Been away. 2 Yahoo! stories:

Neb. Town's Only Resident Opens Library
Thu Apr 7, 3:29 AM ET Associated Press
(Courtesy of ML)

Elsie Eiler, 71-year-old tavern owner, opened an honor system library - ""Rudy's Library" in honor of her late husband, who left behind a collection of thousands of books, from Shakespeare to science fiction to Westerns."

American Novelists Beg for Oprah's Book Club Help
Thu Apr 21, 4:36 PM ET Reuters

"Paula Sharp, an author of four novels and a member of Word of Mouth, said, "Oprah got so many people to read contemporary fiction, in a way nobody else has ever done."

"Getting people to read is about the most important contribution that anyone can make to American society," Sharp told Reuters. "It's a stunning achievement to get 500,000 people to go to bookstores."

"The legacy of a pope who changed history
Apr 2nd 2005 From The Economist Global Agenda: John Paul II, spiritual leader to the world's one billion or so Catholics, has died. He will be remembered as a pope who resisted pressures to “modernise” the church's values—and a man who changed history by precipitating the fall of Soviet communism"

A considered article on the Pope's choices and actions, but what an epitaph:

"On the other hand, Pope John Paul would not have been true to his own deepest beliefs if he had been concerned, first and foremost, with how things seemed in the eyes of the world. He regarded himself as accountable to God; and how he fared by that measure is not something that any human being, whether believer or atheist, may presume to judge."