Between the Covers

Stephen King's "It" returning to the big screen

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Warner Bros. will bring a new version of Stephen King's It to the big screen.

And no, you're not crazy. There was already one version of It, a fairly cheesy TV miniseries with John Ritter, Harry Anderson, Tim Reid, Annette O'Toole and Richard Thompson. That cast may offer a hint as to why it was cheesy, though a pretty creepy Tim Curry played Pennywise the evil clown.

I take a lot of grief for this, but I loved It when it (ha) came out; I even read it twice. And yes, the pre-teen gang bang at the end was pretty heinous - and, let's face it, anticlimactic in terms of foiling evil - but up until then that novel is damned good. Is it any dumber than the end of The Stand (which I will not reveal here in case one person on the planet doesn't know what happened)? No! Both books are worth reading, even if they don't end as stylishly as, say, Salem's Lot.

Read more here.

Service for Barbara Parker

The great Oline Cogdill - a terrific critic who has exquisite taste in mysteries and loves Buffy the Vampire Slayer as much as I do - asked me to post this info:

A reception to celebrate the life of author Barbara Parker will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday March 21 at the Harbour House Condominiums, 10275 Collins Ave., Bal Harbour. Parker, a best-selling mystery writer who lived in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, died March 7 in Boca Raton. In lieu of flowers, the family prefers donations to help writers. Donations can be sent to the Author Sponsorship Fund, Mystery Writers of America, 1140 Broadway, New York, NY 10001.

 

 

Big book deals for pilot hero and novelist

Sure, the economy is awful, and the rest of us are losing our jobs or facing pay cuts. But despite all its cutbacks and reports of dreadful quarters (yawn), publishers are still shelling out the bucks.

The Daily Beast reports that pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger landed a 2-book deal for more than $3 million with William Morrow. (In case you live in a cave, Sully is the pilot who landed a US Airways flight in the Hudson River in January, saving the 155 passengers aboard.) I don't have to be on that plane to know I don't begrudge the guy a big payday (especially considering the contraints pilots are under these days).

Here's the best part, though: Book 1 will naturally be a memoir. Book 2 will be...a collection of poetry! Sully! I think you're awesome, but...poetry? You couldn't write a thriller or a Cold War spy novel or ANYTHING ELSE?

But that's not the only big deal news: The New York Times reported earlier this week that Chicago novelist Audrey Niffenegger, who struck a nerve with The Time Traveler's Wife, scored a $5 million advance from Scribner for Her Fearful Symmetry. Haven't read Time Traveler's Wife myself, but I know it was a huge book club hit.

Ted Kennedy's memoir due this fall

Yahoo! reports that the editor of Ted Kennedy's memoir has announced that the senator's book will be released in the fall.

Jonathan Karp of Twelve (part of Hachette Book Group USA) spoke to the American Association of Publishers earlier this week about True Compass, though he didn't specifiy if Kennedy - 77 and battling brain cancer - had actually finished the book.

What are you reading now?

``I am reading The Given Day by Dennis Lehane. It takes the reader to the gritty side of Boston during the final days of World War I. Lehane writes of anarchy in America by tracing the paths of two very different families through the dark days of the Spanish Influenza pandemic to the infamous Boston police strike of 1919. We meet exciting characters like Babe Ruth, Woodrow Wilson and Calvin Coolidge during a turbulent journey toward the Roaring Twenties.''

STEVEN M. FORMAN, author of Boca Knights

Mystery author Barbara Parker dies

Barbara Parker, who wrote 12 suspense novels - including the wonderful Gail Conner/Anthony Quintana series - died Saturday in Boca Raton after a long illness.

Her last book, The Dark of Day, was set in and around Miami Beach, and it had set up an intriguing new premise involving a young attorney mixing with the trendy club set.

You can read Oline Cogdill's obituary for Parker here.

And Barbara, you will be missed by mystery fans everywhere.

Doc Ford - and Randy Wayne White - are back in "Dead Silence"

I'll be the first to confess that Randy Wayne White's latest Doc Ford thriller gave me the heebie jeebies (in a good, must-keep-turning- pages way). In Dead Silence, kidnappers snatch a victim - a tough Native American kid named Will Chaser - and bury him alive. They're demanding one hell of a ransom: Fidel Castro's secret files, which have been snatched in turn by the U.S. government.

Anybody who grew up in Florida in the '70s will remember the story of Barbara Jane Mackle, an heiress who was kidnapped and buried and, thank GOD, rescued. They even made a TV movie about it, which I must've seen as a kid because just the words "buried alive" make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Anyway, Dead Silence is quite a ride (the kidnapping plot is the main event, but there's plenty more going on here). White, who seems like a hell of a nice guy, is coming here to talk about it Saturday at Books & Books. You can read my interview with him here.

Believe in Zoe Heller

Like many people, I like reading about dysfunctional families that are more dysfunctional than my own. Hence my admiration for Zoe Heller's latest novel The Believers, about a lefty New York family that goes kind of...nuts...when its patriarch is felled by a stroke.

Heller, you may remember, is the author of What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, one of my favorite Unreliable Narrator novels of the past several years. (It was made into a movie with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, which is about as good as it gets).

Anyway, you can read my review of The Believers here. And you can see Heller at 8 p.m. Friday at Books & Books in the Gables. 

It's OK to lie about books!

Here's the Telegraph's take on whether or not one should pretend to have read, well, anything.

What do you lie about reading?

The Irish Times reports that a recent poll indicates the book most people lie about reading is George Orwell's 1984.

Why lie about that? 1984 is actually a damned good book, not difficult to read at all...but I guess this is school related, when everybody used to try to pretend they read all the assigned books but never did. I was a diligent student of literature, though, and I almost read everything assigned for my senior year of AP English. You kind of had to, because at Nova High back in the day AP 12 meant you had to teach the class for seven days (not a week, which was five, but SEVEN), so you wanted to read your friends' books so they'd read yours and hopefully people would talk when you were teaching to help those horrible hours go by.

So I read everything except James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Which did not make the Irish Times' list. Which goes like this:

1. 1984, Orwell

2. War and Peace, Tolstoy

3. Ulysses, Joyce (I got to page 80!)

4. The Bible

5. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

6. A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking

7. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie (I've already copped to not reading this)

8. In Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust (and if you are calling the author of Ala Recherche du Temps Perdu a looney, I shall have to ask you to step outside!)

9. Dreams from my Father, Barack Obama (!!! who lies about this!?)

10. The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins (this must be an Irish thing).