knight

"After a long summer spent laboring in the salt mine of a novel-in-progress," Lethem ventured out to the multiplex to see this year's biggest film. Here are a sampling of his thoughts on the pic, as expressed to the NYTimes and its readers:

No wonder we crave an entertainment like “The Dark Knight,” where every topic we’re unable to quit not-thinking about is whirled into a cognitively dissonant milkshake of rage, fear and, finally, absolving confusion.

It may be possible to see the nightly news in a similar light, where any risk of uncovering the vulnerable yearnings, all the tenderness aroused by, yes, the seemingly needless death of a promising young actor or of a brilliant colleague, all hope of conversation between the paranoid blues and the paranoid reds, all that might bind us together, is forever armored in a gleeful and cynical cartoon of spin and disinformation. Keywords — “change,” “victory” — are repeated until adapted out of meaning, into self-canceling glyphs. Meanwhile, pigs break into the lipstick store, and we go hollering down the street after them, relieving ourselves of another hour or day or week of clear thought.

Beneath the sniping, so many real things lie in ruins: a corporate paradigm displaying no shred of responsibility, but eager for rescue by taxpayers; a military leadership’s implicit promise to its recruits and their families; a public discourse commodified into channels that feed any given preacher’s resentments to a self-selecting chorus. In these déjà vu battles, the combatants forever escape one another’s final judgment, whirl off into the void, leaving us standing awed in the rubble, uncertain of what we’ve seen, only sure we’re primed for the sequel.

If everything is broken, perhaps it is because for the moment we like it better that way. Unlike some others, I have no theory who Batman is — but the Joker is us.

To read Lethem's full review/political diatribe, click here.

Book News, In Brief

A Washington public library was robbed of 150 books -- all at once. A ninja/robber walked in, picked out a stack of books ranging from 101 Secrets a Good Dad Knows to Don't Sweat the Small Stuff about Money, and then waltzed out the front door. When asked to comment, the oblivious library staff said, "Shh," and pointed to a 'No Talking: Computers in Use' sign.

The biggest literary prize currently out there: The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. It's named for the Pippi Longstocking author, awarded to authors of kids' books, and gets the winner roughly $800,000. (Thanks to PW for the initial heads-up.)

I've never heard of Christine Angot (a.k.a. 'The Queen of Auto-fiction') or her supposedly once-famous rapper boyfriend (the delightfully named Doc Gynéco), but the two of them sound ripe for a critical beatdown. Zut alors! The French oblige.

Recommended Viewing: Bolerium

From the Snag Films blurb:
BOLERIUM captures a day-in-the-life at one of America’s most important independent bookstores - Bolerium Books - run from a hidden location in the heart of San Francisco’s immigrant/radical Mission District. This 23 minute portrait is a humorous exploration of the store, its diverse staff and the wild array of customers who frequent its shelves. Filmed in a dynamic handheld style, the documentary captures the caffeinated energy that has driven this store for the last 25 years.

Mike Stilkey, Painter of Light Books

For more information on this artist, click here.

Bratz books -- Buy Low, Sell High!

Make that: Buy in the lower portion of continental North America, sell to the higher portion.

Via The National Post: Scholastic, the largest distributor of children's books to Canadian schools, has decided to yank all Bratz books from its roster after parents and psychologists complained that the controversial dolls promoted "precocious sexuality."

The stock market may be a mess, but remember -- sex always sells!

From the comments section:

Anonymous said...Shame on Scholastic!
If that cover art is any clue as to the book's actual content, I think it's BRAVE of the Bratz series to teach kids about pre-op transexuality.

It's Over: All Star Superman

Here's a Newsarama interview with All Star Superman artist Frank Quitely regarding the series' completion.
Choice quote:
Newsarama: What is the characteristic that you think is most important, and overlooked in capturing the original (Superman)?

FQ: Gentleness, maybe. He's like the perfect dad! Imagine being omnipotent and enlightened - that's an attractive combination.

I couldn't find a recent interview with writer Grant Morrison (at least not one that focused on ASS), so I'm gonna go ahead and pass off this old, Newsarama interview as a shiny, new one.
Choice quote:
Newsarama: There was a very interesting article in The Comics Journal recently about Mort Weisinger and the perspective he brought to the Superman books, something you’ve talked about in the past. The point of the piece was that the Silver Age Superman comics are very psychologically interesting in the way they reflect personal neuroses – how, in many ways, they’re about this man struggling to control the world around him and everyone he knows, and often being subjected to very nightmarish situations of failure, being transformed into something grotesque, or being shown up.
Your arc seems to follow the Silver Age sensibility of, “Let’s throw a lot of ideas out there,” but you’re taking a more life-affirming approach, showing Superman being aware that he can’t solve every problem, but trying to do the best he can with the time he has left. Do you agree with TCJ’s assessment, and if so, are you consciously trying to take a different route than Weisinger’s?

GM: It’s clear from the material that Mort was attending analysis sessions every week. The 1950s was the great time of psychoanalysis in America, and he was coming back from the couch and giving his writers ideas – at least, that’s what I understand from what I’ve read, and from talking to people in the business.
The Weisinger comics, although they were designed to be read by children, were conceived and written by adults, so they actually do speak to the human experience, our fears and hopes and dreams and paranoias.
Like you say, the Superman stories from that era were all about the fears and fantasies of the post-war suburban American male – with his den, his pets, his technology, and his views on women. And we kind of watch the whole thing going into meltdown.
So many of those stories are about loss of self-esteem through physical transformations where he’s old, or fat, or sick and they sort of remind me most of the fairy tales and folk tales we all grew up reading. These are fairy tales and nightmares of the schizoid post-atomic age that created them, but it was also the most popular, iconic “pop art” period of Superman’s publishing history. Back then, as far as I know, those comics were selling millions every month.
So I was interested in modernizing that mass appeal approach. These beautiful little science-fiction fairy tales inspired the take on All-Star Superman, although we’ve been trying to do a more rounded, mature 21st century Superman rather than ape the unreconstructed 50s bachelor/dad guy.
I wasn’t a Silver Age fan – either I wasn’t born or I was too young to read those books when they first came out. I started reading Superman during his ‘creepy’ period in the 1970s but when I was preparing for All-Star and reading my way through the history, the books from the Weisinger era seemed to be most in tune with the human experience as expressed through a kind of pure superhero poetry. They’re not much like what you’d call “superhero” books these days, but they’re really inventive and surreal with an odd kind of suburban twist.
I wanted to make All-Star about being a guy, what it’s like to be a man, and fall in love, or lose parents, or be misunderstood…role models, rivals, all that sort of stuff but viewing it all through the lens of alien worlds, mighty feats and super powers.
It was never meant as a pastiche of Silver Age comics or to service nostalgia…which is why we took care to add new situations and characters to the mythos, like Leo Quintum, Zibarro, new types of Kryptonite and new villains like Krull, the Chronovore, Mechano-Man, or whatever. We wanted the stories to seem timeless, mythic, rather than tied to any particular period or interpretation of Superman.

Lastly, here's a nice Savage Critics review of the last issue (#12) -- spoilers abound!
Choice quote:
In the end, he can only weep from the human enormity of it all.

Update!
Wizard Universe has Grant Morrison's favorite Man of Steel moments.
(Thanks to The Comics Reporter for the heads up.)

Book News, In Brief(OMG! It's Tha Chick Lit 4 Teens Edition)

Chick lit for teens: A lubricated trojan horse used to trick teens into reading, or a shallow waste of time and braincells? ABC News debates.

Candace Bushnell, the vapid wordsmith responsible for Sex In The City, is about to launch a series of novels detailing character Carrie Bradshaw's teen years. Will Pro-Keds become the new Manolo Blahniks?

The Subdury Star gives a classroom full of teenage girls more than enough rope to hang themselves, asking what it is about the Twilight books that they find so intriguing. The girls give this answer: "Edward." When asked to elaborate, the insightful teens came up with this: "Bella is in our situation and she's awkward in high school, which is what we can relate to. Then, she finds this perfect guy, which is what everyone wants to relate to." Somewhere in there is a metaphor for the differences between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. I'll leave it to someone more politically sophisticated to suss it out.

Links Re: Formatting Your Manuscript

Wikipedia's bare bones tip sheet

Big Bad Book Blog's 10 point program

William Shun has written a guide for manuscript presentation in the form of a manuscript

AllExperts walks you through the 12 simple steps required for setting up your Microsoft Word for manuscript format

Book News, In Brief

In an effort to battle the big guys, a Mississippi bookstore has brought their indie aesthetic to the internet.

Freud wouldn't be surprised: Man robs adult bookstore using phallic symbol. Okay, so it was a gun. So what? I needed news items.

A first edition Book of Mormon recently turned up in a Michigan library. The book is said to be one of 5,000 printed by Mormon founder Joseph Smith in 1830. Of course, the Mormons have been known to fall for forgeries before...

Barbershop Digest publisher and self-described "pseudo-novelist" Brian Egeston describes the racist bullsh*t he's encountered as a Black writer and magazine entrepreneur, then makes this plea: Don't shoot Barack Obama.

Kyle Baker Does X-Men Funnies

For more, click here.

R.I.P. David Foster Wallace

The author of Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again died Friday of an apparent suicide.

TIME magazine obituary
AP obituary
LA Times obituary
LA Times online discussion

Book News, In Brief

Finally, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Complete Idiots. Hallelujah!

If at first you're sued by J.K. Rowling, write another book based on her heavily guarded property.

Mo' money? No problem! Biggie's ex-wife's biography creeps closer to NYTimes' bestseller status.

Here's a headline you don't read very often: Mall's movie theater out, bookstore might be in (Of course, it is a Barnes & Noble...)

A win for the Kindle. Biographies of the would-be First Ladies are coming out in e-book form next Monday. The winning wife's bio will be available in paperback only after the election results are in.

Listmania!

Eli Gottlieb (The Boy Who Went Away) picks the fieriest scenes from the eternal conflict between the sexes

Gaming Nexus Blogs recommends 5 literary classics to get you in the mood...for new video games

Jessica Duchen (Rites of Spring) chooses the greatest Gypsy characters in fiction

Esther Woolfson (Piano Angel) lists her favorite instances of birds in literature

Den of Geeks selects the 10 best-dressed comic book villains

Book News, In Brief

Frank Miller's manufactured manliness causes comic book recall. (Murder, torture and ginormous boobs? Hey, that's comics. The word 'goddamned'? Now that's just wrong.)

Via Publisher's Weekly: E-Newspaper Reader Looks Like the Real Thing, reports New York Times. (This is big news for the thirteen people who still haven't discovered the totally free, around the clock news feeds available on that other recently released bit of technology: das internet.)

Book to film news:
1. Via E!: Mamma Mia!'s Amanda Seyfried will star in Dear John, Lasse Hallstrom's feature film based on the Nicholas Sparks bestseller.
2. Via CHUD: Desperate to rake in some of that comics book adaptation cash, Fox Studios is planning a reboot of their fizzled Daredevil film franchise, and is mulling over a sure to be Diablo-Cody-ed, 'teen X-men' flick.
3. Via The Beat: Oh, and those rumors about Cher playing Catwoman as an aging opium den madame in the next Batman pic? No one's debunked 'em yet...

Re: Our Public Flogging

Last week we did a small piece on the folks taking pictures of our staff picks table so that they could then go and order the books online. A few days later, we got this (anonymous) response in our comments section:

Hey, you should probably stop getting upset at your customers (Thanks for yelling at me today, Woman With Long Brown Hair, and I didn't even take a picture) and do something about it. If most people are "buying it on Amazon," maybe you should consider SELLING it on Amazon. Duh? If you want to stay in business, take a shot at progressing with technology instead of being against it.

I responded with brevity and sensitivity in the comments section, but then realized -- hey, I could cut and paste this on our blog and take care of a day's posts. Win-win!

My response:

F**k that. If we started pretending to like every idiot that walks into our store, then we'd be no better than those amnesia cases greeting folks at the entrance to Wal-Mart. One of the benefits of working at an independent bookstore is independent thought -- please don't try and take that away from us. And as for your zinger of an idea about selling on Amazon...stupid. No bookstore in America gets the discounts that Amazon gets. Therefore, no bookstore in America is going to be able to successfully undersell Amazon...especially not on Amazon. (To quote the bard: "Duh.") But hey, no one's stopping you from shopping there. In fact, from this day forth, we're encouraging you to. Just don't express mock shock and faux regret when all of the rest of the indie bookstores in the country close their doors for good. It was the self-centered, penny-pinching, anti-localism spending habits of 'progressive' folks like you that caused it. Oh, and as for your "take a shot at progressing with technology" barb: You posted it on our blog.
Thanks for commenting!

Don't Believe The Hype(but by all means, buy it!)

Via the AP: The publisher that took on O.J. Simpson's If I Did It after it was dropped in the face of public outrage has signed up another rejected project: Sherry Jones' The Jewel of Medina, a novel about a wife of the prophet Muhammad that Random House canceled out of concern that it would anger Muslims. "We read the book, we loved it," says Eric Kampmann, owner of Beaufort Books, which managed a hit last year with Simpson's hypothetical confession to murder. Jones' novel should come out by mid-October, Kampmann said.

J.K. Rowling Wins Copyright Claim

Via the AP: A judge says "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling has won her claim that a fan violated her copyright with his plans to publish a Potter encyclopedia. Judge Robert Patterson said in a ruling Monday that Rowling had proven that Steven Vander Ark's "Harry Potter Lexicon" would cause her irreparable harm as a writer. Vander Ark runs the popular Harry Potter Lexicon Web site.

When asked what she planned to do now, Rowling said, "I'm going to Disney World!"

Correction: Rowling actually said, "I'm going to buy Disney World. And Disneyland. And Somalia. And then I'm off to Kensington for high tea."

Blog-Jacking: The NYTimes

Cape Cod Murder Case Adds Another Chapter
By Corey Kilgannon
Originally published: August 28, 2008

TRURO, Mass. — Peter Manso has always courted controversy to promote his books, including biographies on Norman Mailer and Marlon Brando and a provocative look at Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod.

And there is no lack of controversy surrounding the one he is writing for Simon & Schuster about the high-profile murder of Christa Worthington, a fashion writer who in 2002 was raped and murdered here, just south of Provincetown.

The book, Mr. Manso keeps promising, will be a “bombshell” exposing a corrupt and inept justice system riddled with cronyism and corruption. He has been feeding tabloidy morsels to the press and trashing local law enforcement officials by name, saying they run this exclusive seaside town like “a suburb of redneck Mississippi.”

But Mr. Manso has now run afoul of those same law enforcement officials. Last week a Barnstable County grand jury indicted him on 12 charges, including felony counts, the most serious of which — possession of an assault weapon — carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The charges stem from a search last December of Mr. Manso’s Truro house by the police. He was initially charged in local district court, but the case was ratcheted up and transferred to Superior Court.

“When’s the last time you heard about someone facing 10 years in prison for not renewing a gun permit?” asked Mr. Manso, who contends he was “overcharged and selectively prosecuted by the very D.A. who is the focus of my book.”

To finish this article, click here.

Blog-Jacking: The LA Times

Craziness required
A talk with Jon Scieszka, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, about getting kids to read
By Sonja Bolle
Originally posted on August 24, 2008

"Mr. Ambassador" as a title sounds dignified, statesmanlike. But for Jon Scieszka, it's all about anarchy. As national ambassador for young people's literature, a position instituted jointly this year by the Library of Congress Center for the Book and the Children's Book Council, he considers it his job to bring craziness to his domain, to shake things up a bit. "Crazy" is one of his favorite words, and it means something good, something unleashed: unfettered and uncontrollable creativity.

"Crazy," according to him, is where kids' minds will go when you let them.

The author of many distinctive children's books beloved for their subversive humor -- the best known is "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" -- the 53-year-old former schoolteacher was the perfect choice for the first ambassador. Besides the fact that he's infectiously funny, he already was an ambassador of sorts, having demonstrated his commitment to a larger promotion of reading than the average author on tour by starting up Guys Read, a nonprofit literacy program aimed at males of all ages.

Scieszka (pronounced "Sheska") took up the scepter in January. "The fun thing about this position is that there never was an ambassador before. I get to make it up as I go along. At one of my first appearances, David Shannon [author of "No, David!" and many other books], who was with me, taught a roomful of kindergartners to do the ambassador's salaam. There's nothing like 300 kids bowing and waving and going 'Salaaahhhm!' I try to make the adults salaam, too, but that's harder."

The main idea of the ambassadorship, he explains, "is to connect in a way we don't always [manage] as children's book authors and illustrators. We tend to stay in our own self-imposed ghetto. We talk to each other, but that's preaching to the choir. We have to get out there to the mass audience."

He's been trying to find more creative -- crazier -- ways to reach readers. This summer, he headlined a Guys Read Extravaganza at a Minnesota Twins baseball game.

"The Hennepin County Library has been a big supporter of Guys Read," he said. "They took the template and ran with it. That's what I had hoped would happen with Guys Read. They knew the county commissioners and the owners of the Twins were community-minded, so they set up this event. We gave away 'Time Warp Trio' books [a series Scieszka wrote with frequent illustrator Lane Smith] donated by Penguin to the first 5,000 kids who came in the gates. I was set up at a table and signed books during the first innings. Kids would come up and ask me: 'Hey, aren't you the "Stinky Cheese" guy?' They weren't baseball books, but the message was: Here's a guy who's a fan of baseball and books. You can be both."

As one of six brothers, Scieszka has a particular interest in boys' relationships to books.

"We were all crazy boys, but there was a whole range of readers," he said. "I was always a good reader, and I saw what that could do for you. I went to Catholic school through the 9th or 10th grade. The teachers' attitudes were always, 'Oh, that wouldn't be Jon getting in trouble in the back of the room, he's such a good reader!' So it would be my friend Tim who always got whacked. It's helpful to be the reader, I learned.

"Then I was an elementary schoolteacher for 10 years, and I saw firsthand that boys had a harder time getting into reading. I also have a son and daughter of my own. It was almost stereotypical -- my daughter [Casey, now 24] was crazy about reading, and my son [Jake, now 22 and a student at NYU] . . . not so crazy."

One of the widest planks in Scieszka's ambassadorial platform is to broaden adults' ideas of what reading is, and he observes how much more weight his tips seem to carry coming from Ambassador Scieszka than from Author Scieszka. "My first tip is to include not just fiction in your idea of reading. Include graphic novels, include "Calvin and Hobbes." Third- and fourth-grade boys devour those -- and they're really sophisticated, but parents will say, 'Oh, that's not really reading.' "
Scieszka calls this a "William Bennett position": "If they're not reading Greek myth, don't let them do it at all."

But Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series, Scieszka says, "Is Greek myth," or at least a way into it. "I first saw fairy tales in 'The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,' and they sounded kind of familiar. Then I read the fairy tales. Then I wrote my own books [in which he often, in a smart-alecky way, fractures traditional stories] and messed them all up for everyone. Now that's got a happy ending!!" he says, cheerfully anarchic.

Scieszka considers the debate about what qualifies as "real reading" a red herring. Online reading is certainly reading, he asserts, and it's foolish to ignore new media, as it is the new frontier in publishing: "Everyone's kind of chasing it, but no one knows what it's going to look like yet." His own "Trucktown" series for beginning readers has a website with interactive games, which he hopes will develop into a social site on the order of Webkinz. He is curious to see how Scholastic's forthcoming multimedia project, "The 39 Clues," will fare, and he has his own project in the works ("Spaceheadz," scheduled for 2009), in which kids will have a say in the development of a story through reading blogs, examining pictures and offering feedback.

"It may seem like heresy," says the ambassador, "for the children's literature ambassador to say reading is not the be-all and end-all. But kids could be watching great TV, designing their own video games, or making their own animation." It's all good brain work, he believes.

To finish this article, click here.

Shopping? No, I'm Just Here For The Recommendations.

We've been noticing a new trend in our store. Folks are gathering around our Staff Picks table, taking pictures of the books we've recommended.
At first we thought, wow -- we must have some photogenic books! But then we saw someone take a picture of Shantaram (Inkwell Michelle's pick), and that has a pretty clichéd cover, so we knew that something else was afoot.
The next time we saw somebody camera-clicking the Staff Picks, we ran over, blocking their shot and asking if they were terrorists.
No, they told us, they were not. They were just taking a picture to remind them to look up the book later online.
WTF?!
After Sean Penn-ing the camera out of their hands, we asked them to elaborate. Were they cross-checking our recommendations with other reviews or...
Then they got that look on their face. If you work in a brick and mortar bookstore, you know the look. The look that says, 'I'm buying it on Amazon.' Yeah, that look.
Picking up the pieces of their phone from off of the floor, we said, 'Thank you, come again,' but really we were thinking, 'I hope your carpal tunnel syndrome is fatal.'