People

The graphic novel genre, or "Graphica," is now estimated to be a $100 million market, one which runs the gamut of subjects: from Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus (Pantheon) to all sorts of Japanese manga (comic books), from Harvey Pekar's American Splendor series to Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics (HarperPerennial).

They're all around us, those unmarried 20- or 30-somethings who seem to run in packs, living and working and enjoying life with friends rather than devoting all of their energies to the pursuit of marriage. Who are these people, these -- as the U.S. Census Bureau calls them -- never-marrieds? And what exactly are they doing in the years between student-hood and spouse-dom?

The game of baseball is a statistician's dream. Every aspect of the game is recorded, tracked, and dissected to find out what creates success -- including the one figure that some experts consider the most significant these days: money. While big-market teams, with payrolls to match, dominate the post-season baseball landscape on a yearly basis (read: New York Yankees), it would seem the small-market teams, with their no-name players, shouldn't stand a chance.

Enter Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane.

A memorial service will be held for Pat Kirby Sado on Thursday, October 23, at 4:00 p.m. at the Juilliard School's Morse Hall, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, located on the northwest corner of West 65th St. & Broadway in New York City.

Sado, a long-time bookseller, died suddenly on September 19 at age 56.

For more on the life of Pat Kirby Sado, click here.

"I probably would have been happier living around 1897," said Falls Church, Virginia, author and high school teacher James McGrath Morris.

"Maybe part of the reason I'm writing about the 1890s and 1910 in New York is because I would have preferred to be there then, hanging out on Park Row."

Bookseller Pat Kirby Sado, age 56, died suddenly in New York on September 19. Sado spent most of her bookselling career as a buyer at the old Coliseum Books, at 57th and Broadway, from 1974 until 2001, when the store closed.

The September/October Book Sense 76 includes The Oath: The Remarkable Story of a Surgeon's Life Under Fire in Chechnya, by Khassan Baiev with Ruth and Nicholas Daniloff (Walker), a powerful book suited for a graying season with shorter, darker days. Most Western readers know of Chechnya through fleeting, horrific, and often confusing news headlines.

Citing his pioneering work to protect libraries and their patrons from the sweeping new powers given to federal agents by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, the Library Journal has named Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) its 2003 "Politician of the Year." The Congressman was nominated by librarians from his home state and across the country and is featured on the cover of the magazine's September 15 issue.

Born "a mid-century baby" in Albany, New York, to a family of readers and writers, Gregory Maguire, author of Mirror Mirror, to be published this October by Regan Books, grew up in a world of vivid language and colorful stories.