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A Very Defiant Duckling Named Ender pointed me to Literature-Map - the tourist map of literature. "Looking to find similar authors? Type in the name of your favorite author and see it create a map of similar writers! "

There is nothing truer in the literary world than the fact that it is fated to carry the cross of its patrons’ idiosyncrasies. The V.S. Naipaul-Paul Theroux clash is the weightiest of them all. A potential rival is the latest row between Salman Rushdie and Malcolm Gluck. Only, the issue has shifted from the penning of ideas to signatures. The Best of Booker winner is currently embroiled in a signature war with famous wine writer Malcolm Gluck — The Guardian’s books section being the arena where it is being fought out. The latest in the series is Rushdie’s letter to the newspaper on Friday.

Porco reiterated Amazon.com's claim — a surprise to some publishers — that Kindle downloads from early June through early July made up 12 percent of total sales for the more than 100,000 books available both through the e-book reader and in traditional form. In early June, at the annual booksellers convention, Amazon.com head Jeff Bezos said Kindle sales were 6 percent of the market for books in both formats.

Frederic Evans Wakeman, Jr. (December 12, 1937–September 14, 2006) was a prominent American scholar of Chinese history.

Wakeman was born in Kansas City, Kansas. His father was the novelist Frederic Wakeman, Sr. who often moved the family to live abroad in places like Bermuda, France, and Cuba. He graduated from Harvard University in 1959, where he majored in European history and literature. After Harvard, he went on to earn master's degrees from the University of Cambridge and at the Institut d'études politiques in Paris. While studying at the Institut d'études politiques, he switched to Chinese studies. He also studied as a graduate student in Taiwan. In 1962 he published a novel, Seventeen Royal Palms Drive, under the name "Evans Wakeman." Wakeman, studying under Professor Joseph Levenson, received a Ph.D. in Far Eastern history at University of California, Berkeley in 1965.

Wikipedia entry continued here.

Time takes a look at The Mystery of Shakespeare's Identity: At the heart of the problem is the fact that, for a man who was so prolific with his pen, Shakespeare didn't leave much evidence of his life behind. Most scholars accept that there is enough to prove that a William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, became an actor in London and retired back in Stratford until his death in 1616. But that's where the agreement ends....

We've all read The Serenity Prayer {God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...} made famous by multiple twelve-step programs, but now it's authorship appears to be in doubt.

For more than 70 years, the composer of the prayer was thought to be the Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, one of modern Christianity’s towering figures. Niebuhr, who died in 1971, said he was quite sure he had written it, and his wife, Ursula, also a prominent theologian, dated its composition to the early 1940s.

But Fred R. Shapiro, a law librarian at Yale and editor of "The Yale Book of Quotations" has found newspaper clippings and a book from as far back as 1936 that quote close versions of the prayer. The quotations are from civic leaders all over the United States — a Y.W.C.A. leader in Syracuse, a public school counselor in Oklahoma City — and are always, interestingly, by women.

This week's episode is different from the usual fare. The thread holding this together is: "Authors You Didn't Hear at ALA Annual 2008". Authors David Weber and Piers Anthony were interviewed this week. Interviews ranged from talking about their works to how they view libraries to the future of books. The interview with David Weber is being presented in two parts with the remaining portion to air on a future episode. Both authors raised unique points when it comes to determining authorial intent relative to exposing children to their own works that might be otherwise objectionable.

A link is presented below for the Baen Free Library. That site is one where there are complete works available for reading without digital rights management software issues. Works by David Weber and others appear in that collection.

Related Links:
Home page of Piers Anthony
A book by Piers Anthony not for kids
A second book by Piers Anthony not for kids
The Baen Free Library featuring items by David Weber and others
Works by David Weber published by Baen Books
The Honor Harrington Series
US Transition to Digital Television Broadcasting Info Site
Home page of Erie Looking Productions
An interesting tweet on Twitter

A NOVELIST who was called to the stage as a Wales Book of the Year winner said he had a ‘cruel glimpse of hell’, when it emerged just moments later that there had been a mistake. “Frankly, last night was amateur, a national embarrassment, and I cannot be the only person to have thought so,” he added.

Ray Bradbury spoke last week at the iconic Long Beach bookstore and railed about its threatened closure and the dearth of bookstores in certain areas around Los Angeles. LBReport.com was there and quotes Bradbury, who said of Acres of Books, "I love this place. I love the smell of it. When it used to rain...I'd come to Long Beach, I'd come here to the Acres of Books and I'd go in the back."

American University Librarian Emeritus James Heintze, who wrote the "Fourth of July Encyclopedia" published in 2007 by McFarland, traditionally visits the National Archives and watches the Fourth of July parade in downtown Washington. Here's Heintze's website on the subject that he finds perpetually fascinating.

AP gives us a glimpse of the former librarian and his patriotic passion.