Literature world mourns - Adrienne Rich was dead
11 Apr 2012 02:42:16
Rich, who received a galaxy of honors, including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and National Book Award, for a body of work that spanned seven decades and ranks among the most anthologized of the 20th century, died on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz, California, daughter-in-law Diana Horowitz said.
Horowitz said Rich succumbed to complications from rheumatoid arthritis, from which she suffered for many years.
Rich, who lived and wrote openly as a lesbian for most of her adult life, starting in an... Read Full Story
Talking with best-sellers author Lionel Shriver
11 Apr 2012 02:39:33
"The New Republic" follows Shriver's best-selling works like "The Post-Birthday World" as well as "We Need to Talk About Kevin," the 2011 movie starring Tilda Swinton for which she was nominated for a best actress Golden Globe.
"The New Republic" tells the story of a corporate lawyer-turned-freelance journalist Edgar Kellogg who takes an assignment reporting about a fictional terrorist group on a Portuguese peninsula after the celebrated reporter before him mysteriously disappears.
As Edgar trie... Read Full Story
Barbara Walters's victory
07 Apr 2012 22:33:58
Judge George O'Toole of the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts ruled Tuesday that Nancy Shay's defamation lawsuit had insufficient merit, ending a legal drama that began last year, when Shay filed the suit.
Shay, who befriended Jacqueline Gruber, when the pair attended school together in the 1980s, sued Walters following the publication her 2008 memoir, "Audition."
"Jackie started to refuse to come home on weekends," Walters' book reads. "She had a new friend named Nancy, whom the school kicke... Read Full Story
Amazon Kindle news!
07 Apr 2012 22:31:10
On the same day that Amazon started selling Harry Potter e-books in a landmark deal, buy buttons on the company's dominant Kindle e-book store disappeared for several hours.
Top-selling e-books, including The Hunger Games series and the Fifty Shades trilogy, instead had bigger green buttons saying "This title is not available for customers from: United States."
Several Amazon customers complained on Tuesday about the mysterious button disappearance on the company's online Kindle forum.
"What doe... Read Full Story
What Frank Langella said about his new memoir
07 Apr 2012 22:29:56
Elizabeth Taylor, Rita Hayworth, Paul Newman, Rex Harrison, Richard Burton and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis are among those cast in a none-too-flattering light by Broadway and film star Langella, 74, in "Dropped Names: Famous Men And Women As I Knew Them." Harper Collins is releasing the book on Tuesday.
He recalls a desperately lonely Taylor who, after a second date in 2001, told him "Come on, baby, and put me to sleep."
After helping the then-69-year-old actress upstairs by pushing her from behi... Read Full Story
Pulitzer Prize winne become Katherine Boo
03 Apr 2012 02:31:33
The former Washington Post editor and reporter and current New Yorker staff writer figured that if she couldn't escape calamity in her own home, she may as well do what she loved: report on poverty from one of its epicenters.
Boo does just that in her first book, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity." Since its release in February, the book has become a top 10 New York Times best seller in the nonfiction and political categories. It has attracted wide prais... Read Full Story
"Doonesbury" author Garry Trudeau
03 Apr 2012 02:29:42
The law, which went into effect earlier this year and requires abortion providers perform an ultrasound before the procedure, is intended to give pause to pregnant women and possibly motivate them to reconsider their decision.
Trudeau said in an email that the "party of limited government," a reference to Republicans, has legislated "onerous preconditions for a perfectly legal procedure" and withdrawn funds for reproductive health services that prevent unwanted pregnancies.
"This is happening in... Read Full Story
Publishers like e-books more and more
03 Apr 2012 02:29:01
Several parties have held talks to settle the potential antitrust case, said the person, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. It is not yet clear what such a settlement might look like.
The five publishers facing possible Justice Department action are Simon & Schuster Inc, a unit of CBS Corp; Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group; Pearson Plc's Penguin Group (USA); Macmillan, a unit of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH; and HarperCollins Publishers Inc, a unit of News Cor... Read Full Story
Interview with Kathy Mallory (Carol O'Connell)
02 Apr 2012 03:05:38
Even her creator, author Carol O'Connell, says she's not entirely sure how much she might actually like her own heroine in real life. Mallory, the star of a series of bestselling novels, now returns in "The Chalk Girl," her ninth adventure, after a multi-year wait.
Mallory is being punished with desk duty after an extended leave when rats start falling from the sky in New York's Central Park and a mysterious red-haired child appears in a t-shirt with blood on her shoulders, leading Mallory into ... Read Full Story
Amanda Knox sold her book to HarperCollins
02 Apr 2012 02:53:54
The HarperCollins spokeswoman declined to comment on financial terms of the deal or elaborate on plans for the book, saying further details would be released in a statement on Friday.
Representatives for Knox, a 24-year-old former University of Washington student convicted of murder while studying in Perugia, Italy, said she would have no comment.
A source familiar with the deal said Knox would tell her story in the memoir, including details of the sensational case and her imprisonment in Italy.... Read Full Story
How President John F. Kennedy connects with Mimi Alford
02 Apr 2012 02:51:57
Mimi Alford, who was 19 when she started her internship at the White House in 1962, discussed her secret sexual affair with the president in her book "Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy."
She told NBC's Meredith Vieira that she decided to write the book to stop her secret becoming "deadly."
"It's not so much that I feel that I'm exposing myself, it's that I'm really unburdening myself - it was a very difficult thing for me to do," Alford said in an interview to be broad... Read Full Story
Whats up with Lorax?
29 Mar 2012 12:44:30
The 3-foot-high statue of the Lorax standing on a tree stump with his arms outstretched was reported missing from the hillside property on Monday morning, San Diego Police Lt. Andra Brown said.
Theodor Geisel, who wrote The Lorax and other best-selling children's books under the pen-name Dr. Seuss, died in 1991 at the age of 87.
His widow, Audrey, still lives on the estate in the San Diego community of La Jolla.
Brown said police were trying to determine if the theft was related to an animated f... Read Full Story
