Between the Covers

It's all about the story

I'm always hearing complaints about those kids today, they don't read enough, they just watch bad TV. Well, here's a way to introduce your kids to storytelling in an interactive way: Miami-Dade Public Library System's "Art of Storytelling" festival, which will include such storytellers as Connie Regan-Blake and Dylan Pritchett, pictured here.

The event features storytellers, storybook characters, music and dance, and it's free, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. May 3 at the Main Library in downtown Miami, 101 W. Flagler St. There's even free parking at the Cultural Center Garage, 50 NW Second Ave., and the Hickamn Garage at 270 NW Second. You can find a full schedule of performances by clicking here or by calling 305-375-2665.

Go graphic

Publishers Weekly reports that good news has come out of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference: Sales were up by 12 percent in 2007. Sales in the U.S. and Canada totaled $375 million.

The industry has been boosted by sales of such graphic novelizations as Stephen King's The Dark Tower and Heroes, based on the NBC series, which I am not going to watch anymore because there are far too many annoying heroes out there. (Hint: somebody kill off the remaining twin with the bleeding eyes, the ridiculously stupid and naive Mohinder and any of the supremely annoying characters played by Ali Larter, and I MIGHT consider going back, though honestly it's a long shot.)

Other big sellers on the backlist: Watchmen and (predictably) 300, because who doesn't like guys in leather thongs chopping each other up?

Penis-eating ducks

My editor refused to let me get that phrase in print, but I have a blog now, where I reign supreme! Besides, in her book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Mary Roach actually does mention such creatures in an anecdote about how Thai doctors quickly got proficient at reattachment surgery. Apparently - and here's a chance for me to use another favorite phrase - in the '70s in Thailand there was a rash of incidents involving angry wives chopping off their adulterous husbands' members. Frequently they'd throw them to the livestock, and the ducks developed a taste for them.

"The paper," writes Roach, "does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.' "

But there's more to Bonk than carnivorous ducks. It's a smart, funny book, graphic in parts, sidesplitting in others. Roach, who also wrote Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, is hilarious, and I suspect her upcoming reading at Books & Books (Wednesday at 8) should be a riot.

To read my story on Mary, which is buried so far inside the newspaper that not even the penis-eating ducks could find it because God KNOWS no one wants to read about that dull topic of sex, click here.

Sing a love song to your favorite book - and win cash money

Seriously! Also in honor of National Library Week, Gale - part of Cengage Learning - is sponsoring the Books & Authors songwriting competition in which writers can compose and perform on YouTube an original song about their favorite book or author - and win $5,000, to be split with the winner's favorite library.

So make your video - no more than two minutes in length - and load that puppy to the librareo group on YouTube before midnight EST May 31. Extremely creative types may submit as many videos as you like as long as they don't sing about John Updike, as he is annoying. Ha ha! Just kidding. You can sing about any writer, even John Grisham, if you must. Top five winners will be chosen by June 6 and featured at www.gale.com/librareo for a nationwide vote.

Just in time for National Library Week

I actually got a couple of audiobooks from the Broward County library system, so I can cancel the fatwa against them. So nice to have something to listen to in the car after The Diane Rehm Show is over (or before it begins, for that matter). First up: David McCullough's 1776. The author reads the book, and so far it's not bad, though I'd have to say it falls more  the "like" scale than the "love" scale, but I've only heard 2 discs so far.

I also got Geraldine Brooks' March, in keeping with the theme of books about American wars.

Good news for Elephants

Happy anniversary to Sara Gruen. PW Daily reports that her novel Water for Elephants has just recorded its 52nd week on the paperback bestseller list. That's a year to you if you're counting. The book spent 13 weeks on the list in hardback, with 1.8 million copies in print.

That's great news for publisher Algonquin. The next closest Algonquin book to spend that long in the limelight, according to publicity director Michael Taekens, was Robert Morgan's Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage, which spent 12 weeks on the bestseller list after being chosen as an Oprah Book Club pick.

I haven't read Elephants; what do you all think of it?

Fiction may never be the same

Be still my heart! Oprah whipping boy James Frey's new book hits shelves May 13. This time, he's allowed to make stuff up: Bright Shiny Morning is a novel, so Oprah can't bitchslap him on national TV this time. Or maybe she can. She is allowed to do pretty much anything, isn't she?

What are the odds that Bright Shiny Morning is about a recovering drug addict? Is there anyone out there that thinks drug addicts are actually interesting? With the exception of Bubbles from The Wire, they're NOT.

Orange you glad she's nominated?

American Patricia Wood, author of the debut novel Lottery (due out in paperback in June), is one of six authors on the shortlist for the Orange Prize for fiction by women. You think that's lucky? Wood was inspired by her father's winnings in the Washington State lottery (six million bucks).

Two other debuts were nominated: Britain's Sadie Jones for The Outcast and Canadian Heather O'Neill for Lullabies for Little Criminals. Rounding out the nominees are Canadian Nancy Huston for Fault Lines; and Brits Charlotte Mendelson for When We Were Bad and Rose Tremain for The Road Home.

The winner will be announced June 4. Past winners you may have heard of: Carol Shields, Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith.

Cornwell + Lifetime = movies

Lifetime Television has made a deal with suspense writer Patricia Cornwell to adapt her latest book At Risk and its sequel, The Front, due to be published in May.

Lifetime has adapted novels to its screen before, and as you may have guessed, they're all by, if not for, women: Joyce  Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys, Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid's Chair, a bunch of things by the prolific Nora Roberts and, most recently, Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

At Risk introduces new characters for Cornwell, famous for her Kay Scarpetta novels: ambitious District Attorney Monique Lamont and state investigator Win Garano. It's set in Boston. I can't say I've read it - I quit reading Cornwell, whom I used to enjoy quite a bit, when she started resurrecting characters from the grave - but Publisher's Weekly was less than thrilled, calling it "far from Cornwell's best work." Still, somebody's reading - it was a New York Times bestseller.

My favorite Scarpetta books? The old school Cruel and Unusual and the chilling The Body Farm, in which Kay finally hooks up with Benton and Marino gets jealous and Lucy has not yet started being so annoying that you want her to be the next victim.

No word on whether Tori Spelling will play Monique, but let's hope not.

Riding out tonight to face the promised land

If you think you're the only one who grew up loving Bruce Springsteen's music, think again. Sarfraz Manzoor, a Pakistani-born Londoner, writes in his new memoir Greetings from Bury Park that hearing The River (and the rest of the Boss' songs)  changed his life. Journalist Manzoor did not come from down in the valley but mister, when he was young, they brought him up to do like his daddy done. And he said no.

In honor of Springsteen's concert this week in South Florida, read a swell review of the book by Herald staff writer Lisa Arthur here.