I talk a lot about the benefits and virtues of ebooks and other digital media on this blog, almost to the point of obsession. However, too often I fail to mention that I still love good old fashion print books. It doesn’t matter if it’s a mass market paperback, or a newly released hardcover, or even a trade paperback – they all offer the promise of an entertaining story and maybe the chance to learn something.

There is something else that print books offer, that if you read the New York Times Books Section today, you probably will know what I’m talking about: The things left in books. I came across this interesting essay about various objects found in books, usually by workers at used book stores:

I speak of any of those bizarre objects — scissors, a used Q-tip, a bullet, a baby’s tooth, drugs, pornography and 40 $1,000 bills — that have been discovered by the employees of secondhand bookstores, according to The Wall Street Journal and Abebooks.com. Mystery surrounds these deposits like darkness.

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My thoughts and sympathy go out to Mr. Damour’s family and friends. He was the temporary Wal-Mart employee that was killed as a crowd rushed into the store at 5am:

Jdimytai Damour, 34, was crushed as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m. Friday, police said.

You can read more details about the incident in this article, and more about Mr. Damour in this article. This incident is a sad commentary about what the holidays have become. I don’t think there’s any bargain on electronics or a sale of any kind worth more than a human life.

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When I think of banning books, I normally think about large piles of books being set on fire in the street, or even certain books being pulled from school libraries for one reason or another. But banning books hardly conjures up the image of a large bookstore chain canceling a book signing because a religious group threatens to cause a disruption.

Yet that is exactly what happened at Waterstone’s Bookstore today in the UK. According to this BBC report, a book of poetry that was considered "Obscene and blasphemous" by a group called the Christian Voice:

Patrick Jones was due to sign copies at Waterstone’s in Cardiff but the shop cancelled the event at the last moment.

Christian Voice said the book was "obscene and blasphemous" and called on the chain to remove copies from stores.

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Even as the death of author Michael Crichton is still fresh in our minds, another giant in the world of literature has been taken to that enormous bookstore in the sky: John Leonard, author and critic, has died at the age of 69 from lung cancer.

While John Leonard himself may not be a household name, you will probably be familiar with a few of the authors he helped propel to literary stardom, most notably Grabriel Garcia Marquez and Toni Morrison. I came across this interesting article from the Washington Post, which says in part:

Mr. Leonard was a steadfast promoter of many literary friends, including Morrison. He also was credited with launching Márquez’s reputation among American readers after the Colombian writer received mixed reviews in France for his masterwork, "One Hundred Years of Solitude."

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I have just learned that Michael Crichton, writer of such bestsellers as Jurassic Park, The Andromeda Strain, and created ER – the wildly popular television medical drama, has died of cancer. This is according to  Reuters:

Crichton, a medical doctor turned novelist whose books have sold more than 150 million copies worldwide, died "unexpectedly" on Tuesday in Los Angeles after a private battle with cancer, his family said.

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The literary world lost another great today. All the major media outlets are reporting that Studs Terkel died at the age of 96. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winning author, credited with making the oral history into a reputable literary genre. He was also a famed radio show host in my own hometown of Chicago! Here’s a brief excerpt from a this NYT article:

The elfin, amiable Mr. Terkel was a gifted and seemingly tireless interviewer who elicited provocative insights and colorful, detailed personal histories from a broad mix of people. "The thing I’m able to do, I guess, is break down walls," he once told an interviewer. "If they think you’re listening, they’ll talk. It’s more of a conversation than an interview."

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With the economy sinking, stocks plunging, jobs being lost and more homes foreclosed on than ever before, the word "free" is music to the ears of just about everyone! Generally, when I’m offered something for free, I’ll usually take it. Why not? I have nothing to lose. If I don’t like the free item it goes straight into the trash can.

With that said, it’s pretty easy to conclude that "free" has a lot of power. It catches people’s attention and can get consumers to try something they might not normally try. What about using free to sell more books? Yes, it does seem counter-intuitive at first. But it has been shown to work, as this post points out from my good friends over at the Teleread Blog.

The post gives a very brief summary of author M.J. Rose and her decision to make her new book, The Reincarnationist, free on Amazon (aff link) until October 30. The Teleread post then links to an article that Rose wrote for The Huffington Post, where she explains her decision in terms of other items that do well as free samples:

It’s because trying something for free is the best way of discovering it. And free doesn’t mean sampling a quarter of a cookie – it means the whole cookie. It doesn’t mean someone spraying my wrist with perfume – it means them putting a small bottle of the fragrance in my shopping bag. It means spending a weekend in a hotel and taking two showers using the same soap. It doesn’t mean reading the first five pages of my book online – it means reading my whole book for free as a way of discovering me as an author.

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The literary world was rocked by the news that we had lost another one of our own. David Foster Wallace, author of the iconic novel Infinite Jest, had apparently hanged himself, according to California authorities. My deepest sympathies go out to his family, friends and all his fans. His legacy will live on. While I have heard of Wallace, I haven’t read any of his works.

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When I first came across this story in the New York Times, I almost thought it was a joke. The mere irony that this would happen to Edgar Allan Poe is something you just can’t make up (well, he probably could have, if he were still alive).

In case you haven’t read the article yet, here’s the lowdown: Currently, Poe is buried in Baltimore, MD where he died back in 1849. But another city, Philadelphia, PA, also lays claim to Poe’s body, since that is the city where the author wrote many of his most famous works.

The story doesn’t stop there, however. A Philadelphia Poe scholar named Edward Petit is the one fighting for the rights to bury the author in his city. This is what he said in a recent interview:

"So, Philadelphians, let’s hop in our cars, drive down I-95 and appropriate a body from a certain Baltimore cemetery," Mr. Pettit wrote in an article for the Philadelphia City Paper in October. "I’ll bring the shovel."

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When American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940, he had seen incredible success as a novelist and short story writer, but had failed to leave a mark on the movie scene in Hollywood. He wrote several screenplays, mostly in an effort to try to pull himself out of financial troubles (read more here).

Fast forward to 2008 and Fitzgerald is still trying to make it big in Hollywood – or, at least, his estate is. According to this article from Publishers Weekly, his estate is trying to turn some of his famous novels and even a few short stories into movies:

In December, audiences will see Brad Pitt and Cate Winslett appear in the David Fincher-helmed adaptation of the author’s little-known short story, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." And, with Hollywood options on several other Fitzgerald properties, there may soon be a swell of material about, and by, the romantic and doomed Jazz Age writer.

But it keeps getting better:

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