The 4th, a day late

Happy 4th of July weekend, bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

*** The newest issue of iloveamysterynewsletter is posted, with one review by yours truly of the sequel to Child 44, titled The Secret Speech. And right here and now this author wishes to apologize to his long-suffering editor for not turning in the second review he was supposed to write. Sometimes life just has other ideas.

iloveamysternewsletter

*** So, for all you Catcher in the Rye junkies out there (you know who you are), you may breathe easy again. There will be no sequel as a US District Judge has banned Swedish writer Frederik Colting's 'commentary' 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. So now you can't read it and decide if it's a cheap ripoff or an on-point commentary. Unless, of course, you buy the UK version, which has already been published.

Swede tries to cash in on Salinger's masterpiece

*** What's selling in the UK? Not much, it appears. Maybe the most encouraging part is seeing that James Patterson's sales are down by half, although it's unlikely this means that the buying public has suddenly discovered better taste in their literature. Instead, it seems that book sales overall are down and Patterson, while way down, is still leading the pack. Beats me why people spend good money for his stuff, except when I remember PT Barnum, who was more right than even he knew.

** In reading the Top 10 Chart for UK book sales for the week of June 27th, I was struck that Stephanie Meyer's vampire books hold down the first 4 spots in the Children's category...huh? Twilight, et al, are kids' books? Wow, who knew? You curl up to read your 4 year old daughter a bedtime story with vampires and sex, instead of the Berenstain Bears or Beatrix Potter. The world has really changed that much, has it?

*** Your friendly neighborhood bookseller is a lifelong baseball fan. Not only watching it, but in my late 30's I signed up to play adult baseball, and to this day have the foot pain that comes with stretched ligaments in my right foot, the result of stepping in a hole while running down a flyball in right field. What a hole was doing in a baseball outfield is a good question, and why I didn't sue the city of Bartlett, TN., for not maintaining their field properly is...but I digress.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has a nice article on five new baseball books out this year. Nice gift ideas for the baseball fan in your life.

Five baseball gems to choose from

*** There is a deluge of Michael Jackson books coming. As always, you can expect your friendly neighborhood bookseller to read through them all and sort the wheat from the chaff.

Okay, you can't possibly believe that last sentence. Here's one you can believe: BBG will do his best to ignore them all.