Archive: February 2010 (11-20 of 22)

Feb 12 2010 04:27 PM ET

Reading in the waiting room: It's not just old magazines anymore

by
Tagged:

Ever find yourself seated in the fluorescent purgatory of a doctor’s waiting room, wishing that you could find something to pass the time, but there are only three identical copies of Yacht Aficionado and a medical equipment catalog? If you’re lucky, there is a decade-old issue of this illustrious magazine with Stone Cold Steve Austin on the cover, but don’t hold your breath.

One possible stab at a solution comes from CavanKerry Press, which has put together The Waiting Room Reader, a collection of poetry meant to be somewhat more inspiring and enjoyable than those pamphlets on the dangers of childhood obesity. Last year, 5,000 copies of the book were sent to 200 waiting rooms in 28 hospitals for free as a sort of test run. Successful feedback has now led to a second printing that is being sold to doctors’ lobbies across the country. “Our goal was to provide reading material that people would actually want to read,” says Joan Cusack Handler, the collection’s editor. “The waiting room can be a worrying place, so it’s nice to have something other than a few golf magazines. Honestly, I can’t believe no one ever thought of it before.”

It’s an interesting prospect, even if you’re not big on poetry. I, for one, would be glad for a little more variety while waiting, and literature doesn’t go out of date like magazines do. Novels would probably run a little too long (although, at some appointments, I’m not too sure), but what about short story collections? Nothing like a bit of Alice Munro or John Cheever to prepare you for your GP’s prodding fingers. What do you think, Shelf-Lifers? Would you like to see something different in the waiting room the next time you’re there? Or are you happy reading up on the latest news about the 2004 election?

Feb 11 2010 12:33 PM ET

Final 'Hunger Games' novel has been given a title and a cover

by
Filed under: Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins and tagged: , , ,

For fans starving for news on the Hunger Games series, there’s good news: Scholastic has revealed new details on the final book in Suzanne Collins’ YA trilogy. The new cover continues the previous books’ ornithological theme, and the latest entry will be titled Mockingjay, after the hybrid birds that feature in the novels’ storyline.

The previous two books, The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, were set in a post-apocalyptic world ruled by a ruthless and powerful authoritarian government that sponsors violent games of survival. Details on the plot of the final novel, which is set to release Aug. 24, are being kept under tight lock-and-key, although Scholastic VP Editorial Director David Levithan did reveal a jokey list of story elements that will most definitely not be appearing in Mockingjay, including “At no point does President Snow utter the line, ‘This is Snowmageddon, baby’” and “In a tough editorial call, we decided not to have Katniss win the Hunger Games…only to be interrupted by Kanye West.” Not too much to go on for those hoping for a glimpse of how the series will end, so it looks like fans will just have to wait. “That was about as much as we could get out of him,” says publicist Tracy van Straaten. “I probably won’t be reading the book myself until August 24th.”

So, Shelf-Lifers, are you excited for the conclusion? Can you wait until August?

Feb 11 2010 11:22 AM ET

St. Martins to publish first adult 'Sweet Valley High' novel

by
Tagged: , ,

Great news for grown-up fans of  Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield: Today, St. Martin’s Press officially confirmed that they will publish Sweet Valley Confidential, the first hardcover adult Sweet Valley High novel. The novel — which “follows the cast of characters into adulthood,” according to St. Martin’s press release — will be written by the writer who created the franchise in the early 1980s, Francine Pascal.

“I’ve had thousands of queries from fans over the years wondering what Jessica and Elizabeth would be like as adults,” Pascal says in the release. “Well, Sweet Valley Confidential should give them all the answers. And I can guarantee they will be very surprised. Actually, more like shocked.”

Let’s turn this over to you, Shelf Lifers: What do you expect to see in the novel? What would shock you?

Feb 10 2010 12:46 PM ET

What literary character have you fallen in love with?

by
Filed under: Twilight and tagged: , ,

It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, Shelf Lifers! So in the spirit of the holiday, I thought, why not dedicate a post to those we share a special bond with: The characters in literature that we love?

And I mean love, folks. Not just respect, or admire, but love. Because, really, what avid reader hasn’t fallen for a fictional character at one point in time?

Here’s my confession: While reading East of Eden as a teen, I had a major crush on Caleb Trask, the jealous twin brother of perfect son Aron. (The fact that I went for the one who represents Cain versus the one who’s a stand-in for Abel probably says a lot about me…) And I even came dangerously close to falling for the unlucky-in-love-and-life protagonist of Jonathan Tropper’s This Is Where I Leave You after reading it last year.

So now it’s your turn: Which literary characters have you fallen in love with? And let’s try to stretch our minds beyond Twilight‘s Edward Cullen, shall we?

Feb 9 2010 04:20 PM ET

Sweet Valley High Sequel: What I'd Love to See

by
Tagged: , ,

Brush off your Droids cassette and put on your lavalieres – the Wakefield twins are back. And I don’t mean in Diablo Cody’s movie adaptation of the series.

No, according to  St. Martin’s, Sweet Valley High‘s Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield – the identical twins with blonde hair, eyes the color of the Pacific Ocean and “perfect size six” figures – will return to bookstores, possibly as soon as early next year, in Sweet Valley Confidential, a book chronicling their lives as twenty-somethings.

Rumors have swirled for years that SVH creator Francine Pascal was working on a book focusing on the twins and their friends several years out of high school. Late last month, the SVH world went into a frenzy when an editorial assistant at St. Martin’s confirmed the existence of the novel, giving  Shannon’s Sweet Valley Blog a tentative publishing date of February 2011. While there is no word yet on what characters will appear in the book, there is a plethora to choose from. I think it’s safe to say that Lila Fowler, Jessica’s rich frenemy and my personal favorite, will make an appearance, as will Porsche-driving Bruce Patman and Elizabeth’s moody on-again off-again boyfriend Todd Wilkins. Continuity has never been one of Sweet Valley’s strong points, so I won’t really mind if the book pretends Sweet Valley Senior Year and Sweet Valley University never happened, focuses on just SVH characters, and retains the same fabulous campy quality as the original series.

So, what plots/characters would you like to see in Sweet Valley Confidential? Are there any other YA series that need to reappear with the characters grown up?

Feb 6 2010 07:00 AM ET

'Game Change': The authors discuss politics as unusual

by
Filed under: Barack Obama and tagged: , , , , , , ,

The 2008 presidential election was historic both in terms of the nature of its candidates and its near-complete level of media saturation, but political journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann somehow managed to put together a campaign book chock full of behind-the-scenes details, often juicy, that were overlooked the first go-round. That book, Game Change (click to see the EW review), quickly became a best-seller, demonstrating that over 15 months later, we as a nation are still captivated by that year-long mad rush towards the White House. The two authors spoke with EW about doing hundreds of interviews, how they deal with accusations of gossip-peddling, and their exhaustive attempts to report all the fear and loathing on the campaign trail.

Why do you think so many people are still interested in this particular election, over a year later, even though they know the ending?

John: We started out with a notion as we were covering the campaign that this was an unusual election on a lot of different levels, but it was unusual in particular in that the candidates who were front-and-center were bigger-than-life characters. You had here people who were more interesting than your average politician. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John McCain, these are all people who had celebrity stature. We often like to joke that any race where Rudy Giuliani is the seventh most interesting person is a pretty colorful race. And we thought that all the historic circumstances around the campaign in combination with these characters who had clearly riveted the country in a way that we hadn’t seen before in a presidential election, we thought that there was some chance, that if we rendered the high human drama of what it was like to go through it, and how it changed them, and how the strengths and weaknesses in their characters affected the outcome, that people would, a year later, still have some interest in it, if we did our jobs right.

In the prologue you say that it’s essentially a love story between Obama and Clinton. But parts almost feel like a Greek tragedy…

Mark: We hoped to write a book that wouldn’t be seen as a political book that only people in the beltway would read. What we thought was that these were bigger-than-life figures, many of them iconic, and there was a lot of tragedy and comedy and high drama that, if we told the story right, would reveal these famous people but in a brand-new way. READ FULL STORY »

Feb 5 2010 06:00 AM ET

Jenny Sanford's 'Staying True': A Review

by
Filed under: News and tagged: , , ,

Hell hath no fury like a political wife scorned.

It was true with Elizabeth Edwards, who took her husband John to task in her most recent book, Resilience, and it’s certainly true with Jenny Sanford. You remember Sanford – she’s the wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. (You know, the one who told his staff and his family that he was going to go hike on the Appalachian Trail and instead flew to South America to see his girlfriend.) Jenny Sanford remained quiet during the ensuing media hullabaloo, letting the press skewer her husband while she retreated to the family’s beach house with their four boys.

Now it’s her turn to do the skewering, and boy, does she let him have it. In her by turns funny, thoughtful, and introspective memoir, Staying True (which goes on sale today), Sanford looks back at her marriage and her husband, giving, to her credit, what seems to be a well-rounded portrait of him. Here we have not just a philanderer but a go-getter, a restless man with a zest for life. An incredible cheapskate. A loving son and brother. A tireless campaigner.  A strict, if largely absent, father. Here are some of the highlights (or, rather, the lowlights):

How he was a jerk early on: The first Thanksgiving they were married, they joined Mark’s family at the Sanford farm — where Mark informed her he’d be bunking with his brothers, not with her. “I’ve always slept with my brothers and I don’t see why that has to change now that we’re married,” he told her.

How he pinched pennies: One year, for her birthday, he gave her a drawing of half a bike; for Christmas, he drew the other half. A few months later he handed her a $25 used bike. Then there was the time he had a staffer pick out a necklace for her—but when he saw her wearing it, he said, “That is what I spent all that money on? I hope you kept the box!” He returned the jewelry the next day. And he was once too cheap to hire an exterminator when their Charleston house was infested with bats.

How his disregard for her turned callous: When Sanford needed a tubal ligation (she had been through four difficult pregnancies and could not risk another), she went to the hospital alone. “As I was wheeled in for surgery, the nurse asked me why I didn’t have anyone with me for support.” And shortly after  she discovered his long-running affair, he began “pestering me for permission to see his lover…so he could find the ‘key to his heart.’” When she demurred — she knew she could forgive him for what had happened, but condoning continued adultery was another matter — he asked her, “Do you want to wake up when you are eighty and know you never had a heart connection?”

People will no doubt criticize Jenny Sanford for writing this book and airing so much dirty laundry about her  husband, a man once buzzed about as a presidential contender. But I think he had it coming (in fact, I think the very idea of using a book as revenge is pretty delicious.) He publicly humiliated her, not once but time and time again over the last year. She has every right to humiliate him. That’s how I see it, anyway. You?

Feb 4 2010 10:42 AM ET

Zombies and unicorns: Natural enemies?

by
Tagged:

It’s a match-up centuries in the making, one that can turn brother against brother, mother against son, and babysitter against baby. The question is, of course, which mythological creature is cooler: The zombie or the unicorn? Zombies have been experiencing a resurgence in popularity lately, a revivification, if you will, from Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to Zombieland to the raised-from-the-dead career and mangled face of Mickey Rourke. (“He came back…different.”) Not to be outdone, those rainbow-pooping, ark-missing unicorns have always enjoyed a consistently strong popularity among the puffy-sticker-on-a-Lisa-Frank-folder set, as well as a brief period in the 80’s when movies like The Last Unicorn and Legend helped bring them back into the mainstream.

Well, the age-old question will finally be answered in a new book, Zombies vs. Unicorns, just announced by Simon & Schuster, which will be a collection of essays detailing the pros and cons of both the shambling undead and the horned horses. The idea for the book came from a series of blog posts between authors Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles, Ironside) and Justine Larbalestier (Liar, How to Ditch Your Fairy) that started in 2007 and grew from there. A number of big names from the young-adult circuit, including The Princess Diaries writer Meg Cabot, have contributed individual pieces on one of the two creatures, all of which are tied together by a running deliberative commentary from Black and Larbalestier as they argue for Team Unicorn and Team Zombie respectively. “What’s great about what the contributors are doing is that it isn’t anything typical,” says publisher Justin Chanda. “There’s definitely the standard eating-your-brains zombie, but there’s also some heartfelt zombies and funny zombies. And on the unicorn side there’s some really dark stuff going on, too.”

Anticipating a September launch for the book, Simon & Schuster has set up a website allowing people to vote and make it known where they stand in this debate. I just wonder why we can’t just compromise and agree that clearly a zombie unicorn would be coolest beast never to roam the earth. What do you guys think? Are you on Team Unicorn or Team Zombie?

Feb 2 2010 04:24 PM ET

EA's 'Dante's Inferno' and other classic literature we'd like to see as a video game

by
Tagged: , , ,

Abandon all hope ye who enter the secret code to Level 9. The first part of Dante Alighieri’s pre-Renaissance masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, has been adapted into a video game by Electronic Arts. The game, which hits stores Feb. 9, recasts the moody, reflective poet as a buff, sword-swinging Crusader out to save his beloved’s soul from the fiery clutches of Lucifer. It looks like there will be a lot less introspection and whole lot more decapitation than in the original. Surprisingly, though, Dante’s phantasmal tour guide Virgil hasn’t been changed into a wisecracking talking dog that can give you hints.

This isn’t the first work of literature to be transformed into a game, but up to now it’s usually been via movies. Where the Harry Potter and Beowulf games had just as much to do with the films as the books, Dante’s Inferno skips that step, ready to muck around in public domain without the help of Hollywood. BioShock, which has a sequel releasing the same day, certainly borrowed from Ayn Rand’s philosophy when designing its Art Deco dystopia (it even had a character not-so-subtly named Atlas) but it didn’t purport to be a straight interpretation of her books.

This newfound interest in literary gaming got us thinking: What other classics would we like to see coming to a console near us?

Don Quixote: A lot like the old arcade game Joust, except your enemy is a windmill.

Hamlet: Polonius’ Revenge: This re-imagining is a stealth game in the mode of Metal Gear Solid that has you sneaking throughout Elsinore, hiding behind curtains and listening to other people’s conversations. But don’t get caught, or it’s curtains for you!

Edgar Allen Poe’s RavenHunt: Use the light-gun to shoot at those pesky ravens rapping at your chamber door.

Catch-22: There is no way to beat this game.

The Brothers Karamazov: Power of Three: Dmitri wields the power of ice, Ivan the power of fire, and Alyosha the power of heart. Together they must face down the final boss, an evil, black-robed maniac called the Grand Inquisitor.

Finnegans Wakeboarding: Welcome to the world of Joycean extreme sports!

What do you think? Excited for Dante’s debut on the Xbox 360 and PS3? Any other titles you’d like to see?

Feb 1 2010 02:42 PM ET

'Workin It' with RuPaul: Eight essential bon mots from the drag legend's new book

by
Tagged:

RuPaul’s back tonight with the second season of the reality delight that is RuPaul’s Drag Race on Logo. But the drag superstar isn’t just reigning over our TV sets these days: She’s workin’ the bookshelves, too, with a new book, Workin’ It: RuPaul’s Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style, which hits stores tomorrow. (How’s that for cross-promotion? Talk about knowing how to work!)

Before I get too deep into this, I have to just say that, if for nothing else, Ru’s new book is worth picking up just for the photos alone. Look at the cover there on the left—and just please realize that RuPaul’s pompadoured look here is only about 1/100th of the fabulosity inside. The thing is a veritable photo book of Ru’s amazing looks throughout the years! This is the type of book that’s, truly, coffee table-worthy without actually being a coffee table picture book.

So now, rather than bore you with a straight up review of Workin’ It—because c’mon, there’s now way I wouldn’t just love all over this hilarious guide to life and style from RuPaul—I thought I’d regale you with one delicious bon mot—and a little accompanying T. Stran commentary—from each section of the book. So without further adieu:

Introduction: “Remember to love yourself, because if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else? Can I get an amen in here?”
If you’re a Drag Race fan, then this maxim has a particularly special place, as Ru often uses it to lift up the ladies on her dragtastic reality show.

Chapter 1: It’s Your Attitude, Quite Frankly: “Today, kindness is the new cool. Being kind illustrates the highest level of consciousness and deliberate optimism.”
Tell it, gurlfriend! I love that Ru doesn’t use her platform to promote drag-queen bitchery but self-empowerment, instead. Yes, I’m a sap.

Chapter 2: Give Me Body: “Ever been to a dinner party where a guest insists on standing and talking as they eat? Ew, gross! Food flying out of their mouths! Or on the subway when somebody whips out some Chinese takeout and it smells up the entire car? Double gross! Food should be eaten deliberately at a table.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I didn’t want to go into it here, but one of the best parts about Chapter 2 starts on page 45 when Ru goes into the first time she got a “high colonic.” Literally.

Chapter 3: Wake Up to Makeup: “Shaving my natural eyebrows gives me way more eyelid for shadow.”
Who would’ve guessed?

READ FULL STORY »

Advertisement

TV Recaps

Powered by WordPress.com VIP