Ben Folds In Ann Arbor

Ben Folds, one of my all-time favorite songwriters, rolled through Ann Arbor on Monday night to promote his new memoir, "A Dream About Lightning Bugs." The Literati Bookstore organized the event, which took place at the Blind Pig, featuring a conversation about the book with WDET's Ann Delisi, followed by a couple songs performed solo on piano and a book signing.

Watch his performance of "Rockin' The Suburbs.”

Last Stand

One For The Books

The downtown Ann Arbor library opened at the corner of Fifth Avenue and William Street in 1958. An expansion doubling its size was completed in the 1970s. A third addition was completed in 1991, again doubling its size. Hoping to cement the public library's future in the downtown, the Ann Arbor District Library is asking voters on Nov. 6 to approve a $65 million bond proposal for construction of a new library. Read the story.

Bad Spokesgirl

Book Worms

This is Tobias "Toby" Wacker, co-owner of lab, a hip new coffee shop on Liberty Street in downtown Ann Arbor. The business is successful in only its first few months, despite the fact that I see Toby outside with his nose buried in a book more than I see him actually working. Here he's reading the 1999 book "Development as Freedom," what seems to be a pretty dense exploration on international development by Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, an Indian-born Cambridge economist. Toby's friend is reading Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth," a copy still soggy from the rain she found it in, yet still with the Oprah seal of approval intact.

Black Nerd

Detroit native and University of Michigan graduate David Alan Grier shared a moment with an old childhood friend after his book reading Sunday afternoon at the Ann Arbor District Library. Grier said he and his friend were "blerds" growing up in Detroit, a.k.a. "black nerds." He recalled a time they tried joining the Black Panthers at age 15 but were turned away because they didn't exactly fit the profile. Grier's new book, "Barack Like Me," touches on politics, culture and race as it relates to his own life.