Seattle's Real Life Superhero

We have one. He fights crime. His story, here.

Superhero Panhandlers

It's a sad day. Superhero panhandling has been outlawed in Hollywood, Comic Alliance reports.

Is Scottish Literature English Literature?

That's what the Library of Congress said. That is until, of course, the Scottish said, "What the hell!?" The Washington Post has the story about how the library's cataloguing policy and support office almost abandoned Scottish writing entirely, categorizing all Scottish writing under "English" categories. The Scots, rightly so, were pissed.

Press Freedom Round-Up

Reporters without Borders reports that there were 86 journalists killed in 2007. That's up 244% in the last five years. The reason? Of course it's the ongoing war in Iraq. More than half of the 86 now-dead journalists died in Iraq. Also in the report...

- 887 journalists arrested
- 1,511 physically attacked or threatened
- 67 journalists kidnapped
- 528 media outlets censored

The report talks about other deaths as well, including ones in Somalia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Mexico.

Frightening.

GQ Men of the Year Interview

The great George Saunders interviews the great Bill Clinton.

Russia's Growing Contempt for Literature

There's a systematic crisis in Russia, according to a news story in The Sunday Herald. The crisis is no one is reading anymore in that country, or at least not as much as they used to. From the story, "The Kremlin is now complaining that post-communist Russia has dramatically turned its back on books in favour of trashy reality-TV shows and glossy magazines."

Some factoids:

- In the 1970s, 80% of parents read aloud to their children. Today the figure is just 7%.

- In 1991, the year the Soviet Union imploded, 48% of young Russians systematically consumed literature. By 2005 that figure had shrunk to just 28%.

- In 1991, 79% of Russians read at least one book a year. In 2005 that figure had fallen to 63%.

Of course this isn't a particular problem to Russians. None of us are reading like we used to. It's because of the internet, cable TV, movies, radio, and all the other ways we get information and entertainment.

What can be done to stop the crisis? If you're the Kremlin, you've declared the next 12 months to be "The Year of Reading" in an attempt to raise awareness to the problem and get Russians to start poking their heads in bookstores again.

What can you do? Why not read some classic Russian literature?

In the New Yorker recently, there was an in-depth article, written by James Wood, about a new translation of Tolstoy's War and Peace. For me though, I'd rather dig into Dostoevksy's The Idiot.

WGA On Strike

The Writers Guild of America is on strike (story care of Variety). CNN is also on the picket lines. Slate, always a groovy source for all things newsy, has a story entitled TV Writers Script Their Upcoming Strike.

Get ready, folks, for plenty of reruns until this thing gets worked out. And, please, let's work it out. Give writers their due!

Now, sing with me the old Julius Margolin chestnut, "A Union Man"

When I die throw my ashes to the winds
When I die throw my ashes to the winds
When I die throw my ashes to the winds
I've lived my life the best way I can

I've always been a hardworking man
I've always been a hardworking man
I've always been a hardworking man
I've lived my life the best way I can

I've always been a damn good union man
I've always been a damn good union man
I've always been a damn good union man
I've lived my life the best way I can

I've been a seaman, electrician, and in construction too
On assembly lines and factories and did some farming too
Fought company scabs, union-busting laws, walked many a picket line
For musicians, electricians, and workers in the mines

So when I die throw my ashes to the winds
When I die throw my ashes to the winds
When I die throw my ashes to the winds
I've lived my life the best way I can
Proud to live my life the best way I can!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

The Gashlycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey. Is there anything better for Halloween?

Also, other creepy bits...

In the New York Observer, there's a new theory on how Edgar Allan Poe died. It was a brain tumor.

KNBC, out of Los Angeles, has compiled 15 famously freaky ghost pictures.

And, if you want to sit down with a fun book this evening, might I suggest Eric Nuzum's informative and charming The Dead Travel Fast? It's a cultural history of vampires.

Or, if that's not something you can sink your teeth into (HA!) the Washington Post highlights books that'll scare the bejesus out of you.

P.S. A hunter, traipsing through the Allegheny National Forest, found Bigfoot.

Books Are Dying? Think Again

Karen Long, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer has written a piece entitled, "In an Increasingly Electronic Age, Books Remain Relevant." Yes, a long-winded title, but a good story that gives hope to us book readers that books will be around for a long long time to come, no matter if there's iPods, laptops, and YouTube.

A factoid:
In 2006, Americans bought more than 3.1 billion books, generating $35.69 billion in sales, up 3.2 percent over 2005's total, according to the Book Industry Study Group.

The story goes on talking about the books coming this Fall and Winter that should have an impact on book publishing and, of course, readers. You can have your MySpace and your ESPN, your Facebook and YouTube. I don't need them. All I need is a few minutes of quiet and a book in my hands.

Good-Bye, Hy-phen

According to a recent story in Reuters the hyphen is being siphoned away from the English language. That's a shame! Who doesn't appreciate a good hyphen now-and-again? Who are these ne'er-do-wells?

My three favorite markings in grammar (in no particular order)...
The emdash.
The semicolon.
The ampersand.

Ever Wonder about the Reading Habits of Czechs?

Nor I. But, via the Literary Saloon, Czechs are Europe's biggest bookworms. According to a recent study Czechs spent on average 41 minutes a day with a book. Also, on the average, Czechs read 60 books per year. I wonder how this stacks up against us Americans. My guess is that we spend an average of 41 minutes a day with "Access Hollywood."

What Ails the Short Story

By Stephen King in the recent New York Times Book Review.

My favorite short story of all time? This one.

Be Naughty This Week

Banned Books Week begins Saturday and runs through October 6th. That's plenty of time to frazzle the powers that be by reading something deemed "inappropriate."

What was the most banned book of 2006? Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell's And Tango Makes Three, about two male penguins parenting an egg from a mixed-sex penguin couple. Due to issues of homosexuality, it's been challenged this last year, a lot.

And, let's throw some Toni Morrison in there as well. One of the best writers of her generation, both The Bluest Eye and Beloved were banned due to its sexual content and offensive language.

Alvin Schwartz's Scary Stories was banned because of its occult/Satanism. What's scary is that it's been challenged.

You want a kid to read? Ban a book and they'll get their hands on it. I remember in middle school digging into Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, John Steinbeck, and other authors of banned books simply because I knew they must hold something amazing within their pages, something the adults knew that I didn't at the time, something about, well, the truth, the truth of our world, our times, our people. Why they don't want kids to learn of these truths is beyond me.

For a list of the 100 most frequently challenged books from 1990 to 2000 look here. So, this week my friend read Maya Angelou or J.K. Rowling, Alice Walker or Judy Blume, Roald Dahl or Stephen King, Isabel Allende or Kurt Vonnegut. Let people know that we have the freedom to express our opinions even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and, further, we're allowed to learn of these different viewpoints and make our own decisions.

If You Have a Few Million Kicking Around

You may want to bid on an original copy of the Magna Carta.

The Magna Carta (the original is housed in the British Library [see my post below if you're interested in the library]) is an English charter originally issued in 1215. It influenced constitutional law. It influenced our Constitution and Bill of Rights. It is, quite possibly, the most important legal document in history. The image above shows the Magna Carta being signed by King John.

Also, if you're into auction's these days, you may want to get a paddle up for Van Gogh's last painting.

And, since you want something for your wife as well, why not Marie Antoinette's jewelry?

The Government Knows You're Reading Orwell on Your Horizon Air Flight to Boise

Wonderful! The U.S. government, according to this story in the Washington Post is, "collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials."

Super. I'll feel really sheepish when I read this the next time I fly.

Reclusive Authors in This, Our YouTube World

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article about reclusive authors. Why are they reclusive? What are they hoping to accomplish by not playing the publicity game? Or are they trying to accomplish anything other than to be left alone? And why is it that the reclusive writers we know (J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy) are outstanding unparalleled authors? Is Danielle Steele going into seclusion anytime soon?

Women Read More Than Men

That should come as no surprise. What a recent NPR story delves into is why. Is it because of biological differences in the male and female brain? Is it the way boys and girls are introduced to reading when they're young?

Some statistics:
A typical woman reads nine books in a year. A man reads five.
Women read more than men in all categories except histories and biographies.
Women account for 80% of all fiction reading.

So men, pick up some fiction. There's plenty of manly authors out there. Cormac McCarthy's recent The Road is a tremendous achievement in fiction, in a manly way. And, men, if you don't read fiction, well, there's Jon Krakauer's riveting work and journalists Mark Bowden and Pete Dexter all have some stories that are laden with testosterone. And, men, if you don't read books, well there's always Maxim.

You Can Write, But Are You Attractive?

There's an interesting story in The Phoenix about how the publishing industry is turning young authors into sex symbols. Briefly, from the article...

Literature, unlike so many other media industries, is technically a meritocracy. But that won’t stop book marketers, bloggers, critics, and the literary community at large from collectively slobbering over a pretty author. No, the literary rules changed ages ago. Books no longer need to be serious in order to be published; there are fewer and fewer venues available for reviews (rendering competition more intense with every passing catalogue season), and critics aren’t doing their job unless they are merciless. Perhaps as a response to all of this, publishers have begun to count on their authors to do double-duty — to act as sex symbols as well.

Oh man, am I ever in trouble if that's the case (see above).

25% Of Us Don't Read Books

In USA Today there's an overview of a study that's been done that highlights rather grim statistics about book reading. That is, a lot of us aren't reading books. One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year.

Some other factoids revealed in the news story...
When the Gallup poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started — a similar but not directly comparable question — the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57% of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet.

Damn internet.

Though we don't read books that much, we sure dream of writing them. According to a poll amongst Britons (story in Guardian Unlimited), their number one dream job is to be a writer.

Self-Published Gay Love Story or Oprah Book Club Choice?

Both! Want an interesting story (care of the Weekly Dig)? How's this? A guy in Provincetown self-publishes through iUniverse a novella entitled Crossed Paths. Set in 1976, it's a gay love story. Sales aren't going well. The guy decides to tell the world that Oprah chose the book for her famed book club. A lie. The lie gets more interesting. He states that he went on Oprah's show in May to talk about the book and then fabricated a five page transcript of the "show". For instance...

Oprah: Bill, I must tell you that I immediately fell in love with this book when I first read it.

Schneider: Thank you. Thanks very much.

Oprah: Crossed Paths is truly a gem of story. Tell me how you came to write this very poignant book ...

Oprah: I was very impressed with how well you developed the characters in Crossed Paths.

Schneider: Thanks.

Oprah's team isn't pleased, as you might imagine, particularly after getting burned with the whole James Frey fiasco.