Romance, Perception, Plagiarism, and Ripped Bodices – You may have heard about the Kickstarter campaign to start an all Romance bookstore in Los Angeles. The store’s name, The Ripped Bodice, is stirring up controversy (surprise!), and there have been numerous conversations on Twitter about whether the name is an homage and ... more >
Lost Sherlock Holmes story discovered in man’s attic – Arthur Conan Doyle contributed a short story to a small book produced to support the building of an iron bridge in Selkirk, Scotland, after the original wood bridge was destroyed. Conan Doyle was apparently a frequent visitor to Selkirk and a ... more >
Library to Host Conference, “What Is Love? Romance Fiction in the Digital Age,” Feb. 10-11 – Next month Harlequin will be sponsoring a conference on Romance at the Library of Congress. Conference program and registration information can be found here. It looks like the Popular Romance Project is also a ... more >
New Jersey Passes New Reader Privacy Act, Expanding Laws to Cover eBooks – New Jersey just became the third US state (along with California and Arizona) to pass a law that extends library patron privacy to digital books. I’m not sure how much attention those in the US paid to ... more >
Maya Angelou’s TV legacy, from ‘Roots’ to ‘Sesame Street,’ ‘Super Soul’ – A fantastic tribute to Maya Angelou, who died on Wednesday at the age of 86. Angelou was not only a celebrated poet and novelist, but she also acted, danced, consulted on documentaries and educational television and film projects, ... more >
The New Barbie: Meet the Doll with an Average Woman’s Proportions – Remember the artist’s rendering of what an “average” Barbie would look like? Well, Nickolay Lamm decided to take his vision and make it a reality, raising $95,000 on Kickstarter to design and manufacture his own doll. to be ... more >