What cities are the best for book lovers? Apparently Pensacola is one of them.

When you think of Pensacola, FL, you don't usually think of a hotbed of literary action. Let's assume they just have supper clubs run by people named Louanne and Karen where they comb the latest Jodi Picoult book.

According to ApartmentGuide.com, Pensacola lands at #3 on their top ten list for best cities for book lovers.

The website's criteria was fairly straightforward. They looked at 14,000 cities that had at least one bookstore or library of any sort. Then, they eliminated any city that didn't have at least 50,000 people. That left the site with 764 cities. They then calculated the ratio per 100,000 citizens to figure out the most book-saturated cities.

The Top Ten:

1.)  Cambridge, MA

2.)  Berkeley, CA

3.)  Pensacola, FL

4.)  Ann Arbor, MI

5.)  Chapel Hill, NC

6.)  Santa Fe, NM

7.)  Marietta, GA

8.)  Saint Louis, MO

9.)  Cincinnati, OH

10.)  Birmingham, AL

Some of these cities are understandable as towns with a massive university as its backbone (Chapel Hill, Ann Arbor). While Berkeley is a mix of a college enclave and former hippie extension of San Francisco.

And ApartmentGuide.com says about Cambridge:

"Make no mistake, in the end, Cambridge is the ultimate high-end university town. Smart people matriculate here and smart people live here. And as the best city in America for booklovers, that shouldn't change any time soon."

You probably envision walking the streets of Cambridge and seeing small and cozy mom and pop bookstores holding casual readings with new authors--some tea and cookies in the corner, while a cat yawns from a nap in a window. Later, you might dream of passing austere universities like Harvard and MIT, laced in ivy and dappled in sunlight, like a Renoir painting come to life.

As someone who was born in Cambridge (and raised in the adjacent city), all I can say is...yeah--no. Smart people don't matriculate in Cambridge. Well-connected and well-to-do people do. Not smart people.

There's a difference.

As for Pensacola, don't underestimate the power of Louanne's homemade green bean casserole and a good book.



Sure, this sort of list doesn't include book clubs or writing circles, but have you ever been to a book club or writing circle? At least 75% of those people potentially have a restraining order against them.

Mark Twain's unfinished children's "book" is now finished.

To say Mark Twain has an "unfinished" children's book soon to be published is a bit fast and loose with the facts.

Doubleday Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, plans to release the lighthearted Twain fare on September 26, 2017, after author Philip Stead and illustrator Erin Stead worked to complete the book.

According to Doubleday, the story--The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine--"follows a young boy who eats the flower sprouted by a magical seed and gains the ability to talk to animals. From there, the boy and his new animal friends go off on a wild adventure to rescue a kidnapped prince."

So, it's like Jack and the Beanstalk meets Doctor Doolittle.

In 1879, while the family was visiting Paris, Twain apparently told his daughters a bedtime story following the plot of Prince Oleomargarine. Afterward, Twain wrote 16-pages of notes on a potential full-length book, but left it at that. For over 130-years, the notes remained lost until scholar John Bird discovered them at the Mark Twain Papers & Project at the University of California at Berkeley in 2011.

Somehow, 16-pages of Twain's notes evolved into a 152-page storybook with illustrations by two other people.

Notes = 152-page book.

A "Twain" book.

Notes.

Based on this metric, I have written tens of thousands of books. It's impressive, if I do say so.

Graduating college students are complaining about commencement speakers, so commencement speakers are cancelling.

Former University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau was scheduled to deliver a commencement address to Haverford College--in what can only be described as one of the more disappointing headlining commencement speakers in 2014. ("Hey, kids! We booked an official from another university to speak to you! And, to up the sexy, they're now unemployed!")

Some students at Haverford weren't too thrilled with the selection of Birgeneau, and not because they were hoping for A-list talent. A small group of Haverford students wrote Birgeneau to complain about his oversight of UC Berkeley during the Occupy Movement, when Birgeneau eventually demanded arrests be made after protesters ignored the co-camping rules of occupying Berkeley campus space. Regardless, some Haverford students found Birgeneau's response to be reprehensible, and demanded he step down as a commencement speaker.

He did.

Birgeneau isn't alone. In 2014, notable commencement speakers like former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, among others, have withdrawn as speakers at graduating ceremonies this year after students at respective colleges protested their involvement.

In case you think this is a matter of politics, of liberal versus conservative beliefs, think again. The Los Angeles Times (of a liberal bent) derided the students who demanded such commencement speakers step down, writing in an editorial:


"Still, the cascade of canceled speeches is worrying for several reasons. First, there is the uncompromising nature of the opposition: the demand that a speaker agree 100% with the protesters. This insistence on doctrinal purity is antithetical to the notion that a university ought to be an environment in which students, far from being protected from opposing views, are challenged to engage with them."


Let's face facts. The real challenge here for students was having to listen to Robert Birgeneau for twenty minutes.

What happens in Vegas...: Two Berkeley law students kill exotic bird in casino wildlife habitat.

According to Las Vegas police, two University of California-Berkeley law students allegedly visited the Flamingo Hotel wildlife exhibit, took a shine to a helmeted guineafowl, chased it up a tree...and then decapitated the bird.

Eric Cuellar and Justin Teixeira, both 24 years old and apparently unaware that Las Vegas is cased with surveillance, were caught by video cameras chasing the bird into a tree. According to police reports by witnesses, the two men allegedly came out of the tree with the exotic bird severed, laughed about it, and threw the bird's lifeless body around for awhile.

This is possibly the worst adaptation of The Hangover ever.

Both Cuella and Teixeira were booked on felony charges of conspiracy and the willful and malicious torture or killing of wildlife. They have a court date coming up where those law classes they took get put to experience.



Photo: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department