First Book

NEW YORK - A rare copy of Edgar Allan Poe's first book has sold for $662,500, smashing the previous record price for American literature. The copy of "Tamerlane and Other Poems" had been estimated to sell Friday for between $500,000 and $700,000 at Christie's auction house in New York City. The previous record is believed to be $250,000 for a copy of the same book sold nearly two decades ago. The 40-page collection of poems was published in 1827. Poe wrote the book shortly after moving to Boston to start his literary career.

It's not that I mind being treated as an oracle - it's a little flattering to be consulted on points of language and usage. But I sometimes wonder why people write to me for answers that are, or ought to be, near at hand to them. When someone poses a question about usage, the first book I usually reach for (yes, little ones, Mr. John still believes in books) is Bryan Garner's Garmer's Modern American Usage . Though his prefaces bristle a little about descriptivists, he is the very model of a modern moderate prescriptivist.

WHAT STARTED as a letter of advice to a daughter turning 30 blossomed into a commissioned book series for one Carroll County woman and her best friend. Finksburg resident Peggy Stout and Jean Aziz of Columbia have been friends for more than 25 years. Their friendship has been peppered with late-night talks and tears, with getting to know each other's families, and with swapping advice about raising children and the work world. Much of that advice, as well as wisdom gleaned from interviews with more than 50 women throughout the United States, is part of Stout and Aziz's first book, Wise Women Speak to the Woman Turning 30. The book is the first in a series that has been commissioned and marketed by Capital Books in Sterling, Va. Future books in the Wise Women Speak series will include advice about marriage, parenthood, and surviving a serious illness, surviving the loss of a loved one, retirement, and achieving balance in a busy life.

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]

Move over, Oprah. Now Reba has a book club -- and a role in a national literacy organization.Country singer Reba McEntire has become national spokeswoman for First Book, a Washington-based nonprofit organization that works with local literacy groups to provide new books and tutoring to needy children.Along with that role, there is Reba's First Book Club, a national program intended to "encourage children and their families to discover the magic of books, as well as help raise funds to buy new books for homeless and disadvantaged children across America."

Harford County is getting its own First Book, a nonprofit organization that gives books to underprivileged children. Harford and Cecil county residents are forming a local advisory board for First Book. The first batch of books will be distributed in September in Edgewood, according to the organization. Leading the effort is Veronica Jaynes, who is opening a day care center. A year ago, Jaynes moved to Street from Camden, N.J. "We had a First Book advisory board in Camden - a large one. We did readings with children, and I wanted to bring that idea here," Jaynes said.

"The Very Hungry Caterpillar" slithered beside a neat row of desks and across the floor of a classroom in Sandtown. More accurately, it was 7-year-old Tierra Williams -- her body slouched over archlike, feet and palms gliding forward along the carpet -- acting out the lead character in her favorite children's book of the same name, by Eric Carle. "He eats apples, pears, oranges," Tierra said. "What else did he eat, Travon?""Strawberries and leaves," piped in New Song Community Learning Center classmate Travon Hopkins, also 7.The caterpillar eventually became stuffed, formed a cocoon, and turned into a butterfly.

While David Danelo was in Iraq two years ago, he was "one of those guys" who wrote home about once a month to let friends and family know how things were going. As a Marine Corps captain in Fallujah -- an insurgent stronghold in the Sunni triangle -- he had plenty to say in his "updates from the front." The e-mails were passed around by friends and family and eventually caught the eye of Steven Pressfield, the author of Gates of Fire. The historical novel chronicles the Battle of Thermopylae, during which about 7,000 Greek allies held off millions of Persians in a mountain pass for three days in 480 B.C. Pressfield, whose work is popular with Marines, told Danelo he was a good writer, which made the young captain feel like "Babe Ruth had just told me I was a good baseball player."

By Maryland standards, this has been an unusually cold March. But to Havre de Grace resident Lucille Maistros, the brisk, windy days are no big deal. Maistros grew up in northern Vermont, where March is considered the dead of winter. "It's only 500 miles away, but up there it's going to look like January for another six weeks," she said last week. Her hometown, St. Johnsbury, just got 6 inches of snow, she said. Maistros describes her Vermont childhood in her first book, Growing Up Cold: a memoir of growing up cold, but longing to be cool, in 1950s Vermont.

[Spoiler alert: Do not read further in this interview if you have not read "A Storm of Swords," the third book in the series, "The Song of Fire and Ice. "] Scottish actor Richard Madden, 25, has broken into the spotlight by playing Robb Stark on HBO's hit show, "Game of Thrones. " As the second season of the show continues, Stark, the eldest son of the beheaded Ned Stark (Sean Bean), has been declared "King in the North," and has launched war against his family's sworn enemy, the Lannisters, who hold the Iron Throne.

[Spoiler alert: Do not read further in this interview if you have not read "A Storm of Swords," the third book in the series, "The Song of Fire and Ice. "] Scottish actor Richard Madden, 25, has broken into the spotlight by playing Robb Stark on HBO's hit show, "Game of Thrones. " As the second season of the show continues, Stark, the eldest son of the beheaded Ned Stark (Sean Bean), has been declared "King in the North," and has launched war against his family's sworn enemy, the Lannisters, who hold the Iron Throne.

When I wrote about Jill Smokler last year for The Sun, I said she might be Baltimore's biggest unknown celebrity. Then I pointed out her online following stats -- on Twitter, nearly 155,000 people followed her, more, by far, than Baltimore's mayor, Maryland's governor, chef Duff Goldman and the Ravens' Ray Lewis - together. She's added to her flock since then. By nearly 100,000 people. And it's only going to grow because she's about to release her first book. "Confessions of a Scary Mommy," goes on sale today.

Y ou may love reading "The Hunger Games" book trilogy, but do you have plans to camp out for the premiere? Would you try out a recipe for Katniss' favorite lamb stew with dry plums? "The Hunger Games" has morphed into a pop-culture phenomenon, with rabid fans who express their obsessions in a litany of ways. Here's a quick rundown. It's an event In Los Angeles a veritable tent city sprouted up before the premiere, bustling with fans waving signs anticipating cast-member visits.

I face a tough choice this week: Start filling out my NCAA tournament bracket or continue with the Hunger Games trilogy. I finished the first book in Suzanne Collins' series over the weekend, just in time to clear the slate for a week of college hoops. Mid-March is generally the time that my reading goes on hiatus -- back-to-back-to-back-to-back basketball games will do that. And this year there's a special reason to watch: To see if my home-state team, the University of Connecticut Huskies, can defend its national championship.

Cal Ripken, the former Baltimore Orioles star known best for setting the major league record for consecutive games, is spending some of his free time these days as an author. In this Baltimore Sun video, Cal and co-author Kevin Cowherd talk about " Super-sized Slugger," about a pudgy kid who gets pushed around while trying to earn a spot on a baseball team. Cal says he wanted to address the issue of bullying, and give kids a way to deal with it. Here's the description on Amazon: Cody Parker is the new kid in school.

With less than three weeks remaining before "The Hunger Games" movie is released, I thought it was time to join the 20-plus millions who have read books in Suzanne Collins' hit trilogy. (That and the contunued urging of my teen-age niece, K.T.) Collins' tale about the life-or-death competition among youngsters in post-apocalyptic North America was aimed at a young adult audience -- much like Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series -- but has swept far beyond that group.

You might expect public television's "Genesis: A Living Conversation" to start at the beginning with the first chapter of the first book of the Bible. After all, if it was good enough for GodBut not television. PBS' "Genesis," the highly publicized 10-hour discussion series with Bill Moyers as host, begins tonight with the story of Cain and Abel -- Chapter Four -- in an hourlong program titled "The First Murder."It is a striking choice not only for reasons of chronology, but also because it is the one hour that features secular writers instead of religious leaders talking about the text: Faye Kellerman, Mary Gordon, Oscar Hijuelos, Charles Johnson, Rebecca Goldstein and John Barth.

Paula Poundstone's life might have turned out much differently if her mother had been an early riser. "It would have ruined everything," says the comedienne with a laugh. "I was the youngest in my family," she explains by phone from her home in Santa Monica, Calif. "When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television. " As fate (and TV scheduling) would have it, that hour in front of the tube would turn out to play a pivotal role in Poundstone's development.

A story for Black History Month. Bryan Stevenson is director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala.-based organization he founded in 1989 to provide legal representation for the indigent and incarcerated. The EJI ( www.eji.org ) doesn't charge its clients but, says Mr. Stevenson, he will sometimes require them to read selected books. Last year, Mr. Stevenson sent two books to prisoner Mark Melvin, who is doing life for a murder he committed when he was 14. One was "Mountains Beyond Mountains," about a doctor's struggle to bring medical services to Haiti.

Joseph Maher has joined the family law firm of Weinberg and Schwartz LLC, in Columbia, as an associate. He is a 2010 graduate of the University of Baltimore School of Law and a 2005 graduate of Kalamazoo College, where he earned a bachelor's degree in biology. Maher previously served as the law clerk for the Hon. Louis A. Baker for the Circuit Court for Howard County. Thiagarajan and Kamala Sethurama , of Ellicott City, have purchased the Fresh Healthy Vending franchise and are in the process of selecting locations where each machine will be placed.