Me, I can't imagine reading a book online, but a lot of people evidently want to. They'll be interested in the second annual World eBook Fair starting July 4, and running through August 4. Started by Project Gutenberg last year, the project made more than 300,000 titles available for free downloading. The system's servers were briefly overwhelmed, as more than 1 million "copies" of the books were downloaded on some days. This year, project founder Michael Hart promises about 687,000 titles, as well as 100,000 other books for a fee.

A team from Grub Street writers center recently beat folks from IBM with i-m-i-d-a-z-o-l-e at the Boston Adult Literacy Fund's 18th Annual Corporate Spelling Bee. Twenty-eight teams competed. Some had cheering squads. Some had matching T-shirts. Grub Street didn't have either of those but it did have a capacity to spell words members had never seen before, like velutinous and verticillate. The trophy will be on display for the next year at Grub Street, 160 Boylston St.

Meanwhile, the Grub Street Word-Slingers softball team has yet to win a game in two seasons of play but has determined that this is their year. Games are played on Sundays beginning May 20. Interested players should e-mail captain Becky Tuch at zenbex@hotmail.com.

Who says weighty books don't sell well? Well, OK, they don't usually, at least not on the scale of Mitch Albom or James Patterson.

But there are exceptions. On Publishers Weekly's nonfiction bestseller list for March 7, Walter Isaacson's "Einstein" is already No. 2 in only its third week out. Boston physician and writer Jerome Groopman's "How Doctors Think" is No. 12, and presidential historian Robert Dallek's "Nixon and Kissinger" is No. 14.

Of course, an advice book is No. 1, a dog tale is No. 4, and a diet tome is No. 6. But we prefer to look at the liquid in the glass today rather than the air. Eighty-degree temperatures and sunshine will do that to you.

Lois Lowry

Tomorrow seems to be Lois Lowry Library Day hereabouts. Publisher Houghton Mifflin tomorrow morning is announcing that it will fund a new young adult lounge in the planned rebuilding of the Cambridge Public Library, in honor of the prolific Cambridge-based children's writer, whose books include "The Giver," "Gooney Bird Greene," "A Summer to Die," "The Silent Boy," and "Gossamer."

Later in the day, "Gossamer," published last year, is honored at the Boston Author's Club Luncheon at the Boston Public Library. The book was a finalist for the Julia Ward Howe Award.

The new Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston is cool to look at and out of (the soaring wall of glass facing the harbor), and the art inside is a bonus.

The selection of books in the gift shop is imaginative, too, though I wish there was a bit more room to stand back and open a book without bumping into someone. Photography, theory, architecture, history, even a children's book by doggie photographer William Wegman, who is being celebrated in an exhibit up the road a bit in Andover.

Publishers Weekly online reports that the return of Roger Clemens to the New York Yankees is fortuitous for author Joseph Janczak, whose book, "The Rocket: Baseball Legend Roger Clemens," is due out in July.

When Clemens comes to Boston, one wonders if he will be matched up against some youthful version of his fireballing self, like 27-year-old Josh Beckett. I remember a game against the Texas Rangers one night in about 1990, when Clemens was matched up against his hero, fellow Texan Nolan Ryan. My recollection was that Ryan was about 43 and Clemens about 28. Ryan got the win -- the Sox couldn't touch him -- and I remember yelling in frustration, "Come one, can't you hit this guy? What is this, senior citizens night?"

It would be a very strange thing to be yelling the same thing in the same park, only this time Clemens being the senior. Tempus fugit.

By Judith Maas

SUNDAY: Poet Franz Wright reads at 3 p.m., at the Concord Bookshop, 65 Main St., Concord. ... Poet Linda Pastan reads at 3 p.m., at the Concord Free Library, 129 Main St., Concord.

MONDAY: Nathaniel Philbrick reads from ‘‘Mayflower,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline ($16; includes copy of book). ... Paul Davies discusses ‘‘Cosmic Jackpot,’’ at 6 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Cambridge ($5). ... Clint Richmond discusses ‘‘Political Places of Boston,’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the South Boston Branch Library, 646 East Broadway. ... Stephen Puleo discusses ‘‘The Boston Italians,’’ at 7 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square.

TUESDAY: Mary Mitchell reads from ‘‘Starting Out Sideways,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books, 296 Walnut St., Newtonville. ... Thalassa Ali reads from ‘‘Companions of Paradise,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St., Brookline. ... Helen Simpson (‘‘In the Driver’s Seat’’) and Ben Dolnick (‘‘Zoology’’) read at 6:30 p.m., at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass. Ave., Cambridge. ... Rishi Reddi reads from ‘‘Karma and Other Stories,’’ at 12:30 p.m., at Borders Downtown Crossing, 10-24 School St. ... Tom Stanton reads from ‘‘Ty and the Babe,’’ at 6 p.m., at Borders Back Bay, 511 Boylston St. ... Gary Sheffield signs ‘‘Inside Power,’’ from noon to 1 p.m., at Barnes & Noble, Boston University, Kenmore Square.

WEDNESDAY: Roy Blount Jr. discusses ‘‘Long Time Leaving,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at First Parish Church, 3 Church St., Cambridge ($5). ... Dorie McCullough Lawson reads from ‘‘Along Comes a Stranger,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge. ... Tom Stanton discusses ‘‘Ty and the Babe,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at Newtonville Books. ... Patricia A. Gozemba and Karen Kahn discuss ‘‘Courting Equality’’ at 6:30 p.m., at the Cambridge YMCA, Hannum Hall, 7 Temple St., Cambridge. ... Sy Montgomery discusses ‘‘The Good Good Pig,’’ at 7 p.m., at Borders Back Bay. ... Steven Lee Beeber discusses ‘‘The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Harvard Square Coop, Cambridge.

THURSDAY: Susanna Moore reads from ‘‘The Big Girls,’’ at 7 p.m., at Brookline Booksmith. ... Sasha Issenberg discusses ‘‘The Sushi Economy,’’ at 7 p.m., at Porter Square Books. ... Susie Davidson discusses her Holocaust book, ‘‘I Refused to Die,’’ at 7:30 p.m., at McIntyre & Moore, 255 Elm St., Davis Square, Somerville.

FRIDAY: Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket) speaks with Gregory Maguire about ‘‘Adverbs,’’ at 7 p.m., at the Brattle Theatre; tickets ($14.95, including novel). ... Globe writer Johnny Diaz reads from ‘‘Boston Boys Club,’’ at 7 p.m., at Calamus Bookstore, 92B South St.

SATURDAY: Susie Davidson reads from her Holocaust book, ‘‘I Refused to Die,’’ at 12:30 p.m., at Temple Beth Zion, 1566 Beacon St., Brookline. ... William Martin discusses ‘‘The Lost Constitution,’’ at 2 p.m., at Wellesley Booksmith, 82 Central St., Wellesley. ... Kevin Weeks and Phyllis Karas discuss ‘‘Brutal,’’ at 2 p.m., at Borders Back Bay. ... Poet Ryk McIntyre reads at 3:45 at the Brockton Public Library, 304 Main St., Brockton.

Events are subject to change.

Robert Frost: Reason enough

...William H. Pritchard's "Frost: A Literary Life Reconsidered." Pritchard is professor of English at Amherst College and has written countless great book reviews (see his review of Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America" here) for the Globe over the years. Published in 1984 by Oxford, I have the paperback second edition of this book, published by University of Massachusetts Press in 1993.

The book isn't a biography, though there's much of Frost's life in it, but a set of close readings of the poems, placed in the context of his life and character. Early in the book, discussing the early poem "The Tuft of Flowers," and what Frost said about it many decades later, Pritchard writes,

"Here we touch on as deep a conviction as is to be found in the life of the poetry; for the importance of this insistence on 'free' action, unmotivated by reasons of prudence or foresight or sentimental feeling, is not a message peculiar to 'The Tuft of Flowers' but something Frost believed centrally about his own life. ... It would not be too ingenious to argue that 'The Tuft of Flowers' brought Frost back to the world of other people, as it brings the youth in the poem back by confirming him in his imaginative vocation: by helping him believe that one writes poems, or makes beautiful things, or spares flowers from the scythe's stroke, just and only because it is a beautiful thing to do."

This reminded me of something Donald Hall, the poet laureate of the United States, said to me in an interview last June. I had asked him why people always ask the use of poetry: "Why does poetry have to defend its right to exist?" He said,

"Nobody asks a painter why should painting exist, or music. It's beautiful. That's the good of it. It's beautiful, but because it's made of words, not pigments, people think it ought to say or do something, it ought to be practical, or if it is not practical, it is therefore pointless. But it is as much a matter of the cultivation of beauty as Matisse with his cutouts. There is no other purpose than the beauty of it. And that is reason enough to exist."

It's such a treat to find poetry on the editorial page. In today's Globe is a tribute to Natasha Trethewey, this year's winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Trethewey, who teaches at Emory University, is a 1995 graduate of UMass-Amherst's MFA program in writing.

Her poems bring to light the "facts of her life and America's life that don't show up in the news or in history textbooks." She writes about her mother's marriage crossing the color line and a regiment of black soldiers who served in the Union Army at Ship Island off the coast of Mississippi. Listen to her and watch a video of her visiting that sacred ground.

Jon Clinch
(Globe staff photo by Wendy Maeda)

Everywhere they go, Jon Clinch and his debut novel "Finn" have been making a splash. Last month, Clinch's appearance and his dark, powerful work telling the story of Huckleberry Finn's father were the talk of the Newburyport Literary Festival.

Last week, Clinch gave a reading and talk at Newtonville Books in Newton and agreed to be featured in this week's episode of the Globe's Great Writers Podcast.

Clinch runs his own advertising agency in the suburbs of Philadelphia, but if the buzz over his novel continues to grow, he may have to quit his day job someday soon...