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What to say about a book with the words toilet paper in the title? Kids will line up for it, yes. When teachers read aloud that beginning sentence -- "Inside my best friend's kitchen, blood spatters cover every surface" -- their students will refuse to move till they hear the rest. Based on the eye-catching cover alone, librarians and booksellers will have no trouble convincing patrons to take it home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I just finished reading Paper Boy to Pulitzer. It is an interestingly detailed account by John Hughes -- Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former editor-in-chief of The Christian Science Monitor -- of his long connection with journalism. Hughes includes backstories and feelings about events during his long career that he couldn't tell while writing his news and feature stories at the time. Now he is able to and the result is a fast-paced read with many newsmaker pictures and accounts. Hughes is widely known by Monitor readers and this easy-to-follow book is a rich extension of his thoughts in his last regular commentary from two years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As infrequently as possible, I used to take Route 128, the nasty ring road around Boston, during morning rush hour. This was 40 years ago, when I was young and manly -- it's not something I would do today. One memorable morning, I looked at the car to my left, which was getting too close for comfort, too close even when everyone else was driving at a safe and sane, tailgating, 75 miles per hour. The gentleman behind the wheel was reading a newspaper, which was spread out on his steering wheel. One hand held the paper in place and did the steering, the other held a cup of coffee. Slurp. A glance at the road, a glance at the paper, a glance at the road. Slurp. I might have been young and manly, but this sight gave me the vapors. I looked for an exit. No exit, like the French philosopher said (another guy, by the way, whom I wouldn't like to see behind the wheel). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I was sitting on the couch drinking tea, curling my cold toes on 50 pounds of warm dog, when a homework binder flew past me. It landed on the rug with a seismic thump, spewing papers from every pocket. My furry footstool, an Australian shepherd named Scout, merely twitched. But I cringed as if I had been swatted with a rolled-up copy of the middle-school academic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coming into Thursday night's NFL encounter, the Oakland Raiders have yet to crack the win column during the 2014 campaign. On paper, playing the Kansas City Chiefs -- winners of five straight -- doesn't bode well for the Raiders to stop their 16-game losing streak which dates back to November of last year, when they beat the Texans in Houston. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cultural cliché "paper or plastic?" -- heard in many of America's grocery stores for decades -- could soon include a 10-cent-a-bag levy in New York City's retail outlets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tributes to legendary newspaperman Ben Bradlee, who died Tuesday, largely focus on what many consider his signature achievements at The Washington Post: coverage of the Watergate break-in which led to President Nixon's resignation and the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fans of John Houseman, aka Professor Kingsfield of "The Paper Chase," I urge you to spend some time with his Run-Through, the first of a trilogy. I never thought I'd enjoy a memoir this much. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If you're up for an origami challenge, try this: Turn sheets of paper into a four-legged robot that scoots across the table -- after it's finished performing a push-up as it folds itself into the required shapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A printing press sits idle in Diario HOY, one of Ecuador's most respectable dailies, with a roll of blank paper still fed into the machine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lynne Cheney's eighth book is a biography of James Madison, founding father, leading architect of the Constitution, a principle author of the Federalist Papers, Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of State, and America's fourth president. Such a life deserves periodic review and has gotten it, beginning with a eulogistic biography, "Life and Character of James Madison," written upon his death in 1836 by his sometime political rival John Quincy Adams. There have been a number of books on Madison in this young century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]