Elephant Watch

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen is #14 on the New York Times Best Seller List. Wanna know something? There are 13 books ahead of hers that ain’t near as good. Not even close. No way.

Buy A Friend A Book’s First Anniversary

BAFAB is one year old. If you haven’t checked out this site started by Debra Hamel, than what are you waiting for? To celebrate this anniversary, they’re conducting a week long puzzle contest with lots of great prizes, most of them of the readable variety. You have to complete all six puzzles and then answer a final question on the last day of the contest. Three lucky winners will be chosen at random. There are some great literary prizes here. The contest started yesterday (07/01) so what are you doing here? Go play!

Banned Books

I doubt I will ever hit the New York Times Best Seller List. Hell, there are days when I doubt I’ll ever be published, but I think all writers have those days. While hitting the list might be nice, if I had my druthers and my druthers restricted to just one thing, I’d opt for being banned over being on the list. I can’t think of a greater honor than writing a book some small-minded idiot feels compelled to burn. With that in mind, the folks over at Fulton Books in Groversville, NY really got my attention. They have a list of the 100 most challenged/banned books between 1990 and 2000 and are selling them at 20% off the list price. Check it out. 20% off on banned books.

Not-Books

AbeBooks this week looking for a first edition of something. AbeBooks is the best place on the planet to find out-of-print and used books of all kinds. Anyway, I see this blurb on the front page for a ‘Not-Book’. Not-Book? What is a Not-Book? So I checked it out. Turns out to be a 10th Anniversary promotion featuring blank books with great cover art and outrageous titles. They run $2.17 USD but note that the shipping is over twice that much at $4.50 USD. Still, a book, Not or otherwise, titled Whoops, I Was Wrong by G. W. Bush would be well worth the $6.67 USD. Check it out. Not-Books.

Duck and Cover

Got this from the Book Publishing and Personal Library blog. Gave me a bit of a chuckle and kind of reminded me of how I felt about the old Civil Defense drills they used to pull on us when I was a wee child. In the event of a nuclear attack, we were to crawl under our desk and put our head between our knees. They called it Duck-and-Cover. After seeing the newsreel footage of an atomic test on Bimini Island, I always thought of it as Duck, Cover and Kiss Your Ass Good-bye. Check it out. What to do in case of terrorist attack.

Thank You For Remembering To Smoke

Well, it would seem that my chances of developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease are a tad slimmer. An article in this months Mental_Floss, by way of HowStuffWorks.com, explores new research showing nicotine to be an effective treatment for both diseases. And it seems it may be of benefit to sufferers of Tourette’s syndrome as well. I’d love to point you to a website with the article but Mental_Floss is primarily a print mag, the only print mag I subscribe to, in fact. Great cover-to-cover read. And HowStuffWorks.com is a great resource. Check em out.