Author and radio host Garrison Keillor plans to retire in the spring of 2013, he tells the AARP in an interview. Retire from his "Garrison Keillor Prairie Home Companion Show," that is. Books? No chance.

Keillor is the author of 10 books set in his fictional Minnesota town, Lake Wobegone, which also stars in his radio variety program, which, in turn, is broadcast on 590 of public radio stations nationwide. The first book was "Lake Wobegone Days," published in 1985. He's also written a number of other books, humor pieces for the New Yorker, and was even Salon.com's Mr. Blue, providing advice to both the lovelorn and hopeful authors -- perhaps the only time that romance and writing advice has been combined into a single column.

Keillor, who started his first version of "A Prairie Home Companion" in 1974, has easily moved between radio and print. These days, he also hosts the short daily radio show "The Writers Almanac," in which he provides commentary about authors and reads a poetry; coming up in April is "Good Poems, American Places," a 518-page anthology of poetry Keillor has edited.

About poetry and its place in our lives, he tells the AARP:

Life is a carnival, people are wildly busy, there are love affairs to be pursued, arguments to be waged, omelets to be made, gardens to be tended, plus ballgames, movies, auctions, bike trips, and poetry is very patient. Emily Dickinson has waited 120-some years for you to read "Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed," and she can wait a few more years. Same with Walt Whitman, same with Dorianne Laux, Billy Collins, Philip Booth, Maxine Kumin, May Swenson, and all the others. They'll be around. You will catch up with them eventually.

And as he talks about quote-unquote retirement, the 68 year old is still writing. What he's up to right now, he tells the AARP:

I'm working on a screenplay about a son of Lake Wobegon coming home for a funeral and finding out that, despite his long years of exile in distant cities, he still belongs to these people. It's scary how much he still belongs here. These people have the power to make him ashamed, which distant cities do not. His conscience resides here. The next novel is a Guy Noir mystery in which the old detective is all lined up to become a multimillionaire thanks to his friendship with a brilliant woman, Naomi Fallopian, who has come up with the perfect weight-loss scheme.

As for the radio show, he says he's looking for a replacement host. "I'm pushing forward," he says, "but I'm also in denial." Read the complete interview online at the AARP.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Garrison Keillor performs onstage in the "Garrison Keillor Prairie Home Companion Show" in Rochester, Minn., on Jan. 23, 2010. Credit: Tom Wallace / Minneapolis Star Tribune / MCT

For a guy with his first book on the New York Times best-seller list for two weeks in a row, Gary Dell'Abate is having a rough November.

The longtime producer of arguably the most successful radio show in U.S. history has grown used to making a fool of himself on "The Howard Stern Show," but on his trip to L.A. earlier this month he embarrassed himself once again, this time on national television.

While promoting his autobiography, "They Call Me Baba Booey", Dell'Abate, a huge sports fan, was invited by Jimmy Kimmel to vindicate himself on Kimmel's ABC late night talk show. This summer Dell'Abate had embarrassed himself before a New York Mets game by throwing the ceremonial first pitch so far off-target that many called it the worst pitch in the history of baseball. Stern, his throngs of listeners and sports hosts everywhere ridiculed the lovable mensch endlessly, and a photo of the pathetic pitch adorns the back of the Baba Booey book.

Kimmel walked 60 feet away from Dell'Abate, crouched down in front of his studio audience and watched the 49-year-old father of two wind up -- and throw the baseball wide left into the crowd. After a third attempt  Dell'Abate's wild pitch smacked an unsuspecting woman squarely in the head.

 

Bababooey had done it again.

The show "Marketplace," which is heard on public radio stations nationwide, is collecting all its books coverage in a new section of its website, dubbed the Big Book. "Marketplace" includes the flagship weekday show, a 10-minute morning show and "Marketplace Money," which is heard on weekends. All books coverage, plus excerpts, appear in the Big Book section.

"Marketplace," which somehow manages to make business news an interesting listen, covers smart books and business and the economy and even fiction, when it can bring a business spin. On Nov. 9, host Kai Ryssdal spoke with novelist Paul Auster about his new book, "Sunset Park," focusing on its treatment of housing and the financial crisis of the fall of 2008.

Although "Marketplace" shows are heard on National Public Radio stations, they are not produced by NPR, and they have a separate website. Instead, "Marketplace" is owned by American Public Media, the Minnesota-based radio company that also produces Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion."

Books coverage from programs produced by NPR can also be found in one place on NPR.org.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Mercy, this has got to be the silliest book story in a long time. But our friends at NPR are covering it, and they are serious, smart people, so here goes: At a book party in London, somebody ran up and stole Jonathan Franzen's glasses.

This somehow became news.

Maybe it's because it is so silly. Maybe it's because the pilfering was followed by a fleeing -- the person who'd taken the glasses ran away and leapt a rather high fence. And I haven't even gotten to the ransom note!

Franzen explains the glasses-snatching to NPR: "Somebody shouted, 'Channel 4, Channel 4,' and grabbed the glasses from my face, and took off running, and I actually thought, because I was suddenly blind, I thought it was my editor, warning me that Channel 4, from the BBC, had arrived. So, I trotted after this person, and knew something was amiss only when I saw him leap a five-foot fence and disappear into the trees."

While the thief was hidden away, a ransom note was delivered by someone else to a colleague of Franzen's. The note read (someone other than Jonathan Franzen, who was glasses-less, read it) that the glasses would be returned for 100,000 -- oh, either pounds or dollars, depending on which account you read. Either way, 100,000 is a lot for a pair of glasses.

With concerns for the thief's safety -- some were worried that his escape might have led him into the nearby Serpentine lake -- police arrived, and a helicopter flew overhead. The perpetrator was caught.

Franzen is not pressing charges. "I've been laughing about the whole thing," he tells NPR, "and observing the anguish secondhand."

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Jonathan Franzen in September in Los Angeles, where wearing glasses is still safe. Credit: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times

For 21 years, Michael Silverblatt's talk show "Bookworm" on KCRW has been, uh, bookended by theme music -- a version of the Mickey Mouse Club tune "You (Are A Human Animal)." That run ended Thursday when a brand-new, custom-made theme song by the rock duo Sparks debuted.

"I am so completely thrilled. This is a dream of a lifetime. For me, if George Gershwin had written the theme song for "Bookworm" it couldn't be better than Sparks," Silverblatt said during the Thursday broadcast, when he talked to Sparks, the brothers Ron and Russell Mael. "All I have to do is hear a Sparks song and I start to smile. It makes me feel like -- 'Oh! Talk like a human being. Don't go over people's heads. Be one of us.'"

The L.A. natives have been making music since the 1970s, a little bit glam, a little bit New Wave, a little bit manic madness. Remember "Angst in My Pants"? Or "Cool Places," the Jane Wiedlin duet? Recently, they've had a resurgence -- in 2008 they played 21 concerts in London, performing each of their records live, in chronological order. 

And now you can hear Sparks singing, bookishly, about Gutenberg and "Bookworm," every time you tune into Michael Silverblatt's show.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Ron, left, and Russell Mael of Sparks. Credit: Kirk McKoy / Los Angeles Times

Michael Silverblatt has a distinctive interviewing style: He's deliberate and unhurried and asks complex, multi-layered questions. Public radio has been his safe intellectual harbor since 1989, when he created the show "Bookworm" for KCRW-FM (89.9) in Santa Monica, where it airs Thursdays at 2:30pm.

And because of the miracle of the Internet, you all can hear it, too. The half-hour show can be streamed live, played later on the website or downloaded as a podcast.

Today he'll be talking to poet D.A. Powell, recipient of the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and judge Linda Gregerson, about the substantial prize and its benefit to a mid-career poet. Next week he returns to heady fiction, which is his primary focus, with a discussion with David Mitchell.

Recent shows are so full of notables that I'm compelled to list them here.

Isabel Allende on "Island Beneath the Sea"

Aimee Bender on "The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake"

Peter Carey on "Parrot and Olivier in America," which has since been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Chang-rae Lee on "The Surrendered"

Yann  Martel on "Beatrice and Virgil"

Ian McEwan on "Solar"

Jane Smiley on "Private Life"

Jean-Philippe Toussaint on "Running Away" and "Self-Portrait Abroad"

If you're looking for some literary accompaniment for some extended summer travel, dig into the archives and you'll find hundreds of hours of Silverblatt's conversations with authors.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Michael Silverblatt in 2005. Credit: Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times

In recent years, general interest magazines such as the Atlantic have been curtailing their fiction offerings. But National Public Radio has stepped in to fill the void. They're running a Three Minute Fiction contest, asking readers to submit short fiction pieces; the winner will be read on the air.

Launched during the summer of 2009, the first Three Minute Fiction contest had more than 5,000 entries. The only restriction was that the stories had to fit; in order to be read in three minutes, they'd have to max out at close to 500 words. Which is, actually, quite short for a short story; some might call it a short short story. The first winner managed to squeeze in a broken heart and stolen ducks into the brief word count.

For the second round, the challenge escalated: the stories had to be built around a common first line: "The nurse left work at 5 o'clock."

James Wood, literary critic for the New Yorker, judged both rounds. "The standard [second-round] story, which I hadn't expected at all," he told NPR, "seemed to involve a nurse walking home, immediately lighting up a cigarette and then, as soon as she gets home, dissolving into alcoholism." Wood chose an entirely different story as the winner.

This time, they're using a photograph for inspiration (not the one above, but one of a vacant cafe table, a newspaper and a window's reflection, seen here). NPR book critic Alan Cheuse, who wrote a short story of his own inspired by an Ansel Adams photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941, will be the judge for this round of entries.

It's impossible to tell where inspiration will strike, but if that cafe table gets your creative electricity flowing, you've got until Feb. 28 to send NPR your (short) short story.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Lightning strikes over Los Angeles City Hall in 2003. Credit: Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times