Few Words
April 19, 2008

I wish you all some great reading. Have a wonderful week!

Upcoming Book Festivals:
In the upcoming week and weekend, readers and book lovers in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts will all have the opportunity to enjoy their festivals.

Flagstaff will be hosting the Northern Arizona Book Festival from April 24-26. Though the main part of the festival is Friday and Saturday, two pre-events on Wednesday and Thursday evenings set an exciting tone. Friday night will offer a fiction and poetry reading. Saturday and Sunday have several panels and readings as well as some special events: An Evening with Robert Bly and a Coffee Talk.   

Over in Massachusetts, the town of Newburyport will host the Newburyport Literary Festival on Friday, April 24, and Saturday, April 25. If you are near there, you’ll also not want to miss their opening ceremony on Friday night with a wonderful “In Conversation with . . .” and a “Dinner with the Authors” with a fabulous silent auction. Saturday’s festivities include a morning “Coffee with the Poets,” then a great variety of readings, presentations, and panels  for children and adults, readers and writers. 

And not far from me in southern California is one of the largest American book festivals, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. This festival, which runs two full days, Saturday, April 25 and Sunday, April 26, is unquestionably the best of them. Four hundred authors, more than 250 exhibitors, the annual Times Book Awards ceremony, eighty-nine indoor panels and discussions, a “What you are reading” corner with video and a  graffiti wall for your answers, a Times Live Stage with talks by their award-winning journalists, and six outdoor stages with author talks, entertainment, and presentations going on all day both days. If you live within reasonable driving distance (or even unreasonable, do consider going. It is nothing short of amazing to see so many people so excited about books. 

The Pub House:
Mystery fans, do you know about Crippen and Landru? I’m not speaking of the infamous murderers but the mystery publishing house that specializes in short story collections of new works as well as re-issued classics “(“The Lost Classics Series”). Among the latter you’ll find Sleuth’s Alchemy: Cases of Mrs. Bradley and Others, a collection of stories by Gladys Mitchell published in the 1930s and 1950s in UK magazines. Also of interest in the classics series is Who Was Guilty? Two Dime Novels by one man with two names. Philip S. Warne/Howard W. Macy is the first known African-American to publish a mystery in the U.S., and his two stories from 1872 and 1881 were part of the still small detective genre. The Minerva Club, The Department of Patterns, and Others authored by Victor Canning includes three stories, one about an exclusive English criminal club whose goals and aims often include surprising twists. Regardless of whether your tastes run to the modern era or the nineteenth century, to hardboiled detectives or to amateur sleuths, to an American setting or a South African one, you’ll find it here.

Of Interest:
Green Apple Books of San Francisco has a blog. Now this isn’t news; many bookstores do. What is interesting is a recent post in which they shared some of their “Shelf Talkers.” Basically, they are identifiers, those small tabs you see on grocery and book stores shelves that name the product on the shelf just above them. Sometimes, they will be larger and include marketing material but here they are not only larger and more detailed but wonderfully creative. It’s truly a wonderful way to direct attention in an amusing and delightful way to books you might otherwise miss.
 
This Week . . .
On April 21, something spectacular is going to happen—the launching of the World Digital Library. Offered free of charge and in multilingual format, this site makes available to any interested person “significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.” There is a sample video, but it’s small. Better to wait for April 21. It looks fantastic so mark your calendar.   

Until next week, read well, read often and read on!

Lauren