William Blake at 250

Today is the 250th birthday of the Romantic poet, artist and engraver William Blake.

How important was Blake. A 2002 poll by the BBC of the 100 Greatest Britons has Blake coming in at 38. Not bad for someone who was pretty much unrecognized during his lifetime

Terry Eagleton honors the occassion with a commentary in The Guardian titled The original political vision: sex art and transformation

"Politics today is largely a question of management and administration. Blake, by contrast, viewed the political as inseparable from art, ethics, sexuality and the imagination. It was about the emancipation of desire, not its manipulation."


The Tate is celebrating with an exhibition titled William Blake: 'I still go on / Till the Heavens and Earth are gone' The exhibit features the recently discovered plates from the "Small Book of Designs." The Tate has also published a facsimile of Blake's first printed book of poems, the 'Poetical Sketches' of 1783.
The William Blake Archive, sponsored by the Library of Congress, is a good place to start
Blake at Poets.org

Image is the frontispiece for Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 1793

Starbucks Meet Anne Fadiman

Honoré de Balzac: The Patron Saint of Coffee

Coffee is the name of the essay and it appears in Anne Fadiman's new book At Large and At Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist published by Alan Lane in the UK.

Fadiman is fully caffeinated the entire time she is researching and writing the essay, sharing the same caffeine buzz experienced by the literary giants who populate her essay.

Who knew that it was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "who had swallowed oceans of coffee in his younger days and regretted his intemperance," who first summoned a chemist to see what the magic ingredient was in coffee beans.

and that Honoré de Balzac, "the model for every espresso- swilling writer who has followed in his jittery footsteps," was a slave to the almighty bean, drinking up to 40 cups a day!

"What hashish was to Baudelaire,
opium to Coleridge,
cocaine to Robert Louis Stevenson,
nitrous oxide to Robert Southey,
mescaline to Aldous Huxley,
and Benzedrine to Jack Kerouac,
caffeine was to Balzac."

The Guardian has the essay in its entirety.

My head is spinning from all the possible Starbucks tie-ins.

Image above via Wikipedia a painting after a photographic done in 1842 by Louis-Auguste Bisson

Roller Derby Hits the Books

Roller Derby is back and its packing a literary punch.

My friend and fellow bookseller Charles Seluzicki took in a match in Portland last week and shares this:

Anyone who has ever seen a women's flat track roller derby game knows the mixture of high camp theatricality and hypnotic sport. It is the last place you would think of in terms of literature and books. But scrolling through the on-line register of roller derby names reveals a recent trend in names that reference books and literature. These derby identities function as both acts of hommage and in-your-face persona of fun-loving menace.

The following names are gleaned from the thousands on the register:

Agatha Frisky,
Anna Kareena,
B.F. Skinnher,
Count Smacula,
Creeping Beauty,
Dorothy Park-her,
Germaine Leer,
Goria Steinem,
Hunter Stompson,
Kama Suture,
Killustrator,
Knuckleberry Finn,
Lady Shatterly,
Little Miss Tuffit,
Noam Stompsky,
Scarlet O'Hurtya,
Thumpelina,
Velveteen Savage and
Virginia Woolferine

Talk about a literary all star team.

The Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) is the place start to see what's going on.

Seattle's Rat City Roller Girls homepage
Portland's Rose City Rollers website

And if you think Roller Derby is pure theater have a look at the "battle scars" page of the Steel City Derby Demons website.

or the Hall of Pain Gallery from the Rat City Roller Girls

Oouch!

Image via Library of Congress

Thanks Charlie!

Google the Bookseller

It was bound to happen.

Word from the London Book Fair is that Google is going into the book business. By year's end they will launch two book related initiatives that will further alter the book landscape.

What's in store:

A book rental program that will let you rent the content of a book on a weekly basis.

and

A book retail program that will allow users lifetime access to the texts they purchase.

They are not attaching the cursed e-book tag to either project.

Michael Cairnes, who was at the Google sessions at the London Book Fair, has the scoop in his blog post titled "Google Lending Books" which includes his follow up with Google on these initiatives.

This is the missing piece to the puzzle.

Their aggressive approach to libraries and their books begins to make sense. They are scanning books at warp speed, 30,000 a week just at the University of Michigan.

Google has become part of the DNA of information. It would seem a logical next step to corner the library market. They are homes to our written heritage, storehouses of knowledge and information. And Google needs information. The Google Monster is hungry.

Last month's article by Eric Morath at the Detroit News on Google's scanning of the University of Michigan's 7 million volume library touched on this.

"In Google's view, even the wide expanse of the Internet can't compare to the amount of knowledge stored in books. So searching and retrieving results from written works is a natural outgrowth of Google's root technology.

Forget all the fuss you hear like "Google's altruistic motive for the project is to make the books available to those who may not have easy access to them."

When you hear Allan Adler, the American Association of Publishers' (AAP) vice president for legal and government affairs say "There's no doubt whatsoever that it's to Google's financial benefit to do this" you can be sure that altruism as been thrown out the window. The AAP is the political action committee for the publishing world and mix that with Google's billions of dollars and you have poisonous potential.

"Google argues that the limited amount of information it displays ultimately benefits holders of the copyright because it encourages searchers to seek out the book." Those snippets and limited views that they throw at you now become teasers. You got to pay to play.
This is why I argue for public funds and not for profit companies to undertake the digitization of our cultural heritage. This is exactly why.

Has anyone heard the word author mentioned anywhere in all this? Copyright and publishers are everywhere.

In addition to adding another layer of complexity to the term bookseller, the meaning of out-of-print will soon change too. Out-of-print will no longer mean unavailable. It will mean unavailable in book form.

Until Google gets in the print on demand business.

Then what happens when they start buying the publishers?

This is serious stuff.

Links

Robert Townsend at the American Historical Association blog Google Books: What's Not to Like

Jill E. Grog and Beth Ashmore's article at Information Today Google Book Search Libraries and Their Digital Copies. Includes a list of what libraries are digitizing everything and which ones are only digitizing material in the public domain.

Past Book Patrol posts:
on the AAP and their "Caught Reading" campaign
The First Cracks in Google's Attempt to Digitize the World

Don't "Get Caught Reading"

Right on the heels of National Poetry Month which included National Library Week we welcome Get Caught Reading Month.

Since 1999 the beautiful month of May has been home to this literary concoction. The celebration was devised by former Congresswoman Pat Schroeder through the Association of American Publishers (AAP), where she is the President and CEO.
Its goal: "to spread the word about the joys of reading through an industry-supported literacy campaign."

I am not sure if this was created to give her a job after her political life but this is basically a political action committee for the publishers. This is the Hollywood and Capitol Hill version of a celebration of the book.

The names they throw around include First Lady Laura Bush, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dolly Parton and Drew Carey. The inanimate celebrities include Clifford the Big Red Dog, Spiderman and The Rugrats, all who have "been 'caught reading' their favorite books and magazines for print ads and posters." Over 40 posters of celebs caught reading are available to libraries and bookstores.

There is one; however, that is "temporarily out of stock" and that is the poster of Rosie O'Donnell reading Barbara Kingsolver's "The Bean Trees". All these A-list celebrities and athletes and Rosie's is the only one that is not in stock. Sold out? A printer's error? Politics? The speculation is killing me.

And don't miss the image gallery featuring members of Congress "caught reading." Every image I looked at the Congressperson was looking at the camera not the book! Ad placement Congressional style.
Here is Rep. Mark Foley reading a real page turner Fahrenheit 451.

Highlights of the month long celebration include:

A Capitol Hill Press Event with members of congress. Really.

Public Service Announcements. How about this one: This is your kid...This is your kid caught reading.

Celebrity Posters. Why not celebrity chapbooks? Little printed booklets of their own writing or their favorite quotes or celebrity artist books where then can design and produce the book of their choice. Auction them off and the proceeds go to literacy programs.

I know they are trying to reach out to the majority, the people "not typically associated with reading" (whatever that means), and I applaud them for the effort but something is not quite right here. It feels like it has much more to do with business and politics and ways to turn non-readers into readers into customers than it has to do with literacy. Under their "Literacy Program" header you'll find three links to literacy fact sheets.
I didn't see any mention of literacy programs they support or links to any other literacy promoting agencies.

Is this helping anybody?

Getting to the End

This is how Heather McElhatton got to her debut novel Pretty Little Mistakes that hits stores today . You see it's a "Do-Over Novel" and she came up with 150 unique scenarios. Yep 150! "One Beginning 150 Endings: The Choice is Yours."

Of course I am exhausted just thinking about it but the originality alone merits a peek. If you are fresh out of high school and ready to hit the world then it is closer to a must read.

You just graduated from high school and you got a couple of choices. You either "go to college to get ahead or take some time off and go traveling." Pick one and your off.

Here is my trip so far- I wanted to travel, drive to California, then I choose to go to Berkeley instead of LA, friend gets me a job at the library at UCB (University of California Berkeley), now I am trying to figure out if I want to go out on a date with David or not, whose is not the guy I have been sleeping with in the utility room at the library every day...

Content aside you can see the reach of the concept:
The movie slant, basically the opposite of Groundhog Day
The social networking slant, a Myspace group popping up for each ending.
The teen lit, chick lit slant.

I am not sure I would market it as "an interactive" or "adventure-type" adult novel. The target audience is the young adult or the beginning adult. There is plenty of money to made in their world, there is no need to reach for any other type of adult audience.

Book Patrol puts it on the: Third Shelf

While we are on the topic of author's flow charts. Here is a shot of Will Self's wall.


There are 71 photo's of will's room here.


Thanks to kottke.org for the Will Self lead

Now The Fear and the Copycats: Security Alerts at Eight Libraries in the Wake of Viginia Tech

The Engineering Library at the University of Minnesota was one of 8 buildings evacuated after a typed note was found. No mention of what the note said.

University of Maryland at College Park: e-mail stating that a bomb was “in a book in a library.”

Library at the University of Texas at Austin: Threatening note found. No mention of what the note said. It was the 5th note found on campus since the Va. Tech shootings. This is where George Bush lived when governor of Texas.

West Port High School in Ocala, Florida. Someone found a handwritten note in a book drop. A 10th grade kid was going to blow up the school because his teachers were "going to fail him."

Merrill F. West High School in Tracy, California: A 17 year old taping threatening notes at various places around the campus, including the library.

Durham County (N.C.) Library’s Main Library: A telephoned bomb threat.

Longmont (Colo.) Public Library: Bomb scare, suspicious package found near the library’s mail-sorting area. Turned out to be filled with plastic bags.

and then the one that happened here in the town of Edmonds, about a half hour north of Seattle.
Edmonds Community College: Multiple bomb threats made by a 16 year who didn't want to go to class.
The kicker:
he recruited a person in England to call and make the threats.

Think of all the disruptions, the evacuations, the lock downs.

And to all you future maniacs leave the libraries alone they got enough to worry about.


Via the ALA

Side By Side. Finally

For the first time, after who knows how many thousands of years, the sacred texts of the world's three monastic faiths, Judiasm, Christianilty and Islam have been gathered together for an exhibition at the British Library.

The exhibit Sacred: Discover What We Share: The World's Greatest Collection of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy Books brings together the rarest sacred texts in existence.

Highlights include:
A tattered copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls and
A"Qur'an commissioned for a 14th-century Mongol ruler of modern Iran who was born a shaman, baptised a Christian, and converted first to Buddhism, then Sunni and finally Shia Islam."

There is a significant online component to the exhibit that features videos, podcasts and interactive maps. There are also 8 texts in the exhibit that are available to view using the newly released "Turning The Pages" technology

Graham Shaw, the lead curator, says of the exhibit "We were determined not to create faith zones, but to show these wonderful manuscripts side by side, and demonstrate how much we share"

Maybe one day we can all live that way.



Guardian article on the exhibit



Images:
Above: St.Matthew from the Lindisfarne Gospels
Below: Sultan Baybar's Qur'an from the British Library

The Book Review Shuffle

The Book Review sections of all major newspapers are under intense pressure these days.

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) campaign to Save the Book Review is a noble effort and one I fully support but the problem is not in saving the Book Review sections it is about reinventing them.

It is about widening the scope of their missions. The book landscape has changes dramatically in the last 10 years while the book review sections, for the most part, have barely moved.

It is about serving all the different types of book lovers that exist in our communities not simply covering newly published books vying for a place on the bestseller list.

The readers
The collectors
The book artists
The printers
The librarians

are all deserving. They should all be able to look to their local book sections for content and community written not only by critics but from cheerleaders as well.

The book has tremendous range. It is both a mass produced commodity and a luxury brand. Books touch every life in some way. Even if you never read a book there is a good chance your favorite movie is based on one.

The fact that the ad revenues are shrinking is not the fault of the readers. We are out there. There are ad dollars to be had from the leading players in every sector of the booksphere; the auction houses for the collector, the publishers for the readers, the suppliers and galleries for the book artists and the technology companies for the libraries.

On some level The New York Times is working at it . They just unveiled a new twist in the book section. Steven Heller, former art director for the Book Review, had his debut piece for a column on visual culture.
They also attract ad revenue from a broader base with their back page frequently being an ad for an antiquarian bookseller, Bauman Rare Books.

More...
Edward Champion's take
Sara Weinman's post
Critical Mass the blog of the NBCC

A Plagiarist Goes Off the Deep End. Again

News began circulating last week that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution was eliminating the position of book editor and quite possibly its entire book review section. Coming close on the heels of the recent revamping of the LA Times book section is especially troubling. That's 2 of our country's top newspapers, which serve 2 of our most literate cities, reducing (or potentially eliminating) their book coverage significantly. Not a good sign.

To combat this trend The National Book Critics Circle began circulating a petition to "Help Protect Atlanta's Book Review."

In a show of solidarity Scott McLemee over at the blog Quick Study published a post regarding the petition.

Now the fun begins-

Timothy Patrick Barrus leaves a wrathful comment to the post at Quick Study that begins like this:

"I applaud the elimination of the book critic period. They are not journalists. They are reactionaries. They never bother to fact-check and they spew venom beyond the context of opinion. The ones on blogs are the worst."

Who is Timothy Patrick Barrus? He is a writer of gay erotica who decided to adopt the name "Nasdijj" and write memoirs of the Navaho experience. The three books he wrote under his assumed name were:

The Blood Runs Like A River Through My Dreams (2000)
The Boy ans the Dog Are Sleeping" (2003)
Geronimo's Bones: A Memoir of My Brother and Me (2004)

All three complete fabrications.

LA Weekly's Matthew Fleischer busted Barrus in his January 2006 article "Navahoax" and the rest they say is history. Sherman Alexie" accused Nasdijj of both manufacturing his identity and plagiarism" and refused to provide a blurb for one of his books. Why the book was still published is a story for another day.

J. Peder Zane, the book review editor of the News & Observer wrote a piece about being duped by Burrus. In it is this:

"The rage that had simmered and shimmered just below the surface of his prose erupted in long and frequent Internet rants, in violently crude language, decrying the "racism" of publishing."As his rage mounted -- and he began illustrating it on his Web site with pornographic images -- I feared he had lost control."

Somethings never change.

Thanks to Maud Newton for the lead

The Reader/Collector Syndrome

This week the auction of the library of Frank Streeter at Christie's reeled in over $16 million.

This weekend there are three different book fairs for non-new books taking place in New York including the New York Antiquarian Book Fair were you will find many of the best collectible books available for sale in the world.

This is strong evidence of the staying power of the book and a confirmation of its value to our culture or should I say a segment of our culture.

Sam Jordison's piece for the Gaurdian "What are first editions worth? There's is plenty of money to be made from them, but the genuine value of such fetishised rarities is hard to discern." addresses the dilemma that book lovers face.

One of the complexities in the world of books is that there are different breeds of book lovers.

There is a continuum with readers on one side and collectors on the other.

You have the Readers who inhale words and are enthralled by the very act of reading. Most people in the new book world lean to this side and you have the Collector whose recent book purchases are "immediately fossilised." Where the thought of actually reading one of the first editions is heresy. To them that's what the paperback is for. Many people in the non-new book world lean this way.

Like most continuum's one falls somewhere in between loving the book as an object (the collector) and loving the book for its content (the reader).

Jordison himself struggles with the reader/collector syndrome. He enjoys the usedness of his library while his "favourite section of shelf space is the least populated". That's the shelf of his Hemingway first editions.

One of the intriguing aspects of the reader/collector syndrome is how polarized the bookselling community is around this issue. There are very few bookstores that can make people who reside in the middle of this continuum happy.

This will have to change for bookstores to survive.

Bookstore Robbery Tomorrow at 9

Luckily this takes place across the street from Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers at the Central Saloon where a new band from Seattle called Bookstore Robbery will play. We will have extra security on hand.

Self-described as a "shotgun marriage of power pop and alt-country for the twilight era." To hear some of their songs and watch a video visit their myspace page.

Where did they get the name from?

The Wes Anderson film "Bottle Rocket". The film's tagline: "They're not really criminals, but everybody's got to have a dream."

The following dialog comes from the bookstore robbery scene:

Digan: A bigger bag you idiot!
Bookstore manager: Don't call me an idiot, you punk!
Digan: Do you have a bigger bag for maps and atlases... sir?

I think I am going to go.

"Digitize or Die? What is the Future of the Author"

That's the title of a seminar that took place yesterday at the London Book Fair.

Tania Kindersley has the recap over at the Guardian. Her aptly titled story "The Death of the Book, Again" conveys the almost monotonous battle of print vs. digital that has been hovering over the book industry for years. As Kindersley says "It is an immutable law that the Death of the Book must be debated at least once a year". Actually once a year would be refreshing. The drone seems constant nowadays.

"The old pro-book arguments are so rehearsed as to fade almost to background noise".

Feeding off of noted social psychologist Philip Zimbardo's remark that the book is "something you hold, near to your heart" Kindersley lays down some new 'pro-book arguments' that describe the essence of the book's place in our culture:

-The book is an artifact of the heart.

-Our bookshelves are the record of our lives.

-The physical act of opening a pristine novel, getting the scent of it in our nostrils, and yes, holding it close to our heart, are sensory and uniquely human experiences.

-We carry books to show who we are.

-We need to stop "taking the book for granted and start realizing that it is something rare and marvelous."

As her friend the Man of Letters says, "I wonder if anyone has ever cried while reading an e-book."

This is good stuff.

The Illustration Divide

The study was called "Gender Stereotyping and Under-representation of Female Characters in 200 Popular Picture Books: A Twenty-first Century Update."

The authors looked at the top-selling books in 2001 and a seven-year sample of Caldecott Award-winning books.

What did they find:

That "images of men continue to dominate children's picture books."

-There were nearly twice as many male as female title and main characters
with male characters appearing in 53 percent more illustrations than females
-Female main characters were more nurturing
-Men were shown outdoors more often and women were seen indoors more

-More women than men appeared to have no paid occupation

In 2005 the same team authored another study "Gender role stereotyping of parents in children's picture books: the invisible father"

What did they find:

-There was not one image that showed a father kissing, hugging or feeding a baby in the books sampled for the study. Not one.

"Images of men continue to dominate" & "invisible father". A poisonous combination that is so far from the reality of so many families yet maintains a covert grip on the imagery of our culture.

We need some Alternadad picture books. Quick!

To confuse the matter a bit this article was published today in the Telegraph. The article was titled "Photo Books 'better for toddlers than pictures' ".

The research suggests that "Very young children learn faster from picture books that contain colour photographs than from books with colour drawings"

The study:
A group of toddlers look at picture books to learn how to make a toy rattle.

The results:
The kids who looked at a color photo of the rattle did twice as well as the ones who looked at an illustration of a rattle.

Maybe photographs do help toddlers put things together faster but they don't come close to the power of illustration in a child's life and to title the article "Photo Books 'better for toddlers than pictures' " seems a bit irresponsible and misleading.

Liz Attenborough, a children's book publisher, summed it up perfectly:

"Maybe if you want to instruct a child to do something, a clear picture is better. A child will learn in the pure sense of the word,...But if you want to tell a story, and stimulate the imagination, how dull is a photograph of a series of posed 'fairies' in a fairytale, for example?"

The Literary Plagiarism Museum

Here's a good one:

The author of the book A War Against Truth has been accused of plagiarism.

In January Raincoast Books of Vancouver, the publisher of A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq by Paul William Roberts, got word from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the book contains numerous "elements [that] . . . closely resemble or are indistinguishable from passages" in an article they published on Sept. 29, 2002. The article by Jay Bookman was titled "Bush's real goal in Iraq: Invasion would mark the next step toward an American empire"

Initially the publisher was going insert a correction in the remaining copies but thought better of it and "decided that freezing the stock, then disposing of it "would be the most straightforward way" of handling the issue". That's 2,000 copies down the drain.

Oh and the book was a nominee for the $25,000 Charles Taylor Prize for excellence in literary non-fiction and the author was the inaugural winner of a prize honoring courage in journalism by PEN Canada. Oops.

Here is the James Adams story in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Also today CBS fired one of the producers of Katie Couric's show for plagiarizing an article from the Wall Street Journal. At issue is a one-minute video essay on libraries that Couric did that was lifted from Zaslow's article "Of the Places You'll Go , Is the Library Still One of Them?"

Last month it was Ben Schott's essay "Confessions of a Book Abuser" that held the torch. He borrowed from Anne Fadiman's essay "Never Do That to a Book"

Coincidently, the world's first plagiarism museum opened this month in Cologne, Germany.
"The Museum Plagiarius...will permanently exhibit 300 original products together with seemingly identical rip-offs." Products "range from fashion and household products to electrical and medical equipment."

Maybe they should open a literary wing.

Business Week article "Stop Faking It" by Rachel Tiplady.

Wounded Booksellers Kicked by U. S. Post Office

The U.S. Post Office doing away with surface mail is a no-brainer. Only 2.7% of all international mail is sent via surface mail (or sea-mail as it should be called since the mail spends most of its time in cargo ships on the high seas). The "slow boat to china" routine doesn't really mesh with the new wired world.

The problem is:
The 2.7% is made up of almost 100% of todays independent booksellers. Removing the primary option for delivery of your overseas orders cannot be a good thing. Of course these changes do not impact the major aggregators like Amazon who have chiseled out agreements that have already put the independent bookseller at a disadvantage.

For the higher-end booksellers the hit is less severe. If a customer really wants a book they will have it sent global priority anyway. The difference in cost is not prohibitive. Don't forget the favorable exchange rate is also on our side.

When you are talking about books that are sold for $1-25 it gets a little more painful. Remember that many of these online sellers look to shipping charges as profit centers.

It is painstakingly obvious that the Amazon's and the ABE's are not in tune with or concerned about the independent booksellers who make up the very network that their success depends on. If they had a clue they would be aware that their whole approach to shipping charges, both domestically and internationally, is so out of wack with the shipping reality of their vendors. Just because they can negotiate a better rate for themselves with the USPO doesn't mean their vendors have to match that price. It is impossible.

And I disagree with Jordon Gordon, ABE's head of North American bookseller operations, who says:
"Booksellers who specialize in hard-to-find titles will be more heavily affected... “The Da Vinci Code” will ultimately sell domestically, but there are only a few people in the world interested in, say, an obscure book on medical ethics. And at vastly elevated prices, that book simply will not sell."

Actually I have no idea what he is talking about. Firstly, No one specializes in hard-to-find titles anymore because there aren't many hard-to-find titles left. His company ABE took care of that. The "few people in the world" that might be interested in an "obscure book" will be much more inclined to pay a higher price to have the book shipped to them.
Then he uses the "Da Vinci Code"as an example of a book that "will ultimately sell domestically". There are presently over 3000 copies of the Da Vinci Code in 17 countries offered for sale on ABE. Over 100 of those copies are available for a $1. Who in their right mind would order one from another country. Of course it will sell domestically!

Who hired this guy?

How will it all unfold?

Will there be another bookseller shake-out?
Will the post office save the day and come up with a new mode of delivery?
Will Amazon, ABE and the other book Godzillas wake up and finally charge their customers the actual cost of shipping?

The drama is killing me.

Bob Tedeschi's article for the New York Times started all this

PhiloBiblos post "Another Slap to the Used/Rare Book Trade"
GalleyCat post

Previously on Book Patrol "They Just Don't Get It"
and "Abebooks -They Just Don't Get it Part 2"

An Award For the Green Books

The Santa Monica Public Library has broken the ice. In September 2007 they will award the first annual Green Prize for Sustainable Literature.

The award will "commend authors, illustrators, and publishers who produce quality books for adults and young people that make significant contributions to, support the ideas of, and broaden public awareness of sustainability”.

All books published in the United States during the 2006 calendar year are eligible.
The deadline is April 30.

Kudos to the City of Santa Monica and their library. The award deserves to be as prestigious and coveted as any existing literary award.

To get warmed up for the award have a listen to:

NPR's story the "Year of Living Environmentally"

They talk to Colin Beavan about his year-long experiment on "No Impact Living.

The plan :
Eat food grown within a 250-mile radius of their apartment
Not use any paper products, including toilet paper.
No public transportation.
No elevator.

They live in New York City in an apartment on the 9th floor.

Keep up with the experiment at Beavan's blog. He already has a book deal with FSG for a 2009 release. The book is already the favorite for the 2009 Green Prize.

This coming Saturday, April 14, is the National Day of Climate Action rally sponsored by Step It Up. Find out here what is going on in your area. There are over 1300 events scheduled in 50 states.
The goal: To cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. Doable and necessary.

The event's founder Bill "End of Nature" McKibben has been chronicling the path over at grist.




Thanks to Library Journal for the Green Prize lead

The House of Poetry

April once again brings us National Poetry Month, our yearly attempt to promote the genre to the masses or as poet Charles Bernstein frames it "promoting poetry as if it were an "easy listening".

There are events going on everywhere for everyone so contact your local library or bookstore to see what's going on in your community or check the Poetry Near You page at Poets.org

A highlight is the 15th Annual Poets House Showcase in New York. Each April Poets House puts on a show. Every poetry book published in the U.S. the previous year goes on display for the month. That's right-every one of them.

This year features over 2,000 books, CD's and DVD's from more than 500 independent, university and commercial presses.

The Poets House archives each showcase in its database, The Directory of American Poetry Books. It's free, fully-searchable and contains over 20,000 poetry titles published between 1990 and 2006. It is the most comprehensive bibliographic resource available for poetry published during that time. If you read, write or think poetry this is an essential reference.

Here are 30 Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month
Internet archive feature: Feeling With Their Nerves: Young Poets on the Archive
NPR and National Poetry Month

Click on the image above to see this years National Poetry Month poster up close. A typographic portrait of Walt Whitman created by illustrator and graphic designer Christoph Niemann.

Also don't miss Charles Bernstein's 1999 essay "Against National Poetry Month as Such" where he responds to" promoting poetry as if it were an "easy listening" and proposes an alternative called International Anti-Poetry month".

The Dark Ages Officially Return to Jackson County

"China has libraries. Third-world countries have libraries. Prisons have libraries...Now we don't have libraries." Joe Henry of Medford, Oregon.

Welcome to day 1 of:
The Jackson County Tragedy: A community without a library.

As promised, on April 7th, the Jackson County Library system in Southern Oregon has shut down its entire library system.

The "15 branches will remain shuttered indefinitely because of a budget shortfall, the largest such shutdown in the nation's history."

What if you still have a book checked out? "The fines will continue to accrue at 20 cents per day per item...If someone gets too many fines, we will turn them over to a collection agency...But we don't want to fine anybody. We just want our materials back." said Library director Ted Stark.

"I never thought I'd have to do this,"Stark said. "I've been through my share of economic downturns and budget problems. But we've never closed the libraries before."


Article in Southern Oregon's Mail Tribune "Libraries Close"
Previous Book Patrol post "Southern Oregon County To Shut Down Entire Library System"
Jackson County Library website
Jackson County Library Blog
Open Letter from author Gary Paulsen

Becoming Part of the Book

Ko-Sin Printing of Tokyo has created a process for authors to "add a more personal touch to their printed works by using ink that includes their DNA"

They hope the "process will appeal to autobiographers who want to add value to their work by including their DNA, or to people who wish to insert the DNA of beloved pets into printed materials".

They have successfully printed some "self-published autobiographies whose title pages are printed with ink that includes the author’s DNA". Talk about a new high in vanity publishing.

The DNA can also be extracted from the printed page. Try that with an e-book.

O.J. 's "If I Did It" would be a perfect fit for this new process.



Thanks to Neatorama for the lead