PEN/Faulkner Award finalists are announced

From the Washington Post:

By Marissa Newhall

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Books by Sherman Alexie, Barbara Kingsolver, Lorraine M. López, Lorrie Moore and Colson Whitehead are finalists for the 2010 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the PEN/Faulkner Foundation announced Tuesday.

Alexie's short-story collection "War Dances" and Kingsolver's historical novel "The Lacuna" are in contention for the $15,000 prize along with López's "Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories," Moore's "A Gate at the Stairs" and Whitehead's "Sag Harbor."

The winner of the award, the country's largest peer-juried prize for fiction, will be named March 23.
Judges considered nearly 350 entries -- all novels and short-story collections by American authors published in 2009.
Last year's winner, "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill, was rushed into paperback after President Obama mentioned it in a newspaper interview. Having tired of briefing books, Obama said, he had taken respite in O'Neill's tale of cricket and friendship in post-9/11 New York City.
As each year's winner is thought of as "first among equals," all five finalists will be honored May 8 at an award ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Each runner-up will receive $5,000.

Casanova memoirs return to Paris

Two and a half centuries after Giacomo Casanova was hounded from Paris, the Venetian adventurer returned to his adopted home when the State acquired his memoirs for £6 million.


Casanova made a hurried escape from Paris in 1760 after earning the wrath of eminent subjects of Louis XV for seducing their wives and daughters and cheating them of money.

RELATED LINKS

• Casanova: Prague’s priest of pleasure

• Casanova's Venice

The tale of the manuscript’s survival was almost as colourful as the 73-year life of the gambler, swindler, diplomat and impenitent libertine who died in exile in Bohemia in 1798. Bowdlerised, pirated versions were published across Europe from the early 19th century, mainly focusing on Casanova’s amorous exploits with 120 women and girls, including a nun.

The original book lay hidden in German vaults and was thought to have been destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in 1945 but it survived in a vault. It was first published in 1960 but has only been consulted since by a handful of scholars.

The memoirs offer one of the most sensitively observed accounts of life in Europe’s great cities. In Paris, for example, Casanova, a part-time alchemist, hobnobbed with the likes of Madame de Pompadour and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Casanova’s adventures read like action movies, with sex scenes, narrow escapes, duels, carriage chases and scams. He writes that he is offering a full honest account: “Worthy or not, my life is my subject, and my subject is my life.”

The Unnamed from Joshua Ferris takes on the fear of sickness that can't be labeled in this fantastic novel

Reprinted from NPR: Tim Farnsworth, the main character in The Unnamed, the new novel from Joshua Ferris, is a partner in a high-powered law firm in Manhattan. He is married with a young daughter. And he cannot stop walking. According to Ferris, Tim's condition "is more of a disease than a compulsion."

"It's not really a feeling he has to walk, but really his body overtaking him and forcing him to walk," Ferris tells Melissa Block. Ferris' book delves into the question of whether Tim's condition is psychological or physical. But ultimately, the author says, "it concludes more or less that this is something he's simply not in control of."

He certainly can't control when he is struck by a need to start walking. One of the early episodes comes in the evening, when Tim is taking out the garbage, dressed for bed:

He walked past neighbors' houses, he walked barefoot down Route 22. He walked past the supermarket: empty parking lot and an eerie glow. He walked past the Korean Baptist church and the Saks-anchored mall into the dreams of late-night drivers who took home the image of some addled derelict in a cotton robe menacing the soft shoulder. He looked down at his legs. It was like watching footage of legs walking from the point of view of the walker. That was the helplessness, this was the terror: the brakes are gone, the steering wheel has locked. I am at the mercy of this wayward machine.

The Unnamed
By Joshua Ferris
Hardcover, 320 pages
Reagan Arthur Books
List price: $24.99

Read An Excerpt

Tim seeks out all sorts of medical remedies for his condition, from submitting to tests at the Mayo Clinic to taking bat-wing extract. But nothing can be determined.

"It's unnamed, it's undiagnosable, it's essentially uncurable," Ferris says. "It's recurring and remitting, so he has long stretches of time in which he's not afflicted, and over the course of the book, you see one of these sections and understand one of the ways Tim and, I think, sick people in general, re-embrace life and recognize that which has been taken away from them when their sickness hits."

But the effects of the sickness are brutal. Often, Tim's episodes hit during cold weather, and to keep him from wandering off, never to be found, his wife prepares a survival backpack, complete with a GPS device and energy bars.

'Twilight' And Janet Evanovich Graphic Novels Have 'Staggering' Print Runs

From the New York Times:
A World of Words Reinvented in Pictures

By GEORGE GENE GUSTINES
Published: February 8, 2010

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a prose author moving a ton of graphic novels!

Last month Yen Press announced that it would print 350,000 copies of a graphic-novel adaptation of “Twilight,” the first part of the immensely popular vampire saga created by Stephenie Meyer. Now comes word from Dark Horse Comics that it will print 100,000 copies of a graphic novel by Janet Evanovich, the best-selling mystery writer, which will continue her “Motor Mouth” series of novels.

Right: From “Twilight” by Stephenie Meyer; artwork by Young Kim Beans. 

Left: And, in a scene from “Troublemaker!: A Barnaby Adventure” by Janet Evanovich, artwork by Joelle Jones.



Read all about it at the New York Times article>>> 

Fantastic book with gorgeous writing: Colum McCann's 'Let the Whole World Spin'. Not to be missed.

Recently stayed up half the night delving into this work, "Let the Great World Spin", just named National Book Award Winner of 2009. I was hooked by the writer's talent by page two. If, like me, you love a writer that knows how to turn a phrase, intrigue the reader, and describes people and places with what seem at first simple, yet are so dead on and actually magical, words you should definitely pick up a copy of this book soon. Run, don't walk. Now in trade paperback at all the usual places.


from Amazon's review: Colum McCann has worked some exquisite magic with Let the Great World Spin, conjuring a novel of electromagnetic force that defies gravity. It's August of 1974, a summer "hot and serious and full of death and betrayal," and Watergate and the Vietnam War make the world feel precarious. A stunned hush pauses the cacophonous universe of New York City as a man on a cable walks (repeatedly) between World Trade Center towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives--a street priest, heroin-addicted hookers, mothers mourning sons lost in war, young artists, a Park Avenue judge. All their lives are ordinary and unforgettable, overlapping at the edges, occasionally converging. And when they coalesce in the final pages, the moment hums with such grace that its memory might tighten your throat weeks later.


I wholeheartedly agree.



See Colum McCann's acceptance speech here>>> 


Colum McCann at the 2009 National Book Awards, Fiction Winner from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Apple's new iPad tablet takes ebooks to new level

Apple revealed it's new iPad tablet yesterday to mostly great reviews from the tech crowd, now let's see how it'll impact the rest of us.

The iPad is designed to fit the niche between smart phones and laptops allowing users to view email, surf the internet, listen to their music (like iPod application), and a whole bunch of other useful applications already available on the iPhone. The iPad itself is due for release in the next 60-90 days depending on which version you're interested in. Apple has redesigned many of the iPhone apps specifically for use on the iPad, including maps, calendar, contacts, etc. as well as created new user interfaces including their iBooks feature. This iBooks application is built similarly to the iTunes store allowing users to "one click" purchase (download to their iPad) the book of their choice. No word on pricing of books yet, but expected to be in line with Amazon's Kindle prices (i.e. $9.99 per title and up). The cool design of the books on the iPad is a "bookshelf" graphic representation of your "books" with their cover art showing. (See pic above)
 The Apple website reports: "Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. Just tap it to start reading. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich color, so it’s easy to read, even in low light." 
This technology is different and more user friendly than the Sony e-reader, the  Kindle, and Barnes & Nobles' Nook. Those readers show only black text and "turning the page" is cumbersome, slow, glitchy (especially in the case of the Nook, which also shows a flash and a delay when the page screen changes which can be annoying and interrupt the flow of one's reading). No such problems with what we've seen of the iPad so far. Using the Mac's OS seems to be super fast and capable of handling these issues easily. Plus the size of the device, with virtually the entire face a glass screen, is larger at 9.5" X 7", yet light at under 1.5 pounds. Oh, and the great thing is the battery life is approx. 10 hours on a single charge (much better the best laptops at around 5-6 hours of battery life).
The iPad also does much more than simply download books, it plays video, it operates much like an iPod for music, and it comes with (among many other apps) iWork, Apple's version of word processing and spreadsheet functions, installed. 
I predict many people who only use a computer for email, picture viewing / sharing, gaming, and simple word-processing will use this device instead of a full laptop or desktop computer. Unfortunately, no camera or phone for now. However, Apple will surely add these in the future. We'll report more when the iPad is available for purchase sometime in March or April. Starting price is $499.00 with internet plans at $14.95 p/month. Considering the Kindle is now priced at $259 and offers only the 'book' feature, this seems a bargain.


More details at the Apple website>>>

'Catcher in the Rye' author J.D. Salinger dies

Reprinted from USA Today:

By Deirdre Donahue

The reclusive writer who gave literary voice to the emotional and psychological anguish of teenagers throughout the world is gone.

J.D. Salinger, 91, author of the 1951 masterpiece Catcher in the Rye, died of natural causes at his longtime home in Cornish, N.H., said the author's son, in a statement from the author's literary representative.

Catcher in the Rye was the only Salinger novel released in his lifetime, but it is an acknowledged masterpiece and established the author as one of the most influential writers of the last century.

His carefully structured novel centered on an unhappy 16-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield. Expelled from prep school, Caulfield narrates the story after an apparent mental breakdown.

More significantly, the novel was the first to capture the post-World War II alienation of youth: the idiomatic slang, the rage against the hypocrisy of the adult world and the fury at the inevitable loss of innocence that growing up demands. Holden's deepest feelings are for his little sister, Phoebe, and his dead brother, Allie, who died of leukemia.

Although published in the early 1950s, the book's themes foreshadowed the youthful rebellion of the 1960s. It remains controversial more than half a century later because of its sexual content, questioning of traditional ideals, and language.

Read the entire article>>>

Best-Selling Books: The top 100 for 2009 / Twilight Series 1-4 top spots

Well this proves that 12-15 year-old girls buy a lot, and I mean a LOT of books.
Here's the top 20 bestselling books of 2009 (or how Stephenie Meyer is getting rich).

1	New Moon	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Second in Twilight vampire love saga; movie (F)
2	Eclipse	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Third in Twilight vampire saga (F)
3	Twilight	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: First in love saga: Isabella falls for a vampire; movie (F)
4	Breaking Dawn	Stephenie Meyer	Young adult: Fourth in Twilight vampire series (F)
5	The Lost Symbol	Dan Brown	Harvard professor Robert Langdon unravels the mysterious brotherhood of the Masons (F)
6	The Shack	William P. Young	Man reconnects with God after death of child (F)
7	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw	Jeff Kinney	Children: Greg tries to toughen up to avoid military school; third in series (F)
8	Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days	Jeff Kinney	Children Greg’s summer plans include video games and no responsibility (F)
9	Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man	Steve Harvey	Subtitle: "What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment" (NF)
10	Going Rogue: An American Life	Sarah Palin	Memoir from the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate (NF)
11	Glenn Beck’s Common Sense	Glenn Beck	Subtitle: "The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine" (NF)
12	My Sister’s Keeper	Jodi Picoult	Teen helps cure her sister’s leukemia; movie (F)
13	The Associate	John Grisham	An associate at the world’s largest law firm is forced to hide a secret (F)
14	The Time Traveler’s Wife	Audrey Niffenegger	Story of a couple who cope with husband’s "time-traveling" disorder; movie (F)
15	Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto	Mark R. Levin	Talk radio host presents manifesto for the conservative movement (NF)
16	Three Cups of Tea	Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin	Subtitle: "One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time" (NF)
17	Outliers: The Story of Success	Malcolm Gladwell	Why some people succeed and others don’t (NF)
18	Diary of a Wimpy Kid	Jeff Kinney	Young adult: Diary from a middle-schooler, Greg Heffley (F)
19	The Host	Stephenie Meyer	Love triangle involving a man, a woman and the alien that possesses her (F)
20	The Help	Kathryn Stockett	A young white woman tells the story of black maids in 1960s Mississippi (F) See Full List>>>

"Tweet" why it's the word of the year!

from the washingtonpost.com:

Other outlets have already named words of the year for 2009 -- Merriam-Webster picked "admonish" (huh?) and the Oxford English Dictionary went with "unfriend" (hrmph) -- but the 121-year-old American Dialect Society thinks of itself as the granddaddy of them all, the first and last word in words of the year. Its hour-long quest must yield two words that are accurate, exciting and durable (never mind that their first-ever word of the year, in 1990, was the now-regrettable "bushlips"). Two words must satisfy both the crusty generation of veteran scholars and the giddy linguistic students whose jargon is a step ahead.

Read the whole story: washingtonpost.com

You can follow us on Twitter here>>>

Miep Gies, who helped Anne Frank hide from the Nazis and saved her diary, dies at 100

In this May 19, 2006 photo released by the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 97 year old Miep Gies is seen. Anne Frank called them the Helpers. They provided food, books and good cheer while her family hid for two years from the Nazis in a tiny attic apartment. On Sunday, Feb. 15, 2009, the last surviving helper, Miep Gies, celebrates her 100th birthday, saying she has won more accolades for helping the Frank family than she deserved as if, she says, she tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland. The Anne Frank Museum says Gies, who helped the teenage diarist's family hide from the Nazis, died Monday Jan. 11, 2010. She was 100. (AP Photo/Anne Frank House, File) 


Gies was the last of the few non-Jews who supplied food, books and good cheer to the secret annex behind the canal warehouse where Anne, her parents, sister and four other Jews hid for 25 months during World War II.

After the apartment was raided by the German police, Gies gathered up Anne's scattered notebooks and papers and locked them in a drawer for her return after the war. The diary, which Anne Frank was given on her 13th birthday, chronicles her life in hiding from June 12, 1942 until August 1, 1944.

Gies refused to read the papers, saying even a teenager's privacy was sacred. Later, she said if she had read them she would have had to burn them because they incriminated the "helpers."

Anne Frank died of typhus at age 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945, just two weeks before the camp was liberated. Gies gave the diary to Anne's father Otto, the only survivor, who published it in 1947.

After the diary was published, Gies tirelessly promoted causes of tolerance. She brushed aside the accolades for helping hide the Frank family as more than she deserved — as if, she said, she had tried to save all the Jews of occupied Holland.

"This is very unfair. So many others have done the same or even far more dangerous work," she wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press days before her 100th birthday last February.

"The Diary of Anne Frank" was the first popular book about the Holocaust, and has been read by millions of children and adults around the world in some 65 languages.



More in the Chicago Tribune article>>>