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There's green, and then there's green!
The Cai Lun paper and bookmaking blog points to Elephant Poo Poo Paper, which, like last year's Snakes on a Plane, one would think is a metaphor but is indeed not. Check out the Poo-tique™ for adorable paper products made from, ahem, repurposed fibers.
If this company also made toilet paper, that would just blow my mind.
Seattle-ists! Pencil in The Stranger's event with author/director/performance artist Miranda July at Neumo's on May 17 (via The Stranger).
In the meantime, check out the movie she wrote, directed, and starred in.
That's right--her name's July, her book comes out in May, and she's awesome all year round.
-T.S. Eliot wrote, "April is the cruelest month." It's also National Poetry Month. That dovetailed quite nicely. (via Cruelest Month)
-Gawker exposes what we already knew: You don't have to read a book to blurb it. (via Gawker)
-Shocker: The New York publishing industry is harsh! (The Rejecter via 101 Reasons to Stop Writing)
This week, Slate pays homage to the most slippery of genres, the memoir. (I'm looking at you, James Frey!) Don't miss essays from Oh the Glory of it All author Sean Wilsey, Sweet and Low author Rich Cohen, and Teacher Man author Frank McCourt:
"The only way around all this nervousness is the novel—and that is what I'm trying now. Yes, yes, I still have to cover my tracks—and my ass—but I'll have greater freedom." (Frank McCourt via Slate)
-Dan Brown: not a plagiarist, but still a possible murderer...of fiction! (via BBC News)
-TC Boyle's story "Balto" will appear in the upcoming Best American Short Stories 2007 (via The Paris Review)
-GalleyCat has your first glimpse of the upcoming Harry Potter cover (via GalleyCat)
-Read a review of Cormac McCarthy's The Road (via PopMatters)
-NYC: Check out Jonathan Lethem, George Saunders, and The Night Time at Housing Works Used Book Cafe this Friday 3/30 (via New York magazine)
-Wish I Could Be There is a "vividly written combination of memoir and scientific inquiry." (via The New Yorker)
-T. Jefferson Parker's noir thriller Storm Runners is "a great read." (via Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
-Mississippi Sissy: Growing up gay in the South in the '60s (via Washington Post)
-Literary heavyweights criticize EU's failure to end Darfur violence (The Independent via Critical Mass)
-"For $10,000 to $15,000, you, too, can be a best-selling author." (via Wall Street Journal)
-Top authors pick their favorite books of all time (via Washington Post)
-China pirates around 500 million books per year (via Conversational Reading)
-Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue": just as good as a short story (via The Onion's AV Club)
GalleyCat and the Freakonomics blog speculate on which title Oprah will announce as her next book club pick this Wednesday. GalleyCat has its money on Never Let Me Go while Steven Dubner bets on The Year of Magical Thinking. What say you, dear readers?
A literary Sliding Doors of sorts, NPR says the novel is "'the next step after chick lit.' As a married woman is tempted to cheat on her husband, the story divides into two 'what if' tracks."
Available now from Zooba!
-Nice to know that Posh Spice is one of England's bestselling authors. And that she can read. (via Gawker)
-Andre Agassi memoir deal in the works (via GalleyCat)
-Jon Bon Jovi and Amy Grant + BookExpo America = ultimate synergy! (via GalleyCat)
We were a little preoccupied with an office birthday chez Zooba yesterday, but better late than never...Yesterday was World Poetry Day. Celebrate with these collections of verse. Or check out the Emo Haiku Generator for instant gratification! (via Nerve Scanner)
-Coleman Barks, A Year With Rumi
-Billy Collins, The Trouble With Poetry
-Garrison Keillor, Good Poems for Hard Times
-Former president Bill Clinton collaborates on upcoming book (via Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
-Stephen King is editing the upcoming The Best American Short Stories 2007 (via USA Today)
-GalleyCat rounds up novels that rock (via GalleyCat)
-Publishers' marketing approach: pitch books like movies (via USA Today)
-At HarperCollins, Lisa Sharkey replaces ousted editor Judith Regan (via GalleyCat)
-Author films are the new "author tour" (via Bookninja)
-But without author tours, how will book nerds meet and fall in love? (via GalleyCat)
-Bookforum interviews edgy author A.M. Homes (Bookforum via Bookninja)
-2007 Million Writers Award for best online fiction is now accepting nominations (via storySouth)
Author Dean Koontz challenges fans to create the best book trailer for his upcoming novel, The Good Guy. (Dean Koontz via Buzz, Balls & Hype)
Man! First, we had to write our own novel wiki-style...Now we have to market someone else's?
-Celebrating W.H. Auden's centenary year, The Times publishes his critique of aspiring writers. Auden giveth, Auden taketh away. (The Times via Critical Mass)
-Was Mark Twain a sellout? (via Freakonomics blog)
-How do certain books get front of store placement in bookstores? The publishers' cold, hard cash. (TCF via Buzz, Balls & Hype)
-A closer look at the Broadway adaptation of Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking (via New York Magazine)
-Random House introduces audio widget (via The Book Standard)
-Jack Kerouac was conservative? (via The Columbia Spectator)
-New survey finds that Brits read only half the books they buy (via Conversational Reading)
Happy Monday, everyone!
As of right now, Zooba.com is temporarily unavailable. We're upgrading like The Six Million Dollar Man, so please bear with us. In the meantime, go to ZoobaBookService.com to browse for your books.
If you have any questions or concerns, e-mail me at zbookblogger AT gmail DOT com.
Thanks!
This week, I ate a slice of homemade cake containing Guinness ice cream, Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream, and Jameson's Irish Whiskey-infused whipped cream (thanks again, Erik!). I realized two things: 1. Cake is delicious (seriously, I had no idea), and 2. It's almost St. Patrick's Day! Hence, the Irish reading list...
-Gwendolyn Bounds, Little Chapel on the River
-Frank McCourt, Teacher Man
-Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster, Parish Priest
-For Austen, Nabokov, annotated editions mean content plus context (via The New York Times)
-Review of Bernard Cornwell's Lords of the North (via The Onion's AV Club)
-Interview with Jonathan Franzen, author of The Discomfort Zone (Deutsche Welle via The Literary Saloon)
-Madonna's nanny gets book deal, loses book deal (via The Book Standard)
-Announced first print run for upcoming Harry Potter? 12 million--a new record (via Publishers Weekly)
-Ex-CIA Director George Tenet's autobiography At the Center of the Storm drops April 30 (via Publishers Weekly)
-Up for grabs: film rights to Jonathan Lethem's newest book, You Don't Love Me Yet (JonathanLethem.com via NPR)
-UK announces "Blooker" prize shortlist for the best books based on blogs. PostSecret, anyone? (via Librarian's Place)
Who knew thriller author Dean Koontz was such an early adopter?
Today, he visits Second Life "as the virtual stop on the promotion trail for his latest book, The Good Guy. (via 93 Colors)
*Chicagoans! Check out ongoing City of Words events including today's Jonathan Lethem discussion. (via Chicagoist)
CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHORS: Process and Place*Fellow New Yorkers! Join indie presses this Friday for a reading marathon featuring Soft Skull Press and City Lights authors. (via Small Press Month)
National Small Press Month Reading Marathon
Friday, March 16, 2007
Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction
34 Avenue A
6 p.m.
Gawker reports that Dave Eggers's highbrow satire magazine McSweeney's wants to rescind their lifetime subscriptions offer.
Specifically, the mag's letter to lifetime subscribers says, "You know, move on."
Ouch.
Maybe they're just being ironic?
Galleycat's poll says we take our book hints from friends and newspapers. What was the last book you bought, and where did you hear about it?
The last book tip I followed up on was Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff, which I heard about back when the author appeared on The Daily Show.
-PEN appoints author Francine Prose as president (via Boston Herald)
-A Long Way Down author Nick Hornby writes children's book (via Publisher's Weekly)
-Penguin Books UK blog discusses South by Southwests' Blogs to Books panel (via The Penguin Blog)
-Random House and Whole Foods team up to promote memoir (via Publisher's Weekly)
Gawker ponders shrinking book review sections in the L.A. Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other top newspapers. Apparently, "the only book review in the country that will not be affected is the one that comes in the New York Times."
Yeah, Californians may not read book reviews, but don't forget that they've got literary cred with 826 Valencia and San Francisco's City Lights bookstore.
Wait a minute, that's just northern California...
-Janet Fitch, Paint it Black
-Sean Wilsey, Oh the Glory of It All
-Dr. Connie Guttersen, The Sonoma Diet
The National Book Critics Circle announced their awards for the best reads of 2006. The Inheritance of Loss won in the fiction category, and Rough Crossings won in nonfiction. Get the winners and the finalists from Zooba! (via Laila Lalami)
-Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
-Simon Schama, Rough Crossings
-Cormac McCarthy, The Road
-Donald Antrim, The Afterlife
-Terri Jentz, Strange Piece of Paradise
-Michael Pollan, Omnivore's Dilemma
Happy International Women's Day, fellow non-males! I've been out of the office all day and haven't had the luxury of scouring through our titles at my desk...Here's an incomplete short list of ladyfolk titles. Any book suggestions to add, readers?
-Margaret Cho, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight
-Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed
-Maureen Dowd, Are Men Necessary?
-Joshua Zeitz, Flapper
*Update: also check out Chelsea Handler, My Horizontal Life
-Lance Bass pens memoir. The title? Out of Sync. No, I'm not making that up. (via People)
*Update: Get his ex's memoir from Zooba. I'm not making that up, either!
-The Decemberists frontman and former bookseller Colin Meloy will judge Tournament of Books. (via Pitchfork Media)
-Author Chuck Klosterman reveals what's on his playlist. (via The Onion's AV Club)
Not to get all Matrix on you, but Jean Baudrillard died at the age of 77 at his home in Paris (via BBC News). Who else but a Frenchman could have masterminded such advances in the field of semiotics?
OK, nerdfest is over. (But, seriously, you should rewatch The Matrix.)
On with it, then. The French reading list!
-Julia Child, My Life in France
-Daniel Young, The Bistros, Brasseries, and Wine Bars of Paris
-Sena Jeter Naslund, Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette
An open note to Ann Coulter's former corporate sponsors:
Really?
This was why you decided to pull your ads from her site? You sure? Not because of her defamation of 9/11 widows? Not her scathingly right wing book Godless? Not her poor use of satire?
No? OK. Just checking.
OK, I may have to call backsies on this old post regarding the Jenna Bush memoir. GalleyCat announces that HarperCollins won the book auction; USA Today says the memoir is less "The Diary of Jenna Bush" and more...about a 17-year-old living with HIV in Panama.
Yeah, I didn't see that one coming, either.
Books owned by The New York Times's Ben Schott tend to "fall down the stairs." (via The New York Times)-Mark Sarvas, The Elegant Variation blogger, signs with Bloomsbury (via Slush Pile)
-Catherine Sanderson, La Petite Anglaise blogger, gets fired, inks Penguin book deal (via The Independent)
-Jessica Hagy, Indexed blogger, signs with Viking Studio (via Indexed)
Literary magazine Granta names their choices for this year's Best of Young American Novelists issue (via The Literary Saloon). Want to read the books? Zooba's got you covered!
-Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
-Uzodinma Iweala, Beasts of No Nation
-Kevin Brockmeier, The Brief History of the Dead
-Dara Horn, The World to Come
-Yiyun Li, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
Gawker talks shrinking book advances. It's only a matter of time before $62.5K is the new $125K!
Future novelists, don't quit your day jobs... (via 52 Projects)
It's Funny Friday here at Zooba headquarters--a day eclipsed only by Sarcastic Wednesday. Duh.
Check out this short piece from highbrow satire mag McSweeney's of book reports written by celebrities. The highlight? Matt Damon reviews A Separate Peace. (via Comedy Central Insider)
Tipped off by a letter of complaint, the FBI is considering whether books by Toni Morrison, Kurt Vonnegut, and others should be banned from a high school reading list (via Maud Newton). Also from Maud comes this piece about how books originally deemed obscene become classics.
For more on banned literature, check out Reading Lolita in Tehran, a memoir about the power of books during a time of upheaval.
Check out this trailer for the film based on the novel
...And the winner is Cormac McCarthy's