In the new issue of Entertainment Weekly there is a lengthy Q&A with actress Kristen Johnston in which she talks about how her addiction to Vicodin caused her stomach to explode, her subsequent recovery, and her new memoir, Guts. But the 3rd Rock from the Sun star had far more to say than we could fit in the pages of the magazine. Below, Johnston talks further about her travails, her time on 3rd Rock, and why James Frey is not completely “full of s—.”
Image Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP Images
Amanda Knox, the 24-year-old American who was imprisoned on murder charges for four years in Perugia, Italy, has signed a book deal with HarperCollins for close to $4 million, the New York Times reports. A heated auction for the book rights had been ensuing for four days.
Four months ago, Knox was released from Italian prison and acquitted of charges that she murdered her roommate Meredith Kercher. During her incarceration, Knox, who studied creative writing, kept a diary that will now help shape the book.
Said HarperCollins in a statement: “Knox will give a full and unflinching account of the events that led to her arrest in Perugia and her struggles with the complexities of the Italian judicial system. … Aided by journals she kept during her imprisonment, Knox will talk about her harrowing experience at the hands of the Italian police and later prison guards and inmates. She will reveal never before-told details surrounding her case, and describe how she used her inner strength and strong family ties to cope with the most challenging time of her young life.” READ FULL STORY »
Fickle. That’s probably the best description of my feelings about Valentine’s Day. There are years when I’m thrilled to celebrate love with chocolate, that fat little cherub, and his matchmaking arrows. Then, there are other years when it feels as if I’ve saved up all my bitterness for this one special day.
No matter what category you fall into this year, it is almost impossible not to smile while reading Dave Isay’s All There Is. The compilation of stories from Storycorps’ oral history project share anecdotes of love found, lost, and regained. The short and sweet transcriptions of conversations between two lovers, friends, or family members make you feel like you’re eavesdropping on a genuine moment. Each story only takes minutes to read, making it the perfect anecdote for an especially gloomy day. It’s sweet, sometimes silly, and often heartwarming. Mostly, it’s inspiring.
But even if you have an icebox where your heart used to be, All There Is can at least teach you a few lessons. No wonder it’s a Valentine’s Day gift “more meaningful than any box of chocolates.”
5 Lessons Even The Bitter Can Appreciate (or at least laugh at): READ FULL STORY »
The New Orleans man whose post-Hurricane Katrina struggles and heroism inspired Dave Eggers’ much-lauded nonfiction book Zeitoun was convicted last year of battering his wife, The Smoking Gun has uncovered. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, 54, was arrested in a domestic abuse incident at the home of his wife Kathryn and their five children. A police report reads: READ FULL STORY »
Jodi Kantor, a New York Times correspondent, says she got the idea for The Obamas back in 2009, when she interviewed the couple in the Oval Office for a piece about their marriage. “After the article was published, I couldn’t stop thinking about the subtle tension I had felt in that room,” she writes. Although she never interviewed either the president or his wife again, she went on to talk to 33 White House staffers. The book that resulted isn’t, as advertised, about the Obamas’ marriage — not just because Kantor never spoke to them again, but also because the Obamas lead a cloistered life in Washington, going out even less than George and Laura Bush, who were famously private. The Obamas doesn’t tell us more than we already know about Barack Obama, either. It’s really a portrait of Michelle — and it’s not a kind one. READ FULL STORY »
He dominated tech, and he dominated the publishing industry. Steve Jobs left a legacy that will not soon be forgotten — one part of which was the year’s top-selling book. Elsewhere, George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire set, a World War II story from the author of Seabiscuit, and the ever-scrappy Katniss Everdeen landed in the top 10. Jobs was equally powerful in eBooks, joined by the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Liz Lemon, and Jaycee Dugard, and Edward Cullen. Who else landed the top shelf? Click through to see 2011′s most popular books. READ FULL STORY »
Book publicist turned best-selling author Sloane Crosley doesn’t have a new book coming out any time soon, but for those of us who are eager for more of her hilarious, perceptive observations, it’s lucky she’s gotten into the digital publishing game. Up the Down Volcano, Crosley’s first full-length essay since the publication of her second collection How Did You Get This Number, is available exclusively on Amazon as a Kindle Single. This hilarious yet harrowing account of summiting the Ecuadorian stratovolcano Cotopaxi — Crosley-style — reads more like an epic than her previous works, yet it retains her signature brand of intelligent humor, which stems from keen observation and honest self-assessment. EW caught up with this busy writer to talk about her new Single, the ways digital publishing can resemble the music industry, Arrested Development, and a lot more.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I laughed out loud while reading “Up the Down Volcano,” but I was also very conscious of the fact that your experience couldn’t have been funny when you were going through it. Are many of the experiences you write about only funny in retrospect?
SLOANE CROSLEY: Yes. Those generally make for better stories. I think that if you can see the humor while it’s happening – this is cliché – you’re tempted to not live in the moment, or it’s already fermenting into a story in your mind as it’s happening. You start mentally taking notes; that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t come out as funny or a worthwhile story on the other side, but for me personally, it’s more rewarding if there’s something [deeper] going on. Part of me thinks that it’s a defense mechanism that takes the pressure off of just trying to be funny, but most of me thinks that’s where people need humor the most, both as readers and as writers. READ FULL STORY »
Last week, the New York Times named its 100 finalists for best books of the year, and now that they’ve whittled their picks down to the 10 best, there are a few surprises. Stephen King’s commercial time-travel novel, 11/22/63, made the list, and Jeffrey Eugenides’ much-anticipated, generally well received yet somewhat polarizing novel The Marriage Plot was edged out. Karen Russell’s zany Swamplandia! is a quirky but not at all unusual choice, and of course, year-end lists always celebrate the new and the splashy, so expect Chad Harbach and 26-year-old Téa Obreht’s heralded debuts to continue racking up the “Best Of” honors.
There are fewer oddballs in the nonfiction category. Malcolm X by the late Manning Marable was arguably the favorite to win the National Book Award for Nonfiction this year — that honor went to Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve, which doesn’t appear in this top 10. See the full list below, in alphabetical order: READ FULL STORY »
Marilyn Monroe was such a big star at her height that one young man’s brief encounters with her spawned not one but two memoirs, which in turn inspired a feature film that’s currently generating Oscar buzz. The two books by the late Colin Clark both document the author’s experiences at the age of 23 as the third assistant director — or really, as an errand boy — on the conflict-ridden, six-month-long shoot of The Prince and the Showgirl starring Monroe and Laurence Olivier. His first book about the shoot, The Prince, the Showgirl, and Me (1995), consists of his day-to-day, fly-on-the-wall journals of his on-set observations. The second book, My Week With Marilyn (2000), takes a deeper look at a magical nine-day period (mentioned just briefly in the first book) in the middle of that six months in which Monroe lured Clark into a semi-romantic affair. While the two books — published only five years apart — take a markedly different stance on Monroe as a person and an actress, My Week With Marilyn the movie, as the title would suggest, adheres very closely to the book of the same name, although it draws some expository details from the first book as well. Weinstein Books, the publishing arm of the studio that produced the film, has released the two books in one volume for the first time. Whether you have or haven’t seen the movie, is the book worth reading? (Minor spoilers ahead). READ FULL STORY »
As a ramp-up to naming the 10 best of the year, the New York Times released its annual long-long list of notable books of 2011, splitting it 45-55 between fiction and nonfiction. The list hits many of the big literary names: Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding (Amazon’s pick for book of the year), Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, and Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, although it doesn’t include perhaps the buzziest book of the year, Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Big award winners like The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes (the Man Booker Prize) and The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt (the National Book Award for nonfiction) both earned a nod, but the National Book Award winner for fiction, Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward, is noticeably missing.
Read more:
Amazon chooses Top 10 Books of 2011 — ‘The Art of Fielding’ is no. 1
‘Steve Jobs’ by Walter Isaacson: EW review
Jesmyn Ward on winning the National Book Award — plus, she takes the EW Book Quiz!
National Book Awards: Jesmyn Ward wins fiction prize
