Rudyard Kipling and skiing in Vermont

According to a story, about the WPA Vermont state guide in the New York Times today, evidently Mr. Kipling is credited with introducing skiing to Vermont, through the agency of skis originating with Arthur Conan Doyle. One of those literary bits of trivia that are rather unexpected.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/08/us/08vermont.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1218197883-/nwFlSGY7b5mBZfPvT/wiA

Orwell Diaries to be posted

Orwell diaries are going to be posted, day by day, 70 years after the entries were penned. The Orwell Prize, in association with the Orwell Trust, Political Quarterly and the Media Standards Trust, will be publishing on the blog at http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

Now, The Mark Twain House at Risk

Hard on the heels of the financial difficulties of the Edith Wharton Foundation, comes news that the Mark Twain house in Connecticut is about to drown in debt. Considering the fortunes of Mr. Clemens himself, who was forced to economize by living in Europe for years, it might be poetic justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/nyregion/03twain.html?th&emc=th

Wharton's Mount Saved, This Week anyway

In the ongoing saga of the attempt to keep Edith Wharton's The Mount intact and open to the public... From Bloomburg, dateline April 24:

"The 97-year-old estate where the Pulitzer Prize-winning author penned ``House of Mirth'' and found inspiration for ``Ethan Frome'' has temporarily avoided foreclosure after raising $800,000 by today's deadline, Susan Wissler, the executive who runs the property, said in an interview. "


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=atVOyeqqiENY&refer=muse

50 Top Cult Books Telegraph UK

The Telegraph has published a list of the Top 50 Cult Books, which they tried to define but neded up with..."What is a cult book? We tried and failed to arrive at a definition..." But probably everyone one has read at least one book on this list. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was one of my favorites, Number One Son is a fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Hunter S Thompson, and I think I probably still own my paperback copy of The Master and Margarita. Words & images always has a least one copy of Gibran's The Prophet on hand. But I can't see anything on this list that the LanternGuy probably read. Hmmmm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/04/26/nosplit/boanotherlist126.xml&DCMP=ILC-traffdrv07053100

Edith Wharton's Home, Again

An associate professor at University of Cincinnati (right up the road, so to speak) weighs in on the issue of "The Mount" and the financial difficulties that the foundation supporting it faces.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/opinion/12clarke.html?th&emc=th

Thomas Jefferson Library at Library of Congress

Washingon Post today has an article on the re-creation of the contents of Jefferson's library.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/10/AR2008041004241.html?wpisrc=newsletter&wpisrc=newsletter

The Book Store is The Big Box Store

A story in Washington Post on Saturday discusses the latest shift in the book selling world--to the Big Box discounters. The history of the move from independent stores to the 'category killer" to the neighborhood Wal-Mart or Costco is detailed. In some eyes the recent news that B&N may be looking at buying Borders smacks of deja vu all over again at the next level up.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403540_2.html?wpisrc=newsletter

Edith Wharton Home faces foreclosure

The New York Times reports that "The Mount" is struggling with operational support.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/books/23moun.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Although not her residence for the greater part of her career, it was where she authored House of Mirth

Barsetshire in the New York Times

Verlyn Klinkenborg has a nice little commentary about the Barsetshire novels of Angela Thirkell. He mentions that they share the geography of Trollope, if I remember correctly Thirkell is actually a cousin or some such relation to Trollope. I've always enjoyed the books, and have several in inventory.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/04/opinion/04fri3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

NY Times Article on Book Accumulating

The Times has this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/21/business/21libraries.html?th&emc=th on the book acquiring tendancies of business leaders. Steve Jobs and William Blake? Hmmm

Better World Books

Through a route possible only in our connected culture, I found a book selling group in northern Indiana that is focussed on increasing literacy around the globe.

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/AboutUs/Mission.aspx

The Strand 80

The Strand Bookstore is compiling a list of the top 80 favorite books. You can vote online from now through Sept 15, 2007.
http://www.strandbooks.com/strand80

Gone With the Wind, again

NYT reports that a new sequel to Gone with the Wind is being published. This one is a retelling of the story from the point of view of Rhett and titled Rhett Butler's People, written by Donald McCaig. Apparently Mr. McCaig has written previous work dealing with the Civil War era that has been highly regarded, so we can hope for a better quality product than Scarlett.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/books/16book.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

Business Week - Books in the Ukraine

http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_20/b4034065.htm?chan=gl

Business Week reports that Bertelsmann is finding a strong market for the printed word in countries of the former Soviet Union. Where bookstores are scarce, and internet access not universal, they are finding success with inexpensive editions of printed books. It seems that in areas such as the Ukraine they are signing the hottest young writers and acting as their distributor. From comments posted to the story it appears that other regions of the world, one was from Peru, would respond favorably to such offers as well.

James Whitcomb Riley

Riley Rhymes

a program based on the works of

Indiana's beloved Hoosier Poet

Jeff Keel appearing in character at

Words & Images,

home of The Train Place

19040 Main Street, Metamora, IN

Saturday, May 5, 2 PM

Cat in the Hat Birthday to Benefit First Book

The 50th Birthday of The Cat in the Hat is an opportunity to support First Book. Visit the Cat in the Hat website and click on send the cat a card to participate.
www.CATINTHEHAT.com

Used Books on the web

Chief Marketer-a business enewsletter I subscribe to in my workaday career-has an issue devoted to the book trade. Of course the first article I clicked through on was the one concerning the impact of the web on the used book trade. Go to
http://chiefmarketer.com/cm_plus/web_book_business

Sinclair Lewis cited by Joe Canason

You never know when an old tome that is rarely referred to in current time will pop up. All the more reason to keep those old books available.

Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here is cited in the new work by Joe Canason, It Can Happen Here. An excerpt published in Salon is here.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/02/19/conason/?source=newsletter

Here is the Lewis material as taken from Salon:

To Sinclair Lewis, who sardonically titled his 1935 dystopian novel "It Can't Happen Here," "it" plainly meant an American version of the totalitarian dictatorships that had seized power in Germany and Italy. Married at the time to the pioneering reporter Dorothy Thompson, who had been expelled from Berlin by the Nazis a year earlier and quickly became one of America's most outspoken critics of fascism, Lewis was acutely aware of the domestic and foreign threats to American freedom. So often did he and Thompson discuss the crisis in Europe and the implications of Europe's fate for the Depression-wracked United States that, according to his biographer, Mark Schorer, Lewis referred to the entire topic somewhat contemptuously as "it."
If "it" denotes the police state American-style as imagined and satirized by Lewis, complete with concentration camps, martial law, and mass executions of strikers and other dissidents, then "it" hasn't happened here and isn't likely to happen anytime soon.
For contemporary Americans, however, "it" could signify our own more gradual and insidious turn toward authoritarian rule. That is why Lewis's darkly funny but grim fable of an authoritarian coup achieved through a democratic election still resonates today -- along with all the eerie parallels between what he imagined then and what we live with now.
...
The question that we face in the era of terror alerts, religious fundamentalism, and endless warfare is whether we are still the brave nation preserved and rebuilt by the generation of Sinclair Lewis -- or whether our courage, and our luck, have finally run out. America is not yet on the verge of fascism, but democracy is again in danger. The striking resemblance between Buzz Windrip [the demagogic villain of Lewis's novel] and George W. Bush and the similarity of the political forces behind them is more than a literary curiosity. It is a warning on yellowed pages from those to whom we owe everything.
From "It Can Happen Here" by Joe Conason. Copyright (c) 2007 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press.

Book Store Sales Down!

Bookies of the world, take to the streets and visit your favorite bookstore!

From PlanetRetail this morning is a story on the recent release of information from the US Census Bureau indicating that bookstore sales in 2006 were down almost 3 percent. While total book sales were up 6. I know that I've done my part for both sides of that report.


http://www.planetretail.net/default.asp?PageID=EAlert&Article=52945&Date=2007-02-15
US Census Bureau says bookstore sales fell in 2006
The US Census Bureau has released preliminary results for bookstore sales in 2006, saying that they fell by 2.9% to USD16.1 billion. The Bureau said that the drop was affected by poor holiday sales, with December showing a fall of 8.8% to USD2.0 billion. However, the news for book selling was not uniformly bad in the US, with total sales for book retailing rising by 6% over the course of the year.