I hate to follow good news with bad

The final day of business for Acres of Books (and that is no exaggeration) will be October 18th.

After the compromise wrought from the hollywood CRA in their classic David vs. Goliath struggle, one would think the Long Beach CRA could find a way to keep this icon as part their redevelopment schemes, which have not --to be kind-- always worked out for the best, unless you're with a demolition firm or like fug-uttly buildings replacing classic early 20th century facades such as Acres of Books, shown above. The imitation streamline-moderne of the downtown Long Beach shopping center is a poor replacement for the original.

But I guess what I think about it doesn't matter.

Amsterdam: 2008 World Book Capital

Click here on the header for a link to the UNESCO World Book Capital site, and click here for a link to a paper cardmodel of Anne Frank's house.

Beirut has been selected as the 2009 World Book Capital. There isn't an official website as of yet, but more informatin may be obtained from the UNESCO website, and probably from a fair number of the links found by clicking on the left under Lebanese Bloggers.

Spring Cleaning

It was long overdue getting to all of the changes on my links, but I'm caught up (for now).

There are some new sites to check out (as if anybody has the time) added as well: the news site 365gay, and the very funny author Kevin Sessums.

While I'm at it, Larry Portzline, of Bookstore Tourism has announced he's going to take a break to concentrate on writing his novel (Go Larry!); if you haven't already, you really ought to give him a well deserved thank you for all that he's done on behalf of independent bookstores at lportzline@comcast.net.