Miss Manners and the Nosy Librarian

Worth a snicker: Miss Manners replies to a woman with an excessively nosy librarian.

Another time, I checked out a name book. I'm writing a novel and needed some ideas for my characters. The librarian read the titles and shrieked, "Are you pregnant?! It's too soon for you to be having another baby!" (I was holding my infant son at the time.)

Note to self: don't do this.

Piracy of Anti-Piracy

So Warner is getting sued by a German company for stealing anti-piracy tech. Hilarity!

The Seattle Edible Book Festival

The Seattle Edible Book Festival: basically, food creations inspired by books. Silly but fun.

Forbes Interviews Tony Stark

A fictional Forbes interview with Tony Stark. It's funny!

Speaking of Iron Man 2, it was decent but definitely not as good as the first movie. Also, Black Widow was a disappointment - taking more from her background from the comics would have been much better, though sadly, Scarlett Johanssen isn't really a good choice for that sort of role... so maybe it's best the Widow just ran around in a black catsuit.

Toilet Paper Twitter

A man in need of toilet paper Twittered about it and his plea was answered.

Remember, this is PART OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS NOW.

The Worst Sci-fi/Fantasy Book Covers

Good Show Sir is a site dedicated to finding the absolute worst sci-fi/fantasy book covers. And they have succeeded. This stuff is scary.

The Forbes Fictional 15

The 15 Richest Fictional Characters according to Forbes. I tittered.

That Keith Richards Thing is Really True

Just in case you needed it, another article about Keith Richards' love of books. Worth posting about again because everyone I mention this to stares at me with disbelief. Also a good plug for his upcoming autobiography, which I believe I am now interested in reading.

Sabotage Via Amazon Reviews

From The Guardian: a historian's wife wrote disparaging reviews of the books of his rivals.

Well, that's certainly... loyal.

Mean Amazon Reviews of Classic Books

As someone who loathed Sense and Sensibility, mean Amazon comments about classic books make me laugh. Though mean-mouthing The Diary of Anne Frank seems a bit much.

Recognizing a book for its value capturing a time period or even what its being popular means is still important, but man, did I hate those S&S characters.

Penny Arcade - Flight of the Ebook Readers

A Penny Arcade comic!

One deficit an electronic reader has over printed media, and this is only a factor if you've been in the air as much as we have lately, is that there are portions of the flight where you can't read. Your "book," as it were, now belongs in the same criminal class of devices which includes laptops and missile transponders. The other deficit, I suppose, is that when the device runs out of power your "book" ceases to exist. It retains the gaudy and absurd physicality so common with objects, but all the purpose has leaked out. The unbook you have left becomes a lady of impenetrable chastity.

Keith Richards, Librarian

Wait, what?

Keith Richards wanted to be a librarian. And still does. Apparently he reads a lot and keeps many, many books. I had no idea.

Smelling Books (Again)

In Which, Emphatically And Forever, I Decline To Care How Books Smell, Linda Holmes. I kind of want to marry this woman now.

My day-to-day experience of reading generally involves things that I am reading now, which often means relatively new books -- either new books, or newly acquired copies of old books. Now, I freely admit that if I get my nose within in inch of the paper, I can smell "book." Which, loosely defined, means "paper and ink." I cannot smell wisdom. I cannot smell memory, or the past, or people who were reading a hundred years ago and have handed down their tradition of reading by firelight.

You know when I sense wisdom? I sense wisdom from the words. For me, language contains wisdom and tradition and history, whether printed on a page, heard aloud, read on a screen, or recalled because it was meaningful.

Weird book smell people. Weird, weird, people.

How Will the End of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?

The Onion is not a serious news site. Except the AV Club section, that's actually not made up.

Tiny Art Director

Bill Zeman's A Tiny Art Director is a book about Bill drawing things that his daughter Rosie requests and her reactions to the results. It looks hilarious. I must find this and read it.

Snopes

Snopes.com is actually run by a husband and wife team. I had no idea; I figured it was a bunch of people. I suppose I always envisioned them as being hipsters in their twenties with the big thick-rimmed glasses. (Which I love, and which I own and wear.) (Glasses, not hipsters. I don't wear hipsters.)

The site debunks myths; if you're not sure if a story you've heard is real, you look to Snopes.com. I got hit by the Family Scammer, though my variant was a friend. They'd gotten into his Google mail and Facebook accounts. I did not believe he was in Wales and didn't send them anything, but it's still the most plausible money-grabbing scheme I've ever been emailed. (It also didn't involve a phone call.) Far more convincing than that Nigerian guy.

E-book Sellers and the iPad

From LISNews: E-Book Sellers Face a Battle to Win iPad Customers. Wait, people bought iPads?

Zinnnnng.

Books to Pass On

A poll commissioned to mark World Book Day asked British People what books they would like to pass on to the next generation.

Number one: the Harry Potter books. Okay, yes. Not always the best written. Number two: The DaVinci Code. I still need to read this one, but I really don't want to based on opinions I've heard (Dan Brown is a hack being the most common) and the fact that I didn't much like his book with the Illuminati. I didn't like it enough to even look up its actual title. Anyway! Number five: Twilight.

No, no, no, was my immediate thought. Twilight? Not very well written, horrible message for young girls, blah blah blah. Then I thought about other books I found annoying, like Sense and Sensibility. I have never wanted a character to die as much as I did when one of the sisters fell ill in Sense and Sensibility. I tossed it down in disgust at one point. I guess that's how things like this get started: someone passes down something that's not all that great (yes, I just said Jane Austen's book wasn't all that great and I was being kind) and then years and years later it's a 'classic'. I hope I die before Twilight is ever considered a classic. I hope I am so, so dead.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

More in the battle against late fees! A teenager in Colorado has been sent to jail for an overdue DVD.

Apparently the kid borrowed House of Flying Daggers and accidentally packed it up while moving. The DVD's about $30; it cost $200 to get the kid out of jail, another $200 to get his car out of the impound lot, and $60 in court fees.

Littleton Mayor Doug Clark said the city plans to change its policy on overdue DVDs and books as a result of the case.

"We're not going to arrest people who don't return $30 DVDs," he said.

Gee, y'think?

Little Billy's Letters

In the 1990s Bill Geerhart was an unemployed, not-so aspiring screenwriter in his 30s. To pass the time, he channeled his inner child, 10-year-old Billy, and started writing letters to famous and infamous people and institutions. These letters, written in pencil on elementary school ruled paper, asked funny but relevant questions to politicians, serial killers, movie stars, lobbyists, CEOs, and celebrity lawyers.

Little Billy's Letters to Famous and Infamous People sounds like a fun book. I feel like a shill, but I enjoyed reading the excerpts published in this BoingBoing article.