Political Book News, In Brief

What does it mean for Obama when anti-Hilary books are hitting the bargain bins? Is this a sign that the public loves her, or that even the haters have grown bored with bashing the broad?

Most folks outside of Massachusetts won't care, but our state's first Black Governor, Deval Patrick, has just signed a deal with Broadway Books worth $1.35 million. It's for a memoir to be published in 2010.

The Huffington Post has an excerpt from Jesse Ventura's new book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! In it, Ventura quotes Bush dissing him (calling Ventura's wife "the most patient woman in America"), and him dissing Bush ("he's not a man of his word"). This might just be the most even-handed political book out there.
(Initial heads-up: Publisher's Weekly)

The Pork Book -- it's like a Guinness Book of World's Records for politicians' fiscal crimes! From Las Vegas Now: A congressional watchdog group released its annual pig book Wednesday. It details pork projects -- those projects listed as extravagant that members of Congress get for their home states paid with your tax dollars. Citizens against government waste revealed more than 11,000 earmarks for specific Congress members' home states, totaling more than $17 billion in alleged pork.

Book News, In Brief

Amazon.com now offers shopping via text message. Is this a breakthrough in short attention span shopping, or a frown-faced emoticon waiting to happen? Publisher's Weekly has the details: Here’s how it works: a person sends a text message to “AMAZON” (262966) with the title or ISBN of the book she wants to purchase. Amazon sends a response confirming the book and stating its price, telling the customer to reply with the text message “1” to purchase the book. Amazon then calls the customer with the final details and asks the customer to confirm or cancel the purchase.

Bookgasm has a list of The 9 Most Annoying People I Always See at the Bookstore. If you don't see yourself on this list, you're blind to the truth. Feel free to ask us which category you fall into the next time you're in our store.

The next time you're in Vegas, make it a point to visit the Gambler's Book Shop. Then, when your family and friends make fun of you for your tacky, culture-free choice of a vacation destination, you can pretend you were on one of those Book Store Tours. That should shut them up.

Quick Time Killers

Good grief! BoingBoing has found the answer to that age old question, "What if Charles Schulz created the Watchmen?"

Underground cartoonist Gary Panter (Jimbo) gets interviewed by Marvel Comics.com about his art, influences, and the comic-within-a-comic he's doing for Jonathan Lethem's Omega the Unknown.

Printmag.com has a post illustrating the evolving cover art of some of teen lit's classic titles. Surprise, surprise: they always get worse!

Book News, In Brief

College students in Utah are protesting the use of Alison Blechdel's Fun Home in their school's curriculum on the grounds that it's pornographic. Remember the good ol' days when college kids used to protest in favor of free speech?

Amazon has expanded their new print on demand policy -- slightly. Yesterday, it was 'You either p.o.d. with Amazon, or Amazon's not selling your book.' Today, it's, 'If you want to use an outside print on demand service, you must provide the Amazon warehouse with at least five copies of your book. No exceptions.' The monolith explains: “It isn’t logical or efficient to print a POD book in a third place, and then physically ship the book to our fulfillment centers. It makes more sense to produce the books on site, saving transportation costs and transportation fuel, and significantly speeding the shipment to our customers."

The comics publisher Dark Horse blames scanlations and in-store shrink wrapping for the cancellation of their critically acclaimed manga series Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, Mail, and Hiroshi Hirata's samurai epic, Satsuma Gishiden. Although scanlations and shrink wrap may seem unrelated, the two actually effect one another quite a bit. Here's how the unlikely union works: The kids go into a bookstore to check out the new manga, but they are unable to browse it due to it being wrapped in plastic. This forces the savvy kidlings to go online to preview the books that they were interested in. But upon finding the whole series online for free, they no longer see any reason why they ought to bother going back to the bookstore to pay for it. In closing: Thanks, overly protective parents groups. You f**ked up another good thing.

Author Du Jour: Gilbert Hernandez

Biography:
(swiped without permission from from RAW)

Gilbert (pronounced heel-bear-toe) Hernandez was raised in Oxnard, Southern California with his other four brothers and one sister. His father was a Mexican immigrant, married to a Texan from a family with deep Mexican roots. In her youth, his mother had collected comic books and that passion was passed on to her children. "It was nostalgic for her, I guess. So comics were always normal to us, it was an everyday thing. It wasn't until school that we realized that we were abnormal," commented Gilbert. "I always felt that I was living in two worlds. One was the little Mexican world, because nearly everybody I knew, relatives and cousins and even kids in the neighborhood, were Mexican. Then school was a different world. It was pretty ethnically mixed."

Raised on a diet of pop culture, comics, science fiction and monster movies, all the family were drawing comics from an early age. However, for Gilbert and Jamie, that childhood passion never left them, even when punk rock gripped their lives in the late 1970's. At the urging of elder brother Mario, Jamie and Gilbert self-published the first issue of Love & Rockets, which was quickly picked up by then fledgling comic publisher, Fantagraphics, in 1982 and continues to this day.

Essential Reading:
(stolen from RAW)

Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories
Imagine a novel by Gabriel Garciá Marquez told in comic form, with the depth and vibrancy to bring a fictional Latin American village and it's people to life. Palomar is the intricate tale of the relationships between the citizens of that town - their lives, loves and deaths. This volume collects all the Palomar stories by Gilbert Hernandez including the essential classics Blood Of Palomar and Poison River.

"Beyond impressive. The cumulative power of the Palomar saga is arguably that of the most substantive single work the comics medium has yet produced."
Booklist

"With Heartbreak Soup I had an agenda of sorts. I'm trying to get non-Latinos, for lack of a better word, to identify with Latinos as human beings. Simple as that. I think I've felt that since I was a kid."
Gilbert Hernandez, The Comics Journal #178

X
A portrayal of 1990's LA society centred on Luba's daughter Maricela, who is now an illegal immigrant in the USA working as street corner flower girl. It is a story that conveys the class and racial tensions that exist in all city streets, dealing with rock bands, skin heads, surfers and jaded yuppies.

"It was my version of a Maggie and Hopey story. I thought, Well, I have the same punk rock n' roll background, and I've never used it in a comic. Then that became dark and twisted, too. Something was going on with me and I don't really know where it came from."
Gilbert Hernandez, Comic Book Artist #15

Luba In America
Luba is the matriarch of the mythical Latin American village of Palomar. But now she has relocated to the USA to be with her extended family as their careers and lives develop in unexpected directions.

Recommended Interviews:

The Daily Crosshatch
The Pulse

Book News, In Brief

This year's Oddest Book Title Award goes to If You Want Closure in Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs. Previous winners include The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, Bombproof Your Horse, and The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.

Grab your magic beans. It's high time we killed a giant. Via Publisher's Weekly: BookSurge, Amazon’s print-on-demand subsidiary, is making an offer that most publishers would like to refuse, but don’t feel they can. According to talks with several pod houses, BookSurge has told them that unless their titles are printed by BookSurge, the buy buttons on Amazon for their titles will be disabled.

This Superman-centered court decision is a win for truth, justice, and...well, let's not go overboard. Via UncivilSociety.org: After seventy years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago – the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman copyright.

Japanese court ruling exonerates Nobel laureate Kenzaburo Oe and his book, Okinawa Notes. Via Philly.com: Kenzaburo Oe won a major court battle yesterday over a book he wrote more than 30 years ago detailing how Japanese soldiers perished and sometimes forced Okinawan civilians to commit suicide rather than give themselves up in the closing days of World War II. The ruling was also a high-profile setback for a vocal lobby among Japanese conservatives who have long sought to discredit materials documenting Japanese excesses during the war, including government-supported prostitution, the rape of the Chinese city of Nanjing and other incidents.

British Book News, In Brief

Anne Frank's Diary and the works of C.S. Lewis rank in the Top 10 Favorite Reads of 11-14 Year Olds in England. Of course, the rest of the list is Harry Potter books and tabloid magazines, but why focus on the negative, right? Via The Guardian UK: Predictably, the most loathed read is homework. It is followed by Shakespeare, books of over 100 pages and stories about skinny celebrities in magazines.

Also embarrassing the English is a report that finds 1 in 10 Brits skipping classic literature in favor of feature film adaptations. Even more cringe-inducing is this pitch for the classics' relevancy in the modern day, via The Guardian UK: But despite one-third of adults admitting they never read the classics, there are those who think modern life is imitating the traditional. Dickensian Britain has been reborn in the modern binge-drinking culture, according to 54% of those surveyed. And 47% believe that many young people are suffering from Peter Pan syndrome, unwilling to grow up just as in JM Barrie's classic novel. There is also evidence that the "wag" culture may not be such a new phenomenon - 30% believe that trying to find a rich husband mirrors the themes of Jane Austen's novels.

Bonus! Former Colonies News Item:

But will they waive the late fees? Via The Times of India: An ancient library dating back to 300 years was reopened after a gap of 40 years at the historical monument Water Mill in Aurangabad, sources said. The library housing manuscripts and other precious and rare books like the Holy Quran written by the last Mughal emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir, was thrown open recently to the public.

Book News, In Brief

Bad news, good points...via The LATimes: Book publishers are bullish on the economy -- as a subject, that is. As the stock market gyrates, authors' proposals flourish. But will their financial advice be relevant by the time a book's in print?

According to Financial News Online, Borders has hired JP Morgan Chase and Merrill Lynch to 'advise them on strategic alternatives' as they 'struggle to shore up their capital base amid the widespread tightening of credit.' (That's press release for: This is The Beginning of the End.)

The Beat has posted a link to a recent study in Gender and Reading Habits. The study re-affirms the usual (boys read less than girls, except where superhero comics are concerned), but does so in an enlightened manner. Do make a point to check out the Beat's link to the piece, though, where great lines such as, "Valenti marshals as much statistical evidence as she can and talks to librarians to explore the topic, which shows that for teen boys, books are as great a marketing wasteland as superhero comics have been for adult women" abound.

Good News for Geeks

DC comics has confirmed that they will be releasing a hardcover collection of the Captain Marvel storyline, The Monster Society of Evil, later this year. This 1940's classic is the only comic besides the Hernandez Bros.' Love & Rockets to ever infect my dreams after reading it. The story chronicles Captain Marvel/Billy Baston's battles against a four colored menagerie of animals and monsters, culminating in a one-on-one with their leader/creator, a genius caterpillar by the name of Mr. Mind. Shazam!
(Initial tip: Newsarama)

Children's Book News, In Brief

Ugly authors everywhere are outraged by a fashion model's book being nominated for a children's book award. Something about the book being ghost-written, or some such petty, jealous nonsense.

Yikes. If those authors are worried about the integrity of kids' lit, they're really gonna love yesterday's announcement that Danielle Steel is writing a tome for tots. (Editor's note: And they wonder why kids don't read.)

Turning our attention to a more esteemed and established children's book author, J.K. Rowling's legal battle over the publication of a Harry Potter encyclopaedia has been delayed until mid-April. To tell you the truth, I'd almost forgotten about this case. But now that I've been reminded, I can't say as I like J.K. and her billion dollar bullying much more than the aforementioned authors and their crimes against the craft.

The History of the Ray Gun - Revealed!

IO9 has posted a time line charting the appearance and evolution of the stylish spaceman's weapon of choice. To think, it all started with H.G. Wells...

Book News, In Brief

We probably should have posted this last. You know, just in case you're feeling fragile.
Via TheWest.com: A scientific guide to DIY suicide is to go on sale in the Netherlands to help people end their lives quickly and painlessly. The book, the first of its kind to be published, is by a group of respected scientists and psychiatrists. It contains detailed information on using drugs as well as committing suicide by starvation, including the quickest and least painful way to do it. There are also chapters on the ethical and judicial questions for those who aid suicides. Its authors are also planning English, French and German editions.

Aw, heck. Since we're already on the subject...
Via Wauchope: Harry Potter author JK Rowling said she had felt suicidal after her divorce from her first husband, the British paper Sunday Times reported. She had been suffering from depression and sought medical help and attended a therapy after her divorce from Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes in the early 1990s, the author told the newspaper. Rowling added: "We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable'."

You still with me? Good. Only, we're not done discussing death just yet.
Via The Christian Science Monitor: The first people Roberto Saviano sees every morning are his bodyguards – the three Italian policemen who pick him up in a bulletproof sedan, drive him to the gym, or take him on errands. They haven't left him alone since Gomorrah – his fierce critique of the Neapolitan mafia, the Camorra – hit best-seller lists in October 2006, bringing fame, fortune, and death threats from some powerful and ruthless enemies. But today, because of international and British laws that don't permit him the usual retinue of government bodyguards here in London, he's been entrusted to me – 135 pounds of journalistic muscle. Mr. Saviano doesn't speak English, and I – a native Neapolitan, myself – do; so his agent thinks I'm some sort of protection for him, and I laugh half-heartedly when the agent jokes about me being his bodyguard for a day.
(For the full story, click the above excerpt.)

Having followed this morose theme thus far, why not end it all with a brief (o)bit on The Death of Traditional Literature?
Via Deepikaglobal.com: According to a 2007 survey, more than 70 million people in Japan use mobile phones daily to surf the net, especially during long commutes. Inevitably, some have started to read, as well as write, novels on their handsets. Several novice mobile authors have emerged as writers, the Independent reported. Traditionalists, however, are not amused with the new style of writing which apparently lacks respect for Japan's 1,000-year literary tradition.

Editor's Note: Please refrain from posting suicide notes and/or last will and testaments in the comments section. Thank you.

Free Online Manga: Death Note

The Inkwell Bookstore is proud conflicted to present to you complete page scans of Death Note, the hottest manga of the moment (not titled Naruto).

Click here to begin.

Disney Book News, In Brief

According to internet rumor king Jim Hill, unless Prince Caspian, the next installment of Disney's Chronicles of Narnia adaptations, rakes in Lord of the Rings sized returns, The Mouse is pulling the plug after film three. Disney had originally said that they would be making film versions of all eleven books, but now seems more interested in starting up a franchise based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.

Didier Ghez has posted a looong list of the Disney related books being released in the coming year. Everything from Disney's Dogs and Tinker Bell - An Evolution to Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Parks and Illustrating Disney: Imagineering and the Fine Art of Disney Illustration. For the full list, along with links to each title, click here.

Disney's publishing arm, Hyperion, did well at this year's NAACP Image Awards. Robin Givens' Grace Will Lead Me Home, James Sturm and Rich Tommaso's Center for Cartoon Studies Presents: Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Shadow Speaker, and Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast all took home awards. (Note to all: Please-oh-please-oh-please don't use this good news as an excuse to start yet another 'Release Song of the South on dvd now!' thread. Please.)

Via Entertainment Times Online: 66 years after Enid Blyton created The Famous Five, Blyton’s characters are being revived in a series of books, accompanied by an animated television series, screened on the Disney Channel. Like The Dangerous Book for Boys, the new Famous Five is intended as a riposte to a society where children are told it is too dangerous to play outdoors.

CityPaper.com has a nice write up about the Carl Barks art exhibit currently taking place in Baltimore, MD. Barks is widely regarded as one of the best comic book writer/artists of all time, particularly for his work on the early Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge titles. Many of Barks' best duck tales were eventually adapted for television's Duck Tales animated series.

Book News, In Brief

Let's just go ahead and get this out of the way: Borders is up for sale and Barnes & Noble may be buying. In related news, Market Watch has run one of those cliched 'It's the end of an era for bookstores' pieces, only to reveal themselves as know-nothing idiots by using the words "immortalized" and "the film You've Got Mail" in the same sentence.

Moving right along, The NYTimes has 'raped my childhood' (or some such nonsense), by taking my comic book convention peers and remaking them into models for 'geek chic' (or some such nonsense). How Paul Pope missed this opportunity to preen and look pretty is beyond me.

According to Reuters, the new prequel to Anne of Green Gables is stirring up quite a debate. If by debate they mean that the author of the book has said "I am still vaguely troubled by the idea that L.M. Montgomery would perhaps not want this done," then yeah, there's debate. Otherwise, this is just a press release in a funny nose and glasses.

Via AP: A gossipy book by two ex-concierges at Chicago's Four Seasons Hotel has been pulled because the authors were legally banned from writing about their experiences. Tip: Anyone interested in getting the lowdown on their local hotel need only buy a black light. The true life stories of sex, drugs and violence are all right there on the rarely washed bedspreads.

Recommended Viewing:Allen Finsberg Reads Howl

(Thanks to BoingBoing for the heads-up!)

Book News, In Brief

John was the interesting, intellectual and witty Beatle. George was the spiritual Beatle. Ringo, the goofy Beatle, and Paul, the kiss-a**, boring, whitebread Beatle. So why is Howard Sounes, the writer of the excellent Down The Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan, in talks to publish a new book about the life of Sir Paul? (Answer: $)

A week back, comics scribe Brian Wood (DMZ) was interviewed by The New York Post about breaking into comics. Del Ray Manga's Dallas Middaugh has reprinted Wood's tips for would-be cartoonists, along with some relevant addendums.

A great example of when good ideas go bad. Via Bookseller.com: The bestselling The Dangerous Book for Boys is slated to be turned into a new TV series. "Dangerous Adventures For Boys" will be a six-part series that sees celebrity dads and their sons embark on expeditions and "Boy’s Own" adventures. Huh. Remember when this book was aimed at getting kids away from the television?

Video may have killed the radio star, but twas the internet that did slay the latter day book club. Via IHT: Bertelsmann is exploring the sale of its book and music clubs, a move that would close the door on a business that helped make it one of the world's top five media companies. Net income at Bertelsmann fell more than 80 percent in 2007 to €405 million, or $640.4 million, largely on write-downs at the U.S. division of its Direct Group book business.

Trust me, I'm the last person who wanted to point out a 'plus side' to print on demand memoirs. Still, good news is good news. Also via Bookseller.com: The number of books published in the UK skyrocketed to the highest level ever last year, driven by an increase in print-on-demand titles. According to Nielsen BookScan, the number of frontlist titles sold last year hit 118,602, up 36% from 2006 (86,984). The amount of backlist titles sold last year also dramatically increased, up to 758,125 from 590,464 in 2006, a jump of 28%.

Super Recommended Viewing:Dave Eggers' Grant Recipient Speech

Recommended Viewing:Naomi Wolf on The End of America

R.I.P. Arthur C. Clarke

The following biography was stolen whole from Wikipedia:

Arthur C. Clarke was born in Minehead, Somerset, England. As a boy, he enjoyed stargazing and reading old American science fiction pulp magazines (many of which made their way to the UK in ships with sailors who read them to pass the time). After secondary school and studying at Huish's Grammar School, Taunton, he was unable to afford a university education and got a job as an auditor in the pensions section of the Board of Education.
During the Second World War, he served in the Royal Air Force as a radar specialist and was involved in the early warning radar defence system which contributed to the RAF's success during the Battle of Britain. Clarke actually spent most of his service time working on Ground Controlled Approach (GCA) radar, as documented in his semi-autobiographical novel Glide Path. Although GCA did not see much practical use in the war, after several more years of development it was vital to the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. He was demobilised with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. After the war, he earned a first-class degree in mathematics and physics at King's College London.
In the postwar years, Clarke became involved with the British Interplanetary Society and served for a time as its chairman. Although he was not the originator of the concept, one of his most important contributions may have been propagating the idea that geostationary satellites would be ideal telecommunications relays. He advanced this idea in a paper privately circulated among the core technical members of the BIS in 1945. The concept later was published in Wireless World in October of that year. Clarke also wrote a number of non-fiction books describing the technical details and societal implications of rocketry and space flight. The most notable of these may be The Exploration of Space (1951) and The Promise of Space (1968). In recognition of these contributions, a geostationary orbit sometimes is referred to as a "Clarke orbit".
While Clarke had a few stories published in fanzines between 1937 and 1945, his first professional sales appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1946: "Loophole" was published in April, while "Rescue Party", his first sale, was published in May. Along with his writing, Clarke briefly worked as Assistant Editor of Science Abstracts (1949) before devoting himself to writing full-time from 1951 onward. Clarke also contributed to the Dan Dare series published in Eagle, and his first three published novels were written for children.
Clarke corresponded with C. S. Lewis in the 1940s and 1950s, and they once met in an Oxford pub, the Eastgate, to discuss science fiction and space travel. Clarke, after Lewis's death, voiced great praise for him, saying the Ransom Trilogy was one of the few works of science fiction that could be considered literature.
In 1948, he wrote "The Sentinel" for a BBC competition. Though the story was rejected, it changed the course of Clarke's career. Not only was it the basis for A Space Odyssey, but "The Sentinel" also introduced a more mystical and cosmic element to Clarke's work. Many of Clarke's later works feature a technologically advanced but prejudiced mankind being confronted by a superior alien intelligence. In the cases of The City and the Stars, Childhood's End, and the 2001 series, this encounter produces a conceptual breakthrough that accelerates humanity into the next stage of its evolution.
In 1953, Clarke met and quickly married Marilyn Mayfield, a 22-year-old American divorcee with a young son. They separated permanently after six months, although the divorce was not finalised until 1964.
Clarke lived in Sri Lanka from 1956 until his death in 2008, emigrating there when it was still called Ceylon, first in Unawatuna on the south coast, and then in Colombo. Clarke held citizenship of both the UK and Sri Lanka. He was an avid scuba diver and a member of the Underwater Explorers Club; living in Sri Lanka afforded him the opportunity to visit the ocean year-round. It also inspired the locale for his novel The Fountains of Paradise, in which he first described a space elevator. This, he believed, ultimately will be his legacy, more so than geostationary satellites, once space elevators make space shuttles obsolete.
His many predictions culminated in 1958 when he began a series of essays in various magazines that eventually became Profiles of the Future, published in book form in 1962. A timetable up to the year 2100 describes inventions and ideas including such things as a "global library" for 2005.
Early in his career, Clarke had a fascination with the paranormal, and stated that it was part of the inspiration for his novel Childhood's End. He also said that he was one of several who were fooled by a Uri Geller demonstration at Birkbeck College. Although he eventually dismissed and distanced himself from nearly all pseudoscience, he continued to advocate research into purported instances of psychokinesis and other similar phenomena.
In the early 1970s, Clarke signed a three-book publishing deal, a record for a science-fiction writer at the time. The first of the three was Rendezvous with Rama in 1973, which won him all the main genre awards and has spawned sequels, which, along with the 2001 series, formed the backbone of his later career.
In 1975, Clarke's short story "The Star" was not included in a new high school English textbook in Sri Lanka because of concerns that it might offend Roman Catholics even though it already had been selected. The same textbook also caused controversy because it replaced Shakespeare's work with that of Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Isaac Asimov.
In the 1980s, Clarke became well known to many for his television programmes Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World and Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers.
In 1988, he was diagnosed with post-polio syndrome and needed to use a wheelchair most of the time thereafter. On 10 September 2007, while commenting on the Cassini probe's flyby of Iapetus (which plays an important role in 2001: A Space Odyssey), Clarke mentioned that he was completely wheelchair-bound by polio, and did not plan to leave Sri Lanka again.
Clarke was the first Chancellor of the International Space University, serving from 1989 to 2004, and also served as Chancellor of Moratuwa University in Sri Lanka from 1979 to 2002.
In December 2007, the occasion of his 90th birthday, Clarke recorded a video message to his friends and fans, bidding them "good-bye".
Clarke died in Sri Lanka at 1:30am on March 19, 2008, after suffering from breathing problems, according to Rohan de Silva, one of his aides.

Bonus!

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Book News, In Brief

For some strange reason, The Sydney Herald has randomly printed up a timeline of author Paul Auster's life thus far. Auster stalkers are welcome to chime in with any inaccuracies/omissions.

This LATimes article starts off announcing the film adaptation of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World before morphing into a truly interesting mini-biography of Huxley, his wife, and their Hollywood Hills home (complete with "space room" and "inversion machine"!).

In The GuardianUK, Sean O'Brien offers up six tips for adding drama to poetry, but not once does he mention balcony recitation, self-flagellation or defecating on a flag. Could there be a part two in tomorrow's paper?

Fed up after four months in a safe house, exiled writer Taslima Nasreen has announced that she is ready to leave India. Nasreen's writing about the many ways that religion oppresses women, as well as her descriptions of violence against Hindus in the novel Shame, have resulted in countless death threats, raspberries and 'why I oughttas' aimed against her.

Because I'm Alkie For Seltzer:

The NYTimes On Why They Were Fooled, And What They're Doing To Make Sure That It Never Happens Again

Fooled Again
by Clark Holt
March 16, 2008

With a few computer keystrokes last week at my request, Jack Begg, the supervisor of newsroom research at The Times, showed me that there was no record of a Margaret B. Jones in Eugene, Ore. With a few more keystrokes, he brought up property records showing that the house Jones said she owned was bought by Margaret Seltzer and another person in 2000 and now belongs to Stuart and Gay Seltzer after an “intrafamily transaction.”
All of this should have been a huge red flag about Margaret B. Jones, the author of a memoir in which she said she was abused, taken from her family at age 5 and shuttled between foster homes for three years before winding up in a world of gangs, violence and drugs in South-Central Los Angeles.
The book, “Love and Consequences,” was a fake, and had Begg been asked to do five minutes of checking in readily available public records, or had reporters and editors done it themselves before the newspaper bit, The Times could have been spared the embarrassment of falling for yet another too-good-to-be-true memoir from a publishing industry unwilling to accept responsibility for separating fact from fiction.

Click here to continue...

Book News, In Brief

In France, book fairs are da bomb, yo. Via AP: A bomb threat on Sunday targeted the Paris book fair, forcing organisers to evacuate visitors to the literary event, which this year is honouring Israeli writers despite a Muslim boycott, police said.

Is former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto the next memoirist to have her writing's validity called into question? Via AP: The lawyer for a suspect arrested in a deadly attack on a rally for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said Sunday he would try to halt sales of her memoir because he believed it wrongly implicated his client in a plot to kill her.

Well, it's less embarrassing than the time they opened Disneyland before the asphalt had cooled. Via The Bennington Banner: The Northshire Bookstore held an official launch on Thursday of The Espresso Book Machine, a new type of technology expected to revolutionize the publishing industry, but unfortunately, it (was) broken.

Note to authors doubling as fighter pilots: make sure your name and bibliography are clearly visible to other pilots. It just might save your life. Via The Earth Times: The German pilot who shot down the plane carrying Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of the beloved book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), said he deeply regretted his act, the French weekly Le Journal du Dimanche reported on Sunday. "If I had known who was in front of me, I would never have shot. Not him!"