Sunday I signed books at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, CA. As always, it was fun to be with the booksellers and customers there. What really struck me though was how many people picked up the late Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon or his The Girl Who Played with Fire. For many in the crime fiction community, they may be old hat, but apparently not for others. The word-of-mouth on them must be amazing. What is it about those books? Anyway, on Kepler's bestseller board, my Smasher finished at #2 just behind Girl with Tattoo and Dot Dead finished #7 just behind Girl Who Played.
The Stanford Physics Library is the setting for a critical scene in Smasher. One morning Ian waits till it opens and then goes in to talk to the librarian.
“Many visitors here in the library?” I [Ian] asked.
She [the librarian] laughed. “If Stanford were a prison, this would be its solitary confinement cell.”
“I guess everything is available online nowadays.”
“An awful lot. Most of what we have in here is bound journals.”
No surprise then to read this morning that the library is going "bookless" and moving to a smaller facility. I wonder what they are going to do with the life-size cut-out of Albert Einstein.
