Pretty cool idea!

Harry Potter a left-wing hero, French paper says

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This is a good one for all the teachers out there!

"Noah Webster (1758-1843) was the man of words in early 19th-century America. Compiler of a dictionary which has become the standard for American English, he also compiled The American Spelling Book, which was the basic textbook for young readers in early 19th-century America. (...) Today, the Spelling Book is useless as a children's textbook, but it provides us an example of what Webster thought it important to tell young learners about morality (readers could decide to emulate the "good boy" or the "bad boy") and the principles of American government (members of Congress must be paid because otherwise "none but rich men could afford to serve as delegates," and "there are many men of little property, who are among the most able, wise and honest persons in a state"). The Spelling Book also shows the ways a language can change in 200 years of spelling."

Merrycoz has more of this: Voices from 19th-century America - An eccentric collection of works for adults, from 1800 to 1872 or Nineteenth-century American Children & What They Read - An anthology of works for children, from 1800 to 1872

If you have any of his books flying around, please bring them to the shop! I want them all!!!!

"Nobody writes a better crime novel," Elmore Leonard said of Willeford.

"Willeford's characteristic juxtaposition of humor and violence was apparently one of director Quentin Tarantino's inspirations. Discussing Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has said that the film 'is not noir. I don't do neo-noir. I see Pulp Fiction as closer to modern-day crime fiction, a little closer to Charles Willeford.'"

Quotes from the article about Charles WIlleford on Wikipedia

"The collectable Charles Willeford didn't exist before 1984, when his breakthrough novel Miami Blues kicked off the mad scramble for his backlist. Despite the fact that seventeen books had seen publication since his first title in 1948, no one seemed to have heard of him. Sure, his novel Cockfighter had been filmed, with Warren Oates in the starring role, and with Willeford himself acting in a supporting part. It was one of the few Roger Corman productions that actually lost money. The collectable Willeford we know now was the sixty-five year old pro who sat down and wrote an instant classic named Miami Blues. Until then, you could have found any of his paperback original novels from the 1950s or 1960s for five or six bucks, or less."

From an essay by Don Herron

Dumbledore was gay, says 'Potter' author

Bookmark this list from Pickthebrain.com!

And this: FreeClassicAudioBooks.com

And here's another one: audiobooksforfree.com

209 Books have been left around Berlin free for the taking in the last 30 days. Want to go on a search for one of these books or maybe leave one you have finished reading? Check out bookcrossing* At BookCrossing, you can register any book you have on the site, and then set the book free to travel the world and find new readers.Leave it on a park bench, at a coffee shop, at a hotel on vacation. Share it with a friend or tuck it onto a bookshelf at the gym -- anywhere it might find a new reader! What happens next is up to fate, and we never know where our books might travel next. Track the book's journey around the world as it is passed on from person to person.

*bookcrossing: n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise. (added to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in August 2004)

Short-stories.co.uk/ has a pretty good collection in various formats!

Archive for classic literature on the web

"A blog about books and publishing, aimed at both readers and writers. Listed by the Guardian in 2005 as one of the top ten literary blogs"

Amazing! Have a look at Brian Dettmer's Book Autopsies

Great little crime novel about a detective with turkish roots. There's a "lending only"-copy in our Germany section.

More at "No Exit": "A Turkish worker - Ahmed Hamul - is stabbed to death in Frankfurt's red-light district - certainly no reason for the local police to work overtime. Kemal Kayankaya, however has a different attitude. He is 26, born in Turkey, raised in Germany and now working as a Private Investigator. He has a German passport but has first hand experience of resentment against foreigners and now Hamul's wife, Ilter, has hired Kayankaya to find out who murdered her husband.

In the 3 days it takes him to wrap up the case, he has time to identify Ilter's sister as a heroin addict, track down Ahmed's girlfriend [a prostitute], link his father-in-law's fatal accident three years earlier to an ingenious police cover-up, and still survive beatings, gas attacks and a close encounter with a Fiat."

Sign & Sight: "The six finalists for the German Book Prize 2007 have now been named. We present a list of the shortlisted titles below, with links to English translations of the first pages."

Over at Booktv.org

I just read it again. Loved it as a kid. If you never read it, you gotta give it a try!

Wikipedia : "Dracula is an acclaimed 1897 novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, featuring as its primary antagonist the vampire Count Dracula.

Dracula has been attributed to many literary genres including horror fiction, the gothic novel and invasion literature. Structurally it is an epistolary novel, that is, told as a series of diary entries and letters. Literary critics have examined many themes in the novel, such as the role of women in Victorian culture, conventional and repressed sexuality, immigration, colonialism, postcolonialism and folklore. Although Stoker did not invent the vampire, the novel's influence on the popularity of vampires has been singularly responsible for many theatrical and film interpretations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries."

-Ebook at Gutenberg.org

Archive.org: -Free Audio-book in various formats -Scans of the first edition -Old Time Radio Show (1938) -Free movie for download: "The Satanic Rites of Dracula" (1974, Hammer Films)

Some interesting links for writers on readwriteweb.com.

Interesting story by Josef Hoffmann about Ludwig Wittgenstein. The great philosopher loved western and hard-boiled crime fiction.

Over at Mysteryfile. They also have a good blog.

From Publishers Weekly "At the start of this dark, demented fiction debut from Ellis, the creator of DC Comics' Transmetropolitan and The Authority, the U.S. president's heroin-addicted chief of staff hires 25-year-old Lower East Side PI Mike McGill to find the other Constitution. This is a secret document privately authored by several of the Founders detailing the real intent of their design for American society, which a debauched vice-president Nixon lost in the '50s."

Chapter 1 is online