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+ + INSIDE: Beverly Sills: An appreciation t TELEVISION 4 3 t BRIDGE 6 t ANNIE’S MAILBOX 7 THE BLADE, TOLEDO, OHIO y FRIDAY, JULY 6, 2007 SECTION E Publishers MUSIC TO THE use video to NINES Seven has long been con- introduce sidered a lucky number by a variety of cultures and reli- ’70s pop sensation is gions. This year, many couples their authors are hoping it means they’ll be lucky in love as they get mar- By HILLEL ITALIE ried tomorrow on the hottest ASSOCIATED PRESS proud to now be known wedding date in memory, NEW YORK — Author Mari- 7/7/07. Lucky or anne Wiggins doesn’t pretend not, seven is a she’s up on modern technol- for his guitar skills number that’s ogy. She writes in longhand and all around doesn’t bother with cell phones, us. Just except in her car — “in case I take a have a fl at.” look. But she needed no persuading — when Simon & Schuster called Ryan E. her — at home — to ask that she Smith make a promotional video for The Shadow Catcher, her latest novel. “I was all for it,” says Wiggins, a University of Southern California professor whose other works in- clude John Dollar, Almost Heaven, and Evidence of Things Unseen, a National Book Award fi nalist in 2003. “I’m a professor … I’m plugged into what individuals in their ear- ly 20s are thinking about, people For a multimedia who live on the Internet. I’m not presentation see: writing in a vacuum.” toledoblade.com Wiggins is one of 40 writers fea- tured on a video site by Simon 9 Things That & Schuster that includes clips of Come in Sevens Wiggins, Zane, Jeannette Walls, When Harry Potter and and Sandra the Deathly Hallows is Brown. The pub- 1. released later this month, lisher expects to it will be the seventh and add videos for final installment of Brown books by former the series. President Jimmy By DAVID YONKE Carter, Vince Flynn, Michael Con- BLADE STAFF WRITER nelly, and Jodi Picoult, among After 40 years in the music busi- others. ness and tens of millions of albums Once a novelty, book videos sold, Peter Frampton fi nally won a are increasingly common and, Grammy last year. publishers say, essential. Hyper- The honor may not mean much ion Books, HarperCollins, and to some rock stars, but it means the Penguin Group (USA) are among world to Frampton, who will be in those using them. Powell’s Books, concert Saturday in the Toledo Of the seven wonders a leading independent store Speedway Jam. based in Portland, Ore., plans its of the ancient world, “First of all, a Grammy is very only the pyramids at own series of fi lms, starting with humbling,” he said in an inter- 2. Giza remain. a video for Ian McEwan’s new view last week. “We all say, novel, On Chesil Beach. ‘Oh, awards don’t mean any- “I don’t know if we’re reaching thing’ — until you get one. I Elizabeth people we wouldn’t otherwise think one of the reasons we be reaching, but we are reaching Taylor say awards don’t mean any- has had people who are not necessarily thing is just in case we never 3. reading book review sections or seven get one, we think we should husbands always watching a TV show,” says put them down. It’s a personal Sue Fleming, Simon & Schuster’s (but eight defensive.” marriages). vice president and executive di- The 2006 Grammy Award rector for online and consumer for Best Instrumental Pop Al- marketing. bum was especially sweet for No one makes defi nitive Frampton because it showed claims that videos increase sales, there is life beyond “Frampton but publishers and booksellers Comes Alive!” For too long, the gui- 7UP, agree they can help, especially tar ace had struggled to prove there created if they catch on at YouTube and was more to his career than his pop- 4.in 1929, elsewhere on the Internet. Brian star image of the 1970s. was Murray, president of Harper- “Most people probably think originally known Collins Worldwide, noticed the I got one for ‘Frampton Comes as Bib-Label recent attention given to a video Alive!’ ‘He got everything else, he Lithiated Lemon- for the best seller The Dangerous Lime. One sug- must have a Grammy,’ ” Frampton gestion is that Book for Boys. “It was such a good said. “But I don’t. But maybe it will piece that the Today show picked the current name be the thing that separates me came when the up on it and aired the whole from ‘Frampton Comes Alive!’ ” thing,” he says. creator saw a cattle brand with He said he hurt his image as the number 7 and letter u. Publishers say they want vid- a serious musician even further eos to be lively, but not too slick, by accepting the lead role of Billy and to help readers get to know Shears in the 1978 Hollywood Star Trek: Voyager had the author and get a feel for the bomb, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts a character named book. The Dangerous Book for Club Band. Seven of Nine, played Boys video works like a mock- 5. “My mother, God rest her by Jeri Ryan. home movie as a father and son soul, she passed away a (friends of the video’s producer) couple of weeks ago, but play soccer, toss a water bomb, when they asked her in a 7-Eleven and act out other activities de- convenience scribed in the book, a how-to See FRAMPTON, Page 2 stores took guide that covers everything from 6. ASSOCIATED PRESS their name paper airplanes to go-carts. from their hours of Publishers differ on which operation, 7 a.m. to books are ideal for videos, al- 11 p.m. though they agree that poetry POP CULTURE and short story collections are bad candidates. Murray says he In Snow White and the prefers works that are not of a Seven Dwarfs, rejected specifi c genre, where “you have names for dwarfs included to communicate” what the book 7. California library is heaven Biggy, Blabby, Dirty, Gabby, is about. Fleming says she’s inter- Gaspy, Gloomy, Hoppy, Hotsy, ested in targeting self-help read- Jaunty, Jumpy, Nifty, ers and book clubs. and Shifty. Wiggins was fi lmed on a pier in Malibu, Calif., about 30 minutes for science fiction fans from her house. The two-minute clip shows the author walking By SARA LIN unmatched trove of rare medieval manu- about on a sunny day, her dark LOS ANGELES TIMES scripts. But for research on Capt. Kirk, hair tossed in the wind as she dis- RIVERSIDE, Calif. — For the German Frankenstein, or Harry Potter, nothing cusses her current novel, which monk searching for signs of God in Star tops the 110,000-volume Eaton collec- features the late photographer Trek, the obscure storeroom on the fourth tion at UC Riverside, one of the world’s Edward Sheriff Curtis and a mod- fl oor of the University of California, largest library of science fi ction, fantasy, ern character named “Marianne Riverside’s main library was worth the and horror books. (Bowling Green State Wiggins.” trans-Atlantic pilgrimage. University’s noted Brown Popular Culture “The pier is a place I go to Bernhard Janzen pored over televi- Library also has science fi ction, fantasy, frequently for the healing prop- sion scripts and a video clip from Star and horror in its collection.) erties, for standing at the edge Trek: Deep Space Nine, and noticed how “It’s like going to Graceland if you’re A com- of the continent,” Wiggins says, a black space-station captain had found an Elvis fan,” said Drew Morse, a creative mon adding that she chose the loca- a religious stone tablet and, much like writing professor who made the pilgrim- type of tion. “There was no script. It was Moses, smashed it on the ground as he age to Riverside from Ohio last summer 8. ladybug all very informal and easy to do. shepherded an oppressed people toward to study rare poetry by Fahrenheit 451 has seven It took about an hour. freedom. author Ray Bradbury. dots. “I don’t know any writers these The scene was central to Mr. Janzen’s As appreciation for the literary quali- days who would say that it is dissertation about religious symbolism in ties of science fi ction has grown in recent beneath their dignity to make the space-age television series. years, the UC Riverside collection has The McCaughey a video. Sales have been fl at for LOS ANGELES TIMES The monk is among a new breed of emerged from an academic ghetto. At publishers and I want to fi nd septuplets, born in Iowa Former Eaton collection curator scholars fl ocking to UC Riverside for oth- one time, even public libraries had con- in 1997, were the world’s readers.” George Slusser holds an embossed erworldly research. sidered the books disposable literature, 9. first surviving set of publisher’s edition of a 107-year-old UC Berkeley has the world’s premiere seven children. collection on Mark Twain, and Yale has an + Jules Verne book. See LIBRARY, Page 2 BLADE GRAPHIC + Cyan Magenta Yellow Black 070607_RP5_DLY__E1 1 7/5/2007, 7:00:28 PM.

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