In a brilliant and insightful interview that spans a wide range of subjects, Pete Croatto goes head-to-head with John Schulian a former sports columnist (and, later, television writer) who talks about his experiences on newspapers, with other sports writers, editors, and athletes, the changes in the sports reporting industry, how he broke into television, and more in We Write and Take Our Chances: An Interview with John Schulian.

In his last column, Carl Rollyson critically reviewed a new biography of Adolf Hitler that took an unusual approach. Not surprisingly, he received a number of e-mails and comments about it. In Springtime for Hitler Again, he meets those objections head on and explains why he believes as he does and how the genre of biography is enhanced by that author’s approach.

In Beloved Books: Part Three, Gillian Polack had planned to write about her favorite books that are over one hundred years old—until she found she had thrown out, by accident, her notes. But she did find a small note about writing she loved of that age and those four authors are the focus of her column.

The discussion of library book budgets is lively these days. So also is the discussion of e-books. Oddly, though, what hasn’t really been discussed, at least in  public, is the implications of how the impact of buying e-books vs. print books affects libraries’ customers. In Libraries: For Whom, Lauren Roberts wonders: Is their demographic changing, or are some going to be shortchanged?

Lev Raphael interviews the editor of an astonishing World War II-era German diary that came to light only recently, dispelling forever the myth that average Germans didn’t and couldn’t know about the atrocities their Nazi government was committing in New Light on Old Crimes.

Nicki Leone may work at home but she travels the world with books. So when a new book on street food—nibbles from around the globe—came her way she took advantage of her time and her kitchen in Street Food in the Kitchen.

An early baseball hero who became more than he ever wanted to be is the subject of guest columnist Mike Yawn’s piece this week as he interviews a documentary filmmaker and a biographer about their work on this unique sports champion in Hank Greenberg: American.

Growing up in the middle of the twentieth century meant for Lauren Roberts a childhood of innocent television shows, barbecues and family baseball games on summer nights. One of her fond memories, of a show and a hero, was “brought home” again with a bookmark in Tales & Trails of Roy & Dale.

What don’t books and e-readers have in common? Elizabeth Creith crunched a few thoughts about why she will continue to prefer the printed book and in the process created a lot of laughs in  How Do You Dog-Ear an E-Reader Again?

Life is change. Sometimes it’s thrilling, other times it is startling or even frightening. But it is inevitable and if we allow it, often insightful. In Sea Changes, Katherine Hauswirth talks about a memoir and a novel that in their own ways “ponder life transformation in response to a specific—and often unexpected—occurrence.”

When Carl Rollyson wrote an extended review of a new Hitler biography, the variety of book covers mentioned so intrigued Lauren Roberts, a cover lover, that she decided to do, in Portraying a Book, a little exploration into them.

Adolf Hitler is not a subject that most biographers approach with a humanistic touch, which is no surprise. However, a coming biography that does exactly that attracted Carl Rollyson’s attention to such a degree that he is actually writing three pieces on it for three different publications. The longest, most detailed one is here with honest, biting commentary of the book, its author, and its difficult subject in Springtime for Hitler.

Discovering what books other readers love is almost a passion with Gillian Polack, who, in her last column, queried her friends, and this week queried BiblioBuffet’s team. What books older than one hundred years were their favorites? Come find out in Beloved Books: Part Two.

A new book about a basketball player many sports fans—and especially the author—have come to view as not having paid his dues is, while sounding initially like a lengthy rant, actually became a “bitingly honest, soulful book” and, according to Pete Croatto, one well worth reading as he shares in The Wrong Kind of Success Story.

BiblioBuffet is entering its seventh year, and Lauren Roberts shares a bit of her feelings about what has changed and what has remained the same from 1/8/06 to now in Seven Years Old!

How can a two-thousand-year-old poem seem so modern? Nicki Leone muses on de rerum natura (on the nature of things) in Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Katherine Hauswirth takes a sobering journey through the world of genocide in the World War II era with two books—a children’s novel and a read-long-ago book recently rediscovered memoir—that helped her realize that “there’s a great and profound comfort” to be found even in the worst horrors in Number the Heroes.

“What kind of person has a purge rule in the library?” Not me, thought Elizabeth Creith, who was confronted with this question over the holiday season and who found a kind of accommodation to it in Vat Iss Diss Vord “Purge”?

Bookmarks have, as our readers know, interesting histories but some are more interesting than most. Laine Farley found that to be the case in her exploration of the story behind two bookmarks that advertised an importer of delicate clothing accessories in Crime and Lace.

With the new year comes lots of new things, resolutions being one of them. But when resolutions arise from guilt rather than aspiration our determination can get bogged down in the mire of remorse and blame. Lauren Roberts has found a better way for herself in Riding Into the New Year.

Lauren Roberts sends lots of holiday greetings to BiblioBuffet’s wonderful readers in this, the last issue of 2011 in Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Books aren’t created to be bad, but sometimes they are. Pete Croatto explores the common factors that make up bad sports-related books—what readers should lo0k for—and how authors can avoid them so readers don’t have to avoid them, in The Architecture of a Terrible Sports Book.

Cool books that are more than one hundred years old? Yes, indeed. Gillian Polack reached out far and wide in her search for authors, writers, and readers who have deep feelings for old books that still light the flame of passion within them in Beloved Books.

Biographers often tread tricky pathways in their research, and one of the most touchy of all can be relatives who have also become “keepers of the flame.” Carl Rollyson’s background work on his upcoming biography of poet Sylvia Plath has him feeling the bludgeon of Ted Hughes and others, a process he describes in Proprietary Biography.

Only a few more days of holiday shopping remain, and Lauren Roberts shares her final selections of gifts—this time in the price category of $1,000 to near infinity. Join her for the final version of the Literary Gift Guide, Part 5.

For many people, the holiday season means shopping or decorations. For Nicki Leone, it means comfort food, and along with her visiting mom she has been dipping into cookbooks and old family recipes. The result? Food plus Sauerkraut-Inspired Memories.

Bookmarks follow the seasons too, and this week Lauren Roberts re-visits one of the most exquisite of her collection, a marvelous silk beauty used an advertising/memorial device in Compliments of the Season.

There’s a new kid on the JA block: Jane Austen Made Me Do It, an entertaining anthology of new stories inspired by the famed author’s life and work. Lev Raphael reviews it and interviews the witty editor, a well-known Austen blogger in A Jane Austen Christmas.

There’s lots of discussion about the evolution of books and the e-book in particular. But what do you suppose might have happened to bedtime reading before the last revolution—the one from which the modern day codex is derived—took place? Elizabeth Creith fantasizes, then gives thanks for today’s versions in Midnight Rambles.

Holidays mean get-togethers with challenging family members who provoke “a roll of the eyes, a sigh, and a groan” rather than best wishes. Katherine Hauswirth finds company in the month of crazy in two books, a novel and a memoir that show “how perhaps in many families there is some silver lining alongside the lunatic fringe” in The Crazy Streak.

That favorite Christmas poem, The Night Before Christmas has taken a bit of a twist in Lauren Roberts’ hands becoming with Santa and his “reindeer” making an appearance in ‘Twas That Night Before Christmas.

The past—be it the Middle Ages or 1692—spawned enormous advances in science, art, literature, and more, advances that in fact bring us to today. Gillian Polack found three books—all in different genres—that highlight how “we, as readers, begin to understand the people who have gone before” in How We Understand the Past – From Three Directions.

Former boxing champion Joe Frazier is the focus of Pete Croatto’s latest read in Requiem for a Heavyweight. While the book includes his extended relationship with his nemesis, Muhammad Ali, another champion, it is the book and its readers who are the real winners.

Carl Rollyson is sufficiently annoyed by the latest awarding of the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography to Keith Richards that he beats up the writers’ colony that was born of the writer and provides the prize in this biting, honest warning to readers of biography in Accept No Substitutes.

Gifts and more gifts. Lauren Roberts has the fourth in her guide to bookish gifts, this one focusing on those in the price range of $500-$1,000 (along with a selection of literary hotels) in Literary Gift Guide, Part 4.

Nicki Leone terms a recent and much beloved book an “allegorical illustration of an allegorical poem,” but also, she notes, “there is more here, more to be heard, more to be learned,” in an intimate way and that’s what she shares in What Enlightenment Looks Like.

What does the word “home” actually mean? Katherine Hauswirth explores that question within the context of two books that “evoked a true sense of being home” in Where We Find Home.

The theme of Christmas through bookmarks is a nostalgic journey into the world of Art Deco and its stylized art for Laine Farley who shares some of her early twentieth century collection of beauties in Decorama—Holiday Style.

It’s time for Elizabeth Creith to come clean—and she does. Who knew she was a polysyllable whore? Are you one too? Find out in True Confessions.

Forty years later the question still haunts: Who was D.B. Cooper? Guest columnist Mike Yawn talked with the author of a new and impressive account of the crime, the theories, and the possible man in Welcome to Cooperland: An Interview with Geoffrey Gray.

Seeking literary gifts in the $100-$500 range? Lauren Roberts has ‘em—good ones too even if you are just looking—as well as some other fun reading in Literary Gift Guide, Part 3.

Carl Rollyson continues his two-part series on reviews of biographies, asking why some books, like the Jobs bio, receive divergent reviews. As a biographer and a biography reviewer, he shares his perspectives and ideas in Rush Jobs.

Though he admits he shrinks from doing round-ups, Pete Croatto decides they have a place—like in his column this week. Giving Thanks is an excellent summary of sports-related books and blogs that have captured not only his interest but his heart.

Franz Kafka’s writings still resonate among readers and writers because, as Gillian Polack notes, he “always took the ordinary and rendered it extraordinary, except where he did things the other way around.” In Search of Today’s Kafka is the review of a new anthology in which writers successfully do the same.

Lauren Roberts is back with the annual Literary Gift Guide, Part 2—holiday gift suggestions for your favorite reader in the price range of $25-$100.

The books they share take second place only to the memories of their sharing. Nicki Leone begins her holiday season (and ours) with a warm tribute to the role of her mother in her real and literary life in Mom, the Perfect Reader.

Thanks to our newest contributor, biblio-humorist Elizabeth Creith, I learned a new word. I already knew that “lights out” are anathema to all devoted readers, but I didn’t know there is help for it—if one wants it: Confessions of a Librocubicularist.

Who at some point (or many points) hasn’t dream of a secluded existence where choices are few and obligations simple? Katherine Hauswirth shares, in Cloister Talk, that maybe such ideas are not that simple, and that wise decisions are better based on our own self-determined roles.

Pharmacies play such a large role in our health—from dispensing prescribed medications to carrying simple aspirin—that it is easy to ignore how far they have come as Lauren Roberts describes in Pharm-ing Bookmarks.

The opening of the “holiday shopping season” opens this week, and for those seeking gifts of a literary nature Lauren Roberts has suggestions organized by price—beginning with free in Literary Gift Guide, Part 1.