Bored with cookbooks? Rachel Ray and that Giada lady bringing you down? It’s cool, don’t feel bad. That stuff’s tired. But don’t fret, we’ve got one for you:
This book is amazing. It’s by Kenny Shopsin, a curmudgeonly goon who’s been breaking eggs and hearts at his Greenwich Village eatery for years. He’s famous for his insane 900 item menu and his “the customer is always wrong” mentality, both of which are reproduced here in this witty yet touching manifesto.
Get some.
Tony Hillerman, whose lyrical, authentic and compelling mystery novels set among the Navajos of the Southwest blazed innovative trails in the American detective story, died Sunday at Presbyterian Hospital in Albuquerque, The Associated Press reported.
“It’s always troubled me that the American people are so ignorant of these rich Indian cultures,” Mr. Hillerman once told Publishers Weekly. “I think it’s important to show that aspects of ancient Indian ways are still very much alive and are highly germane even to our ways.”
He was 83 and lived in Albuquerque.
See here for the complete story: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/books/28hillerman.html?ref=books
Guess what book comes out on October 28, just a few short weeks before the release of the movie on November 21?
Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion by Mark Cotta Vaz.
Only thing I’m wondering is, how did the author get his hands on my personal pictures of my boyfriend Edward?
Literary trendspotters: it’s a Lulu world out there. We’re just living in it.
Popping out like worms on sidewalks, these Lulu books.
Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him… All About Lulu… Lulu in Marrakech ?
Uh… Authors Meet Lulu and Love Her… Way Too Much About Lulu… Lulu in Vogue.
Seriously, this is a kooky amount of books to spring up in a two year span about characters named Lulu, but what’s crazy is that they all drop her in the title. The thing is, this idea that popping an uncommon, charming name in a book’s title can build it some buzz is totally undercut by sticking the same name in so many books that it becomes common and charm-spent. One was fun, but three? It’s done.
The yellow tabby with “twinkling green eyes” dumped in the overnight drop box of an Iowa library one cold January night surely had no idea how famous he was destined to become. Now, Dewey’s “biography” is on all the best-seller lists. The book is also about the library worker who found him as a kitten (Vicki Myron, the author of the book) and the town that embraced him (Spencer, Iowa, a farm town of about 11,000.) But Dewey is the charmer behind it all–and the one giving Marley a run for his money.
“Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World,” by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter, has 336,000 copies in print.
From the Cnn.com article:
Dewey was discovered in the Spencer library’s overnight drop box in January 1988, a time when Iowa was in the midst of an economic chill that had gripped the nation. Spencer is a town that hasn’t changed much since the 1930s, with a downtown of family-owned stores in connecting two- and three-story brick buildings, a second-run movie theater and The Hen House, which sells decorating items to farmwives.
Myron bonded immediately with Dewey as she lifted the tiny kitten from the book drop that January morning.
“He was so cold and half starved and very dirty. He didn’t look like much until I picked him up and he started purring immediately and he looked in my eyes with his eyes,” she says. “He had the most gorgeous eyes I had ever seen and I felt a connection with him right away.”
A petite woman with thick, short brown hair who wears wire-rimmed glasses, Myron was struggling back then to make ends meet — a divorced mother trying to raise a daughter, working full time at the Spencer library and studying to get her master’s degree. She had only been on the job for six months and had wanted to make the library more homey. Dewey would fit right in.
Patrons took to him quickly, and over time visitors increased from 60,000 a year to more than 100,000. Many were suffering from the crippling economy that hit the farming community especially hard, and Myron thinks Dewey lifted their spirits and made them a bit more eager to stop off at the library.
“Dewey didn’t bring jobs to Spencer, but there were a lot of farmers who came in to fill out the first resume of their life. They didn’t know how to use the computer, they were having a tough time and were really down when they came in. Dewey won them over and put a smile on their face,” Myron says.
“He … was something to be proud of when Spencer didn’t have a lot to be proud of.”
She described Dewey as an “old soul.”
Click here for complete article.
From those kind, creative, hardworking folks at PEN New England:
You are cordially invited to attend PEN New England’s Annual Book Party!
In the Halloween spirit, we honor those who have survived
THE HORRORS OF THE PUBLISHING WORLD
Come raise a glass and honor your fellow scribes. If the Spirit moves you, feel
free to come in costume!
Tuesday, October 28th
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
The Atrium & Amphitheater @ Lesley University
University Hall, 1815 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA
(Directions: www.lesley.edu/about/porter_map.html)
Please join with us at our annual gathering of the PEN New England community
featuring the traditional celebration of those who have published books this year
and the presentation of PEN New England’s “Friend to Writers” Award. If you have
published a book since last September please email pen-ne@lesley.edu or call
617-349-8113 and leave your name, the title of your book, the publisher, and the
publication date so we can share the news on the 28th. Please bring a copy of your
book for other members and guests to admire.
And if you haven’t published this year, please come and raise a glass to those who
have…
As far as literary representations go, New York certainly tops all towns. But, with writers like Ann Patchett, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Keith Gessen setting recent works here, it’s been a busy time for Boston literature. And then comes Dennis Lehane. The Dorchester native has written about Boston before, of course, but his latest, The Given Day, is as Boston as a book can be. And it’s terrific.
The novel begins at the tail end of the first World War, and in its 700 pages there’s a veritable catalogue of the era’s social issues. Immigration and race are huge concerns here, and Lehane does a great job of sketching the prominent but precarious status Boston’s Irish had attained, as well as the trials awaiting African Americans as they made their way north. The book highlights the local and national labor unrest that eventually exploded into the Boston Policeman’s strike, giving us an intense description of the chaos and destruction it occasioned. The narrative is anchored by Lehane’s focus on two families, but as they race through Boston’s streets and neighborhoods, they’re surrounded by characters with the kinds of names, like Storrow and Coolidge, that now spot our city.
Don’t be scared off by all of the history, though. The Given Day is a tight, tense story, overflowing with the pitch-perfect characters and true-to-life dialogue that Lehane writes better than anyone.
Aravind Adiga’s debut novel, The White Tiger, has won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Adiga is the second youngest writer to win the award; the book centers on the underclass of India and a mischevous narrator, Balram Halwai.
The finalists for the National Book Awards have also been announced, five each in the catagories of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young adult. The fiction list is excellent, with a few cross-cultural novels (Lazarus Project, Telex From Cuba) , established writers (Peter Matthiessen, Marilynne Robinson), newcomers (Rachel Kushner, Aleksandar Hemon) and one recent Newtonville Books guest reader (Salvatore Scibona).
One quick note though: what is up with Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland getting the snub from Man Booker and the National Book Award?
From CNN.Com
PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) — A document written by the Czech Communist police claims that author Milan Kundera informed on a purported Western spy in the 1950s, a state-sponsored institute said Monday.
The Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes said a team of historians and researchers found a document written by the SNB, or Czech Communist police, that identified Kundera as the person who informed on a man who was later imprisoned for 14 years.
The reclusive Kundera, the author of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” lives in Paris. Phone calls to his publisher seeking comment were not immediately returned.
For full article, click here.
A small publisher in suburban Seattle has hit the big time with a biography of GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
“My publishing career is probably all downhill from here. I don’t know that we could ever top this,” says Kent Sturgis, who runs Epicenter Press, publisher of Sarah: How A Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down.The book came out months before Palin hit the national spotlight.
Sturgis grew up in Alaska. His company specializes in books about Alaska — survival guides, histories, memoirs, humor books. So it made perfect sense for him to commission a biography of the newly elected governor.
Sturgis released the book regionally earlier this year. The first run of a few thousand copies did well.
Then John McCain announced his running mate.
“When I walked in the front door, the phone was ringing, and I grabbed it, and it was Barnes and Noble. They wanted 15,000 copies,” he says.
So Sturgis got a publicist. He hooked up with a bigger press in the Midwest to help fill book orders — almost 500,000 orders so far.
Despite this newfound success, Sturgis affirms, “I support Obama. What can I say? I respect Sarah Palin very much, or we wouldn’t have published her book. But I’m gonna vote for Obama.”
For the full story about Kent Sturgis, click http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94822349
“Publisher of Palin Biography Hits Jackpot” by Phyllis Fletcher. All Things Considered, NPR.org. October 11, 2008.
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