ODD BOOKS, DEBUT BOOKS AND MORE.

Yes, this post is going to be all things bookish.

* He may have been founder of a nation, but it seems George Washington has run up a library fine of $300,000 and counting.

"The New York Society Library, the city's only lender of books at the time of Washington's presidency(1789 - 1797)), has revealed that the first American president took out two volumes and pointedly failed to return them.

The library's ledgers show that Washington took out the books - 'Laws Of Nations' and a 14 volume collection of debates from the English House Of Commons - on the 5th of October 1789.

Under the rules, the books should have been handed back by the 2nd of November that same year, and their borrower and presumably his descendants have been liable to fines of a few cents a day ever since." (Not a good time to claim I'm a descendant then!)

- the Guardian (click HERE for full article.)

* The Annual prize for the oddest book title 2009 has been won by the splendidly eccentric CROCHETING ADVENTURES WITH HYPERBOLIC PLANES.

Awarded every year since 1978, THE DIAGRAM PRIZE, went to (the even more bizarrely titled) THE 2009-2014 WORLD OUTLOOK FOR 60-MILLIGRAM CONTAINERS OF FROMAGE FRAIS in 2008.

- the Guardian.

On a more serious note - another prize winner ......

* A debut novel published by a tiny independent not-for-profit press has won the PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION. Paul Harding's TINKERS is about a dying man and his relationship with his father.

* Another sequel to a classic story - TREASURE ISLAND, written by Robert Louis Stephenson and first published in 1938 - is to be ghost written.

After 10 years as POET LAUREATE, acclaimed poet and biographer ANDREW MOTION is to write his first children's book - Return To Treasure Island in which

"Jim's son, Jim Jnr, lives with his father in a Thames-side pub outside London, where he is visited by a girl who turns out to be Long John Silver's daughter who convinces him to steal his father's map of Treasure Island – "nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, [with] two fine land-locked harbours, and a hill in the centre part marked 'The Spy-Glass'" in Stevenson's novel – and run away to seek the remaining treasure with her"

- the GUARDIAN.

* If Vanessa Thorpe reporting in The Observer is to be believed, Vampires are so old news, Angels are the latest thing.

"Angels are all around us", reads the publisher's blurb for Angel (written by L.A. Weatherly), the first of a British trilogy of books for teenagers. "Their beauty is intoxicating, their presence awe-inspiring, their energy irresistible. Angel fever is spreading." (BUT .....) far from benevolent forces (I'm picturing Peter Pan's TINKER BELL who ok isn't an angel but a fairy, same thing surely?), Wetherly's Angels are "despicable creatures" who must be destroyed by the books hero, Alex, to stop them "feasting lustily on the energy of innocent victims." (Hmm, nothing at all like your traditional vampires then?)

- For the full article click HERE.

PLEASE NOTE, Researching 'Angels'/L.A. Weatherly - It seems that this author is even more mysterious and elusive than Angels themselves as the only relevant page I could find was this 'Twitter' page. (Click HERE to view.)