LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

The crime writer has more than 40 books to his name and dozens of films made from that source material. Leonard gives NPR's Noah Adams a tour of his hometown, with stops at some of the places that taught the writer about the language of crime, and at his writing desk at home.
Full story on NPR

Elmore Leonard's writing desk at his home near Detroit. Leonard writes each page of his books by hand, on canary yellow paper.

It's not 'just a book', it's "enriched". From the AP:

David Baldacci's next thriller, "Deliver Us from Evil," comes out April 20 as a hardcover, an e-book, and in an "enriched" electronic version which will include passages deleted from the final text, research photos, an audio interview and video footage of Baldacci at work.

"I have a pretty cool office, if I do say so myself," the author told The Associated Press during a telephone interview Monday from his office just outside Washington, D.C., where he sets many of his books.

"For a long time it seemed all people were talking about was pricing and the timing of the e-book. And I want to bring it back to the books themselves, to the content, because that's what should matter. I want people to have a great experience and give them a behind-the-scenes look at what I do, the way you would have it on a DVD."

The "enriched" Baldacci release will cost $15.99, according to Maja Thomas, senior vice president for Hachette Book Group's digital and audio publishing. The regular e-book will start at $14.99, then come down to $12.99 once it becomes a top seller, old hat for a Baldacci novel.

Literary Monster Mashup
Seth Grahame-Smith started it. He wrote a monster mash-up of Jane Austen and his own imagination called “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” It sold a million copies and set off an avalanche: “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters” … “Emma and the Werewolves” … “The War of the Worlds Plus Blood, Guts and Zombies” … “Alice in Zombieland” … “Jane Bites Back.” Now Grahame-Smith is back with his follow-up — “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.” Literature and zombies. History and vampires. Selling like hotcakes. What’s going on?
This hour, On Point: the monster mash-up craze.

In no less than the New York Times Sunday Book Review...a rave for Marilyn Johnson's "This Book is Overdue : How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All”. Critic Pagan Kennedy writes:

Johnson ushers us into the American Kennel Club Library and introduces us to the inevitable graying librarian in a boiled-wool jacket with a Scotty pin. She also teleports over to a Las Vegas “gentlemen’s club” called the Library, where ladies wearing spectacles (and not much more) slide their way down stripper poles. She peppers the book with lots of random instructions, like how to remove odor from an old Graham Greene paperback. (Use a sheet of Bounce fabric softener.) This is one of those books, in the vein of Mary Roach’s “Stiff” (about human cadavers), that tackle a big topic by taking readers on a chapter-by-chapter tour of eccentric characters and unlikely locations. Given Johnson’s attractions to wild tangents, the journey often dissolves into a jumble. It is a testament to her skill as a writer that she remains fascinating, even in the throes of A.D.D.

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Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss, no girls invited

Dr. Seuss- just like the guys at Pixar and Disney- is so creative in so many ways, why does he become trite and cliche when it comes to gender? Why is it so beyond the male imagination to create a magical world where girls and boys are equally important?

Frey's names a guessing game

James Frey -- the controversial author of "A Million Little Pieces" and "Bright Shiny Morning" -- is using so many pseudonyms lately that any nom de plume is suspected to be his.

Frey is working on no fewer than nine projects where he came up with the idea and hired a collaborator to write it. All nine books will be published under pen names, sources told Page Six.

Article on the prolific author , now 71, whose love of literature began in her hometown, Lockport NY, at the library.

Book Patrol points us to an article in the March issue Smithsonian Magazine, which tells us that contrary to Thomas Wolfe's dictum, "Joyce Carol Oates Goes Home Again."

From Book Patrol: It started innocently enough. Over dinner a friend mentioned that he saw a used bookmobile for sale on Craigslist and wished he could by it. That was all the impetus Tom Corwin needed.

He was soon off to suburban Chicago to buy the decommissioned bookmobile. He paid $7500 for it.

Corwin has already garnered the support of the National Book Foundation, the Association of American Publishers and the American Library Association for the project and has signed a deal with Whitewater Films in Los Angeles for the documentary which will be titled "Behind the Wheel of the Bookmobile." The film will also include information on the history of bookmobiles.

Authors that have already signed up in support include Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, Tom Robbins and Scott Turow, with many of them to take a turn at the wheel...here they are.

Follow the tour on the website and on Twitter.

"WESTMINSTER, Md. — Bryan Hissong is 31, happily married, and the father of a 2-year-old named Olivia. He seems quite content with his life.

But Marilyn Johnson, who is not his wife, loves him and has said so very publicly. It doesn't matter that she has never met him. Hissong is a librarian.

He doesn't look like the clichéd librarian of old. He favors plaid shirts and is sporting a beard on his babyface — but that doesn't matter to Johnson, either. She's well aware that librarians wear many disguises these days. Often they're pierced, tattooed, punk with bright blue hair. She loves them all.

Who knew librarians had become so ... cool?" asks USA Today (we did).

Johnson does an interview with Jon Michaud in this week's New Yorker blog. Here's a snippet:

Ever think of becoming a librarian yourself?

I worked as a page at my local library when I was in high school. I earned 95 cents an hour. After a year, I asked for a raise; I wanted to earn a dollar an hour. They turned me down, so I quit. And that was the end of my library career. I’m really sorry now I played hardball over a nickel. I’m never more at home than when I’m in a library.

How nice to have the reading public recognize the intrinsic value of your profession and the many marvelous examples of librarianship at work.

Beyond "Harry Potter": 5 interesting tales of plagiarism
Rowling is hardly the first well-known writer to face plagiarism charges. The results of such charges tend to vary widely. Some end up dismissed as without merit, others ruin careers, and yet others seem simply to disappear.