Making It Up With a Publishing Round Up

I've been a little out of the loop lately, dear readers--my apologies. With vacation and the Thanksgiving holiday (and an intense work week playing catch up!), I have been a bit preoccupied and lax about posting. I am truly sorry--I know how much you must miss me. ;)

But boy, oh, boy, are there things going on in this crazy publishing biz!

Allow me to share with you some of my personal "favorite" highlights in a quick round-up:


Best of 2012 Lists Posted
That's right. It's that time of year again. The New York Times, Kirkus, and Slate have all posted their big lists of most notable/best books of 2012. As per usual, I only have ever even heard of a few of them, and I  haven't read any of them. Sometimes I wonder where they come up with most of these things...or maybe I am just not as "in the know" as I should be.

Facebook Launching New Social Reading Site
Yup. Another Goodreads-style website is on its way. I received notification from the folks over at Facebook about Riffle, which Forbes magazine describes as "a new kind of Pintrest", and have been invited as an early member (I also can pass along invites to others, if anyone is interested). I've signed up and am awaiting my login information--a review will be forthcoming!



HOBBIT Film Producers Being Sued
The J.R.R. Tolkien estate isn't letting HOBBIT producers off easy for what they claim is a breach of merchandising contracts. The estate wants $80 million to make up for it. As the Hollywood Reporter tells us, "The crux of the suit is the estate's contention that a decades-old rights agreement entitles the studio to create only "tangible" merchandise based on the books, not an "online slot machine" or other digital exploitations that the estate calls highly offensive."



High Fidelity Author Writing Script for Wild Adaptation
Reese Witherspoon's production company, Pacific Standard, is set to adapt Wild, Cheryl Strayed's memoir about her solo 1100-mile trek through California and Oregon to Washington State. Bestselling author Nick Hornby has signed on to write the screenplay. I, myself, hadn't heard of the memoir before, and quite frankly, I'm not seeing the film adaptation potential here. Seems to me like the makings of a slowly paced, somewhat boring flick, but I guess we'll see what the talented Horby comes up with.



E.L. James Given High Publishing Honor
Every year, Publishers Weekly names a "publishing person of the year." Past winners have been the likes of Penguin CEO David Shanks, Barnes and Noble chairman Len Riggio, and Google settlement "architect" Richard Sarnoff. But this year? This year's winner comes as a shocker to myself and other members of the industry: Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James. Bad choices, PW, bad choices.

A Pulitzer Prize Surprise

Today marked the 2011 Pulitzer Prize announcements, one of the most exciting days in the trade publishing industry. But oddly enough, not all categories announced winners. The "Fiction" category, in fact--one of the most looked-forward to in my opinion--went empty, despite having nominees, according to GalleyCat:

There was no Pulitzer Prize for fiction awarded this year. Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace were all nominated.

Stephen Greenblatt won the General Nonfiction award for The Swerve: How the World Became Modern and John Lewis Gaddis took the Biography award for George F. Kennan: An American Life.

Tracy K. Smith won the Poetry award with Life on Mars. The Drama award went to Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegria Hudes. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable won the History prize. Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts by Kevin Puts was awarded the Music prize.

Here’s more about the fiction prize jury this year:

Susan Larson, former book editor, The Times-Picayune and, host, “The Reading Life”, WWNO-FM (Chair)

Maureen Corrigan, critic in residence, Georgetown University and, book critic, “Fresh Air,” NPR

Michael Cunningham, novelist & past Pulitzer Prize winner, New York, NY

See the original post HERE

But the question of why still goes unanswered.

It seems a little wrong to me, to not pick a winner when you have three contestants. Clearly they can't be all that bad if they were in the first place. So why would the P.P. jury just not pick one? Are there not rules in place for ties? Or preparations for massive disagreements? I'm not going to presume to know the answer to either of those questions, but I am certainly baffled.

Stephan Lee at Entertainment Weekly seems to agree:

Wow, Pulitzer committee. That’s cold.

For the first time in 35 years, no Pulitzer Prize was awarded in the fiction category. The message from the committee to any author who published a novel or short story collection in 2011 seems to be: Sorry, you’re just not good enough. The Pulitzer Board failed to reach a necessary majority to determine a winner based on the three fiction finalists determined by a panel of three jurors.*

The fiction jurors were Susan Larson, former book editor of The Times-Picayune, Maureen Corrigan, book critic for Fresh Air on NPR, and the novelist Michael Cunningham, who won the 1999 Pulitzer for his novel The Hours.

The jurors chose three finalists — Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by David Foster Wallace — and it was up to the Pulitzer Board to make the final decision. To be fair to the Board, the jurors may have made the decision more difficult than it should have been. Johnson’s Train Dreams is a novella that was re-issued from 2002, and the board may have felt as though it was something they’d seen before. The posthumously published, incomplete The Pale King wasn’t the late Wallace’s best work. But why not give the award to Russell? Swamplandia! isn’t the typical Pulitzer winner, but it’s an intelligent, inventive, and thoroughly entertaining read. In a time when people aren’t buying books — especially literary adult novels — it seems counterproductive and insulting not to hand out a Pulitzer Prize, which translates into sales. Last year’s winner, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, got a huge boost in paperback after the announcement.

Getting a mass audience to buy a challenging literary novel is an uphill battle, and there better be a good reason for depriving the reading public of a quality recommendation. My mother, whose first language is not English, would always buy and spend a painstakingly long time to read and understand the Pulitzer-winning novel each year. For her and a lot of other readers, the Pulitzer Prize is the ultimate, authoritative stamp of approval, and it got her to read books she wouldn’t normally read — and she gained a huge sense of accomplishment from finishing them.

There were plenty of worthy books in 2011: The Submission by Amy Waldman, Stone Arabia by Dana Spiotta, and The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht come to mind. What books do you think were deserving? Was the Pulitzer Board just being curmudgeonly, or do you agree with its decision?

Read the original post HERE

Myers Selected as 2012 National Kid Lit Ambassador

If this year's choice for national ambassador for young people’s literature is any indication, 2012 is going to be viscerally gritty, darkly honest, and powerfully inspiring.

Walter Dean Myers is a bestselling author of a variety of children's genres (nonfiction, picture books, etc.), but he's most well known for his young adult works. Tackling topics such as drugs, gangs, war, and more in their relation to teens, Myers isn't afraid to explore the truth about the world we live in. A shocking but awesome choice for our national ambassador, in my humble opinion. The New York Times reports:

On the rough-edged streets of Harlem in the 1940s, the young Walter Dean Myers knew better than to carry his library books where other children could see them.

“I was teased if I brought my books home,” said Mr. Myers, now a prolific and award-winning children’s book author. “I would take a paper bag to the library and put the books in the bag and bring them home. Not that I was that concerned about them teasing me — because I would hit them in a heartbeat. But I felt a little ashamed, having books.”

On Tuesday Mr. Myers, 74, will be named the national ambassador for young people’s literature, a sort of poet laureate of the children’s book world who tours the country for two years, speaking at schools and libraries about reading and literacy.

As an African-American man who dropped out of high school but built a successful writing career — largely because of his lifelong devotion to books — Mr. Myers said his message would be etched by his own experiences.

“I think that what we need to do is say reading is going to really affect your life,” he said in an interview at his book-cluttered house here in Jersey City, adding that he hoped to speak directly to low-income minority parents. “You take a black man who doesn’t have a job, but you say to him, ‘Look, you can make a difference in your child’s life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day.’ That’s what I would like to do.”

Mr. Myers is the third person to be appointed to the post, which was created in 2008 and is chosen by a committee formed by two groups: the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the Children’s Book Council, a trade association for children’s book publishers. He succeeds Katherine Paterson, the novelist best known for her “Bridge to Terabithia,” and the first appointee, Jon Scieszka, author of books including “The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.”

The choice of Mr. Myers represents a departure from his predecessors and is likely to be seen as a bold statement. His books chronicle the lives of many urban teenagers, especially young, poor African-Americans. While his body of work includes poetry, nonfiction and the occasional cheerful picture book for children, its standout books offer themes aimed at young-adult readers: stories of teenagers in violent gangs, soldiers headed to Iraq and juvenile offenders imprisoned for their crimes.

While many young-adult authors shy away from such risky subject material, Mr. Myers has used his books to confront the darkness and despair that fill so many children’s lives.

But he does so, critics say, with a sense of possibility. Writing in The New York Times Book Review in 2008, Leonard S. Marcus praised Mr. Myers’s body of work. “Drugs, drive-by shootings, gang warfare, wasted lives — Myers has written about all these subjects with nuanced understanding and a hard-won, qualified sense of hope,” Mr. Marcus wrote.

Robin Adelson, the executive director of the Children’s Book Council, said that while there was a hard edge to Mr. Myers’s writing, there was also the message of holding yourself up and believing in what you can do.

“I think part of what makes him such a great choice for this post is that his writing is a little bit of everything,” she said. “There’s this interest in history and this deep knowledge of history in Walter’s writing. Then there’s this definite hard-core, hard-edged realism.”

His appointment could be viewed as another volley in a debate that intensified last year about young adult literature and whether it is too grim, too dark and too violent for the age group. An essay in The Wall Street Journal in June by Meghan Cox Gurdon questioned contemporary teenage fiction that “can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is.”

Read the rest of the NYT article HERE

Man Booker Prize Finalists, Ron Charles Style

Ron Charles, The Washington Post's popular fiction critic, cracks me up...

Check out his most recent "vlog" about reading and today's crazy technology...and this year's Man Booker Prize Finalists:

Well-deserved Accolade for "The Good Soldiers"

David Finkel's The Good Soldiers, which I reviewed last month, was just announced as the winner of the 2010 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, beating out his fellow nominees with books ranging "from oil to women’s rights to the financial crisis" (The Daily Beast).

I have to admit I'm not surprised. I was super impressed by Finkel's account of the 2-16 Battalion, to the point where I've been recommending it to people left and right.

Here's what The Daily Beast had to say about the memoir:

While Washington bickered over the merits of George W. Bush’s surge, David Finkel headed off to Iraq for The Washington Post to see what was actually happening there. The result is one of the most compelling books on war since Michael Herr’s Dispatches. There is no better example of why great journalists matter than to be taken into Finkel’s devastating, harrowing, and moving account of one battalion’s efforts to turn the tide in their bloody section of Baghdad. It takes spirit and an admittedly slightly perverse sense of self-preservation to do what he did and insert yourself into the middle of a war, but as he spoke on Tuesday night it was clear that he did it for the soldiers as much as for us readers.

Click HERE to read about the other nominees

Congrats, David! (not that he readsmy blog lol)

Britain's Diagram Prize. For What? Oddest Book Title, Of Course!

The Associated Press sent a surprising article about Britain's 2009 Diagram Prize along the wire this morning. And it was too amusing not to share with my loyal readers. Yahoo reposted:

LONDON – Worm hunters, lethal robots and Nazi spoons are in the running for Britain's quirkiest literary award, the Diagram Prize for year's oddest book title.

The six finalists are "Afterthoughts of a Worm Hunter;" "Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich;" "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots;" "The Changing World of Inflammatory Bowel Disease"; "Crocheting Adventures with Hyperbolic Planes;" and "What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?"

The shortlist, announced Friday, was narrowed down from 90 entries, including "The Origin of Feces" and "Bacon: A Love Story."

The Diagram Prize was founded in 1978 and is run by trade magazine The Bookseller. The winner, decided by public vote, will be announced March 26.

Previous champions include "Bombproof Your Horse" and "Living With Crazy Buttocks."

Read the article HERE

My vote goes to "What Kind of Bean is This Chihuahua?"

What about you?

What title do you think shound win?

Gotta love those Hamster Massacres...

The Guardian.co.uk announced last night that the Waterstone's children's book prize has been awarded to author Katie Davies for her book The Great Hamster Massacre.

Does this freak anyone else out a little bit???

A children's book that started life as "a collection of horrible hamster deaths" has won the Waterstone's children's book prize for debut author Katie Davies.

The Great Hamster Massacre, a humorous murder mystery involving two girl sleuths and an array of dead hamsters, is an illustrated book aimed at seven to 10-year-olds and is the first time that a story aimed at a younger readership has won the prize.

"I originally thought it was for older children but then I was told that children over the age of 10 are not interested in hamsters," said Davies. "The story was also inspired by real events that happened when I was a kid around eight or nine years old. I remember quite vividly what it was like at that age: me and my little brother wanted hamsters desperately, but had been given various portentous foreshadowing stories of dreadful things that had happened to small pets. We were also told that both our hamsters were girls but, inevitably, they turned out to be a breeding pair. We were over the moon with the litter but the following morning it was carnage in the cage - they had all been killed by the mother."

Inspired by this memory, Davies began asking her friends about similar pet tales and was overwhelmed with grim hamster stories. "One friend was getting ready for a night out, stepped back with a stiletto and speared the hamster. Another fell into a pot of glue in the classroom," said Davies, with a shudder.

From these unlikely beginnings was born a book described by the children's laureate Anthony Browne as "a funny and touching story told very convincingly and honestly from the point of view of a young girl."

Davies was keen to write a story that would appeal to both boys and girls and contain all the "gory and bodily function bits" that she loved in Roald Dahl books as a child.

Read the rest of the article HERE

Women Writers: "Sugar and spice, and all things nice"

Gender has been an issue in literature for as long as books have been written. Whether it be picking apart the gender roles represented in classic novels, exploring the fact that a certain writer created a protagonist of the opposite gender, or debating the relevance of a writer's gender in a particular time period, it's always been under the microscope.

Even now, with the age of Feminism somewhat behind us, people are still raising a ruckus over gender. Take this year's literary awards, for example.

As I was browsing the Huffington Post's website today, I stumbled upon at least three posts about female writers sweeping this year's awards:

Nobel Prize in Literature: Herta Müller
Man Book Prize in Fiction: Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
Pulitzer Prize in Fiction: Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kitteridge
Man Booker International Prize: Alice Munro
LA Times Book Prize in Fiction and The Orange Prize: Marilynne Robinson, Home

Initially, I was intrigued by Erica Jong's article "Big News: Women Can Write!" and I clicked curiously. But as I started reading, it made me cringe that the post had even been written in the first place. Then, when I came across a few more articles on the same subject, my cringe became an all out frown.

I'd heard some of the award results already myself (and read Strout's fantastic short story collection), but I hadn't clumped the winners by gender. Why should I? They're just brilliant authors whose literary merits are being rewarded. Everyone suddenly seems so shocked that women can actually be talented writers.

Jessie Kundart's post, for example, "Women Sweep Literature Prizes," noted:

Is it an accident, the judging panels, a mini-trend or are the tides turning? With the sweep of this year's literary awards, all eyes are on the women who won. Judges' comments are noting the detail, vividness and emotional power of their writing.

Quite frankly, I don't understand why anyone cares. No one's jaw drops when all men win these awards. There is no conspiracy here, friends. It's just a little thing called coincidence. So, let it go and pick up one of the year's best, regardless of its author's gender.

Another startling coincidence: just as this topic is being publicized, Random House publishes a new edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, one of the most significant woman-penned classics, and no longer lists Mary as its sole author. The cover now claims "Mary Shelley (with Percy Shelley).

To read more about this interesting debate, check out Victoria Rosner's post, "Co-Creating a Monster," as she asks herself "why [...] Percy [is] now getting marquee billing?"