Publishing Insider

The Swedish book help desk

HYSTERICAL!

librarians ARE crazy!

Quote of the day, courtesy of Shelf Awareness:

NPR's All Things Considered featured a report on the Librarian Book Cart Drill Championships held recently at the American Library Association's convention in Chicago: "Five teams of librarians--dressed in costumes ranging from Vikings to Elvis Presley--competed for the coveted gold book cart. They marched in drill-team formation, equipped with metal book carts."

"Our carts at home don't do wheelies as well as the models we use here. These are full-competition models," said Gretchen Roltgen of Baraboo, Wis. "Absolutely, they're built for this type of rigorous competition."

Children's authors Mo Willems and Jon Scieszka served as emcees. "There's a stereotype that librarians are boring. And I think they want to change that stereotype to 'librarians are crazy,'" said Willems.

source of vampire craze revealed!!

Well yes, there was Bram Stoker, but before Anne Rice, Stephanie Meyer and Trublood, there was Dark Shadows, a cult 60's soap that introduced vampire Barnabis Collins in the 1967 season. And one the two writers on the show was the one and only Joe Caldwell, author of The Pig Did It!!!!!!

I LOVE the I Love You, Beth Cooper movie!

I went to the screening with modest expectations, as I loved the book, and you know how that goes. After having to check the blackberry (how scary was THAT!) and the screening starting a half hour late, my daughter, myself and the whole audience pretty much laughed for the next hour and a half! It ain't the Breakfast Club or Napoleon Dynamite, but I Love You, Beth Cooper is really, really good. A sweet love story, both touching at times as well as over the top, but the geeks win the day. Director Christopher Columbus has a great eye for the funny moment, a la Home Alone, and my daugher and I give I Love You, Beth Cooper a total of 3 thumbs up. Great soundtrack, too.

really!?

So, after one of the most successful product launches of all time – the ipod – and one of the most dramatic shifts in buying of a medium in our time, online music downloads are still just 33% of the biz.  I am fervently in favor of e-books - give the readers what they want when and how they want it - but I found this music # very, very interesting. 

fab bookstore vid

From Shelf Awareness: Check out Green Apple Books's latest Book of the Month video. This hilarious "reenactment" from the San Franciscio store is for Conquest of the Useless by Werner Herzog, journals from the time the director made Fitzcarraldo in the Amazon.