Book News Round-Up

Happy New Year, bookworms. I'm finally back with a book news round-up, the first of 2010 and, depending on who you talk to, the first of the new decade. Enjoy!

• While wizards, vampires and Robert Langdon dominated the decade, there were a few other books published in the last ten years. Daily Beast has a list of the best 14 you might have missed while you were making your way down the best-sellers list. The list has a variety of nonfiction, fiction and graphic novels.
  
• Um..., okay. My current hometown of Quincy, MA is considering enacting a law that would ban Level 3 sex offenders from the library. The idea is that this law would create safe areas around the locations (such as libraries, parks and playgrounds) so that children and their families don't feel threatened. I think it's a great idea, but as a frequent patron on the Quincy library myself, I don't think they have to worry about sex offenders finding kids there since I almost never see any.
• Local, independent bookstores are struggling to stay open in the current economy and have taken some painful, but necessary steps to keep their doors open. In particular, specialty bookstores are cutting down on certain titles in order to stock the shelves with the books most likely to sell.
• Since Hollywood likes to steal ideas from literature, Galley Cat has a post pondering the best literary adaptations of the year. Though movies like Up in the Air, Precious and others are getting good reviews, the consensus seems to land on Dave Eggers' adaptation of Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are as best of the year. And you'll get no argument from me. Anyone that can take a book with such a small amount of words and make a 90 minute movie out of it deserves recognition.
• I guess authors just don't make the right kind of money these days. Before Christmas, the New York Times reported that an author tried to shoplift his own book from a bookstore. Few clues have surfaced, leading many to wonder who "he" is, but if he's so desperate to steal his own book, he's probably not a very good author. I'm guessing.
• And lastly, Galley Cat conducted a highly scientific survey to determine just how many writes, novelists, authors, etc. were on Twitter, in this year of Twitter's rise. According to a simple search of people's own self-written biographies, there are 9,139 poets, 1,790 novelists, and a staggering 99,082 writers on Twitter right now. Unfortunately, of the most popular Twitter profiles to have "writer" in the biography, the number one spot goes to Perez Hilton, who despite his popular blog, I would argue is not actually a writer. Well, it's the thought that counts.