Shawnie came home with a mission

I love Shawn Colvin; I really do. I love her versions of Steve Earle's plaintive Someday and Bob Dylan's classic You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go and the late, great Warren Zevon's Tenderness on the Block. I think her CD Whole New You is one of the most underrated albums by a singer-songwriter, and I was happy she won a Grammy - not that Grammys matter at ALL anymore - for A Few Small Repairs and its song Sunny Came Home.

So you might think I would thrill to the news she's writing - you guessed it - a memoir, entitled A Few Small Repairs, due to be published by HarperCollins sometime in 2009.

What I wish though is she'd work on a follow-up to These Four Walls, which came out way back in 2006. Shawn! Sing for us! Please!

New Krakauer book on hold

Anybody who can't wait to get their hands on Jon Krakauer's latest book is going to have to wait a bit longer. Publisher's Weekly is reporting that the author's The Hero - a meditation on the nature of heroism centered on football player Pat Tillman, who was killed by friendly fire in Afganistan - is on hold indefinitely.

The book was scheduled for release mid-October, but PW writes that Krakauer "has withdrawn the title," and that he's unhappy with the manuscript. Doubleday was planning a 500,000-copy first printing; now the publisher is assuming the book won't be ready to hit shelves until 2009.

Krakauer is the author of three of the best nonfiction works I've ever read: Into the Wild (made into a mediocre movie by Sean Penn; nice job, Sean); Into Thin Air (about the Everest disaster of which he was a part) and Under the Banner of Heaven (about Mormon fundamentalists). All are absolutely riveting, and I was really looking forward to this book.

What do Harry Potter and Cormac McCarthy have in common?

In its newest issue, Entertainment Weekly has listed its top 100 classics in various areas (movies, TV, style, music, etc.) and of course books. The best book in the past 25 years? They choose Cormac McCarthy's The Road, with - and this is really a strange choice - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Now I've read Goblet, and I loved it, but I'm just not sure I'm going to list it no. 2. First of all, The Prisoner of Azkaban was really when the series got rolling, so shouldn't it get a nod first? Then: Well. Harry Potter is a phenomenon like the publishing world has never seen, but is it the second best book of the past 25 years? I have to think about that one.

Of course, I'm happy to see Zadie Smith on there (for On Beauty), and Alice Munro (Selected Stories), and Possession (A.S. Byatt), and Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove, and Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, and ... well. You can see the book list for yourself by clicking here. For other lists, visit ew.com

Making things better, one book at a time

Can the market for liberal progressive books still thrive as the Bush era comes to a close? The creators of The Progressive Book Club are betting it can. A blend of book club, blog, political grassroots movement and online social network, the website offers works at a discount every month (somewhere between 10 and 40 percent, and on occasion 80 percent according to AP) and donates $2 per book to different environmental, educational or other organizations.

Board members include Dave Eggers, Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Chabon, and started up with about 200 books, from President Clinton's memoirs to Thomas Paine's Common Sense. I also couldn't help but notice Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle figures prominently on the website at the moment. There are also novel recommendations (Toni Morrison, Sherman Alexie). The staff pick at the moment is Rick Perlstein's Nixonland; the "partner pick" from the "Vote Vets" group is Jim Webb's A Time to Fight.

Elizabeth Wagley, club founder and CEO, says the plan is not to just rag on Republicans. That's fun and all, sure, but she hopes the club will "look toward the future."

Life is a mystery

So the secret is out: Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone is writing a tell-all about her for a Simon & Schuster imprint, Simon Spotlight Entertainment.

What? You don't CARE? How is it possible that you have no interest in the pop icon, who for decades has cashed in on the fact that music consumers are suckers, despite the fact she hasn't recorded a decent song since Like A Prayer?

You know what? I don't care either. Never mind.

Marlee's writing again

Actress Marlee Matlin, who washed out on the most recent version of Dancing With the Stars, will publish a memoir, according to the Associated Press. Matlin, who also co-starred on The L Word and won an Academy Award in 1987 for the film Children of a Lesser God, is working on I'll Scream Later - that's a tentative title - due to be published sometime in 2009.

Matlin has already written a novel, Deaf Child Crossing, and two books for kids (she's a mother of four).

Man, I used to LOVE Children of a Lesser God. That was back when William Hurt had hair and was actually kind of attractive.

Barack on the bookshelves

The publishing world wasn't about to wait for Sen. Hillary Clinton's concession speech. There's a big push on for books about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, reports AP. A BIG push. Though the consensus seems to be that none of these will be as compelling as Obama's own books (The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father) several works are planned for release this summer and later in the fall, including reporter Liza Mundy's book on Michelle Obama, several children's books and a collection of the candidate's speeches and screeds from the left and the right.

My favorites, based on titles alone: Matthew Honan's Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle: 366 Ways He Really Cares. Can someon explain why a bicycle cares? Because mine doesn't seem to care about me. Also I like the crazy paranoia of the ominous-sounding Obama - The Postmodern Coup: Making of a Manchurian Candidate by Webster Griffen Tarpley. Can I get a few more clauses with that title?

Gloom and doom

News flash: the immediate future is bleak for book sales, according to the speculations of the Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit supported by the publishing industry. AP reports that BISG announced today at Book Expo America that it estimates growth of only 3 to 4 percent through 2011.

Without Harry Potter to guide it, the children's book market is projected to barely break even. Worst hit, BISG believes, will be mass market paperbacks. The Good News: religious book sales are rising. What could help mass market? Dan Brown to finally finish his sequel to The Da Vinci Code. Of course, the way his books dominate the bestseller lists, it could be years after publication before the sequel makes it to paperback.

Dog narrates book!

The latest book touted - and sold - by Starbucks is Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain, which I keep looking at on my shelf because it has a dog on the cover (albeit not a black dog, but a dog nonetheless). This book is actually narrated by a dog named Enzo, who is apparently something of a philosopher who waxes nostalgic on his owner, an up and coming race car driver.

"Gestures are all that I have," he says. Or writes. Or thinks. Or something. "Sometimes they must be grand in nature." I like that opening. What I don't like is that I'm SURE this dog ends up dying at the end, because dogs ALWAYS end up dying at the end, and who needs trauma like that? I'm still blubbering over Pam Houston's Sight Hound, which I read years ago. I refuse to read Rick Bass' Colter; I want Willie Morris' My Dog Skip as far away from me as possible.

If you are not a giant wuss like me - or want to make your own informed decision on whether this  is for you - you can hear an interview with Stein here.

Who's buying what at bookstores?

Despite the downturn in the economy - look! I didn't say "recession"! - book sales are up for the first part of 2008, according to PW Daily, which reports March sales were up 1.3 percent. Sales have increased every month so far in 2008, though March boasted the smallest leap. PW Daily says that numbers for the bookstore segment (up 5.1 percent in the first quarter) are higher than the rest of the retail segment (up 3.9 percent in the quarter).

I dunno. Probably just means sales of coffee are on the rise.

May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead

Irish-born writer Nuala O'Faolain has died of lung cancer at 68. You can read a nice New York Times obituary of the feminist, journalist and memoirist by clicking here.

Ms. O'Faolain, whose name I will inevitably misspell by the end of this post, was here in Miami several years back to talk about her second memoir, Almost There (she became famous for her first memoir, Are You Somebody?) She was a terrific interview, lively and funny, asking me questions with a sincerity and good humor I will never forget.

The book of hers I will always treasure most is her novel My Dream of You, seductive and romantic and terribly sad, about an Irish journalist who delves into the history of the famine. I remember reading it on a hiking trip down the Grand Canyon (South Canyon to be exact, for those of you who are Canyoneers). The first mile down South Canyon is not something I really like to think about, unless I am thinking: "Wow, I am never going down THAT again," but I remember lugging that fat paperback to the bottom and then being so happy I had once it rained and rained and RAINED AND RAINED, and the six of us were stuck under a tarp for a large chunk of the trip with not a lot to do besides read and drink.

Anyway, I know Ms. O'Faolain, who died in Dublin, did not much believe in the afterlife, so the heading on this post is not terribly appropriate. But I'm going to do it anyway, as I am a sentimental type. It's this or I sing Danny Boy and trust me when I tell you that nobody wants to hear that.

Spitzer, hookers and a brand new book

Associated Press reports that the Penguin Group is publishing a book on the rise and fall (insert $5,000-a-pop hooker joke here) on former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. The book will be written by an author who knows a bit  about rises and falls: Peter Elkind, senior writer for Fortune magazine and co-author of the 2003 bestseller Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room. His collaborator? Filmmaker Alex Gibney, who made the documentary based on Elkind's book. The pair will also collaborate on a film on Spitzer.

There really are just so many jokes here I don't know where to begin. I'd solicit guesses at the title but it really is far too obvious to even use the word "solicit" here.

No word on when the book will be released.

Can Bob Woodward beat "The Secret"?

Talk about a no-win situation: PW Daily reports that publisher Simon & Schuster found that profits were down the first quarter of this year. Revenue fell 12%. The news is especially jarring when compared with last year's boon, the moronic popular self-help book The Secret, which apparently accounted for $53 million in S&S's first quarter last year.

S&S execs say they're expecting things to pick up, however. There are still chuckleheads out there who will buy The Secret, which touts the power of positive thinking and suggests that negative thoughts can bring on terminal illness, disease, poverty, stomach aches, shin splints and, possibly, premature baldness. Also expected this September: the fourth installment in Bob Woodward's Bush at war series, which one S&S exec says will definitely affect the election. Can that be good news for John McCain? Stay tuned!

OK, this won't be TOO controversial or anything

AP is reporting that Dutch film director Paul Verhoeven has written a book that suggests that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier who raped Mary. Wow, that won't offend too many people. But honestly, how can you not trust the man responsible for bringing us Basic Instinct and RoboCop?

Amsterdam publishing house J.M. Meulenhoff will publish Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait in September.

AP also points out that Verhoeven is a member of Jesus Seminar, a group of artists and scholars that tries to "establish historical facts" about Jesus.

No title, but a swell pedigree

Production began this week in Connecticut on the new screenplay by husband and wife writers Dave Eggers (What is the What) and Vendela Vida (Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name). The untitled project, about an expectant couple traveling around the country looking for a place to raise a family, is being directed by Sam Mendes (American Beauty).

If that's not enticing enough, the couple is played by John Krasinski of The Office (shirtless here as perfect guy Jim) and Maya Rudolph of SNL. The supporting cast is pretty stellar, too: Toni Collette, Jeff Daniels, Catherine O'Hara, a bunch of other people I don't really care about and Allison Janney, whom I will love forever for being C.J. Cregg on The West Wing and suffering through that debilitating woot canal.

Go graphic

Publishers Weekly reports that good news has come out of the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference: Sales were up by 12 percent in 2007. Sales in the U.S. and Canada totaled $375 million.

The industry has been boosted by sales of such graphic novelizations as Stephen King's The Dark Tower and Heroes, based on the NBC series, which I am not going to watch anymore because there are far too many annoying heroes out there. (Hint: somebody kill off the remaining twin with the bleeding eyes, the ridiculously stupid and naive Mohinder and any of the supremely annoying characters played by Ali Larter, and I MIGHT consider going back, though honestly it's a long shot.)

Other big sellers on the backlist: Watchmen and (predictably) 300, because who doesn't like guys in leather thongs chopping each other up?

Sing a love song to your favorite book - and win cash money

Seriously! Also in honor of National Library Week, Gale - part of Cengage Learning - is sponsoring the Books & Authors songwriting competition in which writers can compose and perform on YouTube an original song about their favorite book or author - and win $5,000, to be split with the winner's favorite library.

So make your video - no more than two minutes in length - and load that puppy to the librareo group on YouTube before midnight EST May 31. Extremely creative types may submit as many videos as you like as long as they don't sing about John Updike, as he is annoying. Ha ha! Just kidding. You can sing about any writer, even John Grisham, if you must. Top five winners will be chosen by June 6 and featured at www.gale.com/librareo for a nationwide vote.

Fiction may never be the same

Be still my heart! Oprah whipping boy James Frey's new book hits shelves May 13. This time, he's allowed to make stuff up: Bright Shiny Morning is a novel, so Oprah can't bitchslap him on national TV this time. Or maybe she can. She is allowed to do pretty much anything, isn't she?

What are the odds that Bright Shiny Morning is about a recovering drug addict? Is there anyone out there that thinks drug addicts are actually interesting? With the exception of Bubbles from The Wire, they're NOT.

Cornwell + Lifetime = movies

Lifetime Television has made a deal with suspense writer Patricia Cornwell to adapt her latest book At Risk and its sequel, The Front, due to be published in May.

Lifetime has adapted novels to its screen before, and as you may have guessed, they're all by, if not for, women: Joyce  Carol Oates' We Were the Mulvaneys, Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid's Chair, a bunch of things by the prolific Nora Roberts and, most recently, Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter.

At Risk introduces new characters for Cornwell, famous for her Kay Scarpetta novels: ambitious District Attorney Monique Lamont and state investigator Win Garano. It's set in Boston. I can't say I've read it - I quit reading Cornwell, whom I used to enjoy quite a bit, when she started resurrecting characters from the grave - but Publisher's Weekly was less than thrilled, calling it "far from Cornwell's best work." Still, somebody's reading - it was a New York Times bestseller.

My favorite Scarpetta books? The old school Cruel and Unusual and the chilling The Body Farm, in which Kay finally hooks up with Benton and Marino gets jealous and Lucy has not yet started being so annoying that you want her to be the next victim.

No word on whether Tori Spelling will play Monique, but let's hope not.

God beats Scarlett O'Hara

A nationwide Harris poll of 2,500-plus people reports that most Americans' favorite book is...wait for it...The Bible. With Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind a close second. Frankly, my dear, this whole list makes me wonder.

Here are the standings:

1. The Bible. Begat this!

2. GWTW, MM.

3. The Lord of the Rings series. Nerds unite!

4. The Harry Potter books by JK Rowling. How'd Jesus beat Harry?

5. The Stand, Stephen King. So surprising it's not The Tommyknockers.

6. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown. Seriously?

7. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee. YES!

8. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown. WHAAAAAAAAAA? OK. I can buy seeing the Da Vinci Code on this list, if only because everybody in the world read it, but this one isn't even any good!

9. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand. Starting to worry about the American people right about now.

10. Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. Whew. Perfectly good choice.

I guess my question is this: do any of these books make YOUR top 10 list?

The final frontier

Sci fi writer Arthur C. Clarke has died in Sri Lanka at age 90, according to the Associated Press.

I'm not a sci fi reader, but those who love the stuff know he's the author of more than 100 books - now that's prolific - and the co-creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a movie I have never quite figured out the appeal of but that sci fi fans of all shapes and sizes and ages adore. (What's up with those apes at the beginning? I mean, what the hell?) Still, I believe I did read a short story by him in high school which may or may not have been called The Nine Billion Names of God, and from what I remember it was pretty good.

If any sci fi readers could put him in proper perspective, I'd be grateful.

Speaking of books and new technology...

Australian author David Rollins and his publicists have come up with what seems like a surefire way to lure readers to his books (military fiction is the best way I can describe it, though his publicity material indicates that his books are funnier than you'd expect in this genre). He's sponsoring a contest in which readers make a video (two minutes max) telling us why they like his books. Post that on YouTube, and you're under consideration for the Grand Prize (500 bucks and a signed set of Rollins' books).

The 20 most popular videos will be posted on his website, and readers can vote for their favorites. Prizes will also be given away randomly on the site, so keep an eye out. The contest runs through June 8, 2008; Rollins' latest novel The Death Trust hit stores last September.

Read on your iPhone

Unless you're like me and don't have an iPhone...anyway, Penguin Press has jumped into the reading + technology fray by making the first chapters of all its latest novels available to download for free.

By March 17 there will be 50 titles available online, and the publishing house plans to upload the first chapters of every fiction title each month (no word on the nonfic titles yet). You can download the chapters on Blackberries, computers. phones, etc., to see if you like the story enough to buy the actual book and read the rest. Or I suppose you could just read the first chapter of every novel that comes out; maybe that would be entertaining enough.

Click here if you want to start downloading.

Save me

Is there anything more damaging to the continued good health of forests than using paper to print books? OK, carbon emissions maybe, but besides that?  An Associated Press story suggests that some publishers are actually paying attention to the fact that printing millions of pages each year is not exactly environmentally conscious. Not all, but some.

The AP reports that 60 percent of publishers have some sort of formal policy regarding the environment. Recycled paper seems like a no-brainer, but it's more expensive, so some  publishing houses (like Regnery) won't switch to it. On the other end of the spectrum are houses like Random (vowed in 2006 to increase use of recycled paper to save 500,000 trees a year); Penguin (making use of wind power); Hyperion (switching to soy ink!); and Scholastic (printed fancy schmancy version of the last Harry Potter book on "100 percent post consumer waste fiber.")

And of course, there are e-books. And Kindle. And if I were truly an environmentalist like I think I am, I suppose I would make use of new technology instead of letting all these trees go down so I can feed my reading habit. But I just can't do it. So viva the recycled paper!

Real consequences

NPR's News and Notes show last night spent the first 20 minutes discussing the  fake memoir (Love and Consequences) white-girl-claims-she-ran-with-the-Bloods debacle; it's worth a listen. Click here to listen to host Farai Chideya's interview with Motoko Rich, who broke the story.

Even better is a related intervew with writer and Hunter College prof Eisa Ulen, who is like, um, Margaret or whatever your name is, don't do us any favors by acting like this was all for the downtrodden black people.

Oops! A memoirist did it again

In her memoir Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival, Margaret B. Jones wrote about growing up a half-white, half-Native American foster child running drugs among the Bloods of South Central L.A. The book was compelling enough to earn a rare "deeply affecting" from Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times, a notoriously cranky reviewer whose mere name throws writers into paralyzing terror.

Here's the thing: The subtitle should have been A NOVEL of Hope and Survival. Just a few days after running a feature on Jones, the Times reports that Jones admitted making up the whole story, that she grew up in Sherman Oaks and went to a private Episcopal day school. (Personally, I think the Native American bit should've tipped someone off.) Somewhere, James Frey is breathing a sigh of relief that he's not alone.

You can read the whole Times story here, and let me assure you it's worth your time. The best part of the story? Jones' own sister ratted her out to Riverhead editors when she saw the Times story! Cold!

I have to admit I'm thoroughly sick of drug/alcohol memoirs, although not all are wretchedly self-indulgent (I'm thinking Smashed by Koren Zailckas, which was never over the top but disturbing nonetheless). But this whole thing makes me wonder what would have happened to the absolutely wonderful Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, had we been so picky about whether memoirs were true. Clearly some of the nutty things that happen in that book are embellished. Is embellishment OK in a memoir? Is shifting a date or making up a quote acceptable, while wholesale fiction (ie, Love and Consequences) is not? Or does it just matter if the book is good or not? Scissors is absolutely delightful even at its most horrifying, and I suppose it does need to be true on some level for it to work...or does it?

You knew it was coming...even if it makes you mad

In what can only be called an inevitable bit of news, AP reports that Oprah's latest book pick - the self-help book A New Earth by Eckart Tolle - has already sold 3.5 million copies, four weeks after the talk show host touted it as her latest book club selection.

AP says that this is a record shipment for publisher Penguin (and Penguin published Eat Pray Love, which wasn't exactly a slow seller in paperback). The story also says it's the fastest-selling Oprah pick Barnes & Noble has ever had and has topped the amazon.com charts since it was chosen.

I don't know how to respond to this except to utter a huge sigh. It's like hearing how well the latest reality TV shows are doing.

Strippers, terrorists and Florida

The Garden of Last Days, the new novel by Andre Dubus III, comes our way in June.  This one is set on Florida's Gulf Coast in early September 2001, when a stripper at the Puma Club for Men meets an arrogant, foreign young man who's awfully free with his cash. Normally this is a good thing for a stripper. But this guy, named Bassam, has business elsewhere in early September that will change history, which means nobody who comes in contact with him is going to be the same.

The novel is based on a real-life visit by 9/11 hijackers to a strip club, and you have to believe Dubus - a National Book Award finalist for House of Sand and Fog, which was made into a movie starring Ben Kingsley - is going to make the most of this intriguing premise. Count me in. This is the sort of summer reading to which you can really look forward.

Oprah's just doing her thing

We may gripe about her from time to time, but there's no denying that Oprah has quite an effect on reading habits. The Associated Press reports that  more than a million copies of Suze Ormon's Women & Money was downloaded since it was made available for free download on www.oprah.com last week.

According to AP, 19,000 copies were downloaded in Spanish. And apparently the free download hasn't hurt sales of the hard copy: the book was no. 6 on amazon.com as of Saturday.

Ormon said in a statement that Women & Money is "the most important book I've ever written."  Judging from the size of my credit card bill, I might want to put down the fiction and read it.

Look! We're not total idiots!

We're buying books!

The Association of American Publishers, which tracks sales, reports that the month of December saw a drop of 1.8 percent in sales. But wait, there's more! Yearly sales were up 7.4 percent, so...it's better than a wash. Right?

I never know how to interpret these figures. But up 7.4 percent is better than down 7.4 percent. Adult hardcover sales were up 7.8 percent for the year, says the AAP. Young adult books doing even better: hardcover sales up 46.4 percent for the year - thanks, Ms. Rowling - and paperbacks up 6.5 percent for the year. Maybe the next generation will be smarter than we are.

You have GOT to be kidding me

So Oprah has picked the new book for her book club, and it's a doozy: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhard Tolle is the new choice. Yes! A self help book! To hell with all the fine fiction and important non-fiction out there. Let's gaze at our navels some more! Heaven knows we don't do enough of THAT.

Now I hesitate to be too hard on Oprah; she's done a lot for reading in this country, which as we all know is filled with idiots who think American Gladiators is a legitimate form of entertainment. Oprah has made some questionable choices - James Frey comes leaping to mind - but she's introduced legions of readers to all sorts of interesting writers (Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates), even (maybe) tricked some into reading classics like East of Eden. Her last choice was Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, which is a great tale of medieval England and the building of cathedrals.

But...self help? Bleah. I don't need to awaken to my life's purpose. Come on, Oprah. Champion books that really matter.

Call me Ishmael, but don't call me a liar

The war of words continues in the ongoing saga of Ishmael Beah, whose memoir A Long Way Gone traces his life  from peaceful days with his family in a small African village to his conscription as a child soldier in Sierra Leone's brutal civil war. According to PW Daily, an Australian newspaper raised questions about some of the dates in the book, saying that if Beah was indeed wrong about them, he was only in the army for two or three months, instead of the two or three years detailed in his memoir.

Beah, says PW Daily, has issued a statement defending the dates in his book, offering as proof two other Sierra Leoneans to support his version of the events. He also talks about a lengthy back-and-forth discussion with reporters for The Australian, who found a man who claimed to be Beah's father, who was supposed to be dead, according to the memoir.  The guy was not Beah's dad, as it turns out. "I was right about my family. I am right about my story," Beah wrote in a press release sent out by his publisher, Farrar Straus Giroux. "Sad to say, my story is all true."

I guess I wonder: Does it matter if he was in the army killing people for a few months or a few years? Either way it would scar a child forever, I would think. Or is that simply too much poetic license for a writer to take?

A Long Way Gone has sold around 700,000 copies in hardback, according to FSG and PW. A paperback edition is due out in early August; it should see excellent sales because the subject matter makes it a natural for book clubs.

Go fly a kite

Still can't get enough of The Kite Runner? Even though you saw the movie and you have to admit it's not...that...great? Nova Southeastern U is leading a forum on Afghanistan and the challenges facing the country. It's called, appropriately enough, "Afghanistan and its Challenges: Realities of the Kite Runners," and yes, it will include discussion of Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel.

Afghan native Bahaudin G. Mujtaba, a professor at Nova and cultural consultant to the producers of the Kite Runner film, will lead the forum, which runs from 9-11:30 a.m. Feb. 8 at the main NSU campus at 3301 College Ave. $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Need more info? 954-520-2800 or http://www.nova.edu/

King's "Key"

In response to the hint that this blog was a little highbrow in its coverage of books - ME? highbrow? I watch Reaper, for heaven's sake, or at least I did before the WGA strike - I am pleased to report that Stephen King's Duma Key arrives in stores Tuesday.

I haven't read Duma Key  - which is set on Florida's west coast -mostly because Herald movie critic Rene Rodriguez grows petulant when he doesn't get to review the horror books (how did I get stuck with the dreadful Hannibal Rising, you ask? BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT). Anyway, I passed Duma Key along to him; his review will run Tuesday.

Can't tell you too much more except Rene, a King aficianado, says the book is "awesome." I'm looking forward to it. Horror is a genre I would enjoy a lot more if more horror writers wrote as well as Mr. King. Last book I read by him was From a Buick 8 (actually I listened to it on CD) and I liked it. Loved the short story Everything's Eventual, though, which was good enough to be a standalone X-Files episode, definitely better than some of those latter day episodes about killer trees or whatever.

My favorite King book? Most people say The Stand, which was definitely great and scary until that whole Giant Hand of God business; I also loved The Shining and Salem's Lot. But God, how I loved It, pre-teen gang bang at the end notwithstanding.

Neither shaken nor stirred

Sir Roger Moore, aka The James Bond Who Never Lived Up to Sean Connery, is publishing his memoir this fall with HarperCollins, according to the AP. Called My Word is My Bond, the book will not only delve into Moore's adventures filming The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die, but also talk about his encounters with other stars - Cary Grant, his friend Audrey Hepburn, Sinatra - and his battles with his health.

I am sorry to report, however, that I am not excited by this news. Nope. I am not a James Bond fan at all. How has nobody noticed they've been making the same movie over and over FOR AS LONG AS I'VE BEEN ALIVE? It's like Drew Barrymore's acting skills - am I the only one who notices she has none?

I wish the best of luck to Sir Roger, who is rockin' like a hurricane at 80, and yet...I can't say I need to see any of his Bond films again (or anybody else's, for that matter, though everybody keeps telling me to watch the one with Daniel Craig...I remain skeptical despite the enticing shirtless scene I keep seeing stills from.)

There isn't a bird in your head, but read this anyway

What began as a classroom project ended up a winner Monday when Good Masters! Sweet Ladies: Voices from a Medieval Village won the John Newbery Award for best children's book. According to the AP, author Laura Amy Schlitz at Park School in Baltimore noticed that her fifth graders enthusiastically embraced the Middle Ages, and so she wrote a series of monologues about the period so that the kids could perform them.

Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret earned the Caldecott Medal for best picture book, and Mo Willems' There Is A Bird In Your Head! won best book for beginning readers. (How I love that title!) Christopher Paul Curtis won The Coretta Scott King Book Award for best African American young adult author with Elijah of Buxton.

The awards are given out by the American Library Association.

Go, go, JCo

Joyce Carol Oates - or JCo, as David Sedaris likes to call her - earned nominations in two categories for the National Book Critics Circle Awards, announced Saturday in San Francisco. She was not nominated in a special category for Most Prolific Author Ever in the History of the World, Even Counting Stephen King, but Lord knows she could have been.

Oates was nominated for her novel The Gravedigger's Daughter and her autobiography The Journals. The latter is a new category, in which Miami's Edwidge Danticat was also nominated for Brother, I'm Dying.

Fiction nominees: Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men; Vikram Chandra's 3 billion page Sacred Games; and, inexplicably, Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher, a novel I truly wanted to like due to my love for Wiggins' brilliant Evidence of Things Unseen. The Shadow Catcher, a fictionalized life of Western photographer Edward Curtis, had its moments, but overall turned out to be a poorly calculated mess. Missing from the list? Denis Johnson's critically lauded National Book Award winner Tree of Smoke.

Nonfiction finalists included Tim Weiner's National Book Award winner Legacy of Ashes and Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

For a full list of nominees, go here. Results will be announced March 6.

(Literary) election fever!

Barack Obama may have lost the New Hampshire primary to Hillary Clinton, but right now he's winning in book sales. AP is reporting that due to popular demand, Crown has requested an extra 50,000 copies of Democratic hopeful Barack Obama's book The Audacity of Hope and another 10,000 of Dreams From My Father.

Clinton's million-selling memoir Living History has also seen increased sales, says the AP, though not quite as much. The story says that Living History was selling around 1,000 copies a week in December and early January, with Audacity at 7,000 a week and Dreams at 2,000 a week.

No word on sales of Dennis Kucinich's If I Win I'll Put Dick Cheney On That Flying Saucer I Saw At Shirley MacLaine's Place.

Bibliotherapy - it works

Can the written word stave off depression? An excellent article in the Guardian indicates that yes, there are ways in which fictional characters can help those suffering from anxiety, bipolar issues, panic attacks or other mental disorders.

The story is about a group in Birkenhead, England, one of almost 50 "Get Into Reading" programs in the area at hospitals, day care centers, group homes and other facilities. The group members read aloud, the idea being that reading can alleviate mental distress. It probably doesn't work if you're struggling through something as moronic as, say, Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, which would cause anyone anxiety. The groups tend to stick to classics, though - works by Shakespeare, Dickens, the Brontes and the like. They even read The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, a writer one would not normally associate with hilarity or the general lifting spirits. (I'm still feeling kind of low over Jude the Obscure - damn you, AP English!)

The books aren't dumbed down at all, no matter the group's makeup, according to the Guardian article, which then uses an example of what I consider one of the best lines in the English language. From A Winter's Tale: "We'll thwack him hence with distaffs." Not sure what that means, exactly, but I feel great just saying it aloud.

More best ofs (is that even English?)

Oh, how I love best of lists. I just managed to make it through Entertainment Weekly's Best/Worst issue, and I have to commend critic Jennifer Reese for choosing Lionel Shriver's The Post-Birthday World, a novel about love, sex and morality, as the best fiction of the year. Best nonfiction is Alan Weisman's The World Without Us. Weisman's book appeared on many top 10 lists, but I didn't see Shriver's book show up on any. Herald reviewer Ellen Kanner liked it; I haven't read it yet, but I'm intrigued.

To read the full list go here.

And before you snobs turn your nose up at EW reviews, let me just say here that nobody, and I mean NOBODY, can capture the flavor of a book in just a few sentences the way they do at EW. I'd rather read their reviews than more than half of the pontificating wankage that appears in the New York TImes Review of Books. (Heresy!) EW never scoffs at genre fiction, and its writers don't muck around telling you all about their personal lives and issues. They get to the point. Wish I could do as much.

A bonus: In the same issue, Stephen King gives his best/worst list, always worth checking out (I thank him for the tip on Mischa Berlinski's Fieldwork, a terrific novel that was nominated for the National Book Award). His no. 1 is William Gay's Twilight, now out in paperback, about which he writes, "Think No Country for Old Men . . . and Deliverance . . . then double the impact." Whoa.

Zadie's back - sort of

If you're like me - and you're probably not; you're probably saner - you picked up The Book of Other People (Penguin, $15) and shrieked because you saw Zadie Smith's name on it and thought, "She's written a new book! That sacrificial goat worked!"*

But no. Ms. Smith, genius author of White Teeth and On Beauty, is merely the editor of this anthology, which came out this week. It's a collection of stories (one by Smith, naturally, plus she wrote the introduction) based on "character." That means she asked a bunch of writers to create a character specifically for this book. Got it? Contributors include David Mitchell, Daniel Clowes, ZZ Packer, Nick Hornby, Edwidge Danticat, George Saunders, Colm Toibon, Dave Eggers, Miranda July, Vendela Vida, Andrew Sean Greer, Chris Ware, Hari Kunzru, Heidi Julavitz, Jonathan Lethem and others. (I'm tired of typing.)

As a bonus, each copy sold benefits 826NYC, a nonprofit organization that helps kids 6-18 with writing skills.

* no goats were harmed in the blogging of this post

A happy holiday for booksellers

2006 may not have been the best year for independent booksellers, but PW Daily reports that holiday sales perked up in 2007, not hugely but modestly. Still, better sales are always good news when it comes to book sales. We'll take what we can get.

The story cites several books that were in strong demand in stores across the country: Stephen Colbert's I Am America (And So Can You!); The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden; The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz; and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, which is described by one store owner as "the stocking stuffer book this year." No wonder it's still no. 1 on the paperback nonfiction bestseller list.

Mitchell Kaplan says that all of the titles mentioned above sold well at Books & Books, including the new store in Grand Cayman. "Eat Pray Love was huge," he says. "It got some more wind under its sails." Also big for Books & Books: the photo books I Was Cuba and Havana Deco. Foodies gobbled up copies of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse and sci fi fans sought Star Wars: A Pop-Up Guide to the Galaxy. Probably claimed it a gift for their kids, too, but we all know better.

There will be "Blood"

We won't see it until 2009, but the AP and Publisher's Weekly are reporting that Tom Wolfe is publishing his new novel through Little, Brown. That he has ended a 40-year relationship with Farrar Straus Giroux probably is only of interest to those in the publishing world, but you've got to admit, 40 years is quite a run. One wonders if the weak sales and critical disdain for his last book, I Am Charlotte Simmons, had anything to do with the split.

Charlotte Simmons revealed a most shocking development: That college kids drink a lot, take drugs and have meaningless, frequent hookups that lead to nothing more than other meaningless hookups. Imagine! Wolfe reports that his new book Back in Blood will be more of a Bonfire of the Vanities-style novel set in Miami, taking on "class, family, wealth, race, crime, sex, corruption, and ambition." Sounds like a day at the Herald, except for the wealth part. Also sounds ambitious and intriguing, although let's face it: It would be terribly easy to get Miami wrong. Stay tuned in 2009 to find out how Wolfe fared.

The apocalypse: nigh?

So I just came across a mindboggling story on the wires from the Kansas City Star. Seems there's this new website, dailylit.com, at which you can sign up for email installments of more than 500 different books. Each segment arrives in a chunk digestible in about five minutes. The idea is that people don't have time to devote to reading every books, especially classics (hello, Moby-Dick). So you just grab a few minutes when you're on your Blackberry or checking your email, and you make your way through the book slowly but surely. The service is free for some classics; others cost $4.95. The idea is to supplement, not replace, reading.

But here's what freaked me out: Susan Danziger, one of the founders, tested the program by reading Pride and Prejudice this way. Now what self-respecting literarily inclined woman reads P&P one page at a time!? How could you possibly stand not to speed through it breathlessly? HOW? I don't understand. Just rent the miniseries if your time is that valuable.

On the other hand, Moby-Dick comes in 252 handy segments . . .

Looking ahead

This time of year everybody's looking back and debating what the best books of the year were. I'm going  to do that too - sometime at the end of the month - but right now I'm thinking ahead. December is usually a fairly quiet month in the book publishing world; most of the interesting end-of-the-year books come out in September or October, or possibly early November. But come January, a whole new crop awaits.

Here's what I'm looking forward to most: Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth. Lahiri is author of the novel The Namesake, which I think everyone I know has read, and she won the Pulitzer Prize for her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies. The new book is a short story collection as well; it's out April 1.

Also intriguing and on the horizon in February: Chip Kidd's follow-up to The Cheese Monkeys, entitled The Learners, about "advertising gone mad," as Augusten Burroughs writes on the jacket blurb. Kidd is an associate art director at Knopf, where he has designed some of the most famous book jackets ever (remember the iconic dinosaur on Jurassic Park back in the day?). He also designed an extremely cool Miami Book Fair International poster a few years ago. But he's also a terrific writer, so The Learners should be a blast.

Harry who?

Amazon.com is just as pleased as punch that it paid almost $4 million bucks for a handwritten and illustrated book of fairy tales by J.K. Rowling entitled The Tales of Beedle the Bard (see sample illustration at left). Go here if you want to read further of the crowing and see photos of the book. There are only seven copies in existence, according to the self-congratulatory folks at amazon, and the Los Angeles Times reports that  in a posting on a discussion board, the company also said it plans to send the book on a tour of schools and libraries. Presumably a human will be present to tote it around as well.

OK, now this has got to be a first...a book tour that's really a book tour and not an author tour. Only Rowling could manage this one.

Good luck, Terry

AP is reporting that fantasy author Terry Pratchett, 59, has announced on his illustrator's website that he has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's.

Pratchett, 59, is author of the Discworld series, which have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide, according to his website. His latest novel, Making Money, came out this fall.

Terry doesn't want anybody moping around, apparently. "I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet," he wrote on illustrator Paul Kidby's website. Whatever you say, Terry. We send good wishes your way.

Ethics and answers

The National Book Critics Circle released the results of its ethics poll on Tuesday - the first such poll in 20 years, according to Publishers Weekly - and while the results are interesting they are also occasionally shocking.

Only 76 percent of those responding said a reviewer should read a book cover to cover if they plan on writing a review. I'm surprised that number is so low; what sort of creep reviews a book if he hasn't read it? I feel perfectly happy to climb up on my high horse about this; I can honestly say I have never not finished a book if I wrote about it. Even if I hated it. Especially if I hated it. I remember struggling through the lengthy, tedious Until I Find You by John Irving and cursing him every step of the way, but I knew I had to finish or I couldn't properly dismiss it as the junk that it was.

Here's the other shocker: Only 60.5 percent said it was perfectly OK to ignore self-published authors. Now some spineless individuals voted that they were "not sure" about that. HOW CAN YOU NOT BE SURE? But what I'd really like to know is how the respondents who believe book critics must review self-published books actually manage to do their jobs. Where do they find time to evaluate self-published books, none of which undergoes a rigorous editing process by anyone other than the author, which, for the record, does not actually count as "editing"? How do they eat, sleep, write, walk their dogs, have conversations with other people and, you know, read? I can barely get to most of the legitimately published books, even to assign them to other people.