Blog-Jacking: Mollygood

No One Wants to Read a Book Written By W.
Originally posted by Whitney on 11/7
For all the jokes about President Bush being borderline retarded that have been made in the last eight years, you would think that the man would leave well enough alone once he left the White House and stopped being the world's chief source of ridicule.
But no. Our 43rd commander-in-chief wants to publish his memoirs as soon as he gets out of office, despite the fact that no one is buying books in this bad economy, and no one wants to buy a book written by the guy who gave us this bad economy. So that's a double neg.
To finish this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

We did not forget Louis Braille's birthday on January 4th. In fact, we're offended at the accusation. We sent him a card. He must not have seen it.

Financially, this holiday season is going to be crap. The publishers have admitted it. The big box stores have said the same thing. So why are certain booksellers claiming everything's going to be alright? (My guess: They're either lying, high, or still practicing that The Secret bullsh*t.)

The next time you visit online print-on-demand publisher Lulu.com, you may be surprised at what you find. They're not printing books. Well, not at the moment, anyway. When internet watchdog Valleywag contacted Lulu to ask what was up, "a customer-support rep said that the company had known about the ordering bug for a week, and might not fix it for another week." Valleywag's conclusion: "Lulu doesn't have enough actual customers to worry about letting them conduct business with the company." Ouch.

Writers H8 Prop 8

Publishers Weekly has a nice piece about the literary community's reaction to California's approval of proposition 8 -- the proposition banning gay marriage. The potential ramifications apply to breeders, too.
An excerpt:
John Rechy, the Los Angeles-based PEN International Award-winning gay author expressed a sense of outrage and betrayal by the passing of Prop. 8. Noting what he called fear tactics used by its backers in their ads, Rechy said, “Of course it helped Prop. 8 to use a harmless children’s book (King & King) about gay marriage in its campaign of minority intolerance. My fear now is that all of gay literature will be more closely scrutinized, and that free speech will become even more endangered.”
To read the whole darned thing, click here.

Writers <3 Obama

The AP's got praise for the President Elect from everybody. Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon), Jane Smiley (A Thousand Acres), Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated), and Ayelet Waldman (Daughter's Keeper) all drop early Valentines in Barack's mailbox.
Hell, the Obama love is so strong, it's even pouring in from dead authors. In the same article, Ms. Morrison speculates as to how James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain) and Ralph Ellison (Invisible Man) "would have reacted."
Click here to read.

R.I.P. Michael Crichton

October 23, 1942–November 4, 2008

Author Du Jour:President Elect Barack Obama

Biography:
(Stolen whole from Wikipedia)
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and President-elect of the United States of America -- 44th president of USA... :) Obama is the first person of African-American descent to be nominated by a major American political party for President, and the first person of African American descent to be elected President of the United States of America. A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became the first black person to serve as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70 percent of the vote.
As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he helped create legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. During the 110th Congress, he helped create legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Obama announced his presidential campaign in February 2007, and was formally nominated at the 2008 Democratic National Convention with Delaware senator Joe Biden as his running mate. Obama won the 2008 presidential election and will take the oath of office and become the 44th President of the United States on January 20, 2009.

Bibliography:
(Again, from Wikipedia)
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream
Barack Obama in His Own Words


Brief clip of Obama talking about books/his favorite book as a child:


Obama's 11/04 Acceptance Speech:

Part two

Don't Forget to...

Tuesday's Tip for Flailing Writers:A Story Idea -- Ripped From Today's Headlines!

News item, care of the AP:
ATLANTA – A judge has ordered Martin Luther King Jr.'s daughter to resume documenting her mother's personal papers, which are at the center of a family feud among the civil rights icon's surviving children.
Bernice King and brother Martin Luther King III again faced off in court Friday against another brother, Dexter King.
Dexter, CEO of King Inc., wants a judge to order Bernice, the administrator of her mother's estate, to turn over personal papers, including intimate letters between Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King Jr.
The documents were part of a $1.4 million book deal with Penguin Group for a memoir about the civil rights matriarch, but that deal fell though earlier this month after the family missed a deadline from the New York-based publisher to turn the documents over. It is unclear now whether the documents can or will be used for any future such deals.

Story Idea:
Title: Little Women Bitches
Plot: Set in New England Atlanta during the Civil War fifty years after the Civil Rights Movement, the novel follows the adventures of the March sisters King siblings as they struggle to pursue their dreams the publishing rights to their deceased dad's dream.

Book News, In Brief

The Guardian UK is a bastion of fact-based, unbiased reporting...except when they're writing about books. Then it reads like a mash note. From Thursday's edition: Who is your literary crush?

This news item is dedicated to those of you who say that porn is 'victimless.' Three Firefighters Hurt In Adult Bookstore Blast. (Aw, what the hell? I'll also dedicate it to those of us who think porn is 'hot.')

Not having learned a goddamned thing from their failed foray into selling videos online, Google has announced plans to open an internet bookstore. Lord knows they could use the extra income. They just paid out a $125 million settlement to publishers angered over their unauthorized Book Search feature.