Book News, In Brief

Author Rick Riordan and his new series, The 39 Clues, get this week's 'The Next Harry Potter' write-up in the NYTimes. You may remember Riordan from last year's write-up in the LATimes, where his Percy Jackson & the Olympians series was proclaimed -- you guessed it -- 'The Next Harry Potter.' I'll say this for Riordan. He's got one hell of a press agent.

From the AP: The author of the best-selling novel The Horse Whisperer is recovering in a hospital after eating poisonous mushrooms during a holiday in Scotland, his agent said Tuesday. Nicholas Evans' agent said the writer, his wife, her sister and the sister's husband became sick after cooking and eating mushrooms they had picked in the woods Aug. 23. I had a similar experience once, only I was at a Wu-Tang concert, and the mushrooms were psychedelic.

Having completely forgotten that the majority is rarely right, HarperCollins has just launched authonomy, a "global community site to find/promote new writing." Here's an even wordier, loftier description from the authonomy website: authonomy is a brand new community site for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins. We want to flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around - we’re glad you stopped by. If you’re a writer, authonomy is the place to show your face – and show off your work on the web. Whether you’re unpublished, self-published or just getting started, all you need is a few chapters to start building your profile online, and start connecting with the authonomy community. And if you’re a reader, blogger publisher or agent, authonomy is for you too. The book world is kept alive by those who search out, digest and spread the word about the best new books – authonomy invites you to join our community, champion the best new writing and build a personal profile that really reflects your tastes, opinions and talent-spotting skills.

Book News, In Brief

I thought that bookstores and colleges were supposed to be hotbeds of sexual expression and exploration. So how is it that the Boise State College Bookstore has been tied into a scandal involving...condom coupons? From The Arbiter Online: After multiple complaints from students, parents and faculty, condom coupons were removed from the coupon booklet handed out to students entering The Boise State Bookstore. The coupon was for 20 percent off any purchase of $5 or more at The Ozone condom shop located on Broadway Avenue.

A bibliokleptomaniac is like a shoplifter on steroids...chewing a power bar...and sipping an energy drink. From Chronogram Magazine: If you have any resemblance to bibliokleptomaniac Stephen Blumberg, you have an intense love for books. Blumberg’s obsession led him to multiple arrests in the 1980s and early ’90s for his theft of over 20,000 rare books from over 140 universities in 45 states and Canada, and to custom-build 86 bookshelves that extended over windows and into the backs of closets to house his collection.

Remember that Twilight prequel we told you about yesterday? The one where Stephanie Meyer changes the p.o.v. from Bella's to Edward's and calls it a new book? Well, we read some of it today, comparing it to the first book in the best selling series. Rough estimate: At least a third of the book is exactly the same. The dialogue is a carbon copy, and even some of the descriptive passages remain unchanged! This was some lazy, money-grabbing, almost-a-scam sh*t Meyer was going to pull here, so let's hope (for her sake) that its leak to the internet will cause Meyer to do a major re-think. Moroni knows she lost enough fans with Breaking Dawn. This book would've only lost her more.

Book News, In Brief

Michael Phelps just won eight gold medals and Coca-countless endorsement McDeals. Does he really need $1.6 for his ghost written memoirs?

The New Zealand Herald has this advice for self-publishers: Eff a paperback, print your work in a three ring binder. Their reasoning? The chances of you making a living off of your print-on-demand work is next to nil. But the odds of you being able to make some money in the lectures and consulting fields? Slightly better.

Extra, extra! Read all about it! Internet leak spares millions the drudgery of reading another Twilight novel...for now. From the CBC.ca: Stephenie Meyer, the author of a popular teen vampire series of books, says she has temporarily ditched the final episode of her series after an incomplete draft was leaked on the internet. The last book was to retell the story of the first installment of her series, Twilight, from the point of view of Edward Cullen, the main love interest of the human teen Bella Swan.

Speaking of cash-ins...er, I mean tie-ins: Bloomsbury, the British publishers of the Harry Potter books, can't wait for December 4th. What's the significance of 12/4/8, you ask? Well, that's when Rowling's first series spin-off, Tales of Beetle the Bard will be released to the non-millionaires of the world. It seems that after selling millions and millions of copies of the first seven Potter books (and pocketing billions and billions in profits), Bloomsbury's feeling a little light in the pockets. I guess Biggie was right: Mo' money, mo' problems.

Book News, In Brief

See? She's suffered: Author of faked holocaust memoir is still waiting for the $32.4 million her publisher refuses to pay. 

Thank god for The Great Firewall: Five years after illegal downloads brought the record industry to its knees, bootleg books begin popping up on China's internet.

If they really believed this, they'd release an e-book version: W.W. Norton & Co. has re-released André Kertétz’s influential book, On Reading, citing "the disturbing prospect of digital and online books overtaking and possibly eliminating printed media" as their reason.

Book News, In Brief

Ah, corporate America...
Borders posted a quarterly loss on Tuesday, sending its shares up nearly 14 percent. Wait, what?

Ah, synergy...
Charlie Higson, author of the Young Bond series, has launched a computer game set in the world of 007 in hopes of getting boys reading. Higson's new game, The Shadow War, combines gaming with reading both on and offline -- specifically the aforementioned Young Bond series.

Ah, controversy...
The Danish love f**king with the Muslims. First they ran a series of newspaper cartoons that spawned riots and death threats, now they're announcing their plans to publish The Jewel of Medina, Sherry Jones' novel about the child bride of Muhammad, which was dropped by Random House.

Out Tomorrow:

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond
Issue 1 of 2
Written by Grant Morrison, art by Doug Mahnke
From the DC Comics sales pitch:
To save the woman he loves, the greatest hero of all time becomes the pawn of ultra-dimensional forces when a wounded emissary from a world of doomed super gods comes to Earth on the eve of the Final Crisis. His mission: To recruit Superman's help against an epic, reality-spanning menace that originated in the Crisis on Infinite Earths!

Join the Man of Steel and his alternate-earth counterparts for a mind-blowing voyage to the edge of the DC Universe — and beyond! Can these super champions overcome their differences to beat the clock, find the ultimate treasure and save all existence from extinction?

Writer Grant Morrison and artist Doug Mahnke take you on an unforgettable, hyperdelic journey from the streets of Metropolis, through the 52 worlds of the multiverse, to the haunted court of the King of Limbo, in part one of this 2-issue Superman adventure!

With a unique 3-D section, eye-popping visuals and mind-boggling glimpses into the mysteries behind Final Crisis, Superman Beyond takes the Man of Tomorrow to new dimensions of action and excitement! This issue comes with a pair of 3-D glasses!

Does this sound rad or what!

Blog-Jacking: The Guardian UK

Children are swearing already, so why can't Jacqueline Wilson?
Written by Michael Rosen
Originally posted on August 22, 2008

The squeamishness that has forced the word 'twat' out of her novel My Sister Jodie is deaf to both current usage, and to the words children know already

First things first, the word "twat" has an interesting derivation. It's probably linked to the suffix "thwaite" that appears on the end of place-names. Somewhere in the mists of Germanic linguistic time, it had the sense of being a piece of land that had been delineated by humans, cut off from the uncultivated land surrounding it. At some point, this was also used familiarly to describe some or all parts of a woman's part, if you get me. (Yes, I know I'm being euphemistic here).

Feminist criticism could have a ball here on interpreting this metaphorical use as a piece of male ideology whether that's because there's something "cut off" about female genitalia, or that it's a place that is to be ploughed and settled on.

Then, as with many other sexual parts, male and female, it became a word of insult. And then, in time (and this is crucial for the Jacqueline Wilson case) the word is used without people knowing that it's linked to the sexual part. Robert Browning famously used the word in a poem, clearly not knowing either of these meanings, while Henry Miller used it over and over again in the sexual sense only. Jacqueline has some interesting precedents.

Anxiety about the possibility that children will be corrupted if they hear rude words has been around for a long time. Some readers will remember Robert Westall's magnificent The Machine Gunners. This is one of the best "war" novels for children, exploring the underground world of boys in the space left them by absent parents. There are parallels in world fiction, including one by Nobel prize-winning Kenzaburo Oe's Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids and I think Westall's matches them all for power and story. However, a good deal of critical noise was made over the fact that Westall dared to use the word "bloody" in the book - several times!

To finish this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

This just in! A bad economy effects bookstores! And libraries! Only differently! (Wait. Why am I yelling? This is just common sense disguised as news.)

You know what they say: 'Behind every good woman, there's a fey, bi-curious poet.' But did Percy Shelley really co-author Frankenstein with wife Mary, or did he just help with the adjectives? (Cries of sexism begin...now.)

With rival film studios battling over the multi-million dollar movie rights to Watchmen, the IHT has decided to take a look at The Murky Side of Movie Rights. (This is a must-read article for unpublished authors with delusions of grandeur.)

Not sick of Hollywood's insanity yet? The Los Angeles Times has an autobiographical piece from a 'serious author' writing tie-in novels for TV shows. In it, said 'serious author' talks to the folks writing this summer's biggest film novelizations, as well as a guy who wrote the novelization of a screenplay that was based upon his comic book. (Let me break that last part down for you: Author 1 wrote a comic book. Author 2 then wrote a screenplay which was based on author 1's comic book. Author 1 then wrote a novelization based on author 2's adaptation of author 1's comic book. Exhale.)

Book News, In Brief

An unpublished novelist asks: How do you believe in your own writing? Salon attempts to answer.

Rock 'n' roll photographer Barry Feinstein has found a decades old collection of poems written by Bob Dylan. Surprise, surprise -- he plans to publish.

Who needs James Frey when we've got Salman Rushide and his Controversy of the Day Club? Today the pendulum swings back in Rushdie's favor. Via The Guardian UK: "The authors of a book which claimed that Salman Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" by his police protection officers have admitted there were falsehoods in the manuscript and have made amendments accordingly."

It's not a kiss and tell. More like a shelve and share. Via MichiganLive.com: "A library employee in this Lake Michigan resort community has been fired for writing a book that describes a range of unpleasant patrons, from the merely unpleasant to online sex fiends, in a town she calls "Denialville." Using the pen name Ann Miketa, Sally Stern-Hamilton wrote Library Diaries, which she describes as a fictional account based on her on-the-job experiences. "After working at a public library in a small, rural Midwestern town (which I will refer to as Denialville, Michigan, throughout this book) for fifteen years, I have encountered strains and variations of crazy I didn't know existed in such significant portions of our population," she wrote in the book's introduction."

Book News, In Brief

The Independent got wind of those Craigslist ads for forgers and ran with it. Their article, Signing off: The Weird World of Book Signings, offers a myriad of excuses for authors considering similar scams.

Don't expect to see a film adaptation of the new Bond novel, Devil May Care. The producers behind the recently revived film franchise say the book is too steeped in the sixties and 'would be out of keeping with the current penchant for supercars and state-of-the-art gadgetry.'

Hip hop magazine The Source has been having a rough couple of years. First, their old publisher alienated the readership by starting feuds with some of the most popular rap stars of the day. Then they lost the majority of their staff due to the crazy office antics of that same publisher. And then, last year, they were forced to file for bankruptcy. Well, things are finally looking up. Next month marks the The Source's 20th anniversary, and they're using the opportunity to relaunch the magazine. They've hired Spike Lee to shoot a series of cover photos, they've got a round table discussion with professors Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, led by Public Enemy's Chuck D, and they're planning on expanding their scope to include travel, education and business. Here's hoping it works.

Book News, In Brief

Wanted: Nimble fingered hands to sign books for lazy authors. Fourteen open positions. See Craigslist ad or the Guardian UK article for details.

Micheal Moore has a list of fall reading recommendations. No, wait. I got that wrong. He suggests you read nothing and spend your time volunteering in local politics instead. Cuz that's just what the world needs: more ignorant fools involved in politics.

A warning for folks seriously considering this 'dating on the cheap' thing: If you think we've gonna let you hang out in our store for hours -- "reading to each other" -- you've got another thing coming. We'll dump a cart of books on you. At the Inkwell, we don't cotton to vagabonds.

You think we're kidding? Think again. The days of the meek and mild bookstore employee are over. Just check out the complaints list filed against Portsmouth, NH bookstore owner and uber-a**hole, Walter Wakefield:
* On April 2, 2005, police were called to the bookstore by a man who reported he was assaulted. According to police records, the customer reported Wakefield "tried to hit him with the door to the store."
* In April 1999, Wakefield was arrested on a charge of simple assault.
* On April 27, 1995, Dale Shaw of Rye went to the store and after being told there was a $5 fee to browse, an argument ensued, according to court records. A court affidavit said Wakefield called the customer a (expletive) retard," before hitting him with a metal pipe, scraping and bruising his arm. In 1995, Wakefield told the Herald he was defending himself from a robbery attempt and Shaw shoved him. Shaw was not charged by police with any crime.
* Hampstead auto parts dealer Patrick Murphy told the Herald in 1995 that he went to browse in the bookstore where Wakefield started an argument and called him "an AIDS infected" (expletive).
* In March 1994, Richard Wentz of Rye was arrested for criminal threatening, according to police records, for showing a handgun at the bookstore after getting into a dispute with Wakefield.
* In 1998, Wakefield was convicted of criminal threatening and assault against a Merrimack man for shoving and threatening him with a pipe.
(In his defense, Wakefeild claims to be the victim of shoplifting.)

Watching The Watchmen Reviews

Ever since that Watchmen trailer first appeared, a whole new flock of readers has been rushing to read the comics masterpiece -- so much so that DC recently announced a 900,000 copy re-printing. But what do all of these new readers think? Is it love at first page, a slow-building appreciation, or a begrudgingly afforded respect given only so as to not seem stupid? Let's round-up the recent reviews and see, shall we?

Pro:
Precisely the kind of comics review I hate: the kind that starts out proudly proclaiming, "I normally don't read comics..."
Oh look, here's another one: "First off, I am not by nature a comic book guy."
And another, this one super pretentious: "I’ve never been a comic book reader, preferring the printed word to pictures on a page, the longer and more intricate the novel, the better."
Ah, finally. A review I actually like...a lot: "These aren't emo Batmen, they're Tony Sopranos and Seth Bullocks, idiosyncratic and troubling portraits of great physical strength and moral violence juxtaposed against tremendous emotional and psychological weakness."
And more:
"I now understand what all the hype was about."
"I embarrassingly bought Watchmen after I saw Dark Knight due to the trailer."
Powell's likes it
"It was the hype itself that made me originally reject it."
"thoroughly engrossing"

Con:
A collection of "scathing reviews" (and a real time saver for me!)
"Ending somewhat disappointing and boring."

Mildly Impressed:
"So yeah, the comic was alright."
"Not bad but not 'incredible' either."

Wow, if only the majority of mankind agreed with me about everything...

Indie Bookstores:This Is How You Stage An Uprising

(a lesson in rebellion, brought to us by a bookstore we've been unsuccessfully rebelling against for years)

First, there was this announcement, made at Publisher's Weekly:
Chelsea Green Publishing is crashing a book on Obama in time for the Democratic National Convention in Denver later this month. President and publisher Margo Baldwin said the book, Obama’s Challenge: America’s Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency by Robert Kuttner, will go from final manuscript to bound books within four weeks. The publisher will produce 2,000 advance copies, and make the book available early exclusively on Amazon—two firsts for the eco-conscious independent publisher.

Three days later, indie bookstores responded -- via email:
Via PW: Chelsea Green’s sales team has received e-mails calling the move “a money-grubbing sellout,” a “slap in the face,” and “another blow to independent bookstores.”

The publisher (predictably) scoffed at these self-righteous, crybaby emails:
Via PW: “This is about a publisher’s commitment to its author to get one of a very few pro-Obama books out into the marketplace in the shortest amount of time,” Baldwin wrote. The house is printing 75,000 copies, its largest first printing ever. But, Baldwin pointed out, that number “pales in comparison to anti-Obama books flooding the market.” She continued, “I wonder how many booksellers are happy to sell another few thousand ‘abomination’ books while being ‘outraged’ by Chelsea Green’s decision to make its book available as fast as possible.”

Oh, and they refused to change their plans.
(How did the indies respond? More emails!)

That's when Barnes & Noble -- hardly a defender of the little guy -- publicly announced their plans to fight corporate bullying with corporate bullying:
Via PW: Barnes & Noble has canceled its 10,000-copy order of Obama’s Challenge, a book by Robert Kuttner that Chelsea Green is making available early exclusively through Amazon.com. Chelsea Green president and publisher Margo Baldwin said the chain will make the book available on BN.com and will special order it, but that it will not stock it in its stores.

Ouch. Sorta makes us indies look like wussies in comparison, don't it?
But let's face it. If The Inkwell was to announce a similar stratagem, it wouldn't even rate as a blip on C.G.'s radar. So what can a small shop only planning to order a fraction of B&N's number of Obama's Challenge do? Well, don't, for starters. Or do, but offset your order by sending Chelsea Green even more sure-to-be-ignored emails. If nothing else, we might get lucky and crash their website. And to a publisher putting internet sales over brick and mortar hand sells, that would be like kicking them in the privates.

Oh, The Irony!

Via Publisher's Weekly:
Salman Rushdie Condemns Random House Over Cancellation of Book
Rushdie weighs in on the cancellation of The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones: "I am very disappointed to hear that my publishers, Random House, have canceled another author’s novel, apparently because of their concerns about possible Islamic reprisals. This is censorship by fear, and it sets a very bad precedent indeed."

This, only two weeks after:

Via Huffington Post:
Salman Rushdie Threatens Lawsuit Over Ex-Bodyguard's Book
Author Salman Rushdie is threatening to sue a publisher over a book by a former bodyguard that he says portrays him as cheap, nasty and arrogant.

Disney Book News, In Brief

Didier Ghez has the covers to two of this year's most eagerly awaited Disney-related tomes: Walt Disney Animation Studios The Archive Series: Story and Alice in Wonderland by John Scieszka and Mary Blair. 'Story' is a collection of notes and sketches from the golden era of Disney animation; 'Alice' is the follow up to last year's gorgeous Cinderella children's book. To gaze upon the goodness, click here.

Cartoon Brew has a brief blurb about The Alchemy of Animation by Beauty & The Beast director Don Hahn. The book "details the process Disney uses to make animated films from traditional animation, to CG to stop-motion." The blurb also offers this enticing bit of news-to-me: Hahn is developing a stop-motion animated feature of Frankenweenie with Tim Burton! To read the Cartoon Brew piece, click here.

Crabapplecove.vom has posted a review of Character Animation Crash Course by animator Eric Goldberg (he did the Genie in Aladdin, among others). Crabapple gives the book a 50/50 rating, saying that "it has some genuinely terrific information in it, but like nearly every other book on animation to date, it’s not so much a systematic how-to as it is a collection of formulae." He then goes on to lament the fact that "animators don’t really have a 'Unified Field Theory' of animation." To find out just what the heck all of this means, click here.

InRich.com recently did a piece on Disney's current Tinkerbell merchandising bonanza. In it, they talk to award winning author Gail Carson Levine, whose book Fairy Dust and the Quest For the Egg was published by Disney Press as the cornerstone of the "Disney Fairies" franchise. Commenting on the character, Carson says, "The only thing (Tinkerbell) says in (the original Peter Pan) is, 'Silly ass!' And she tries to have Wendy killed a couple of times. She is not, in my mind, a warm, fuzzy character." WTF? That sounds way more interesting than a mute do-gooder. To read the article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

I know it's rather late in the season to be foisting yet another summer reading list on y'all, but this one was too good to keep to myself. Via CBR: Comics luminaries share their picks.

Via finance.sympatico: "By opening its channels to a million outside sellers, Amazon has undercut (eBay) and is winning the battle for Internet sales. Next up: A challenge to eBay's PayPal."

Via MSNBC: "The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported that college textbook prices increased at twice the rate of inflation between 1986 and 2004. Is there any way to avoid this crippling expense? Actually, there are several."

Via theregister.co.uk: "Amazon's Kindle e-book reader will sell more than 380,000 in 2008, according to analysts at CitiGroup...Analyst Mark Mahaney reckons a Kindle is going to be the must-have item for this Christmas, pointing out that his predicted sales are roughly the same as those achieved by the iPod in its first year...He also reckons that by 2010 the Kindle will be contributing $1 billion annually to the online-bookseller-turned-everything-emporium - four per cent of their total revenue."

Recommended Reads: Geeks

Spirited Away: BFI Film Classics by Andrew Osmund
From the Anime News Network's article/press release:
In Spirited Away: BFI Film Classics, Osmund details the filmmaking process of Hayao Miyazaki on the 2002 work and how it relates to his previous films and the themes that he expounds. The British Film Institute book includes quotes from Miyazaki and his colleagues and over 60 color images. Osmund also wrote Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist, a book that profiles the acclaimed director of Perfect Blue, Paprika, and Paranoia Agent.

Bottomless Belly Button by Dash Shaw
From the NYMagazine author profile:
Bottomless Belly Button tells the story of a week in the life of the Loony family, whose parents, Maggie and David, are divorcing after 40 years...Shaw’s avoided the path that young writers so often follow, for better or for worse: He’s not really writing about himself. His parents are still married, and he seems to have been drawn to the story of a disintegrating family as a genre exercise. “It was interesting to me how there are differences in family relations”... Bottomless Belly Button, it seems, was created out of a desire to see what would happen if characters from a traditional family drama—“super-dysfunctional and super-dramatic”—were placed alongside characters from a more reserved family story: a narrative game, rather than a dead-serious uncovering of emotional trauma.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
From the NYTimes book review:
Díaz shows impressive high-low dexterity, flashing his geek credentials, his street wisdom and his literary learning with equal panache. A short epigraph from the Fantastic Four is balanced by a longer one from Derek Walcott; allusions to Dune, The Matrix and (especially) The Lord of the Rings rub up against references to Melville and García Márquez. Oscar’s nickname is a Spanglish pronunciation of Oscar Wilde, whom he is said to resemble when dressed up in his Doctor Who costume for Halloween.

Congratulations, Yiddish Policemen's Union! (are you done winning things yet?)

Michael Chabon has been awarded the prestigious Hugo Award for his most recent novel. Where does he find the shelf space?

Book News, In Brief

How true to life (i.e. scandalicious) is Britney Spears' mom's book going to be? Not very, judging from that soft focus book cover. For a more fitting distillation of the book's themes, click the image to the left.

Last week, disappointed readers of Breaking Dawn (are there any other kind?) were calling for a book burning. This week they're rallying behind a new plan: returning the books for full refunds. Ha! Go back to burning 'em, suckers. Caveat emptor, and all that.

Booksellers get labeled as nerds, sure, but we've got it a hell of a lot better than our brethren, the comic bookseller. Their public ridicule knows no bounds. Here's a link to a website dissing a comic book shop owner simply because he gave the new Astonishing X-Men a negative review. Although the comments section seems to side with the dissing, the piece raised a couple of question in my mind: Should negative reviews be nixed from a shopkeeper's spiels? Are they bad for business, or do they help to build a buyer's trust?

(Editor's Note: The fact that we've called our patrons suckers in one news item, only to then ponder customer loyalty in the next was not unintentional. To quote Full Metal Jacket, we're only "trying to suggest something about the duality of man...the Jungian thing.")

Book News, In Brief

McSweeney's asks tweens, teens and their online predators:
Did you see Shakespeare's Facebook pics?
(OMG!!! He's hot!!!)

Kafka and Thomas -- the new Britney and Lindsay?

Dylan Thomas' dirt filled diaries are up for public perusal, while an upstart publishing house has put out a book cataloging Kafka's vast and varied porn collection.

Edjumacated dudes predict Oprah's endorsement is worth a million votes. Considering the staggering quantities of East of Eden that she managed to sell to an otherwise illiterate America, I'd have to agree.