I could have done with my thesaurus because I was beginning to repeat myself . . . The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin, #5 in The Good Thief's Guide series by Chris Ewan

Chris Ewan (born 1976) is a British crime and mystery writer.  He is best known for his "Good Thief" series of travelling adventures featuring Charlie Howard, a thief and author of his own crime series.  Ewan was born in Taunton, Somerset, and lived on the Isle of Man with his family before moving back to Somerset.  Ewan studied American Literature at the University of Nottingham.  His first novel, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam (2007), won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award.  His first and second novels, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam and The Good Thief's Guide to Paris, were shortlisted for the Last Laugh Award for best comic crime fiction.  The audiobook of The Good Thief's Guide to Vegas, read by Simon Vance, was nominated for an Audie Award in 2013.  His latest work in the series is The Good Thief's Guide to Berlin.  The Good Thief's Guides are being developed for TV by 20th Century Fox Studios for ABC.  Ewan's thriller Safe House, set on the Isle of Man, has sold over 500,000 copies  and was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ewan

A ghost village, nestled on the cliffs of Shengshan Island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, sits just 40 miles east of Shanghai, yet seems a world away from the tumult of the planet’s most populous city.  The lush beauty of the abandoned fishing community is almost surreal, as vines conspire to entangle the stone walls of cottages and creep purposefully through open windows.  Shengshan, part of the Shengsi Islands archipelago in Zhejiang province, is now a popular tourist destination and, with its characteristic vernacular architecture, has long been known as a regional fishing hub.  But fishermen and their families are said to have left the ghost village on Shengshan Island in the early 1990s, since access to the larger mainland ports made their livelihood more economical.  The ghostly houses amid this lush, humid landscape are now the preserve of tourists and photographers.  It’s ironic that they may now be visited by more people than ever before, despite the likelihood that their crumbling walls will never again be occupied.  See pictures and link to stories of other abandoned or derelict places at http://www.urbanghostsmedia.com/2015/06/abandoned-fishing-village-shengshan-island-china/

Comedy-mystery is a film genre combining elements of comedy and mystery fiction.  Find a list of comedy-mystery films from 1930 (The Limejuice Mystery or Who Spat in Grandfather's Porridge?) to 2016 (The Nice Guys) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_comedy%E2%80%93mystery_films

Q1:  What is a genre/form term?  How is it different from a subject heading?  A:  Subject headings have traditionally been assigned to describe the content of the work.  Genre/form terms, on the other hand, describe what an item is, not what it is about.  The subject heading Horror films, with appropriate subdivisions, would be assigned to a book about horror films.  A cataloger assigning headings to the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre would also use Horror films, but it would be a genre/form term since the movie is a horror film, not a movie about horror films.  Q2:  What is the difference between a form and a genre?  A:  Form is defined as a characteristic of works with a particular format and/or purpose.  A “short” is a particular form, for example, as is “animation.”  Genre refers to categories of works that are characterized by similar plots, themes, settings, situations, and characters.  Examples of genres are westerns and thrillers.  Unlike some other systems, which always make a distinction between genres and forms (e.g., Moving Image Genre/Form Guide (MIGFG)), terms in LCGFT often combine the two.  The terms are based on literary warrant (the existence of a body of works representative of the genres and forms) and standard terminology (the terminology used in literature about the genres and forms).  Read 20-page document from the Library of Congress at https://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genre_form_faq.pdf

In 1945, Michael Bornstein became one of the youngest prisoners to escape the Auschwitz death camp alive.  It’s a memory he had long tried to forget, and one he refused to speak about for the next 70 years--until now.  But at the urging of his family, Bornstein finally decided to share his story, in a book he and his daughter called “Survivors Club.”  More than one million prisoners died in Auschwitz during World War II, but Bornstein believes he only made it out alive because he was very sick.  Footage taken by Soviet soldiers more than 70 years ago shows Bornstein at just 4 years old as they liberated the camp.  He was carried out by his grandmother and later reunited with surviving members of his family in Poland.  Of the 3,400 Jews living and working in Zarki, Poland before the Holocaust, less than 30 returned, most of them members of Bornstein's family.  http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/Holocaust-Survivor-Tells-His-Story-70-Years-Later-416277303.html  See also http://www.slj.com/2017/01/interviews/debbie-bornstein-holinstat-on-survivors-club/  Michael is a graduate of Fordham University in New York and holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics and Analytical Chemistry from the University of Iowa.  http://www.mbornstein.com/about.html

The "Five Eyes" (FVEY) refer to an alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.  These countries are bound by the multilateral UKUSA Agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence.  In recent years, documents of the FVEY have shown that they are intentionally spying on one another's citizens and sharing the collected information with each other in order to circumvent restrictive domestic regulations on spying.  As the surveillance capabilities of the FVEY continue to increase to keep up to pace with technological advancements, a global surveillance system has been gradually developed to capture the communications of entire populations across national borders.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_under_Five_Eyes_surveillance

From:  Anu Garg (words at wordsmith.org)  Subject: Write an equation contest  In response to the write-an-equation-contest, readers sent equations for calculating love, peace, wisdom, happiness, health, success, domestic tranquility, and more.  One of the winners: 

Equation for predicting electoral success:

     G x B x A

ES = ---------

       H x I

Where
G = invocations of God
B = current Buzzwords
A = Appeals to worst instincts
H = Hard realities mentioned
I = evidence of Intellect
Note that if either H or I approaches zero, ES becomes infinite. - Richard Kaplan, Farnborough, UK 

2017 Pulitzer Prizes  http://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-year/2017

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1691  April 12. 2017  On this date in 1934, Tender Is the Night, a novel by American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, was published.   It was his fourth and final completed novel, and was first published in Scribner's Magazine between January and April 1934 in four issues. The title is taken from the poem "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tender_Is_the_Night  On this date in 1916, children's author Beverly Cleary was born.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Cleary Word of the Day  grandcat noun   (humorous, affectionate)  A cat owned by one's child, having a status comparable to a grandchild.