Archive for October, 2006



Punk Drummer, Chiropractor, Author-to-Be

Published on October 24, 2006

Terry Chimes was a worldwide punk phenomenon as the original drummer for The Clash. After leaving the band, he was replaced by Topper Headon, who was presently kicked out for drug problems, at which point Chimes was asked to rejoin. He toured the US and UK in that capacity. He also drummed in other bands [...]


Stephen Elliott and the Butt Plug

Published on October 23, 2006

Dibs! has received a press release from Cleis Press in San Francisco about an upcoming reading in the city featuring successful West Coast writer Stephen Elliott, author of five books including 2004’s Happy Baby (a novel about a down-and-out masochist which some said was autobiographical). Elliott’s father started contacting the media after Happy Baby came [...]


A Vast Concrete Book in Turkmenistan

Published on October 20, 2006

Turkmenistan is the source of our book-news today, as its president Saparmurat Niyazov inaugurates a massive building shaped like an open book, dedicated to democracy in the media. It’s a very attractive building in that old Iron Curtain style: pale and huge, with a door at the top of steps, above which a massive concrete [...]


New Zealand’s Libraries: Robbed!

Published on October 18, 2006

A huge case involving millions of dollars’ worth of books, stolen from libraries by various thieves including a trained antique-books expert over several years, is rocking New Zealand. Called Operation Pukapuka (the latter is the Maori word for “book”), the case centers around 44-year-old Lee Simpson, who over ten years stole some 2,500 books from [...]


Nurse-Romance Pioneer Dies

Published on October 17, 2006

You’ve always wondered whom to blame for nurse romances. Well, we’ve got the culprit right here: Lucilla Matthew Andrews Crichton, who using several different bylines including Lucilla Andrews, Joanna Marcus and Diana Gordon wrote 35 novels such as Quiet Wards, The Young Doctors Downstairs, Hospital Summer, Flowers From the Doctor, Healing Time, Nurse Errant, Ring [...]


Book Characters Are Sad Substitutes for Real Halloween Costumes

Published on October 13, 2006

Dressing up as Stuart Little or the Cat in the Hat is paltry compensation for not being allowed to dress up as a witch, bat or ghost for Halloween — but that’s what a North Carolina school is forcing students to do. At Stokesdale Elementary, holiday parties that include references to actual holidays as traditionally [...]


Di’s Butler Writes Book, Only Five People Care

Published on October 11, 2006

Even celebrity tell-alls have their sell-by dates. Princess Diana’s former butler, Paul Burrell, is now trying to publicize his second memoir about life with the late royal. But at his latest signing, at a bookstore in the English town of Wrexham, Burrell attracted an audience of — count ‘em — five. “You may have been [...]


Oprah Was Fooled By Yet Another Lying Author With a Fake Memoir

Published on October 10, 2006

In 1995, Twyana Davis gave birth in her Ohio college dorm room, wrapped the baby in plastic bags and stuffed it into a trash bin, presumably hoping that the tiny girl would die. After a passerby rescued the infant and detectives discovered whose it was, Davis told the media that she’d become pregnant while being [...]


Precious, Precious Garbage

Published on October 7, 2006

It’s yard-sale and flea-market day, Saturday — so what better time to post about how one of the greatest, rarest and most valuable photography books ever published recently turned up in a Canadian dump and then at a local flea market? “In 1934, the great surrealist photographer Man Ray published a book, Photographies 1920-1934, in [...]


Mathematical Community Greets Earth-Shattering Claims With Silence

Published on October 6, 2006

In response to one of the very earliest Dibs! posts — a review of Dan Rockmore’s Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis — Dibs! has recently received an astonishing email from Jiang Chun-Xuan, a mathematician in China who claims to have disproved the legendarily difficult problem. Jiang included in his email a detailed mathematical paper (which you [...]