BookOpinion

According to results from a recent study, Minneapolis and Seattle are the most well-read cities in the U.S.

The survey targeted 69 U.S. cities with populations of 250,000 or above and chose six key indicators to rank literacy: newspaper circulation, number of bookstores, library resources, periodical publishing resources, educational attainment and Internet resources.

Overall, the top 10 most literate (and wired) cities included:

1—Minneapolis, Minn.
2—Seattle, Wash.
3—St. Paul, Minn.
4—Denver, Colo.
5—Washington, D.C.
6—St. Louis, Mo.
7—San Francisco, Calif.
8—Atlanta, Ga.
9—Pittsburgh, Pa.
10—Boston, Mass.

Minneapolis, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Denver and Washington, D.C., have made the top 10 since the survey was launched in 2003.

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Some cities that didn’t make it to the overall top 10, however, did strut their stuff in one of the six key literacy indicators. For instance, while Newark, N.J., was the 49th most literate city overall, it shared the top spot for newspaper circulation with Washington, D.C.

Plano, Texas, ranking 51st on the overall most-literate-city list, came in second for educational attainment. The education ranking included two factors: the percentage of the city’s adult population with a high school diploma or higher and those with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

Cleveland, Ohio, scored the highest for library resources, with St. Louis coming in second. The library category was a measure of five variables, such as the number of library professional staff and total branch libraries relative to library patrons.

Atlanta and Boston took the lead spots in the Internet resources category.

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Barnes and Noble has put together lists of their top 10 gifts for books and DVD. Here they are in no particular order:

Top 10 Gift Books
I am America (and so Can You!) - Stephen Colbert
1776: The Illustrated Edition
The Daring Book for Girls
Mad’s Greatest Artists: The Completely Mad Don Martin
A Family Christmas - Caroline Kennedy
The Star Wars Vault
Cartographia
War: An Intimate History - Ken Burns
A Lifetime of Secrets - Frank Warren
Rolling Stone Cover To Cover: The First 40 Years

To find these Top 10 Gift Books - Click Here.

Top 10 DVD Gifts
Seinfeld – The Complete Series
The War – A Ken Burns Film
Ratatouille
A Christmas Story
Audrey Hepburn 5-pack
Harry Potter DVD Collection – Years 1-5
Planet Earth – The Complete Series
Peanuts Classic Holiday Collection
Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End
High School Musical 2

To find these Top 10 DVD Gifts - Click Here.

Looking for holiday gift ideas? Amazon has released a list of the books that are most found on its users’ wish lists. The range of titles includes: “Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain” by Oliver Sacks; “Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography” by David Michaelis; The Harry Potter Boxset Books 1-7 from J. K. Rowling; “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia” by Elizabeth Gilbert; and many others.

Check out the Amazon wish list here to pick up some gift ideas for the holidays.

You can also go to their Gift Central main page to find user favorites in Electronics, Music, Kitchen, DVD, Jewelry, Toys, Home Improvement, Sports, Pet Products and more.

There is a service called 123PrintFinder.com that can help self-publishers and authors find great prices on their next print job.

The site has a proprietary database of printing presses across the U.S., Canada and overseas in countries such as South Korea or China. They will take your specs and find the optimal press for that book. The savings can be thousands of dollars depending on the size of the print run. Since they work with publishers on printing a wide variety of different books, they can also suggest small changes to optimize your book that could save you a bundle.

“We’ve definitely been able to save many book publishers thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars simply by placing their project in a plant that better suits them,” said Josh Prizer from 123PrintFinder.

123PrintFinder can print as few as 25 books or even larger print runs of up to 100,000 or more, which they have for major corporations.

Click here to find their book printing request form which will allow them to send you a quote.

Not sure where to start? Send them an email. Prizer says they have also walked many first-time publishers through the entire process.

Find out the hottest books selling right now at Buy.com with this quick run down of their current bestselling books:

Order any of these books and more from Buy.com. New Buy.com customers can also save on their next purchase with this coupon:

Offer: $5 off $100 or more in ALL Stores (New Customers Only)
Expiration: Sept. 30, 2007
Coupon: Use This Link.

The Quill Awards for the best books of the year in 19 different categories were announced. Below is a list of the winners. You can still vote for Book of the Year. Voting ends October 10, 2007.

Winning authors in all of the categories, plus dozens of other bestselling authors, will be seen at the Awards Program on NBC Saturday, October 27, 2007.

Here are this year’s awards:

Debut Author Of The Year
The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel
Written by Diane Setterfield
Published by Atria

General Fiction
The Road
Written by Cormac McCarthy
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Romance
Angels Fall
Written by Nora Roberts
Published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Audio
To Kill a Mockingbird
Written by Harper Lee
Read by Sissy Spacek
Published by Caedmon Audio

Religion/Spirituality
Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–And Doesn’t
Written by Stephen Prothero
Published by Harper One

Graphic Novel
Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels
Written by Scott McCloud
Published by Harper Paperbacks

Poetry
For the Confederate Dead
Written by Kevin Young
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Cooking
Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition - 2006
Written by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker
Published by Scribner

Health/Self-Improvement
How Doctors Think
Written by Jerome Groopman, M.D.
Published by Houghton Mifflin

Biography/Memoir
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Written by Walter Isaacson
Published by Simon & Schuster

Sports
The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Genuises Who Make Up America’s Top HighSchool Chess Team
Written by Michael Weinreb
Published by Gotham Books

Humor
I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence
Written by Amy Sedaris
Published by Warner Books

History/Current Events/Politics
The Assault on Reason
Written by Al Gore
The Penguin Press

Business
The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t
Written by Robert I. Sutton, PhD
Published by Business Plus, Grand Central Publishing

Mystery/Suspense
What the Dead Know: A Novel
Written by Laura Lippman
Published by William Morrow

Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One)
Written by Patrick Rothfuss
Published by DAW Books

Children’s Picture Books
Flotsam
Written by David Wiesner
Published by Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin

Children’s Chapter/Middle Grade
The Invention of Hugo Cabret
Written by Brian Selznick
Published Scholastic Press

Young Adult/Teen
Sold
Written by Patricia McCormick
Published by Hyperion Books for Children

The Top 15 bestsellers currently on eBooks.com:

1. The Secret, By: Byrne, Rhonda
2. The Rake and the Rebel, By: Brendan, Mary
3. The Marriage Bed, By: Guhrke, Laura Lee
4. The 4-Hour Work Week, By: Ferriss, Timothy
5. Mass Effect - Revelation, By: Karpyshyn, Drew
6. God Is Not Great, By: Hitchens, Christopher
7. Cross, By: Patterson, James
8. Gone, By: Kellerman, Jonathan
9. Einstein, By: Isaacson, Walter
10. Touch of the Wolf, By: Whiddon, Karen
11. The 5th Horseman, By: James Patterson
12. Getting Things Done, By: Allen, David
13. Killing Floor, By: Child, Lee
14. The Medici Dagger, By: West, Cameron
15. Dark Lover, By: Ward, J.R.

Each of these books is available for instant download at eBooks.com.