Whoa! There are far more awards for writers of crime fiction than I realized. I thought I knew them all, even a rather low key one called the Hammett Prize. Uh, no. Apparently not. Some mystery writers awards are within a more general literary group, just one section. I was unaware of these and perhaps, … Read more
Richard Russo interviewed several best selling authors about the recent amazon trickery, and the results were comforting, at least. The authors, including, Scott Turow, Stephen King, and Dennis Lehane all found amazon’s tactics less than a stellar business practice. However, the comments to the article were typical in the ‘oh you elitists’ and ‘poor amazon’ … Read more
I didn’t realize that biblios had such a broad range. While researching, I found rare manuscripts and letters, and even scraps of writing on paper were considered part of the genre. A few titles fit very neatly. Here’s one–The Vivero Letter, Bagley, Desmond, 1968– A letter dating from 1539 and the conquest of Mexico by Cortes … Read more
I ran across an article about challenges the Canadian libraries and school libraries faced for the year 2010. Despite lagging a year behind in their statistics, the outcome was quite pleasing to me, as someone who has written so much on banning books from school and public libraries in the US. Report of the Annual … Read more
Anne Anderson’s House That Jack Built is worlds apart from a Victorian’s book plate, or Art Deco vision, or a Golden Book’s mid century idea of what the perfect abode would look like in Mother Goose Land. Because of these differences it’s like a birthday, or holiday whenever a collector finds a new version of … Read more
An interesting article once again explores the impact of print on demand books. A offbeat attitude is displayed by the author of the article, Clive Thompson. It’s his contention that PODs will lead to *more* physical books, not less, actually he thinks in 20 years we will all be ‘neck deep’ in them. It’s what … Read more
I’ve revamped, redone, reorganized and generally changed the way I’m going about listing and writing up the Best 100 Mysteries of All Time. Although these titles are still in the list–they no longer are numbered. I have put the entire list up, in alphabetical order, thereby keeping what book comes in at what number, undisclosed, … Read more
Who would have thought it? Not me. Thanksgiving in my life is something I’ve always wanted to avoid. Stress, relatives, stress, too much food, and stress were the prevailing elements when I was growing up. Naturally, over the years the holiday was celebrated with other people, but the stress remained–a boyfriend’s mother, a friend’s family, … Read more
