Penguin returns to e-book library lending and more book news

Penguin will expand its small library e-book lending program to two major regions, Cleveland and Los Angeles County. About a year ago, Penguin pulled its e-books from libraries. The change is about back-end distribution systems: Instead of using the market-dominant OverDrive, Penguin is expanding a pilot program with 3M using distributor Baker & Taylor. This is super-interesting to people who know a lot about libraries and e-books, less so to end users. The upshot: Los Angeles County library readers should be able to borrow the e-book of Junot Diaz’s “This Is How You Lose Her” before the end of the year. Note: This is for county libraries, not Los Angeles city libraries.

The Center for Fiction is holding an online auction for its school library program, which this year will benefit schools hit by Hurricane Sandy. Items on the block include weekend getaways in Vermont, Maine, San Francisco and Uruguay, sets of autographed books by George Saunders and Dennis Lehane, a painting, VIP tickets to “The Daily Show” and fashion items that include an Olympia Le-Tan book clutch. (via Galleycat)

The YA debut “Blackwood” by Gwenda Bond is in development with MTV, Kelsey Grammar’s production company and Lionsgate. The supernatural mystery is set on Roanoke Island. “DC Comic book and television writer Peter Calloway (Brothers & Sisters) will write the adaptation,” Deadline Hollywood reports.

Nashville, Tenn.’s Parnassus Books has celebrated its first birthday. “When people say to me this industry is dead, I say look around. Look at the people in Nashville. This is not dead,” said co-owner and novelist Ann Patchett. She also told the crowd, which had gathered in the store’s newly expanded space, “We are a community center. We are the place that you can come and bring your kids, and bring your date, and hang out and know your friends and talk about books.”

Tim Ferriss would like to portray Barnes & Noble’s decision not to carry his book “The Four Hour Chef” in its stores as “banning,” which it clearly is not. I would write more about it, but the clock on my four-hour work week is ticking.

ALSO:

Ngugi wa Thiong’o soars “In the House of the Interpreter”

Karl Rove likes reading Jorge Luis Borges. Yes, that Karl Rove.

The posthumous literary life of Roberto Bolano and his book “Woes of the True Policeman”

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