Books

ATLANTA -- When I was a child, reading was about my only option for summer entertainment. Growing up in Monroeville, Ala., meant I was deprived not merely of iPods and MySpace, but of cable television and a mall as well. My hometown didn't even have a McDonald's parking lot that bored adolescents could circle in their parents' cars. So I spent my elementary years with Little Women, The Swiss Family Robinson, Heidi and Huckleberry Finn. By the time I was 10 or so, I had acquired a taste for the weird tales of Edgar Allan Poe and the science fiction of Ray Bradbury.

Lillie Patterson, a retired Baltimore public school teacher and administrator whose love of writing and keen storytelling skills led her to write 16 books geared toward children, died Thursday of cancer at her West Baltimore home. A West Baltimore resident for more than 50 years, Ms. Patterson, 82, wrote mostly biographies, historical accounts and books of poetry. Her topics included the lives of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

READING MAY OR may not be a favorite pastime for many middle-school pupils, but the chance to read and discuss the books nominated for two writers' awards brought more than 80 children and parents to Oklahoma Road Middle School on Wednesday. In their first "Celebration of Books," teachers Marlene Friedenberg, Pam Knellinger and Susan McDowell and media specialist Blair Reid guided seventh-grade pupils in reviewing the books nominated for the 1999 Maryland Black-Eyed Susan Award and the Maryland Children's Book Award.

Picture this: You drop by for a cup of coffee, pick up the book I've left on the coffee table and exclaim, "Haven't you read this before?" If you are near and dear to me, you may add, "At least a dozen times!"I, in turn, will glare at you before responding, "Your point being?"If you're my husband and you slip in some sly remark about my reading list of a dozen books, preferably bad, I will simply pretend not to have heard you. (You won't be surprised.)My position on the matter is simple: If a book is worth reading, it's worth reading again and again -- even if that means buying another copy after the original meets an untimely demise in the bathtub.

Judith Krantz is an immensely successful professional writer. Twenty-two years after her first novel was published, her 11 books have sold tens of millions of copies in hardcover and paperback, translated into 47 languages. They leap, and then cling with Rottweiler tenacity, onto worldwide best seller lists. For my sins, I have read two of them: "Scruples" (1978), her first, and "Mistral's Daughter" (1982). They were breezily swift-paced, overrun by caricaturish glitterati, and brimming with raw, vulgar sex. Not my kind of novels.

At age 8, Christyna Johnson reads all the time. She reads to her grandmother, her aunt and her mother every day. She reads so voraciously that she read her way through 515 books, up two grade levels and straight into Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's office on Friday. Christyna was one of 11 children honored by Schmoke and the Abell Foundation for reading more books than anyone else in their schools. First-grader Nicole Winneberger from George Washington Elementary read 1,248 books. They are enrolled at the 11 schools that took part in an Abell Foundation-sponsored program called the 100 Book Challenge, designed to boost the amount of independent reading children do each day at home and in the classroom.

LOS ANGELES -- Two weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh and Jimmy Buffett -- pop culture icons, both -- topped the New York Times hardcover best-seller lists. Two weeks ago, Derek Walcott won the Nobel Prize for literature. A famous face or high media profile can obviously be used to jump-start book sales. But does literary acclaim also result in dollars at the bookstore? "It certainly has some impact," said Helene Atwan, associate publisher for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Ms. Atwan has firsthand experience with the question: FSG publishes both Mr. Walcott and last year's Nobel laureate, Nadine Gordimer.

Read any good computer books lately?If you have, it would surprise me. I've looked at dozens of books that purport to make personal computing as easy as 1-2-3. But the truth is, a lot of the so-called beginner books on personal computing make it about as easy as calculus.I am often asked by people who have recently purchased their first computer if I can recommend a book that will help them get started. I have to tell them that I cannot. I have yet to see a single book that takes the place of simply sitting down and experimenting to find out what a computer or new software can do.The book that really gets me is "America Online for Dummies," (IDG Books, $19.95)

Intuitively, it may seem that the Internet is delivering a catastrophic blow to the cultural currency of books. In some significant ways, this is true. The Web has become a formidable competitor for the leisure time of Americans and a distraction from literary concerns. Web surfing also makes a virtue of dipping in a toe and skipping along to the next entertainment. It discourages the sustained, close attention that literature rewards.At the same time, the World Wide Web is home to a bustling, bristling, companionable, contentious literary community.

Suzanne Collins'"The Hunger Games" trilogy has sold millions of copies in the United States since the first book was published in 2008. Now, with the release of the blockbuster movie of the same name, the series has achieved even more: It has influenced kids to spend more time outside. Two weekends ago, 13 young "Hunger Games" fans braved the rain to learn about archery. The Saturday event, which was hosted by the Thurmont Regional Library and run by members of the Tuscarora Archers, allowed the teenagers to learn how to shoot a bow. "[It]