Today we celebrate World Book Night (website | Twitter | Facebook) where readers around the world will celebrate their love or the written word by handing out free copies. Thousands of cities and towns around the world will be participating in the second annual World Book Night where the expected number of books to be donated reached 2.5 million. The event, first conceived by Jamie Byng, Managing Director of Canongate Books in Edinburgh, Scotland. This year though would be the first time US readers will participate along with Germany, Ireland and the UK of course. The date, April 23, was not incidental as it marks both the death of Miguel de Cervantes and the birth of William Shakespeare. The goal, in the United States, is to give out half a million books to those who ordinarily wouldn’t have bought them. Designated givers, 25,000 in the United States, will give out brand new paperback books specially printed for the event. Among the 30 titles available are The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, The Stand by Stephen King, A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, The Poisonwood…

Kathy Hep­in­stall’s Blue Asylum (my thoughts) was a quick read on two very interesting subjects – The American Civil War and the definition of insane. i was glad to get the chance to ask Ms. Hep­in­stall a few quick questions. Q. There is a famous story (which I cannot recall where I heard) about a psychiatrist who was interviewing a very pleasant man who thought he was a famous figure (Jesus? Napoleon?) . The man asks “what if I’m right”? The phsychologist answered “you might be right, but there are more of us”. Blue Asylum seems t thrive on the notion of who is considered insane at a moment in time. was that the story you set out to write? What’s your opinion? A. I’m not sure if I set out to write that story, but it ended up that way – I mean, it’s ridiculous, isn’t it, when you think there were people being held in an insane asylum at the exact time we were actually fighting a war in large part, over whether we should keep other human beings as slaves? I found myself really loving and feeling empathy for the inmates of Sanibel Lunatic Asylum. Q. why did…