“The stunning beach [depicted above] has been owned by Dennis Arbon, a trustee of the Hall for Cornwall, a performing arts venue in Truro, for the past 19 years. But Mr Arbon auctioned off the beach in order to raise funds for the Hall.

“A spokesman for estate agents Colliers CRE said there was a lot of interest in the beach which sold for £30,000 above its reserve price…. Competition between three telephone bidders pushed the final price up at the auction at Portman Square, London. It was bought by a man from Cornwall but based in London.

“However planning rules means he will not be able to build on the land or excavate minerals. The beach must remain public which means the new owner can only make the money back with services such as by selling ice creams and donkey rides.”

“The idea of a library unifying the country’s information and archival resources was first suggested in 2007. The then-president Vladimir Putin signed a decree to found such a library. He also proposed naming it after the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin,” we read in the St. Petersburg Times.

“The library is set to act as a central connecting point for all of the country’s libraries. Its electronic archives will receive materials from the Russian State Historical Archive and from Russia’s leading national libraries. It will mainly contain materials on the history of the Russian state. Texts, audio files and pictures are included in the database.”

Also in the library is “a unique collection of books and magazines connected to Russia. The collection, consisting of more than 2,000 books, belonged to a Swiss family who amassed it over three generations, with the oldest book in the collection dating back to 1551. The collection was set to be auctioned off, but was then offered for full sale to Russia.

“Boris Yeltsin’s widow Naina Yeltsina, who was also present at the ceremony, said ‘Russia has always prided itself on being a nation of readers. Although life is changing now, and today every family has a TV set, we need to keep books in our life because they are one of mankind’s most priceless inventions.’

“Yeltsina said that her husband loved reading, especially in his student years. Later in life, his political activities did not leave him much time for reading but when a new book appeared in the house Yeltsin used to always say that he would read it when he retired, she said.

“’And it really happened that way…. In his last years reading was his main occupation. Our daughters barely managed to read new books because he got through them so quickly! The opening of the library is a priceless gift for all book-lovers and a fitting tribute to Boris.”

Saturday, May 2, is Free Comic Book Day. This means that comic-book stores all over the nation will literally give books away. The annual promotion, which began in 2001, was launched by comic-book publishers and distributors to bring more people into the stores. Among the freebies at participating stores are titles from the major companies DC (Superman, Batman) and Marvel (Spider Man, X-Men) and from smaller publishers such as Image, Dark Horse, Dynamite and Devil’s Due.

In Berkeley, California, Comic Relief is not only giving away freebies but also offering chances to meet a lot of artists and writers, including Daniel Cooney (Valentine), Joseph Wong and Genevieve Tsai (Islands in the Sky), Daniel Salcido (Doodles of the Drunk), Joey Alison Sayers (I Wish You Were Dead) and Derek McCullough (Displaced Persons, T-Runt, Stagger Lee).

Get ‘em while they’re free!

Half Price Books

By purchasing the wind power, Dallas-based Half Price will offset about 15 million pounds of carbon dioxide. That is the equivalent of planting 901,000 trees or recycling 6 million pounds of newspaper.

According to a company press release: “Half Price Books has been dedicated to environmental and literacy efforts for 36 years and supports hundreds of local, national and international programs. Each year the company sponsors the Half Pint Library Book Drive at each of its stores, donating thousands of books to hospitals and clinics throughout the United States. Half Price Books is a founding contributor to Laura Bush’s National Book Festival, a continuing supporter of the National Center for Family Literacy.”

While there, Dibs! met Wendy Tokunaga, author of the 2007 novel Midori by Moonlight, whose heroine is a young Japanese woman newly arrived in the USA, where the russet-haired Californian she came here to marry cheats on her with his ex-girlfriend and calls off the wedding. Sad story — but funny, the way Tokunaga tells it, and sweet … in more ways than one, as Midori stays in the States and tries her hand at professional baking. A musician as well as a writer, Tokunaga grew up in San Francisco and first went to Japan after winning a Japanese songwriting contest.

“It’s exceptional to encounter a personality so strong, so open to new ideas that you become friends, even though that friend lives 3,000 miles away and you have never met him. We have to admit that from our sealed-up world back East, we don’t always know what we’re dealing with in the vast Western territory of Jonathan Evison’s mind. But that’s what we like most about him.

“The Three Guys have reviewed books and interviewed authors now for about a year. But ever since we covered All About Lulu, Jonathan’s debut novel, we have stayed in touch with him, sharing ideas and a growing friendship. His prose, through its agility and warm-humored intelligence, has inspired us and made us better writers. So we thought, why not? We will ask him to join us and add a West Coast POV to what we do.

“The Three Guys welcome Jonathan Evison to our blog, which is now his blog also.”

Evison’s debut post skewers publishers for signing only likely crowd-pleasers. He’d rather “read and write books that only the most fearless editor would ever dare to publish, and only the most uncompromising writer would ever endeavor — at the risk of starving their family — to write. Whether you’re talking about narrative decisions or acquisitions, nothing is worse for literature than safe choices.”

“In the wake of troubling reports that performance in last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examinations dropped, an influx of substandard books into schools looks set to deliver more shocks to the sector. Unscrupulous book vendors and pirates are increasingly printing books recommended by the Ministry of Education for use in secondary schools, most of which are of low quality compared to what is in the curriculum, education officials said. While this piracy is denying Kenya’s lucrative book publishing industry millions of shillings annually, educationists are raising a red flag that quality education is at stake. Education minister, Profesor Sam Ongeri, told Business Daily that quality assurance officers at the Ministry have launched investigations into the scam.’We have cases of two books which we are investigating to validate whether the contents of the books are the same as those in the approved books,’ Ongeri said.”