BILLIONS OF BLISTERING BLUE BARNICLES! by Rob Lopresti My father was a elementary school principal so I often got books as presents. That was fine with me. On Christmas when I was seven there was a book under the tree called Explorers On The Moon. This was half a decade before before Neil Armstrong took […]

NEWS CLIPPING by Rob Lopresti Yesterday, for the second time, we featured a chapter of The Man In Court by Frederic DeWitt Wells. Just for kicks and giggles I decided to see if I could find out any more about the man. I found one story that tells us a bit about life in the […]

THE WASHINGTON-TO-WASHINGTON BOOK REPORT by Rob Lopresti I just got back from a library conference in Washington D.C. This was not as exciting a trip as my last one,. in part because this conference contained not five thousand librarians of all types, but just a few hundred government documents librarians. But if you want to […]

TALENT HUNT by Rob Lopresti This week I have one question for you and a whole lot of answers. The answers have nothing to do with the questions, but, hey, you can’t have everything. Here’s the question Sometimes I hear someone say, approximately, “I’d love to write, but I don’t have any talent.” (It could […]

POP QUIZ 2: PROPER NAMES by Rob Lopresti One interesting thing about surnames is that most of them mean something. (Some only mean that an official at Ellis Island couldn’t spell, but never mind that.) When people ask me about my own I usually explain that Lopresti means “son of a priest.” Then I wait […]

LIVING IN THE PAST by Rob Lopresti In October 1979 I was dwelling in a place called, so help me, Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey. One evening I brought in the mail and found a letter with no return address. I opened it and a check fluttered to the floor. There was nothing else in the […]

FOUR NOSES FOR CRIME by Rob Lopresti I just finished a terrific book of short stories by James Powell. A Pocketful of Noses is published by Crippen and Landru which, amazingly enough, specializes in collections of mystery stories. (May their coffers overflow.) If you haven’t encountered Mr. Powell, I should warn you that he isn’t […]