At the heart of it all, I’m a fan. A fan of books and bookstores. A fan of fiction and non-fiction. A fan of authors and publishers. And most of all I’m a fan of great conversations sparked by books. All that to say - I really need more bookshelves.
Like many in Birmingham I went to the Joshilyn Jackson signing Between, Georgia, at the Alabama Booksmith, back in July. This was about three weeks before Jackson was ARRESTED on August 10th!!!
Was Jackson a criminal mastermind? Was Jackson really a raving madperson posing as a sunday school teaching soccer mom that writes books on the side to help ends meet?
Nope. Jackson’s crime was that her “papers were not in order”.
Sounds like something from a Hogan’s Heroes episode doesn’t it?
There’s a new online tool for tracking down authors similar to those near and dear to your heart. Just type in your fave scribe into the The Literature Map and it will form a breathing author cloud around that person. By measuring proximity, you can judge who this program things you’ll enjoy most.
Apparently, some big name authors are tossing in soundtracks with their books now?!?!? Somehow I’ve missed this trend, but GalleyCat pulls it all together from WSJ articles and blogs.
Folks like James Patterson, Michael Connelly,Lemony Snicket and Bret Easton Ellis are tossing in the tunes with their books. Most of the cd’s are just collections of songs we’ve all heard but may be “inspired by” the book? Some of the authors offer “listening lists” on their sites too.
I’m betting we’ll see more of this cross-media manipulation as behemoth companies gobble up all the music and book companies under one roof. It’d be a boon if they could use their books to sell cd’s and cd’s to sell their books.
We’ll just have to wait and see if this trend will succeedor flop.
The Homewood Library Sale was a doozy this weekend. I got there 45 minutes early and had to stand at the back of a line! The natives were getting restless. But organizers were smart and stacked hundreds of 5o cent paperbacks out in the waiting area for us to peruse. The books kept shoppers from storming the gates as they could see the 12,000 books (we were told) through the auditorium door windows. And true to their word, 99% of the books fell bewteen 5o cents and 3 dollars. By 6 pm there were about 100 folks crammed in line, chatting about books, comparing notes waiting to get in…
but once the doors opened, talk was over and the gloves came off!
