Book News, In Brief

Only days before dying, Patrick Swayze completed recording the abridged audiobook version of his memoir, The Time of My Life. Entertainment Weekly has obtained three clips that you can play at your next Ouija Board party or while pleasuring yourself in the bathtub.


Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore has announced the launch of Ecstatic Peace Library, a boutique publisher of art books to debut in 2010. A catalog of their titles is available here...on January 1st. For now, you just get an awkward looking E.P./peace sign logo.


Glenn Beck may be a 'crazy bimbo,' but dude drew quite a crowd at Saturday's Worchester, MA signing. Can you picture 500 retired, conservative, White folks lined up only a stone's throw away from one of those little kiosks that airbrush bootleg Li'l Wayne t-shirts? That's dementia. Er...devotion.


This is why I mercilessly make fun of the industry I adore: Saturday's New York Times ran a piece wherein publishers pondered whether or not e-books will be pirated. Are they f**king serious?! Of course they're gonna get pirated! Ask anyone what they'd rather pay -- $9.99 or free -- and guess what they're gonna say? Better yet, ask an ex-record store employee.


A couple of months ago, Steve Jobs said that Apple was not getting into the e-book market. A week later, the rumor was that the upcoming Tablet was, in fact, an e-reader. Fast forward to this past Thursday, when an iPhone app maker came forward saying, "Whilst I’d love it if Apple were looking at doing [e-books], I find it unlikely." Hell, the Roman Polanski rape case less conflicting rumors surrounding it.


The Australian has a persuasive, positive review of Poisoned Pens, a collection of famous authors' acidic assessments of other famous authors' work. Here's an excerpt, from Norman Mailer's review of Tom Wolfe's A Man in Full: "It is a 742-page work that reads as if it is 1500 pages long. At certain points, reading the work can even be said to resemble the act of making love to a 300lb woman. Once she gets on top, it's all over. Fall in love, or be asphyxiated."