The publishing world recently celebrated—or for the most part failed to celebrate—a milestone: the 205th anniversary of the publication of CHILDREN’S AND HOUSEHOLD TALES, first published on December 20, 1812, still in print, but better known today as GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES.

Did you make your New Year’s resolutions yet? Myself, I don’t make resolutions for the new year, but I think I’m in the minority. Most people try to turn over a new leaf at the start of each new year.

Time was when making it to the “Best-Seller List” was quite an accomplishment, but when it comes to the list, or more properly “lists,” plural, these days, the bloom is off the rose. Why? For two reasons. One I alluded to above: a proliferation of lists. And the other is recent alleged manipulations of lists to land a book on one of the best-seller lists through devious means. There was a time when “the Best-Seller List” referred to the list in the New York TIMES. That was it. Other media might also have their own best-seller lists, but the TIMES...

If you were around in the late ’60s/early ’70s, you may remember the bumper stickers and pins and posters that read, WHAT IF THEY GAVE A WAR AND NOBODY CAME? I was reminded of that saying last Saturday. Only it wasn’t a war. It was something that should’ve been much more fun.

I did a booksigning this past Saturday, reading two picturebooks at an area bookstore. I alerted everyone on my local mailing list as well as posting notices on both Facebook and CraigsList, and the bookstore had told me they would do promo as well.

I read the article so long ago that I remember neither where I read it nor all the particulars. It concerned a difference between the genders when reading a novel or watching a movie, particularly one with a romance in it, whether that was the main thrust of the story or merely an incidental thread. The article posited that one gender—and here is where my foggy memory betrays me, as I don’t remember which gender it is—watches the movie or reads the book and puts themselves in the plot in place of the hero or heroine. The other gender, on...

Remember when books were just…books? If you wanted to read a book, you picked up a book…period. In the beginning, all books were hardcover. Then came “mass market”—small paperbacks printed on inexpensive paper, they were mostly westerns for male readers, romances for females. The next advance was “trade paperbacks,” better-quality paperbacks, larger in size and printed on paper that was heavier, more durable, less brittle, and didn’t have the same tendency to yellow or break that the pages of mass market books did. Another advance was large-type books for people with low vision. And then there were Braille books, with...

Do you have hidden treasure in your home? No, don’t go digging up the floorboards or searching the attic or basement. The “treasure” I’m talking about isn’t stacks of old coins or paper money, squirreled away by a curmudgeon who didn’t trust banks after 1929.

Would you go into your neighborhood supermarket and purloin a bunch of bananas? Would you head to the clothing store and swipe a pair of pants? Unless you’re like a certain fellow I once knew—okay, lived with, but when I learned his true colors I kicked him out—you’re no shoplifter. You may not like or be comfortable with parting with your money, but you recognize that the grower of a comestible or the manufacturer of a wearable, as well as the retailer who sells it to the end customer, is entitled to compensation for his or her labor.

I have a friend who’s a “booksale hound.” Whenever there’s a booksale within reasonable driving distance of her home—and she considers well over an hour “reasonable driving distance”—she’s there.