Watchmen Trailer Premiers Tomorrow Today

Click here to view (but be patient, it may take a minute or two).
(Image swiped from CHUD.com)

Book News, In Brief

The Wall Street Journal forgets its raison d'etre, recommending people borrow from libraries instead of buying at bookstores. Ah, but this'll learn 'em...

Instant karma! Financial woes are forcing The Wall Street Journal to cut 50 editing positions. Note to WSJ: Maybe nobody's buying your paper cuz they're reading it in the library.

Scandal! David Hessayon, author of the 50 million-selling Expert series (Gardening for Dummies, but loftier), has announced that "tending his own roses and shrubs no longer gives him pleasure." I betcha he still loves harvesting the ol' money tree, though.

Fanfic makes good. George Norman Lippert's James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing, an unofficial sequel to the Harry Potter series, has not only inspired a YouTube film adaptation and its own fanfic spin-offs, it has received J.K. Rowling's blessing as well. Lippert's next James Potter book, The Curse of the Gatekeeper, hits the net this September.

Book News, In Brief

The Comics Reporter admits that this is nearly impossible to verify, but is Google censoring pro-Palestinian comics?

Kiplinger.com has an article up comparing the Kindle to the Sony Reader. While Sony wins in all of the aesthetic categories, the Kindle holds more and has wireless options. But in the end, Kiplinger says that both e-books "cost too much for what they deliver."

Via The Boston Globe: "In a woeful time for book publishing, when sales are stagnant and reading for pleasure is declining, an unlikely first novel is climbing bestseller lists and causing a sensation. To the astonishment of writers, editors, and booksellers, David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is proving that readers can still fall hard for an old-fashioned literary epic by someone they've never heard of..."

Via Boing Boing: "This marvellous paperback chair is on display at Myopic Books in Providence Rhode Island...ZOMG I wish this was for sale."

Re: Race & Class

A janitor at Purdue University was observed reading a book about a 1924 riot between Notre Dame students and the KKK. The University charged him with racial harassment, likening it to reading porn at work(?!). Assorted civil liberties groups took up the cause, quoting from that pesky 'free speech' thingamabob, and now, almost a year later, the University has apologized...but only after making it clear to EVERYONE that they are committed to free speech.

Except where history books about unlikable hate groups are concerned.

Oh, and where porn is concerned.

But every other type of free speech? They're totally cool with those.

Quick side thought: Had it been a student at Purdue who was seen reading this book, it would've been no big thing. Students are intellectuals, naturally curious about matters of history and/or social unrest. But a janitor? Well, he had to be an ignorant racist.

That's class!

For the longer, less biased version of this story, click here.

Smart People Prefer 1984 To Anything B.C., J.C.

Via Publisher's Weekly:
Disinformation Readers Pick Favorites
By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 7/14/2008 1:03:00 PM
Favorite book lists vary widely, as Sara Nelson points out in this week’s PW. Her editorial comments on two recent polls: one recent by Harris that queried just over 2,500 Americans about their favorite books and found the top two were the Bible and Gone with the Wind; and another by Disinformation.com that found the top two were Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Ralph Bernardo, managing editor at Disinformation, explained the results...Bernardo said Disinformation’s readership is diverse geographically, economically and racially; however, the group tends to more highly educated than the general population. Disinformation’s and Harris’s polls did share some favorites: both included Lord of the Rings, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Catcher in the Rye.

To read the complete article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Barnes & Noble bucks the boutique bookstore trend, actually expanding their one and only rare books store.

Where are they now? The Guardian UK tracks down some high profile literary award winners who've disappeared from the public eye.

These two links were swiped from Fantagrapics' FLOG blog: Steve Ditko in Entertainment Weekly and Charles Burns in The New Yorker.

MichelleInkwell thinks we're gonna damage our lit cred by posting this one, so view it quick -- before she edits this. The Mortal Kombat vs. DC Comics video game trailer is online.

Author Du Jour: Jennifer Haigh

Biography
(Stolen whole from Wikipedia)
Jennifer Wasilko Haigh is an American novelist and short story writer. Her critically acclaimed novel Mrs. Kimble (2003) won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Outstanding First Fiction.
Haigh was born in Barnesboro, PA, and is a 1990 graduate of Dickinson College. She earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2002. Her short stories have appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Hartford Courant, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She lives on Boston's South Shore.
Her second book, Baker Towers (2005), was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship award for best book by a New England writer.
Her third novel, The Condition will be published by HarperCollins in July, 2008 traces the dissolution of a proper New England family when their only daughter is diagnosed with Turner's Syndrome, a chromosomal abnormality that keeps her from going through puberty.

Interview Links
Chester College School Paper
BookBrowse.com
Eye On Books (audio interview)

Author's Official Website
Click here

Rushdie Wins Hyperbolic 'Best Ever' Award(But what happens when they hand out next year's?)

Via NPR:
Salman Rushdie is probably the Booker Prize's best-known winner. Now he is officially the best.Rushdie's 1981 novel "Midnight's Children" was named Thursday as the greatest-ever winner of Britain's most prestigious literary award. The book received more than a third of the 7,801 votes cast in a competition to mark the prize's 40th anniversary.

To continue this article, click here.

Book News, In Brief

Russia has banned a Hitler-themed history book because it contains quotes from der Fuhrer which are offensive to Russians and Jews. I guess they wanted a kinder, gentler genocidal madman.

Got cancer? The vultures at HCI are circling overhead, looking for cancer stories for an upcoming Chicken Soup for the Soul book. Note: They only want inspirational cancer stories. Sad ones, tragic ones, and ones that end in death simply do not sell. The submission deadline lifeline is August 31.

The 101 year old executor of Franz Kafka's estate has finally died, freeing up the author's until-now unseen private papers. Don't get me wrong, it's never nice when someone dies, but when you don't know that someone, and that someone has been selfishly sitting on a literary goldmine for the past forty years...well, I ain't crying, that's all I'm saying.

From WOOD TV: A Christian publisher Zondervan is facing a $60 million federal lawsuit filed by a man who claims he and other homosexuals have suffered based on what the suit claims is a misinterpretation of the Bible. Does anyone really think that this guy is going to win? In today's courts? The fact that they still make you swear in on a Bible leads me to believe that the case is doomed.

Disney Book News, In Brief

R.I.P. Thomas M. Disch, 68; prolific science-fiction writer and author of The Brave Little Toaster, the children's book that was later made by Disney into an animated film. For a longer, more fitting obituary, click here.

In a previous D.B.N. update, I mentioned the upcoming release of Jeff Kurtti and Bruce Gordon's long awaited book, Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Parks. Well, Didier Ghez has just posted an interview with Kurtti, and it's a good one.

Disney has released some new info about their upcoming comics venture, Kingdom Comics, at Wizard World Chicago. Here's a bit of it, via Adventures In A Strange Land: If you'll remember a month or so ago Disney announced that they were launching a comic book company called Kingdom Comics. Well, this was a panel to show that they are serious. They've hired Ahmet Zappa, and Christian Beranek to head it up and both were on hand to 'answer questions'. Unfortunately the company is just getting off the ground and they couldn't even announce a single title. All they said was that they intend to cull from the Disney library of live action properties throughout the ages, and they only intend to produce graphic novels, no monthly issues.

Disney corporate politics, via that bastion of truth, The New York Post: An ex-employee of Harvey and Bob Weinstein is writing an "explosive" book about their management of Miramax, based on files and tapes compiled over a period of 15 years, a source claims. The so-far-anonymous author claims, "The book, which is told from a deep insider's point of view, will detail the day-to-day manipulation of the Disney company by the Weinstein Bros." The author attached a seven-minute audio file in his letter to The Post, "just to prove to you this is not some kook writing you." The recording is of a Dec. 12, 1996, phone call between Harvey and Joe Roth, then president of Walt Disney Studios, in which the two complain about the $138 million severance deal that Mike Ovitz negotiated to leave Disney after 16 months. (Click here to hear the recording.)

Book News, In Brief

The New York City cottage where writer Edgar Allan Poe lived is slated for renovation and will be closed for a year -- something about a strange, heartbeat sound coming from the floorboards. Details can be found at the CBC.

Our best wishes go out to the owners, staff and patrons of fellow indie bookstore, Bunch of Grapes, over on Martha's Vineyard. This past 4th of July, a fire next door spread to the bookstore, seriously damaging it. The good news: Bunch of Grapes plans to rebuild.

We're in an election year, which means we're about to be inundated with a million different Best Of lists pertaining to every nuance of democracy. We already did our list months ago (Top 5 Election Books), but here's one from The Washington Post: Fightin' Words: Five Memorable Revolutionary Books.

Over at the venerable Guardian UK (it's where I steal an inordinate amount of my daily links from), writer Mark Hooper argues that sometimes the best way to bring a book to life is to first watch its film adaptation. (Methinks he's smitten by Beowulf's amber colored Angelina Jolie.) (Methinks me is, too.)

Cumming Coming, October 14th

Da details.

Tom Wolfe vs. Michael Gazzaniga

The father of cognitive neuroscience and the original New Journalist discuss status, free will, the human condition at Seed Magazine.com.
Click here for front row seats.

Book News, In Brief

I knew that Nick Hornby and I had more in common than an obsessive approach to women and music. Turns out he hates e-books, too.

I knew that Larry McMurtry and I had more in common than just jowls and an aura of dishevelment. Turns out he finds bookselling frustrating, too.

Okay, so I'd never even heard of Stella A. Estremera before today, but it turns out she and I have something in common, too: Every night, we have to choose between sleeping and reading.

This sort of volunteer work is supposed to inspire, but personally, I find it depressing as hell and an admission of obsolescence. Via The Bulletin: New bookstore opens; profit not required.

Book News, In Brief

It's Independent Booksellers Week...in England. In America, it's business as usual.

Barbara Walters has refused to read the sex stuff on the audio version of her autobiography. On behalf on weak stomachs and sensitive ears everywhere, allow me to scream, THANK YOU BARBARA! No one wanted to hear you lisp your way through your affairs in the Lincoln bedroom (with Abe Lincoln) anyway.

Anytime a blogger wants to bash The Behemoth, I'm willing to toss 'em a link. But when The Los Angeles Times takes on Amazon.com (and its controversial Kindle with the unreleased sales figures), I've gotta add a 'Hallelujah!'
So, um...Hallelujah!
Update: Seeking Alpha also put out an article yesterday calling into question Bezos' e-book hype: Amazon's Kindle Numbers: All Fluff, Zero Substance.

Indiana court protects porn peddling, via PW:
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression took a victory yesterday when a federal judge dismissed an Indiana law requiring retailers to register "sexually explicit" material with the state.
This is a victory for free speech, and a blowjob to the traditionally uptight state of Indiana. Lest they forget, one can't spell Hoosier without the 'Ho.'

Book News, In Brief

Know someone who’s 100? The National Centenarian Awareness Project is looking for subjects for an upcoming book. But act fast, cuz -- let's face it -- most folks don't live to be 101.

When looking at other people's book shelves, what secrets can we learn? What warning signs may we glean? Can we really tell if the owners are smarter/stupider than us? The Oregon Live takes a look.

Everyone knew that factions of the Muslim community were going to get sour about Salman Rushdie's knighthood, but what I want to know is: What took Iran so long? Hell, Pakistan was bitching about it two weeks ago.

The good news, via PRWeb: HBF Publishers (HBFP) is leveling a digital cultural imbalance by giving African American authors opportunities never before available: control of the content and delivery of their books with immediate access to a growing and profitable African American reading market, cultivated over the years by QBR The Black Book Review and the Harlem Book Fair.
And the bad news, via us: Amazon won't sell the books.
But wait! There's some more good news: Us. The Inkwell. We'll sell the books...
A li'l more bad:...or we'll return them, unsold...
And Good:...but at least we'll try...
Bad: ...which is more than Amazon will do.

Book News, In Brief

(Adjective) birthday, Mad Libs! You're 50 (plural noun) old!

Angry Little House fans take switch to HarperCollins over updated cover art; bonnets suspiciously missing, covered wagons nowhere to be found.

Either the bookstore was amazing, or the author is O.C.D.
Via East Bay Express: Bob Calhoun, aka Count Dante (author of the self-described "punk/wrestling tell-all" Beer, Blood, and Cornmeal), will still present his scheduled booksigning at Cody's tonight, even though the store has been closed since June 20.

The publishing industry wants Dave Eggers to be more like Mary Higgens Clark.
The details, from The San Diego Union Tribune: In an age when reading for pleasure is declining, book publishers increasingly are counting on their biggest moneymaking writers to crank out books at a rate of at least one a year, right on schedule, and sometimes faster than that. Many top-selling writers, such as John Grisham and Mary Higgins Clark, have turned out at least one book annually for years. Now some writers are beginning to grumble about the pressure, and some are refusing to comply.

Sneak Peek: Paul Pope's Battling Boy

For Pope's own thoughts on the project, click here.

Book News, In Brief

I love articles about indie bookstores as much as the next indie bookstore employee, but goddamn -- do they always have to focus on the stores' cats?! No wonder people are turning to big box bookstores and online behemoths. Instead of hyping our intelligence and experience, we've made ourselves look like a bunch of crazy neighborhood cat ladies.

It's what the kids call 'backpedaling', via The Huffington Post:
Author Of 'Obama Can't Win' Book Doesn't Believe Himself
Author Shelby Steele now says, "I regret that subtitle. It was an afterthought. And I don't argue that in the book. He can definitely win." Oh, and while he's setting the record straight, Steele is just a pen name. He chose it to offset his malleability.

Sunday's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review featured an article titled, Retailers in Step With Trends Shift Focus to Web Commerce. In addition to the usual blah-blah-blah about e-commerce (It's cheaper! You don't need as many employees! People like shopping while naked and viewing porn!), the article mentioned this depressing bit of gossip: A possible Amazon.com merger with Borders.
I don't know about you, but I just lost my erect**n.

Bail Was Posted. Back To Blogging.