From my favorite librarian blog Swiss Army Librarian comes word of a push to make “Massachusetts Libraries” license plates available soon. Advance applications for Bay Staters are available on the Central Massachusetts Regional Library website. A portion of the license fee goes to support... you guessed it... libraries.--David E
I'm writing this on Wednesday, so I can't vouch for the content, but Danielle Steel, the 61-year-old author of more potboilers than you can shake a stick at, is launching a blog Thursday. It's at www.daniellesteel.net, of course.--David E
Coffee House Press is holding a benefit tonight in honor of its upcoming 25th anniversary. There will be hors d’oevres, desserts, drinks, a performance by poet and NPR essayist Andrei Codrescu, and live music from accordionist Dan “Daddy Squeeze” Newton. The party starts at 7 p.m. on October 29, 2008 at the Grain Belt Brewery Bottling House, 79 Thirteenth Ave. NE, Suite 110, Minneapolis. Tickets are $30; to reserve a ticket, contact Diana with payment information at 612-338-0125 or email her.
Last week, we hosted a reading by Peter Fogtdal, author of the novel The Tsar's Dwarf. We host a lot of events here, and we're pretty used to seeing them from the back row. So it's fun to read the author's perspective. 
The Bookstore Guide reviews bookstores in Paris. Of course, they visit Shakespeare & Co., but they also go further afield and visit Artazart (for art books, bien sûr) and The Red Wheelbarrow ("It simply oozes familiarity and friendliness," says BSG).
Alan Bennett--whose work includes the plays The Madness of King George and The History Boys and the recent novel The Uncommon Reader--has donated his archives to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England. 
How does news travel on the web? Slowly.
Oregon's bunny-book-burning mom has repented. Says the Associated Press, "Taffey Anderson says she will make the book [The Book of Bunny Suicides] available for the Central Linn School District's review committee to screen. The Halsey woman recently said she would burn the book rather than take a chance on it returning to a shelf at the Central Linn High School library.
It's on again. The Hennepin County approved county funding for the proposed planetarium atop the new downtown Minneapolis public library, reports the Star Tribune. All that's left now is for the Minneapolis Planetarium Society to raise a mere $20.5 million. Taffey Anderson, a mother in Halsey, Oregon, was shocked--shocked, I tell you--when her 13-year-old son came home from his high school library with a copy of The Book of Bunny Suicides. So disturbed was she that she's refusing to return the book, lest another impressionable mind be warped by its cartoons depicting rabbits on the verge of self-destruction. 
The English-speaking literary world is still scrambling to learn more about Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. The New York Times published selected excerpts two weeks ago. Now the New Yorker has announced that its October 23 issue will include a complete Clezio short story, "The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea."
The film version of JR Ackerley's paean to his pooch My Dog Tulip is well underway--68 minutes of an expected 88 minute run time have been completed. The book is an unflinching look at dog ownership--and to judge from the clips on www.mydogtulipfilm.com, the movie isn't prettying up Ackerley's frank and funny book. 
British humorist (and technology enthusiast) Stephen Fry is coming to America. His new show--helpfully titled "Stephen Fry in America" has just begun airing on the BBC. 
MinnPost's Amy Goetzman has a crush on Tom Dickson's new book The Great Minnesota Fish Book. There's no other way to explain her rave review on MinnPost. 
The latest issue of The New Yorker has a review of To Siberia by Per Petterson. Petterson's first two books In the Wake and Out Stealing Horses were surprise hits.
Computer software books must have the ugliest covers of any category, but this one really takes the cake. Who on earth would look at the manuscript for iPhone in Action and think, "What would really tell readers what this book is about like a drawing of a fourteenth century Turkish warrior?"--David E
The winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize--which constantly touts itself as "the most prestigious literary prize"--has been announced: it's White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. This is the Indian author's first novel.
Since the wrecking crew came in last week and tore down the buildings across the street to the east, a lot of folks have asked what the new Calhoun Square will look like. We don't really have any inside dope, but above is the most recent info from calhounsquare.com.
Larry Millet--author of Lost Twin Cities and Strange Days, Dangerous Nights--is back with more crime photos from the Twin Cities' newspaper archives. Murder Has a Public Face traces four shocking murders from discovery to arrest to trial. It's a fascinating look at both crime and punishment in the mid-twentieth century. The Star Tribune looked back at the era in a recent review of the book: "Apparently, newspaper readers had no problem digesting a full helping of gore -- and all the gory details."
We have two copies of the new DVD of The Visitor to give away. It's the story of a man who learns to live (and it seems, to drum) again, thanks to the soulful folk he finds squatting in his apartment. The director is Tom McCarthy, who also directed The Station Agent. Critics liked it; it got 93% on rottentomatoes.com's Tomatometer.
The UK web magazine The First Post is one of the first out of the gate trying to answer the question Who the heck just won the Nobel Prize for Literature? (A: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio) They managed to uncover a " a Le Clezio expert from Birmingham University," one Beatrice Damamme-Gilbert. She gives thumbnail sketches of five of Clezio's books. They also tracked down a Clezio hater. "[S]ays David Platten of Leeds University, ... generally speaking the Frenchman is 'pretty dull'."
The Nobel has been a contentious subject in literary circles in the US of late. Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy (which awards the Nobels) said, "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining." American writers and editors rose as one, accusing the Academy of provincialism; after all, this is the body that never offered its prize to Proust, Joyce or Nabokov. (Slate.com posted a nice summary and rebuttal last week. Ted Gioia has a provocative list of alternate-reality winners here.)
After six years of study and preparation and hard work, David Macaulay is finally satisfied with his latest book, The Way We Work. This time around, his subject is neither castle nor cathedral, but the human body itself.
"What Light" is looking for Minnesota poets. Please submit up to three short poems, maximum 50 lines or 300 words each, as attachments to poems@mnartists.org. You must be a resident of Minnesota and a member of mnartists.org to enter. Our judges--Deborah Bernhardt, Jim Johnson, and William Stobb--will select twelve winning poems to be posted, one poem per week, on mnartists.org and magersandquinn.com. The deadline is October 18, 2008.
Last summer, Prince played 21 shows in 21 nights at London's O2 Arena. If you missed them, you might want to pick up a copy of 21 Nights, which has just been released. The book documents the London run--both backstage and onstage. Included are Prince's own poetry and lyrics and never-before-published photographs by Randee St. Nicholas. Each book also comes with a copy of "Indigo Night," a CD available only with the book that captures some of the live after-show sessions.
Minneapolis' own Amazon Bookstore Coop is getting a new moniker. It will be known henceforth as True Colors Bookstore.
NPR's "The Sound of Young America" program recently broadcast Chip Kidd's appearance at Seattle's Bumbershoot Music & Arts Festival. Kidd--as befits a man who's made his name designing book covers and more recently writing novels--has some interesting things to say about the future of e-books. Listen to the podcast of the interview below.--David E
