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Long-time readers can skip most of this post if they like… I’ve been blogging as “The Book Maven” since August 2004, when my then-boss at AOL asked me to start a blog and choose a name for it. At the time, the book of the moment was Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, in which he talks about different kinds of people (e.g., “connectors”) including “mavens.” When this site becomes The Book Studio next week, I’ll still be The Book Maven here, on my more personal blog, and maybe somewhere else, too (must keep you guessing!).

I liked the concept, but I also loved the word. It’s Yiddish, and means (as I’ve mentioned in the past) both “expert” and “freak.” It makes sense. After all, the more specialized one’s knowledge in a single area, the more one tends toward freakishness. In a good way. A bookseller once described me as “the self-titled Book Maven,” which I suppose was meant to be disparaging. How dare I deem myself an “expert?” 

I was thinking more of the “freak” side, you see, when I chose that moniker. 

One of my regular blog entries in all of the places I’ve blogged has been to ask readers “What’s on your nightstand?” I can’t stop it now. As my daughters (AKA “The Mini Mavens”) squawk whenever we try to skip a stop on our annual Cape Cod vacation: “It’s a tradition!” 

Of course, there are new ways to ask people what they’re reading, now. I can ask on Facebook, and this morning, I asked on Twitter and got a slew of replies from the early-morning tweeple (I’ll have to “re-tweet” my question later, for the office Twitterers). But on Twitter, at least, responses are severely limited. I thought I’d ask here, so that anyone can leave a list as long as they like of the book stacks by their beds. 

What’s on your nightstand? I really want to know, as much now as I did nearly five years ago.

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In an exciting announcement, a spokesperson for “Masterpiece” from PBS said that starting next year, the decades-old beloved series will cease covering classic works of literature and instead focus on today’s new classics — graphic novels.

“To tell you the truth, we’re completely bored with the classics,” said Cholmondeley Rodriguez, spokesperson for WHAH, the heretofore unknown PBS station in Poughkeepsie. “All those bonnets, carriages, and British accents? They don’t fit with today’s consumer’s needs.”

What does fit with those needs, Rodriguez says, are graphic novels. “We want to introduce the faster storytelling pace of modern graphic novels. We’re working on a completely authentic version of Watchmen right now. None of that Zack Snyder superficial stuff. We didn’t simply build an Owlmobile; we went back in time to make sure we constructed it only of materials that Alan Moore could have envisioned during the 1980s.”

Projects in development include Hellboy, starring Hugh Laurie; The Dark Tower, starring Colin Firth; and The Sandman, starring Derek Jacoby. All female characters will be portrayed by Helen Mirren. 

There has been much jockeying for the coveted position of “Masterpiece!!! Graphix” host. Rodriguez admits that great consideration was given to Neil Gaiman, but the host will be Michael Palin. “He’s still under contract for an unfinished series about soccer hooliganism and its effects on Cotswolds gardens, so he’s cheap,” says Rodriguez.

Happy April Fool’s Day from Bethanne!

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Our dear old friend the British Brigadier has come to stay for just one night before he’s off to some conference of spies somewhere. The Brigadier does funny stuff, so for many years whenever I spoke to his lovely wife and asked after his whereabouts, I knew if she replied “He’s upstairs” that that meant I simply didn’t want to know.

I’ll be whisking our friend off to his embassy shortly, but as we sat around the breakfast table with our coffee and toast, he mentioned he’d like to send the younger Mini Maven a copy of Conn Iggulden’s The Dangerous Book for Boys as a gift. I told him that she does already have The Daring Book for Girls, in case he would like to save his Euros. 

“Oh, nooooo,” he said (it was more like “Och nauw,” since he’s Scottish, but I’ve promised not to make too much sport of his foreign tongue). “The book for boys is much, much better. Did you know that they’ve got a guide to recognizing freshwater fish and also a list of the kings and queens of England?”

Uh, no, we didn’t. And, um, how exciting?

“Ahhhhh,” said the Brigadier. “But hidden between those pages is a spread of information about how to build a detonator. In a book for children! When I am explaining about the basics (Ed. note: “The basics” !!!!), as I’m handing round different explosives, I bring out a copy of The Dangerous Book for Boys and open it up to show them the directions. Iggulden gives such clear instructions on booby traps that it’s better than any military manual.”

HarperCollins, what hath thou wrought? 

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My fearless leader, Director of Digital Media Pam McKeta, and I were invited to tag along with our WETA colleagues from Reading Rockets on Monday to the Library of Congress (LoC) Center for the Book Partners in Reading annual networking session (again, phew). The “networking” consisted of each partner introducing his or her program for five minutes.

This sounds sensible, right?

Unfortunately, while many of us in attendance believe that “five minutes” is a quantifiable amount of time, for others it was, shall we say, flexible. The introductions went on from 9:00 a.m. to 1:10 p.m., with only one brief break for restroom use or flight. (Believe me, some people took the latter opportunity!)

I chose to stay until the end to large degree because I was curious to see if there might be more people concerned with adults and reading. There were at least two dozen people/groups represented with focus on early childhood reading and literacy, but fewer than a dozen altogether for the grownup side of things. These included us (soon to be The Book Studio!), the NEA’s Big Read, SeniorLearn, and RedRoom.com. I’m sure I’ve missed a few, but the point is, their partners in reading were largely partners in kiddie lit.

There’s nothing wrong with that; after all, the love of stories and reading is best inculcated and nurtured from and at a young age. There is great power in early childhood reading programs, like Arlington’s own Reading Connection. But given the troubles and changes in reading and publishing right now, I think it’s all the more important to think about how to keep and revitalize the love of reading after age 18. 

I’ve talked about this before (I seem to say that a lot!). People love stories; many experts believe we need stories. While it’s important to foster a love of stories during childhood, there are many people who miss out on having a parent read to them, or who rebel against it, or who had learning challenges early on that prevented them from really bonding with books, and so on. These people may not be illiterate, but they may need help to learn about the power of the written word. 

I’d like to see more programs work to promote love of books and reading for grownups. Why, for example, wasn’t there an advocacy group for book clubs represented at Monday’s networking session? There’s certainly room for an organization like that, IMHO. What about an association for reading/author event series, like this longrunning one at Indiana’s Butler University? 

What do you think our society can or should do to promote the love of reading for adults? 

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Snow days were my favorite days growing up because during the Pleistocene Era in the Northeast (read: the 1960s and 1970s), we got lots and lots of snow, enough so that my parents (who were usually at home as well, the roads being impossible to navigate) could easily build an igloo with room for two or three kids to huddle in and use alternately as a fort, a playhouse, and a retreat. 

The latter happened when my hyperactive younger sister (hyperactive compared to me, at least) finally got tired enough to go inside for cocoa. Then I could go back outside and into the igloo with a plastic sled to sit on and…what else? READ!

I grew up in a very small house, and until I was well into junior high shared a room with said sister, so having a quiet place to read wasn’t something I took for granted. Even though I couldn’t stay outside in the igloo forever (let alone for more than half an hour!), being enclosed in its muffled interior was the closest thing I got to having “a room of one’s own” in those days. Just as I would settle down to finish a chapter, my sister would bound out of the kitchen door, ready to invent a new game involving both me and the igloo.

Today I supposedly have a room of my own — my tiny study/office, complete with the even tinier closet that holds my groaning stacks of galleys, books, and files. Unfortunately, the cozier I make that room, the more everyone else in the family wants to come in and use it. 

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose. Or igloo. Sooner or later, no matter how much you want to read, the rest of life needs attention. But today, it’s nice to have had meetings and calls cancelled and to be able to hole up with some reading. I hope you’ve gotten your own version of a snow fort today!

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You can probably guess what I’m going to say: Now read the book!!!

We all know that “Slumdog Millionaire” swept the Oscars, and Slumdog Fever seems to be sweeping America, too: The strains of the film’s final song, “Jai Ho,” are all over the airwaves right now. (By the way, did you know that “Jai Ho” means “May you be victorious?” Yeah, me neither, until I read it here.)

When I was interviewing Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni the other night, we touched on “Slumdog,” since Divakaruni sits on the board of Pratham, a charity that brings books, teachers, and literacy materials to India’s worst slums, including the one that the adorable little child actors run through in the movie. Divakaruni said “Remember when those children were fighting over The Three Musketeers? It’s so hard to have your own books and your own stories in a place like that.”

That’s why I believe if you loved “Slumdog Millionaire,” you owe it to yourself and to Jamal to read the book on which it’s based: Q&A by Vikas Swarup. But I’ll warn you: You won’t find some of your favorite scenes, there. 

But you may find that some of the book’s scenes become your favorites. 

Has anyone else read Q&A? Did you prefer it, or the movie? I’d love to hear from you.

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Good morning, everyone, and Wednesday greetings. This was supposed to be posted on Monday, but there wasn’t enough coffee, or cold medicine, in the world…

There’s not enough chicken soup in the world, either: At least not for my family today. We’re all down with colds/respiratory infections, and while Mr. Bethanne and I have to work regardless, both Mini Mavens are home from school. Fortunately, when I went out to interview Amy Dickinson at Politics & Prose over the weekend (that interview, with text and video, coming this week!), I bought the younger MM some reading material, so she’s happy. The older MM is curled up with a novel, and Mr. Bethanne is reading The New Yorker. I’ll be reading again, too, as soon as I manage to get this post live.

Today’s question: What do you read when you’re sick?

Again, this is a random giveaway. The first 30 respondents will be entered into a random generator and we’ll pull out 10 who will receive 2 new hardcover books each. Have fun, and thank you — I hope I’ll be back to a normal posting schedule tomorrow.

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As most of us in Washington, DC, know, yesterday was the final print edition of our beloved Washington Post “Book World” review supplement. 

No one can be happy that this section is gone. Or can we?

First of all, let’s not be caught up in the idea that the section’s pages have disappeared due to lack of advertising dollars. As Motoko Rich noted in this NYT piece, advertising dollars were never what kept newspaper specials afloat, anyway. What did keep Book World afloat for many years was the support of Don Graham; perhaps Marcus Brauchle has decided to do the same thing, only in a different form: online.

This may not please folks who preferred to recline with print rather than with a laptop, and I understand that. We’re not yet to the point where e-reading devices mimick the ease and ergonomics of bending, folding, and mashing newsprint pages to our liking. As reader after reader has noted in blog comments and news story comments about the change in Book World, people looked forward to curling up with the section each week and learning about books they wanted to read, books they might never read but needed to know about, and commentary on the literary life.

All of these things will still be available in the new, Web-based universe of Book World. To me, here’s the rub: We all realize it’s easier for us right now to read printed, easily flipped pages. We want our newsprint, and we find it easier to drink coffee while we’re holding a newspaper section in our hand than when we’re tapping away at a keyboard (be that keyboard on a laptop, a Kindle, or an iPhone).

If we really, truly, madly, and deeply care about Book World — or any other book coverage — will we follow it down the cyberpath? Because as far as I’m concerned, nothing will kill off thoughtful, smart, timely, and lively book coverage than everyone abandoning it as soon as its familiar form changes. 

If you love The Washington Post Book World, keep reading it — and other book coverage — online. Who knows? You might even become adept, as I already am, at drinking coffee at the same time, too.

Disagree with me! Tell me I’m crazy. Or describe your own struggle with this transition. We’re all in this together, or we won’t get to hear about books at all — that, my friends, would be the real tragedy.

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It’s another one of those “Why didn’t I think of this?” moments, and this one goes out to all of our “Masterpiece Classic” fans here at WETA/PBS. Every woman I know loves Jane Austen. Every man I know loves zombies. Seth Grahame-Smith evidently understands this at a deep level, since he has become Jane Austen’s co-author on the stunning new novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Have you ever seen a cover that makes you want to run out and buy the book like this one does? How could you resists the Regency maiden’s visage scraped down to the bone at jawline? This is intrigue that goes way beyond the lucite platform heels and Sharpie eyebrows of celebrity sites; this is the kind of narrative that cannot be created by a single author. 

In other words, it takes a mashup to create the silliest literary juxtaposition ever — and I can’t wait to read it! The author credits? “JANE AUSTEN is the author of Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and other masterpieces of English literature. SETH GRAHAME-SMITH is the author of How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn. He lives in Los Angeles.” (With Seth’s credits, he might want to take a look at my husband’s latest brainstorm…)

Tell me, would you read a novel that is billed as “The Classic Regency Romance, Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem?” All I can think of is what will come next: War and Peace and Fava Beans with Chianti? The Canterbury Tales Serial-Killer Pilgrims? Wuthering Heights of Psychotic Madness?

Oh, wait; that last one is a tautology. 

Although I’m recommending this as the most romantic book possible for both sexes, it is sadly not available for purchase until May 13, from Quirk Books. Three months to wait! 

But not for everyone: I’m going to wheedle a copy for myself from Quirk today, and I’ll award that copy (lightly pre-owned!) to the commenter who leaves me the most creative literary mashup in these comments. Heck, if I get a lot of creative entries, I’ll find a way to get more copies of this soon-to-be-masterpiece. Because I love you all on this Valentine’s Day weekend.

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Recently author Stephen Hess told me that Barack Obama has the potential to be “our most literary president since Lincoln.” This is not a toss-off remark, nor a mere reference to Lincoln’s considerable rhetorical gifts. Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was an autodidact whose reading habits and material shaped his heart and mind. When we remember him as one of our greatest leaders, we should not ignore this (I’ll be ranting more about the importance of reading next week).

Here is a list, properly annotated, of books scholars know or have reason to believe that Lincoln read. It’s a wonderful list in so many respects, ranging from poetry to scripture to speeches to history to novels and much more. It’s shorter than a modern president’s list might be, but the important caveat is not only that books were more precious and harder to come by in the 19th century, but that Lincoln (especially in his early years, when he had very little money for extras) read deeply. He didn’t skim texts; he learned them, and thought about them, and tested their ideas against his inner compass. 

Next week, in honor of Abraham Lincoln’s February birthday celebration, WETA will be airing two special Lincoln programs: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln from The American Experience, and Looking for Lincoln with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 

Early next week I’d like to put together the Ultimate Abraham Lincoln Bookshelf — books about President Lincoln. I’d like to see your picks now, so I can include them.

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