Book News, In Brief All Bad

When life (or the current financial crisis) gives you lemons (or a 30% drop in book sales), make lemonade (or an overly sunny PR piece that reads well with the elderly and mentally infirmed, but holds nothing but laughs for those of us sadly in the know).

Over at Penguin Books, bad news abounds. Well, books about bad news, anyway. The orange tinted imprint has just purchased the rights to Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big To Fail. This is the third book about the current financial crisis that Penguin has bought in the past week.

To be fair, bad news abounds everywhere. According to the Wall Street Journal, if Borders doesn't find a buyer soon, "the chain must grant Pershing Square Capital 5.15 million warrants to purchase additional shares in the company, a move which will give the hedge fund an even greater stake in the chain." Wait. That might be good news...for some of us.

On a seriously somber note, the family of Anne of Green Gables author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, has come forward with a shocking revelation regarding the esteemed writer's death: It was a suicide, via an intentional drug overdose. Montgomery's granddaughter explains: "I have come to feel very strongly that the stigma surrounding mental illness will be forever upon us as a society until we sweep away the misconception that depression happens to other people, not us – and most certainly not to our heroes and icons...The fictional Anne went on to happiness and a life full of love and fulfilment. My grandmother's reality was not so positive, although she continues to inspire generations of readers with her books, which reveal her understanding of nature – both in matters of the heart and the world...I hope that by writing about my grandmother now there might be less secrecy and more awareness that will ease the unnecessary suffering so many people experience as a result of such depressions."