Archive: September 2009 (21-30 of 37)

Sep 13 2009 07:42 PM ET

First review of Dan Brown's 'The Lost Symbol'

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Categories: Dan Brown, Fiction, Thrillers

6a00d8341bf6c153ef011570de1436970c-800wiThe New York Times’ Janet Maslin has posted a glowing review of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which goes on sale Tuesday. “Too many popular authors (Thomas Harris) have followed huge hits (The Silence of the Lambs) with terrible embarrassments (Hannibal),” writes Maslin. “Mr. Brown hasn’t done that. Instead, he’s bringing sexy back a genre that had been left for dead.” According to Maslin, the new book is replete with plot tricks and twists, codes, secrets, and explorations into ancient philosophies and the occult.

SPOILER ALERT! Maslin says that Brown’s hero, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, has been lured to Washington, D.C., to give a speech on behalf of his old mentor Peter Solomon at the Capitol—only to find Solomon’s severed hand atop the Capitol Crypt. The mystery/treasure hunt that ensues does, as has been rumored, prominently feature the Freemasons. Only they do not occupy the villain role that Opus Dei played in The Da Vinci Code. According to Maslin, the villain this time out is a sinister psycho named Mal’akh.

Observant types will remember that back in 2003 Maslin also had the first review of The Da Vinci Code — and it was a rave as well. “Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase and coaxing them through hoops,” she wrote. Brown later admitted that “people called and said, ‘Is Janet Maslin your mother, because she never says stuff like that?’”

Sep 11 2009 02:04 PM ET

Jon Krakauer talks about his new Pat Tillman book

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Categories: Interview, Nonfiction, Publishing Biz

36272813In the frenzy-filled final days leading up to the Sept. 15 release of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, you might think that there are no other blockbuster titles being published this month. You’d be wrong. On the same day Brown’s novel hits stores, Doubleday will also release best-selling author Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman. For those who don’t remember, Tillman was the NFL star who gave up a $3.6 million contract to volunteer to serve with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Then, in 2004, he was killed by friendly fire. His life (and the cover-up surrounding his death) is the subject of Krakauer’s tear-jerking follow-up to his Mormon exposé Under the Banner of Heaven, the Everest tragedy Into Thin Air, and Into the Wild, his nonfiction blockbuster which was adapted into a movie starring Emile Hirsch and directed by Sean Penn.

We spoke with Krakauer for a Q&A in this week’s issue of EW. Here are some of the outtakes from that interview.

EW: Tillman’s family told you that your book Eiger Dreams was found in his backpack when he was killed in Afghanistan in 2004. That’s pretty eerie.

Krakauer: It’s very eerie. I didn’t put that in the book because it seemed self-serving and didn’t really add anything. But I was pretty blown away by it. Tillman really liked Under the Banner of Heaven apparently and gave it to a Mormon cousin. Pat’s wife is very private and circumspect and she thought it over before deciding to work with me. I got lucky that Tillman knew my work.

EW: You’ve been working on this for years and you said it was the hardest book you’ve ever written. Why?

Krakauer: Dealing with the Army, trying to make sense of thousands of pages of redacted documents, it was…as you probably know, I canceled the book at one point.  It came out a year late, but it was time really well spent. I needed more time. When I first told my editor that I was canceling it, I’m not your basic neurotic author, I don’t have to have my hand held. I deliver on time, I don’t freak out. But I freaked out! And they told me to calm down and take a deep breath. I didn’t want the pressure, I just wanted to stop. I had this bad feeling that if I didn’t stop, it was going to come out in a form I wasn’t happy with.

READ FULL STORY »

Sep 11 2009 11:04 AM ET

Obama quote pulled from cover of UNC basketball coach's memoir

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Categories: Barack Obama, Book Covers, Memoirs, Publishing Biz

president-obama_lhard-work_lShelf Life has learned that a quote from Pres. Barack Obama has been removed from the book jacket of Hard Work: A Life On and Off the Court, a memoir by University of North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams that will be published by Algonquin in November.

Here’s the quote: “What makes Coach Williams one of the great coaches isn’t just his extraordinary record, but his dedication to his players. He’s just as serious about making these guys into men and into leaders as he is into making them champions.” Obama, who made the statement when he stopped to shoot hoops with the Tar Heels team during his campaign last year, clearly intended to extol Williams the man and not to blurb the legendary coach’s book (which has been getting rave advance notices). According to a publicist for Algonquin, the company has deleted the statement from the jacket after consulting with its legal team, which determined that sitting presidents cannot make commercial endorsements. A staffer at the The White House press office confirms this: “As a general matter, the White House does not authorize the use of the President’s likeness or words for commercial purposes.”

Interestingly, though, recent printings of the paperback edition of Joseph O’Neill’s 2008 novel Netherland include a sticker with this blurb (a quote pulled from an Obama interview published last spring): “‘Fascinating…A wonderful book.’ President Barack Obama, Newsweek.” Vintage, the book’s publisher, did not check with the White House before issuing the stickered edition. (with reporting by Keith Staskiewicz)

Sep 10 2009 06:24 PM ET

Ever tempted to skip around in a book series like 'True Blood'?

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Categories: Fiction, TV, Vampires

dead-to-world-eric_lI’m one of those people who’s not only picked up HBO’s True Blood this summer, but also Charlaine Harris’ best-selling Southern Vampire series, upon which the show is based. I enjoyed the first book, but I’m busy, and impatient, and I keep seeing the words “Eric” and “shower” mentioned in reference to Book 4, Dead to the World, on our True Blood blog posts. I own the first seven novels (they were on sale!), but here’s my dilemma: Do I skip Books 2 and 3, vowing to return to them even though I know I won’t to get to scenes of showering Eric quicker, or do I exercise restraint?

I took the question to Twitter, and Harris fans talked me down (SPOILER ALERT!): “Do NOT by any means skip book 2!!! Eric at the orgy is hilarious!” “Book 2: pink spandex bodysuit… Book 3: he, um, makes 1st ‘contact’ w/Sookie. Plus many many other essential things.” “Nooo! You can’t skip them! Besides there is an awesome Sookie/Eric scene on a hood of a car in book 3. You gotta have build up.”

What book series have you been tempted to skip around in? And if you jumped ahead, did you regret the decision later?

Photo Credit: Alexander Skarsgard: John P. Johnson/HBO

Sep 9 2009 04:03 PM ET

Are the Amish the new vampires?

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Categories: Fiction, Romance Novels, Vampires

34533962Forget Team Edward. Bring on Team Amos! According to an article today in The Wall Street Journal, readers are going buggy for a new literary genre: Amish romances, a.k.a. “bonnet books.”

It sounds crazy, right? I think not! In fact, it makes perfect sense that the genre would begin attracting fans. After all, there are more similarities than one would think between romances about the Amish and ever-popular vamp tales. Forbidden love, anyone? And like many YA bloodsucker novels, bonnet books are generally G-rated — making them attractive to parents and youngin’s alike — and penned mostly by women (who, interestingly enough, are not Amish themselves).

I have yet to read a bonnet book, but now I’m more than curious. Would you get drawn into stories of forbidden love in places like Lancaster County, Pa., Shelf Lifers? Or are you already addicted?

Sep 9 2009 12:35 PM ET

James Patterson: Prolific author or brand manager?

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Categories: Fiction, James Patterson, Mysteries, Thrillers

James-Patterson_lJames Patterson™, perennial mainstay of the best-seller lists, just renewed his deal with Hachette’s Little, Brown for his next 17 books. That’s right: his next 17 books. That commits the former advertising exec to the publisher until 2012, for 11 more adult books plus six books for younger readers. That’s actually a slackening of his current publishing pace. By year’s end, Patterson will have published a whopping 22 books in the last three years alone. (Many people I know haven’t read that many books in that time.)

But Patterson, of course, is more than just a proverbial book factory. He’s an actual book factory, typically using credited co-authors to compose “first drafts” from elaborate outlines that he sends (as he detailed in a 2006 Time profile). Like Patterson himself, most of his collaborators have a background in advertising: There’s Richard DiLallo on the Alex Cross thrillers, Michael Ledwidge on the Michael Bennett thrillers and the Daniel X young-adult series, Maxine Paetro on the Women’s Murder Club mysteries, and Howard Roughan on various standalone thrillers. And while there is no co-author listed on the cover of the popular Maximum Ride YA series, about a group of kids who are part bird and part human, the copyright on those books is listed not as “James Patterson” (as it is on most of his titles) but the cryptic “SueJack, Inc.”

It’s an impressive commercial operation. The question is, can James Patterson™ be considered a prolific author in the way we regard Joyce Carol Oates (nine books in the last three years, by my count) or Alexander McCall Smith (ten books in three years)? Or is he more like Carolyn Keene or Franklin W. Dixon, the credited “authors” of the comparably well-branded Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mystery series? Are you still a writer if you subcontract out much of the actual, you know, writing?

Sep 8 2009 04:24 PM ET

Anthony E. Zuiker brings reading to a new 'Level' with online video extras?

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Categories: Fiction, Mysteries, Publishing Biz, Thrillers, TV

Anthony E. Zuiker, a.k.a. the creator of CSI, has released a novel, Level 26. And as expected, the book follows a familiar hero: a crime scene tactician who must chase down a deadly enemy.

But Level is not quite your run-of-the-mill thriller. Zuiker, who wrote the book with Duane Swierczynski, opted to add a more interactive component to the book, allowing readers to log onto a website every five chapters to watch a “cyber bridge.” (In fact, Level is branded “the first digi-novel.”) So what exactly does that mean? In this case, Zuiker’s “cyber bridges” are short movies 2-3 minutes long, starring familiar faces like Bill Duke (Predator) and Kevin Weisman (Alias) that serve to enhance the plot for readers. (The films do not simply reenact the book’s scenes — instead, they attempt to give the reader additional, admittedly inessential information regarding the plot).

Fun or no (I’d vote “fun”), Zuiker’s experiment brings up a question: Is this kind of interactive reading the kick in the pants the publishing industry needs? With so many consumers trading in TV and the web for books, is this one way that publishers can reel their readers back in? Personally, though I think the concept is cool, I’m not sure how many readers would be willing to put down their books and hop over to their computer to watch a video.

But would you, Shelf Lifers? Do you like this concept, or do you prefer uninterrupted, old-fashioned reading?

Sep 8 2009 12:00 PM ET

A.S. Byatt and J.M. Coetzee lead the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize

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Categories: Awards, Fiction

Alas, Me, Cheeta didn’t make the cut for the shortlist of the U.K’s prestigious Man Booker Prize. (It seems there’s still a bias toward human authors.) But books by previous winners A.S. Byatt and J.M. Coetzee are now considered front-runners for the £50,000 prize, which will be announced Oct. 6. (Coetzee, a nominee for the autobiographical novel Summertime, would be the first author to win the award three times.) Americans interested in the six nominees will mostly have to wait — unless they plan a trip to the U.K. or choose to swallow steep shipping charges from amazon.co.uk. Only one of the nominees is in U.S. bookstores now: Sarah Waters’ novel The Little Stranger, a ghost story set at an English country house in 1947, which was published here in April. Byatt’s The Children’s Book, following two generations of families in the British countryside at the turn of the 20th century, and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, a retelling of the life of Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell, are both due in U.S. stores in October, while Summertime is due out on Christmas Eve. So far, though, I can find no U.S. publication date for either of the other nominees: Adam Foulds’ The Quickening Maze, based on the life of real-life 19th century poet John Clare and his descent into madness, and Simon Mawer’s The Glass Room, about a wealthy Jewish car-maker in Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s. (Neither book seems to have an American publishing deal yet — though one suspects that will change very soon.)

Sep 5 2009 02:33 PM ET

'The Anthologist': Nicholson Baker's new novel about poetry, love, and 'Designing Women'

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Categories: Fiction, Poetry

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“Why do we need things to rhyme so much?” asks the protagonist of Nicholson Baker’s wonderful new novel The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster). The speaker is Paul Chowder, who has compiled an anthology of poetry. All he needs to do to finish the project is write the introduction, a mere forty pages … but he has writer’s block. And, oh yes: His girlfriend, Roz, left him recently. And he has a dog named Smacko. Just that dog alone makes it a better book than Marley & Me.

“Hello, I’m Paul Chowder, and I’m going to try to tell you everything I know.” That’s the first sentence in The Anthologist, and if you’ve ever read a Baker novel before, you pretty much know that Paul ain’t kiddin’. Baker specializes in precise, funny descriptions of everyday activities and moments. His first novel, The Mezzanine (1986), was entirely about what one man does during one day on his lunch-hour. (Only Baker can wring drama from — and I’m not joking here — a broken shoelace. Read that book.)

Similarly, when you begin to read The Anthologist, you may think you’re going to get a conventional-fiction tale of the agony and heartache of a tortured artist. Instead, Baker offers something different and (after all the books that have been written about tortured artists) better: Chowder talks to us about poetry. His love for it (“Poetry is a controlled refinement of sobbing”); his quietly controversial ideas about it (he firmly believes the instinctive rhythm for most great American poetry isn’t iambic pentameter but iambic tetrameter — a four-beat, rather than a five-beat, line); and detailed praise about poets he likes (including Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, and W.S. Merwin) and poets he doesn’t (“wacky Charles Olson”), as well as poets he’s jealous of (Billy Collins, “charming, chirping crack whore that he is” — ouch!).

Chowder/Nicholson — for like many of the author’s narrators, you suspect his character is speaking what Nicholson believes — also compares poetry to television in a way that will make TV viewers not exactly feel guilty about preferring the tube over a tome: “One day the English language is going to perish… And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form.”

The drama and emotion in The Anthologist builds subtly. You become so engaged by Chowder’s narrative voice, and his engrossing musings about poetry, that his loneliness and his valiant attempts to cope with despair creep up on you. When they do, you’re moved by this sincere, funny, sad man.

Baker works a lot of things he enjoys into The Anthologist, including a couple of mentions of the real-life singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves, whom he has Paul listening to a few times during the novel. I like Slaid Cleaves, too. Maybe when you buy The Anthologist, you’ll want to pick up a Slaid Cleaves CD, too.

Sep 4 2009 02:30 PM ET

Nick Cave's 'Death of Bunny Munro': An exclusive excerpt!

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Categories: Celebrity, Exclusive Excerpt!, Fiction

It’s fair to say that the Australian renaissance man Nick Cave has a working knowledge of the dark side. In fact, Cave seems to pretty much live there — ask anyone who has read his 1989 debut novel And The Ass Saw The Angel, seen the 2005 movie The Proposition (for which he wrote the script), or heard pretty much any of his albums. Technically, however, Cave dwells on the south coast of England. That is also the setting for his second novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, in which a sex-obsessed traveling salesman is forced to take his young son on the road with him following the suicide of his wife. We’re delighted to offer you an exclusive excerpt from what is undoubtedly one of Cave’s darkest, most hilarious works to date. (Be forewarned: Though we’ve dashed out obscenities, this is still most definitely not suitable for kids). The book goes on sale next week.

Chapter 4

As Bunny turns into Church Road, the deejay is still talking about Kylie’s gold lame hot pants how they are housed in a temperature-controlled vault in a museum in Australia and have reportedly been insured for eight million dollars (more than the Turin Shroud). Bunny feels his mobile vibrate and he flips it open, takes a deep breath and releases a measure of air and says, ‘What?’

‘I got one for you, Bunny.’

It is Geoffrey calling from the office. Geoffrey is Bunny’s boss and he is also, in Bunny’s view, something of a sad case, gone to fat in that mouse-sized office of his on Western Road, almost welded into a tortured swivel chair that he rarely seems to leave. A good-looking guy once upon a million years ago there are framed photos of him on the back wall of his office, fit and almost handsome but now an outsized, treacle-voiced pervert who sweats and sniffs and laughs into the handkerchief he forever waves theatrically in his fist. Geoffrey is a sad case, in Bunny’s view, but he likes him all the same. Sometimes Geoffrey exudes a kind of paternal, Buddha-like wisdom that Bunny, on occasion, finds himself responding to.

‘I’m listening, fat man,’ says Bunny. READ FULL STORY »

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