The Happy Booker

Craig Arnold needs our help: Urgent

Please read this important message from poet Craig Arnold from his family and friends, and help spread the word. Thank you. 

"Craig Arnold, whom some of you know, has gone missing on a small volcanic island in Japan while on a creative exchange fellowship. Craig, an experienced explorer of volcanoes, never returned to his inn after leaving alone to research the island’s active volcano for the afternoon. The authorities are on the third day of searching for Craig, and are scouring the small island (of only 160 inhabitants) with dogs and helicopters. If he is not found by the end of the day, the authorities will call off the search.

We need your help to insure that the search will continue. The island and areas surrounding the volcano are small enough that an extended search will surely lead to Craig’s discovery.

WE NEED PEOPLE TO CONTACT THEIR LOCAL CONGRESSPEOPLE AND SENATORS TO PRESSURE THE JAPANESE STATE DEPARTMENT TO CONTINUE THE SEARCH. WE ALSO NEED HELP SPARKING MEDIA ATTENTION FOR THIS STORY, WHICH WE ALSO HOPE MIGHT INCREASE PRESSURE ON JAPANESE AUTHORITIES TO FIND CRAIG. 

If any of you have ideas or know people who might be able to help, we’d appreciate hearing from you. Please, though, take a minute to contact your senator and congressperson via telephone or even email to explain this problem and insist on their help.”

The University of Wyoming (where Craig teaches) is taking an active interest in the search and Wyoming Senators are apparently in contact with the Japanese consulate.

There is a “Find Craig Arnold” Facebook group. Please join for updates and news here. 

Those who do not have a Facebook account can go here.

Will Power

Gail Kern Paster, Director of the  

Folger Shakespeare Library, appears on the PBS Engage blog, "Five Good Questions.” The blog series asks visitors to send in questions to be answered the following week.  This is a chance for you to ask those burning questions you may have about Shakespeare, the Folger Library, the upcoming production of King Lear for Great Performances, or whatever else is on your mind.  The blog will pick five questions for Gail to answer and post her responses next week .

 

Post your comments and questions here: 

 

DC Event Tonight

Politics and Prose welcomes Art Spiegelman tonight at 7pm.  The man who invented the graphic novel with Maus—even though he insists he is a comic-book writer—will present his graphic autobiography in his new book, Breakdowns.

(While you're there, check out the bargain books on the lower level. We spied  The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts, Milan Kundera's exploration of the impact of reading for only 5.98. Go. See. Read.)

To Do List

Vote

Hold Breath

Wait

Small Change, Big Impact

R. L. Stine, author of scary books for kids,  sends us this Halloween email just in time for the holiday:

Of course, Halloween is my favorite time of the year. I'll be out scaring folks wherever I can.

But I wanted to write to you today about something that is truly scary to me — the prospect of children growing up without books. I find it terrifying that children who live in low-income communities have few, if any, new books of their own.   

That's why I'm so happy to be a part of First Book. First Book has provided over 60 million new books to kids in need. Yet there are still too many more children waiting for new books of their own.

Will you make a special Halloween donation to First Book so that we can reach them all?

Each $2.50 donation will provide one wonderful new book to a child who desperately needs books. For $25, you can fill an entire backpack with ten new books for a child to enjoy.

I can't think of a better holiday gift. Please make a donation now.

Your generosity gives me goosebumps!

With thanks,

R.L. Stine

Linksy-Daisy

Sharing means caring:

Margaret Atwood in the Times on our Life and Debt, complete with literary references and a sane perspective.

Oprah warms to the Kindle, calling the electronic reader her " favorite new gadget."  Visitors to the Oprah site get a promotional code that gives $50 off the purchase price through next Friday only, and Amazon is giving another ten percent off the Kindle version of Oprah's latest book club selection, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

FYI: Books on Oprah's Kindle include The Story Of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski, The Audacity Of Hope by Barack Obama, Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones by Suzanne Somers, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, and Crack The Fat-Loss Code: Outsmart Your Metabolism And Conquer The Diet Plateau by Wendy Chant.

Could a What's on your Kindle? ad compaign be far behind?

Sad Links:

An incredibly moving account of David Foster Wallace appears in the October issue of Rolling Stone. (excerpt here, but  you're going to have to visit the newsstand for the complete article and we assure you it's worth it. )

RIP: Novelist Tony Hillerman died of pulmonary failure on Sunday. He was 83 and lived in Albuquerque. (Times obit)

Book Deal That Made Us Happy

From Publishers Lunch:

Lee Gutkind's THE TORAH HUNTER, following Rabbi Menachem Youlus, who
not only writes and repairs torahs but also is on a quest to save lost
or missing ones throughout the world despite the dangers he encounters
from neo-Nazis and the like, to Amy Cherry at Norton, by Andrew Blauner
at Blauner Books Literary Agency (world).

You can read more about this remarkable man here, from the New York Times.

Pesky Palin Poll

 
" So, is the Palin poll now "scientific"? Absolutely not. It is still subject to large scale efforts on the left and the right to mobilize people to vote. The poll has become something of a Rorschach test, a tiny political marker in a tightly contested race. Over the past two weeks, the results of the poll see-sawed back and forth from a majority saying "No" to a majority saying, "Yes". At the moment the single-voter system was implemented, it was close to a tie: 50% say Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as Vice President, and 48% say no. Those results, in my view, are actually a measure of the mobilization and manipulation efforts by partisans on both sides."

—PBS on Palin Poll

End of an Era

 
After thirty-six years Olsson's, Washington's oldest independent book and music stores, closes its doors.

"...Through it all, our best and brightest served Washington's best and brightest with love and distinction. I'm very proud of what we accomplished."  —John Olsson, principal owner

Sweet New Year

The New York Times dishes advice for your holiday table here.