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.'

Book News, In Brief

Author Rick Riordan and his new series, The 39 Clues, get this week's 'The Next Harry Potter' write-up in the NYTimes. You may remember Riordan from last year's write-up in the LATimes, where his Percy Jackson & the Olympians series was proclaimed -- you guessed it -- 'The Next Harry Potter.' I'll say this for Riordan. He's got one hell of a press agent.

From the AP: The author of the best-selling novel The Horse Whisperer is recovering in a hospital after eating poisonous mushrooms during a holiday in Scotland, his agent said Tuesday. Nicholas Evans' agent said the writer, his wife, her sister and the sister's husband became sick after cooking and eating mushrooms they had picked in the woods Aug. 23. I had a similar experience once, only I was at a Wu-Tang concert, and the mushrooms were psychedelic.

Having completely forgotten that the majority is rarely right, HarperCollins has just launched authonomy, a "global community site to find/promote new writing." Here's an even wordier, loftier description from the authonomy website: authonomy is a brand new community site for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins. We want to flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around - we’re glad you stopped by. If you’re a writer, authonomy is the place to show your face – and show off your work on the web. Whether you’re unpublished, self-published or just getting started, all you need is a few chapters to start building your profile online, and start connecting with the authonomy community. And if you’re a reader, blogger publisher or agent, authonomy is for you too. The book world is kept alive by those who search out, digest and spread the word about the best new books – authonomy invites you to join our community, champion the best new writing and build a personal profile that really reflects your tastes, opinions and talent-spotting skills.

Book News, In Brief

I thought that bookstores and colleges were supposed to be hotbeds of sexual expression and exploration. So how is it that the Boise State College Bookstore has been tied into a scandal involving...condom coupons? From The Arbiter Online: After multiple complaints from students, parents and faculty, condom coupons were removed from the coupon booklet handed out to students entering The Boise State Bookstore. The coupon was for 20 percent off any purchase of $5 or more at The Ozone condom shop located on Broadway Avenue.

A bibliokleptomaniac is like a shoplifter on steroids...chewing a power bar...and sipping an energy drink. From Chronogram Magazine: If you have any resemblance to bibliokleptomaniac Stephen Blumberg, you have an intense love for books. Blumberg’s obsession led him to multiple arrests in the 1980s and early ’90s for his theft of over 20,000 rare books from over 140 universities in 45 states and Canada, and to custom-build 86 bookshelves that extended over windows and into the backs of closets to house his collection.

Remember that Twilight prequel we told you about yesterday? The one where Stephanie Meyer changes the p.o.v. from Bella's to Edward's and calls it a new book? Well, we read some of it today, comparing it to the first book in the best selling series. Rough estimate: At least a third of the book is exactly the same. The dialogue is a carbon copy, and even some of the descriptive passages remain unchanged! This was some lazy, money-grabbing, almost-a-scam sh*t Meyer was going to pull here, so let's hope (for her sake) that its leak to the internet will cause Meyer to do a major re-think. Moroni knows she lost enough fans with Breaking Dawn. This book would've only lost her more.

Book News, In Brief

Michael Phelps just won eight gold medals and Coca-countless endorsement McDeals. Does he really need $1.6 for his ghost written memoirs?

The New Zealand Herald has this advice for self-publishers: Eff a paperback, print your work in a three ring binder. Their reasoning? The chances of you making a living off of your print-on-demand work is next to nil. But the odds of you being able to make some money in the lectures and consulting fields? Slightly better.

Extra, extra! Read all about it! Internet leak spares millions the drudgery of reading another Twilight novel...for now. From the CBC.ca: Stephenie Meyer, the author of a popular teen vampire series of books, says she has temporarily ditched the final episode of her series after an incomplete draft was leaked on the internet. The last book was to retell the story of the first installment of her series, Twilight, from the point of view of Edward Cullen, the main love interest of the human teen Bella Swan.

Speaking of cash-ins...er, I mean tie-ins: Bloomsbury, the British publishers of the Harry Potter books, can't wait for December 4th. What's the significance of 12/4/8, you ask? Well, that's when Rowling's first series spin-off, Tales of Beetle the Bard will be released to the non-millionaires of the world. It seems that after selling millions and millions of copies of the first seven Potter books (and pocketing billions and billions in profits), Bloomsbury's feeling a little light in the pockets. I guess Biggie was right: Mo' money, mo' problems.

Book News, In Brief

See? She's suffered: Author of faked holocaust memoir is still waiting for the $32.4 million her publisher refuses to pay. 

Thank god for The Great Firewall: Five years after illegal downloads brought the record industry to its knees, bootleg books begin popping up on China's internet.

If they really believed this, they'd release an e-book version: W.W. Norton & Co. has re-released André Kertétz’s influential book, On Reading, citing "the disturbing prospect of digital and online books overtaking and possibly eliminating printed media" as their reason.

Book News, In Brief

Ah, corporate America...
Borders posted a quarterly loss on Tuesday, sending its shares up nearly 14 percent. Wait, what?

Ah, synergy...
Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series, has launched a computer game set in the world of 007 in hopes of getting boys reading. Higson's new game, The Shadow War, combines gaming with reading both on and offline -- specifically the aforementioned Young Bond series.

Ah, controversy...
The Danish love f**king with the Muslims. First they ran a series of newspaper cartoons that spawned riots and death threats, now they're announcing their plans to publish The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' novel about the child bride of Muhammad, which was dropped by Random House.

Out Tomorrow:

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond
Issue 1 of 2
Written by Grant Morrison, art by Doug Mahnke
From the DC Comics sales pitch:
To save the woman he loves, the greatest hero of all time becomes the pawn of ultra-dimensional forces when a wounded emissary from a world of doomed super gods comes to Earth on the eve of the Final Crisis. His mission: To recruit Superman's help against an epic, reality-spanning menace that originated in the Crisis on Infinite Earths!

Join the Man of Steel and his alternate-earth counterparts for a mind-blowing voyage to the edge of the DC Universe — and beyond! Can these super champions overcome their differences to beat the clock, find the ultimate treasure and save all existence from extinction?

Writer Grant Morrison and artist Doug Mahnke take you on an unforgettable, hyperdelic journey from the streets of Metropolis, through the 52 worlds of the multiverse, to the haunted court of the King of Limbo, in part one of this 2-issue Superman adventure!

With a unique 3-D section, eye-popping visuals and mind-boggling glimpses into the mysteries behind Final Crisis, Superman Beyond takes the Man of Tomorrow to new dimensions of action and excitement! This issue comes with a pair of 3-D glasses!

Does this sound rad or what!

Blog-Jacking: The Guardian UK

Children are swearing already, so why can't Jacqueline Wilson?
Written by Michael Rosen
Originally posted on August 22, 2008

The squeamishness that has forced the word 'twat' out of her novel My Sister Jodie is deaf to both current usage, and to the words children know already

First things first, the word "twat" has an interesting derivation. It's probably linked to the suffix "thwaite" that appears on the end of place-names. Somewhere in the mists of Germanic linguistic time, it had the sense of being a piece of land that had been delineated by humans, cut off from the uncultivated land surrounding it. At some point, this was also used familiarly to describe some or all parts of a woman's part, if you get me. (Yes, I know I'm being euphemistic here).

Feminist criticism could have a ball here on interpreting this metaphorical use as a piece of male ideology whether that's because there's something "cut off" about female genitalia, or that it's a place that is to be ploughed and settled on.

Then, as with many other sexual parts, male and female, it became a word of insult. And then, in time (and this is crucial for the Jacqueline Wilson case) the word is used without people knowing that it's linked to the sexual part. Robert Browning famously used the word in a poem, clearly not knowing either of these meanings, while Henry Miller used it over and over again in the sexual sense only. Jacqueline has some interesting precedents.

Anxiety about the possibility that children will be corrupted if they hear rude words has been around for a long time. Some readers will remember Robert Westall's magnificent The Machine Gunners. This is one of the best "war" novels for children, exploring the underground world of boys in the space left them by absent parents. There are parallels in world fiction, including one by Nobel prize-winning Kenzaburo Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids and I think Westall's matches them all for power and story. However, a good deal of critical noise was made over the fact that Westall dared to use the word "bloody" in the book - several times!

To finish this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

This just in! A bad economy effects bookstores! And libraries! Only differently! (Wait. Why am I yelling? This is just common sense disguised as news.)

You know what they say: 'Behind every good woman, there's a fey, bi-curious poet.' But did Percy Shelley really co-author Frankenstein with wife Mary, or did he just help with the adjectives? (Cries of sexism begin...now.)

With rival film studios battling over the multi-million dollar movie rights to Watchmen, the IHT has decided to take a look at The Murky Side of Movie Rights. (This is a must-read article for unpublished authors with delusions of grandeur.)

Not sick of Hollywood's insanity yet? The Los Angeles Times has an autobiographical piece from a 'serious author' writing tie-in novels for TV shows. In it, said 'serious author' talks to the folks writing this summer's biggest film novelizations, as well as a guy who wrote the novelization of a screenplay that was based upon his comic book. (Let me break that last part down for you: Author 1 wrote a comic book. Author 2 then wrote a screenplay which was based on author 1's comic book. Author 1 then wrote a novelization based on author 2's adaptation of author 1's comic book. Exhale.)

Book News, In Brief

An unpublished novelist asks: How do you believe in your own writing? Salon attempts to answer.

Rock 'n' roll photographer Barry Feinstein has found a decades old collection of poems written by Bob Dylan. Surprise, surprise -- he plans to publish.

Who needs James Frey when we've got Salman Rushide and his Controversy of the Day Club? Today the pendulum swings back in Rushdie's favor. Via The Guardian UK: "The authors of a book which claimed that Salman Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" by his police protection officers have admitted there were falsehoods in the manuscript and have made amendments accordingly."

It's not a kiss and tell. More like a shelve and share. Via MichiganLive.com: "A library employee in this Lake Michigan resort community has been fired for writing a book that describes a range of unpleasant patrons, from the merely unpleasant to online sex fiends, in a town she calls "Denialville." Using the pen name Ann Miketa, Sally Stern-Hamilton wrote Library Diaries, which she describes as a fictional account based on her on-the-job experiences. "After working at a public library in a small, rural Midwestern town (which I will refer to as Denialville, Michigan, throughout this book) for fifteen years, I have encountered strains and variations of crazy I didn't know existed in such significant portions of our population," she wrote in the book's introduction."

Book News, In Brief

The Independent got wind of those Craigslist ads for forgers and ran with it. Their article, Signing off: The Weird World of Book Signings, offers a myriad of excuses for authors considering similar scams.

Don't expect to see a film adaptation of the new Bond novel, Devil May Care. The producers behind the recently revived film franchise say the book is too steeped in the sixties and 'would be out of keeping with the current penchant for supercars and state-of-the-art gadgetry.'

Hip hop magazine The Source has been having a rough couple of years. First, their old publisher alienated the readership by starting feuds with some of the most popular rap stars of the day. Then they lost the majority of their staff due to the crazy office antics of that same publisher. And then, last year, they were forced to file for bankruptcy. Well, things are finally looking up. Next month marks the The Source's 20th anniversary, and they're using the opportunity to relaunch the magazine. They've hired Spike Lee to shoot a series of cover photos, they've got a round table discussion with professors Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, led by Public Enemy's Chuck D, and they're planning on expanding their scope to include travel, education and business. Here's hoping it works.

Book News, In Brief

Wanted: Nimble fingered hands to sign books for lazy authors. Fourteen open positions. See Craigslist ad or the Guardian UK article for details.

Micheal Moore has a list of fall reading recommendations. No, wait. I got that wrong. He suggests you read nothing and spend your time volunteering in local politics instead. Cuz that's just what the world needs: more ignorant fools involved in politics.

A warning for folks seriously considering this 'dating on the cheap' thing: If you think we've gonna let you hang out in our store for hours -- "reading to each other" -- you've got another thing coming. We'll dump a cart of books on you. At the Inkwell, we don't cotton to vagabonds.

You think we're kidding? Think again. The days of the meek and mild bookstore employee are over. Just check out the complaints list filed against Portsmouth, NH bookstore owner and uber-a**hole, Walter Wakefield:
* On April 2, 2005, police were called to the bookstore by a man who reported he was assaulted. According to police records, the customer reported Wakefield "tried to hit him with the door to the store."
* In April 1999, Wakefield was arrested on a charge of simple assault.
* On April 27, 1995, Dale Shaw of Rye went to the store and after being told there was a $5 fee to browse, an argument ensued, according to court records. A court affidavit said Wakefield called the customer a (expletive) retard," before hitting him with a metal pipe, scraping and bruising his arm. In 1995, Wakefield told the Herald he was defending himself from a robbery attempt and Shaw shoved him. Shaw was not charged by police with any crime.
* Hampstead auto parts dealer Patrick Murphy told the Herald in 1995 that he went to browse in the bookstore where Wakefield started an argument and called him "an AIDS infected" (expletive).
* In March 1994, Richard Wentz of Rye was arrested for criminal threatening, according to police records, for showing a handgun at the bookstore after getting into a dispute with Wakefield.
* In 1998, Wakefield was convicted of criminal threatening and assault against a Merrimack man for shoving and threatening him with a pipe.
(In his defense, Wakefeild claims to be the victim of shoplifting.)