Donna Liquori also writes in today’s column:

I’m looking for some examples from fellow bibliophiles for an upcoming column on books that
have changed lives. Do you reread something every year? Is there one book that set you on a
different path? I want to know. Drop me an e-mail and a few publishable sentences explaining
why your particular book is so important. Also, drop me a line whenever you read something
great. It doesn’t have to be a new book. I’m looking to broaden my recommendations throughout 2007. Thanks and Happy New Year.

You can contact her at bilbiofiles@hotmail.com

From the Times of London:

The world’s libraries are heading for the internet, says Bryan Appleyard. If this means we lose touch with real books and treat their content as ‘information’, civilisation is the loser
‘The majority of information,” said Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, “lies outside the internet.”

Redmer was speaking last week at Unbound, an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library (NYPL). It was a groovy, bleeding-edge-of-the-internet kind of affair. There was Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of The Long Tail, a book about the new business economics of the net. There was Arianna Huffington, grand panjandrum of both the blogosphere and smart East Coast society. …

Full story is here:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2557653,00.html

The following was written by Biblio Files columnist Donna Liquori and published in today’s Times Union. Contact her at bibliofiles@hotmail.com. Seems like a good day for a lover of books:

6:52 a.m.: Wake up. I’m late. Today’s the big day.

7 a.m.: I down a cup of coffee and head out for a quick walk. It’s cold and rainy … the
perfect day for what I have planned. I do a mental inventory of the books I’ve stockpiled next
to my bed. I’ve planned this day as an antidote to a frantic holiday season that left me
feeling, well, wilted.

7:36 a.m.: Home. Time to banish the children and husband from the house.

8:40 a.m.: I push them out the door with lunches, kisses and absolutely no guilt
whatsoever.

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A post from The Beat — which is all about the world of comics — seems to suggest that this could be a reality. The post is here. And the original post is here. The credit for the image above goes to spacecoyote.

A new book about an 1890s killer in the Pacific Northwest speaks of his roots in the Capital Region. “Cold Lead: The Life, Times and Death of 1890s Killer Tom Blanck” is a new biography written by Mark Dugan and is published by Hancock House.
Here’s a bit from the review from the Weiser Signal American Newspaper in Weiser Idaho:

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A new art fest in the Spa City, and Russell Banks has already signed up to be one of the main attractions:

this is from the post star:

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Art in its many forms will be on display and packed into a new three-day festival this summer.

The first SaratogaArtsFest will be held June 15-17, organizers announced Wednesday. The event features performances and exhibits by several dozen artists at venues throughout the city, festival coordinator Marie Glotzbach said.

The idea of an arts festival had been in the works for six years, Glotzbach said, and Skidmore College helped make the idea a reality. Marie Glotzbach is the wife of college President Philip Glotzbach.

The Upper Hudson Library System will be taking part in the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read 2007 program, featuring Zora Neale Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God.”

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The Times Union books blog has a new contributor, Eli Hetko, a senior at Shaker High and an intern at the Times Union. Keep an eye out for his posts!

I’ve always enjoyed Colson Whitehead’s novels — Intutionist, John Henry Days and Apex Hides the Hurt. But knowing what he ate for a week may be a little TMI, courtesy New York Magazine (though it does give a hint of what his next novel will be about — “a teenager who subsists on TV dinners and toils at an ice-cream parlor”)