Today is a special day for “Gone with the Wind.”  Margaret Mitchell first published that wonderful epic on this date, June 30, in 1936.

I learned this tidbit of history-on-this-day when I stopped into the Mahopac Public Library this afternoon to return Jodi Picoult’s “Change of Heart.”

“Gone with the Wind” was an immediate sensation in Atlanta, where Mitchell was living. By 1937, it was widely read across the United States and the world, says a neat Web site dedicated to the book.

According to the site, Mitchell had been a newspaper reporter for The Atlanta Journal. But horseback riding injuries required her to quit her job and take to her bed.  Her husband brought her books, and plenty of them, to read. She did so at q quick pace.  Then her dear husband brought her a Remington typewriter and passed along the sage advice—write what you know.

Out came Rhett Butler, Scarlet O’Hara and Tara.

She won a Pulitizer Prize in 1937 and “Gone with the Wind” remains one of the bestselling novels of all time, say industry sources.

In 1939, it was released as a movie starring Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard. It garnered eight Academy Awards.

Today is a good day to pull it out again and give Mitchell’s tome another try.  I have found that re-reading books at different stages is really interesting and can be a different reading experience.  With a fresh perspective, new parts of the book and its characters come alive in new ways.

I first became a fan of The Saint — Leslie Charteris’ fictional adventurer/thief — by watching Roger Moore in the role on my television screen.

But after being hooked, I sought out the originals (like any other bibliophile) to enjoy at my leisure. I’ve managed to acquire a half-dozen books and recently acquired a particularly moldy version of “Getaway” in a Crime Club edition copyrighted in 1932.

“Getaway” is dedicated to P.G. Wodehouse “who had time to say a word for the Saint stories, when he could have written them so much better himself.”

I believe the most recent Saint incarnation was a movie from the late 1990s, but it’s been a good decade or so since Simon Templar caused any kind of a stir. A sad state of affairs, I think. Like Captain Blood or The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Saint is a character worthy of attention as much for his style as his story.

This particular Saint story takes place between World War I and World War II, in Germany and Austria and other European areas. The Saint, his girlfriend Patricia Holm and a respectable book editor, Monty Hayward, chase after some crown jewels, with a little mayhem and a crooked crown prince for entertainment.

There’s nothing like a little Saintly activity to recharge people tired of the usual. For those who haven’t read Charteris’ books, I’d suggest you give them a try. The mold you can leave to me. The stories — definitely worth a look.

Michael Jackson might not have liked to be out in the sun, but he liked to read and had a library at Neverland with at least 10,000 books. He was a shopper at Los Angeles bookstores including Dutton’s Books in Brentwood. He was known to have also frequented Book Soup on Sunet Strip and Skylight Books, too.

Turns out the pop music icon loved poetry, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson poetry and books about psychology, art and architecture, according to a The Los Angeles Times piece that ran this weekend. And kudos go to one of my favorite book blogs, GalleyCat at Mediabistro.com for cluing me in.

Clearly, he liked to browse the stacks.

Maybe some of us are glued to our television (or computer screen) to get reports on the untimely death of Michael Jackson — what happened, why and what comes next. Certainly most of us were shocked at his death at 50 years old.

But a clever writer, Angie Rayfield from Kansas City Books Examiner, at examiner.com has collected the names and added short takes on books written by and about the popular songster. Click on this and see some neat black-and-white photos, too.

I was interested to learn that in 1988 he wrote an autobiography, ” Moonwalk,”  which is now out of print but available through used bookstores, e-bay and at libraries. The list of books about Jackson goes on, and includes “The Trials of Michael Jackson” by Lynton Guest, 2006.

There is also a list at this site dedicated to Jacko which has a page of books and also has photographs.

Happy reading.

Noted writer Ray Bradbury,  think “Fahrenheit 451” and  “The Illustrated Man”,  came out to support Ventura County Public Libraries in the wake of seriously falling revenues to support that public institution. The news came from  Friday’s New York Times.

The story has been picked up by other media bloggers, like MediaBistro.com, but this is my chance to make sure our readers know of Bradbury’s pronouncements in favor of libraries.

“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said in the Times piece by Jennifer Steinhauer. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

This weekend, he participated in fund-raisers to help the library system with its serious shortfall. Turns out he supported libraries when they needed him last year and the year before that he helped a  bookstore he liked.

Libraries in the Lohud region squeaked by with support from our elected officials at local, county and state levels.  Without a doubt each one is seeking increased usage with people glad for programs, book and movie loans and reference help. Many libraries are helping patrons with job searching by hosting interview training sessions and showing novices how to take advantage of Web resources.

Some libraries, like Mahopac Public Library kept its budget stable from the previous year in spite of increases in costs.  Its board felt now wasn’t the time to push through an increase no matter what.  And they managed to maintain library hours and services.

Tough times, need good libraries. I can personally say I have spent more time reading some long-lost books than in past years and it has been very nice.

Sad, though, there have been some bookstore closings in our communities. Second Story Bookshop in Chappaqua is gone. So is Ben Franklin Bookstore in Nyack (read today’s story about the shop’s new renter and her mural images), and Origin Books in Nanuet.

On the flip side I’ve re-discovered Borders Books in Mt. Kisco and found many good selections.

Keep reading and feel free to share your summer reading suggestions.

Reporter Ken Valenti and I held an email discussion this week about Holden Caulfield, the art of literature and how times have changed.

Here’s how the conversation started. This is from Ken’s message to me:

There was an essay in the NY Times yesterday about Catcher in the Rye. Apparently teens and young adults hate the book now. They can’t identify with this loser who is detached from society. He’s just a whiny dropout who can’t cope. They identify more with Harry Potter, the geeky guy who fights the noble fight and wins. (I mean, they call Harry geeky, and he’s certainly drawn that way on the covers of the books, though I never really thought of him as a geek as he comes across on the pages of the books.)

But Holden Caulfield, they have no patience for. One teacher said her students wanted to tell him; “Just shut up and take your Prozac.”

And you know, I noticed something similar in my non-fiction class at Manhattanville a year ago. We read this essay I really liked by Joan Didion on her first time living in Manhattan, getting a job at a magazine. The tone of the article was unhappy and unsettled. (Imagine that from Joan Didion.) Of course, it’s really well-written. Didion can write rings around most living writers. Some passages were actually beautiful, if I remember correctly.

But one woman in our class, in her early 20s, couldn’t stand it. She felt, Who is this whiny (woman) to complain about her life? She comes to Manhattan, gets a decent job. What’s her problem?

So. No sympathy for someone who simply feels disconnected from society at large. Got a problem? Unless it’s an external force — like an evil wizard out to do you in — then it is just that; YOUR problem. Don’t bother us with it.

My youngest asked me for help with an English paper the other day. She needed to find someone who wrote in a regional voice, but they had to have done their writing between, say, 1890 and 1918.

My first thought was to drag out a book about/by Kin Hubbard, because Old Abe certainly spoke in dialect. Unfortunately,  Hubbard — whose name is actually Frank McKinney Hubbard — did much of his more famous work in the 1920s and ‘30s.

We settled on Margaret Penrose, simply because my stack of Dorothy Dales was readily accessible and the books were written in the early 1900s. But I had gotten out my Kin Hubbard book and found myself flipping through the pages and chortling.

Few people know Kin Hubbard these days. He wrote and drew for the Indianapolis News initially in 1891, but more successfully at the Sun from about 1899 to 1901, and the News (again) from about 1901 until his death. He was an Ohioan born and bred, the son of a newspaper editor father, and he spent some time at art school before drifting into newspapers first as an artist and then as a columnist.

He specialized in political satire, much of it out of the mouth of Abe Martin (who first saw print in 1904), a bewhiskered and grizzled denizen of Brown County, Indiana.

You may not know Old Abe, but you’ve probably heard what he had to say, including this: “When a fellow says, “It ain’t the money but the principle of the thing,” it’s the money.”

I thought of Hubbard again this week, after a comment from a reader who was pleased to have seen Don Marquis and archy and mehitabel appear in this blog. There were brilliant writers whose names these days are unknown. I’d like, occasionally, to bring their writing back to view.

So here are some of Kin Hubbard’s more telling quotes, found through a Google search:

“There’s no secret about success. Did you ever know a successful man who didn’t tell you about it?”

“We would all like to vote for the best man, but he is never a candidate.”

“Nobody ever forgets where he buried the hatchet.”

“Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly while he’s overcharging you.”

“Peace has its victories no less than war, but it doesn’t have as many monuments to unveil.”

“Some folks can look so busy doing nothing that they seem indispensible.”

“The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.”

“It ain’t a bad plan to keep still occasionally even when you know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.”

“Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny.”

If you can’t get to a live baseball game Saturday and really want to get in the mood, try this book talk at the Mahopac Public Library.

Jeff Pearlman, author of a new Roger Clemens biography, “The Rocket That Fell to Earth: Roger Clemens and the Rage for Baseball Immortality” will be on hand at 2 p.m. He is a Mahopac High School alumnus and former senior editor for Sports Illustrated magazine.

He will talk about his new book “which is an explosive account of the rise and fall of one of the greatest modern day baseball players,” explains the library.
Copies cost $20 and may be purchased (and autographed) at the event.
Registration is requested with online or call 845-628-2009, ext 100.

Who needs to line up for the next Iron Chef or Make Me a Super Model? Those with silky voices or clear enunciation deserve their fame, too.

And if you like literary works,  all the better.

Would-be audiobook narrators, says the wonderfully timely and clever book blog, GalleyCat, have the chance to try out for a role reading books on tape in a contest by sending a 3-minute sample tape to Scott Brick, described  as the “audiobook maestro.”  Galley Cat credits its item from Sarah Weinman.

Find out more about the “Share the Experience” contest on Brick’s site. Deadline is June 30 so if you are interested clear your throat and snap to it.

Lohud contestants, share your entries and inspirations with us here—and good luck.

It is fast approaching summer reading season—even if the weather has been cloudy and rainy. Actually, reading is a great past time when showers make bike riding, gardening and hiking unappealing.

Last week, I asked for some reading suggestions from Lohud.com readers and pulled in some interesting choices.

Here are some choices for mystery readers and those who want some self-help:

From Jennifer: “I have recently discovered the Harry Bosch detective series by  Michael Connelly. There are enough books to go the summer. I also was told about John Sandford with a Det. Lucas (Davenport) series. There are plenty of them as well!! I enjoy James Patterson’s Alex Cross as well. All of the above are series and make great summer reading. Matter of  fact all year reading!”

Connelly is a former Los Angeles Times crime reporter and his thrillers have won him an Edgar Award. He tells the story of Bosch, an LAPD cop. Standford is a Pulitizer-Prize winning reporter who has written thriller novels that are quite popular.