The Book Booth is a weekly feature at The Political Carnival, relating news, notes, and reflections from the world of books and publishing. SeattleDan, along with his wife, SeattleTammy, are operators of both an on-line bookstore, as well a brick and mortar in small town Washington State. Both have been in the book business since shortly after the Creation, or close to 6000 years now.

Another slow week in the world of books and publishing, but I think we’ve come up with some things to entertain you, the reader!

I concluded last week’s edition with the homage to books from Carl Sagan. Here is a sweet piece about the “Golden Record”, the documents of human existence which was on the launches of both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, by filmmaker Penny Lane, who’s parents. it seems, had a sense of humor. It also tells the love story of Carl Sagan and his wife, Annie Druyan. Very nice, and short film.

Yeah. I don’t like Tom Clancy either.

Stephen Colbert interviews Kevin Mitnick, author of Ghost in the Wire. It is from August, but I am hearing a lot of good things about the book.

NPR has had some interesting stories of late involving the book world. The first, Make the Bread, Buy the Butter, is one of SeattleTammy’s favorite cookbooks of the year. And it will tell you how to make your own marshamallows.

The other features the NPR’s staff picks for the best music books of 2011. And the book that caught our eyes was Everybody Loves Our Town: An Oral History of Grunge. It doesn’t seem like 20 years since Nirvana released Nevermind.

And speaking of music, as we just were, I wanted to point folks to the book, We Were Stardust, by our friend Kathrin King Segal. It tells the tale of the Greenwich music scene in the sixties. Kathrin spent many years in New York, is a fine actress and chantreuse. She now lives in the San Fernando Valley, in my old stomping grounds. You can read SeattleTammy’s report here. And you can catch her singing some Rodgers and Hart, too!

Happy New Year to you all. I’m looking forward to another fine year at The Political Carnival.