I wish I was making this up, but I'm not that clever.

Posted by andrea at 01:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Scream has been found. Story not interesting enough, you say? Why not throw an ex-soldier, would-be priest and current undercover cop into the mix? Yeah, that should do it.

Posted by andrea at 01:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spike Magazine has an interesting link to erotica writer Susie Bright's interview of Melinda Gebbie & Alan Moore, whose book Lost Girls has been building quite the buzz (we talked about it here).

Other comments by Susie offer some interesting insight into the fate of the book business. More after the jump...

Spike Magazine quotes Susie Bright's interview in Publishers' Weekly:

"Do you know how many times I've walked into a book-signing and the manager greets me with: "Thank god you're here!—the only thing we're selling nowadays are sex and business books."

My heart sinks. It may sound good for "sex authors" at first glance, but it's more like an "end times" mantra. It's the last thing the bookseller says before they close their doors.

We are in a bookshop crisis of mind-boggling proportions. I have a list of every bookstore that I have appeared at or done a special promotion for since 1984.

Do you know how many of those stores have closed since I started my list?

NINETY PERCENT.

Book biz observers understand this, but they don't always draw the line between our business imploding and the slender survival thread of erotica."

Put that in the context of this comment from Conversational Reading about the ongoing debate around The Quill Awards:

<b>"Can we just get a blogosphere-wide denounciation of this Quills idiocy? ...They´re just gluing together some shoddy piece of garbage so that they have yet another marketing tool. That´s all this sham is."</b>

Since when did marketing books become a bad idea? Most of the books on the Quills awards are not business books or erotica. So if companies want to put marketing dollars behind exposing those books to more readers, well...then why not?

The Kenyon Review (which Conversational Reading cites) makes a more pointed argument. The problem with the Quill Awards is not that they are a marketing tool, but that they are a BAD one.

Posted by andrea at 07:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Will Self, author of highly amusing, often grotesque fiction, has self-published (trying to restrain myself from saying ha) a short story on his eponymous website. It's called The Gesture:

It was one of those things that married people come to loathe about their spouses with a deep and passionate intensity, along with the timbre of their coughs, their tipsy giggles, the particular, guilty creaks with which they ascend the stairs. In Holly’s case, it was the dismissive flick of thumb and index finger, with which Brion indicated that the subject was closed. That he wasn’t going to come out with them to lunch - and that he didn’t wish to talk to her anymore.

Just the right thing to ease you into the workday today.

Posted by andrea at 07:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thousands of prisoners have been shaving their heads and chests to donate hair to help mop up the Philippines' worst oil spill, officials said Wednesday.

But who's going to clean up all the oily hair?

Posted by andrea at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes, a book just needs to be put down. I recommend burying it in the backyard, for closure.

RIP, Naguib Mahfouz, "the only writer in Arabic to win the Nobel Prize for literature" (WaPo) and a supporter of the Egyptian peace with Israel.

Brad Meltzer, author of the upcoming The Book of Fate, talks about writing comic books. His predecessor as the writer behind Green Arrow comics? Kevin Smith, director of Clerks, Mallrats, etc.

And to bring things full-circle, Mark Sarvas talks about books he's recently finished reading. Show off.

Posted by andrea at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The state of marketing just has me feeling a little icky today.

First Gawker, then The Millions comments on an article in Variety that says that someone's adapting Malcolm Gladwell's Blink as a movie.

Those of you who have read Blink, a book which doesn't have a plot so much as a central theme, may wonder how this could be.

Apparently, the movie will star Leonardo DiCaprio as a jury selection expert who's especially adept at thin-slicing. In other words, the movie will be totally different from the book, but it will leverage the book's branding and popularity to market a distinct creative work.

So, you can do that now? Amazing.

Posted by andrea at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

But, look, they carved their own tombstone. How cute.

I think I am going to go throw up now.

Posted by andrea at 01:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am over the whole Pluto thing. But in case you aren't, here are some astronomy books. Get them while they're cheap -- you know, before they become collector's items.

Last chance to register for the Three-day novel-writing contest.

Sound erudite: Learn to pronounce literary names with this convenient guide (courtesy of The Millions). Don't even pretend like you knew how to say "Ngugi wa Thiong'o" before.

Galleycat points to a Newsday article about a (purported) new trend of books encouraging people to be nice to each other. Who wants to be nice when you could be rich? Oh, and if you need a book to tell you to be nice to others...maybe you need more than a book.

Poppy Z. Brite talks about Post-Katrina New Orleans.

We wish we were in Florence right now. So does Rare Book News.

More from me when my own coffee kicks in.

Posted by andrea at 08:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrea at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"Truthiness" and "wikiality" -- both words minted by Colbert -- are the buzzwords of the year, according to Global Language Monitor (link via Writer's Blog).

Watch Colbert explain wikiality (reality modified by Wikipedia) here.

Posted by andrea at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The WaPo has published its Fall Reading List, and we're delighted to tell you that we have a whole bunch of books for ya...

but except for Frederick Forsyth's The Afghan, I can't talk about them!

It's all very hush-hush, but we'll be selling a lot of the books on the lsit, especially in the thrillers section...so keep checking back at www.zooba.com and keep happy this fall!

Posted by andrea at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello darlings. I really wasn't planning on posting again so soon, but some things must be discussed.

Do you see this title? We carry it in a few of Zooba's sister clubs, but not in Zooba.

Here is a clip from the club review:

You’ll laugh out loud as you discover Celia’s thoughts on:
• the right way to book a character breakfast at Disneyworld (unless you like eating chicken from a bucket with Sneezy)
• the secrets of celebrity moms (don’t hate them for being beautiful when there are so many other good reasons)
• why clothes for your first grader make them look like angry Vegas showgirls
• life as the world’s oldest tween queen stalker, and much more.
See why the truth with a Southern twist can be so much fun! Explicit language.

I love this book. WHY DON'T WE HAVE IT IN ZOOBA?! Commenters, here is your chance. Does anyone agree that Zooba should get a little Skanky?

Posted by andrea at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Apologies for the lack of links on Friday. I was struck down by the Tubercular Death Flu and didn't make it very far out of bed.

However, now that I have made a good-enough recovery (thanks to the CyQuil), I am free to comment on this morning's book news!!

GalleyCat gets its hands dirty and officially jumps into the Chick Lit fray and comments on the latest Peter Pan sequel (no, not Alan Moore's Dirtastic fairyfest). I'm sorry. There's just no topping Hook.

Free audio books! (Plug: here, too!)

Gawker highlights what might be the most offensive story illustration ever.

Moorish Girl has a nod to Edward P. Jones' All Aunt Hagar's Children and a link to 2 "glowing" book reviews.

There's more! So much more! But I have real work to do, so you'll have to check back later today for it.

Posted by andrea at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's that time of year again, when writers and other professional intellectuals head off to their sabbatical locations.

Moorish Girl is blogging from Bread Loaf, where even the waiters are talented.

The NYT discusses the relative merits of Yaddo and MacDowell and concludes that the sex is better at Yaddo.

Salon disagrees, but only in terms of some colonist named Walter.

And I have a link to Bellagio. They may be revising their deadlines and program dates, but I feel that Lake Como deserves a special mention.

Posted by andrea at 02:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was GONNA do a post on comics today, but Jessica Crispin of Bookslut totally beat mine.

Hers: includes the term "hairy-chested Neal Adams love god."

Mine: discusses a technique called "slabbing" -- which is nowhere NEAR as exciting as it sounds.

Where does she get those wonderful toys?

Posted by andrea at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ben Vershbow says definitely not and sounds a call to arms:

Google, a private company, is in the process of annexing a major province of public knowledge, and we are allowing it to do so unchallenged...Years from now, when Google, or something like it, exerts unimaginable influence over every aspect of our informated lives, we might look back on these skirmishes as the fatal turning point.

Read the rest here.

Posted by andrea at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Music from a 16th-century illuminated manuscript will be performed for the 1st time in about 500 years, reports the Halifax Record.

For those of you who aren't huge book dorks like me, the illuminated manuscripts produced in medieval Europe (there are non-European kinds) are gorgeously illustrated books, usually made of parchment or vellum and bedecked in gold and expensive inks.

They took years to make and were commonly produced in monasteries, since most people at that time couldn't read and didn't have the significant discretionary income it took to obtain the materials involved in book production.

Why is the Halifax case so rare? Well, unfortunately, unless they are protected, these manuscripts aren't actually used for their original purposes or even preserved. They're more often ripped apart, and their pages sold individually.

You could argue that this democratizes an expensive art form, making it available to people who can't afford a whole book (few people can), but it destroys the book in question.

There are better ways to make art publicly accesible. The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia has found one of them.

(see pics of illuminated manuscripts in general here, and for one of the more famous examples, The Book of Kells, here)

Posted by andrea at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back when I was still a copywriter at Zooba, I wrote a newsletter about James Tiptree, Jr. and was completely fascinated.

Tiptree, whose muscular prose was compared to Hemingway and described as 'ineluctably masculine,' was the public face of Alice B. Sheldon.

Daughter of african explorers, CIA operative, Doctor of Experimental Psychology, Sheldon thought of herself as "nothing but an old lady in Virginia," but her writing transformed SF. Not only did she successfully masquerade as a man for years, but at one point she ran away from her CIA spook husband and it took him months to find her.

I mentioned this to a friend, who asked: "How is it possible to hide from your CIA husband?"

I said: "Simple, you just have to be much, much smarter than he is."

That's why this article comes highly recommended. Click to read about a truly singular mind.

Posted by andrea at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jessica Crispin has a link to a radio interview by Kathryn Davis, author of The Thin Place. Davis has been compared to Lewis Carroll, Virgina Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov...you get the picture. And the book remided our reviewer of Russell Banks' The Sweet Hereafter, the Atom Egoyan film adaptation of which pretty much broke my heart.

The NYT has a profile of Nora Roberts, with a nod to Angels Fall.

We missed Ray Bradbury's birthday (it was yesterday). Sorry Ray! If it soothes at all, The Illustrated Man was a childhood favorite and Bradbury fans should check out Bradbury Speaks -- a must.

Browse-Inside technology for everyone! (link via GalleyCat)

Old Hag's mini-review of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go is not to be missed, if only because it features this synopsis: "a prep-school love triangle worthy of a great piece of teen chick-lit is inexplicably ruined by the fact that the characters all have to give up their organs afterwards."

There, that should keep you busy for a while.

Posted by andrea at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In addition to the debut book nominees for the publishing industry's Quill awards, Zooba is offering all nominated books in the General Fiction category, the History/Current Affairs/Politics category, and the Biography/Memoir category.  The winners will be announced October 10.

General Fiction:
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore
The March by E.L. Doctorow
Suite Française by Irene Nemirovsky
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

History/Current Events/Politics:
An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr
Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson
The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey by Candice Millard
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

Biography/Memoir
Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival by Anderson Cooper
Marley & Me: Life and Love with the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan
Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields
The Tender Bar: A Memoir by J. R. Moehringer
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Posted by Larry Shapiro at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, so we're cheap! But we're also proud to feature 3 of the 5 candidates for Quills Debut Author of the Year awards (for just $9.95 + free shipping)!

Raymond Koury's The Last Templar, a DaVinci Code-esque international bestseller.

Julie Powell's Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, the true story of a modern American woman's quest to to recreate each of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year, complete with obscenity-laced meltdowns and surprising triumphs.

...and The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family, in which the Today show correspondent takes his aging parents on a Winnebago ride across America.

Congrats to all of our awesome authors!

Posted by andrea at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While monitoring the recent reemergence of the controversy about the merits of Chick Lit that followed the publication of the anthology This Is Not Chick Lit, I was reminded of Dan -- oh, excuse me -- "Danuta" de Rhodes' wry twist on the genre, The Little White Car.

Part Cooking with Fernet Branca, part Bridget Jones-esque trifle, the book follows the adventures of a 22-year-old Parisian who, unlucky in love, gets wasted and flees the City of Lights only to find that she may be responsible for the death of Princess Diana.

Throw in some feather-headed adventures, a degenerate best friend and a Saint Bernard named Cesar, and you get a frothy, irreverant Chick Lit comedy that deserves to be revisited, even if it has been written by a non-chick.

Posted by andrea at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Here at Zooba, we get our share of free Advance Reading Copies (ARCs). These are usually delivered to the editors and may then be passed down to assistants or around the office for employees to take home.

But it seems that some people are selling the more coveted ARCs on Ebay, at used bookstores, etc.

The practice has sparked a somewhat heated debate between someone at least claiming to be bestselling author Nora Roberts and a commenter on the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

GalleyCat has a good recap of action. You can see the post that started it all here.

Posted by andrea at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There, now that I've gotten us forever banned from Google, I'd like to note:

SNAKES ON A PLANE PREMIERES TONIGHT.

I would normally now link to a movie review, but since this work of cinematic GENIUS was not screened for critics, none exist.

So here, instead, is the tantalizing review from Snakes on a Blog, which actually just crashed. Oh well. Your images are broken anyway, Brian.

Try this instead: NY Metro's "review," which quotes a theatergoer as saying "People are ready for it to be terrible. But they want to see the terribleness for themselves."

Money.

Side note: Viewer beware: This movie has the power to melt your brain. I told my father, one of the smartest people I know, that I was going to see it. The conversation went like this:

Me: I'm going to see Snakes on a Plane.

Dad: What is that?

Me: It's a movie.

Dad: Oh. What is it about?

Me: <pause> Seriously?

Posted by andrea at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Okay, CNN says that Jennifer Lopez and super-classy, non-famous ex Ojani Noa are not going to court over a tell-all book he wants to write about their relationship.

This probably means that said book won't get past the spitball stage, but why get upset about it when you can take matters into your own hands and simulate the Noa-J.Lo memoir experience with a cocktail of several other tell-alls?

Je presente: Toasty Vixen Queens Who Shine, a unique melange of titles sure to satisfy (I recommend adding them to your reading list in this order for maximum effect):

Start with a celebrity marketing hook (Burnt toast).

Shake together with some high-profile sex with lopsided power dynamics (Sex with the Queen).

Turn up the heat and tone down the formality with something smut-a-licious (Confessions of a Video Vixen).

And top it all off with a dash of jaw-dropping shamelessness (Shine).

Mwah! Parfait! Devour and enjoy.

Posted by andrea at 05:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Saw a very amusing quote in the NYT today, regarding cooking contests at County Fairs:

“We learned that men wanted to enter in baking but were intimidated by the skills of the regular competitors,” said Lyn Jarvis, culinary supervisor of the Champlain Valley Fair in Vermont, which offered its first men-only contest in 1990. “Now they are winning best in show ribbons.” (The Champlain Valley Fair will be held in Essex Junction, Vt., Aug. 26 through Sept. 4.)

Men who bake, and bake well. I might be in love. If there are any guys out there who want to don a chef's hat and claim that blue ribbon, I recommend the following:

Preserves is "a complete 'how-to' on how to capture the flavors of summer in delicious homemade jellies, pickles, chutneys and more," and its lucious cover makes it suitable as a coffee table book, so you can show off your interest in cooking even before you show off your skills.

Still afraid of your stove? Beer Can Chicken means You Can Cook. You probably have half of the ingredients in your home RIGHT NOW.

Don't want to use Coors Light on the chicken? Make your own with Dave Miller's Home Brewing Guide and customize your drinks to your taste.

Posted by andrea at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From an article on CNN.com (link goes to the security rules):

Kingsley Veal, 35, a geologist from England, said his Continental flight from London's Heathrow airport to San Francisco was "long and boring" because, under British flight restrictions, he couldn't bring any books or music on board.

Hello? What is that, a 9 hour flight with no form of entertainment except for whatever in-flight movie or sitcoms the airline chooses to show?

I would say that it sounds like we'll see a spike in Ambien prescriptions as international travelers seek to put themselves out of their misery, but let's face it, watch enough episodes of Two and a Half Men on that tiny airline screen and your brain will just automatically shut off anyway.

If these restrictions continue, we should all lobby for in-flight WiFi access so you can download your favorite eBooks, TV shows, podcasts, games and more to your portable device.

But until that day comes, the best solution is to be prepared and download audio books to your iPod or MP3 player.

Incidentally, Zooba has an agreement with Audible that allows you to receive a FREE audiobook, + 30% off additional audio purchases. Click here to check it out.

I had mono in March and the downloads of the Iliad and the Odyssey may have saved my life. 

Posted by andrea at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Surprising no one, Starbucks is kicking off their new bookselling venture with Mitch Albom (of Tuesdays with Morrie fame)'s new novel, For One More Day.

Even the press release (oops, I mean Yahoo news story) notes that "Albom's sentimental narratives are far from the Beat poetry traditionally associated with coffeehouse culture," and it's definitely a departure from the funky CDs and DVDs they've been hawking alongside the coffee.

Since many writers and book people are usually:

1) dependent upon coffee as upon air itself

2) dependent upon Starbucks for office space while retaining some high-mindedness about the corpo-ickiness of it all

there's been some chatter about this in the blogosphere. To spare you your own search, here's a brief rundown of the reactions:

It's the apocalypse: Gawker

Good for business (with slight anti-corpo-coffee aftertaste): EW, Marketing Blurb, Seattlest

We couldn't care less but feel obligated to join the conversation: Defamer

We get paid by the byline: Akron Beacon Journal (check out the headline: pure gold)

Posted by andrea at 02:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Thanks to all who have sent vacation reading suggestions.  I'm obviously back, but now I have a good list of recommendations for my next vacation.  This one didn't allow all that much reading time, except for the long flights and delays at airports.  I was on a bicycling trip in Oregon, which was a great getaway, but by the end of the day I didn't have the energy to turn a page.

A book I've found wonderful to read since returning from Oregon is HOMESTEAD by Jane Kirkpatrick. Mrs. Kirkpatrick and her husband bought a big piece of undeveloped land in Central Oregon in the 1980s.  HOMESTEAD is her memoir of building a house and a new life there, in conditions that may remind you of pioneer days, even though they had a tractor and a small plane and learned how to use them.  The book is available from Zooba.

Posted by Larry Shapiro at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MASON-DIXON KNITTING has become a surprise Zooba bestseller.  It's a surprise at least to those of us who don't know the first thing about knitting, or what makes a knitting book stand out.  I do know the book is funny, but I'm thinking there must be more to it than that.  Would one of you Zooba members who has bought it please tell me more about what makes it special?

Thanks.

Posted by Larry Shapiro at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)