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EDITOR: ROWLING "FIERCE" BUT FAIR ABOUT POTTER
[Reuters, 12/4/08]
J.K. Rowling's first editor, who championed Harry Potter after several publishers had turned the boy wizard down, described the author as "fierce" but fair to work with. Barry Cunningham, 55, was at British publisher Bloomsbury in the mid-1990s when he received a manuscript of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." "When I first got the book I didn't know everyone else in the universe had turned it down, so I read it as a book and I loved it," Cunningham told Reuters in Edinburgh on Wednesday, December 3. "What I really loved about it was the friendship of the children, the support they gave to each other and the fact that they were able to overcome so many difficulties ... the adult world was against them and they got together to overcome that." Cunningham was speaking at the National Library of Scotland, which is exhibiting his copy of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," one of seven hand-written and illustrated books Rowling made of her new collection of wizard fairy tales. She gave six away as gifts, and the seventh copy was bought at auction a year ago by online retailer Amazon for $4 million. At a similar event in the United States, another copy given to Harry Potter co-editor Arthur Levine of publishers Scholastic went on display at the New York Public Library. "Will people ever get tired of Harry Potter? No. I really don't think so," Levine said. The library's president, Paul LeClerc, added: "She (Rowling) has reminded us in a very dramatic way of how books are still important to readers, in an age when some question the future of the book." Beedle the Bard, mentioned in the final Harry Potter installment, will be published on Thursday and profits go to The Children's High Level Group (CHLG) (www.chlg.org) charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe co-founded by Rowling. The seven Harry Potter books sold more than 400 million copies worldwide, and a film franchise has earned $4.5 billion at the box office so far. There are three more films to come. Asked to describe what it was like editing Rowling, Cunningham replied: "She's fierce, she fights back. Obviously my role as an editor is a bit like a first boyfriend -- you have to trust me and we have to have a to-and-fro. He saw Rowling's charity work as her way to "spread the wealth." Her personal fortune has been estimated at $1 billion. Beedle the Bard was displayed at the library next door to a room showcasing Scotland's most famous bard, Robert Burns, ahead of the 250th anniversary of his birth next year.

"THE TALES OF BEEDLE THE BARD" - A FIVE TALE COLLECTION
[Reuters, 12/3/08]
A new book by British author J.K. Rowling, her unofficial farewell to the adventures of boy wizard Harry Potter which made her the world's wealthiest writer, goes on sale on Thursday, December 4. Proceeds from "The Tales of Beedle the Bard," expected to become an international bestseller even though the seven-book Potter series is over, will go to a charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe co-founded by Rowling. Beedle the Bard is a collection of five fairy tales and is mentioned in the final Potter book "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" as having been left to the boy wizard's friend Hermione Granger by Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts school. Only one of the five stories -- "The Tale of the Three Brothers" -- was recounted in the Potter book, and the volume contains clues that were to prove crucial to Potter's final mission to destroy Lord Voldemort. Indicating the interest the new book is likely to generate with Potter fans young and old, one of seven hand-written, illustrated copies of Beedle the Bard made by Rowling fetched $4 million at auction a year ago. Online book store Amazon, which bought that copy, is printing up to 100,000 collector's' editions costing $100, and the global print run will be around 7.5 million copies. Bloomsbury will distribute the book in Britain and Scholastic in the United States. Publishers and retailers give all net profits to the chosen charity once their costs are covered, and retailers who sell the book at a discount -- a common practice with the Potter series as stores fought for market share -- do so at a loss. Beedle the Bard may not be Rowling's final word on the world of Harry Potter. She has said she plans an encyclopedia on the series and will donate the proceeds to charity. Rowling, 43, went to court in New York earlier this year to sue an independent U.S. publisher which planned to bring out a 400-page Harry Potter reference book. A judge ruled in her favor in September.

"MICHELANGELO": THE MOST EXPENSIVE NEW BOOK ARRIVES IN NY FROM ITALY
[AP, 11/26/08]
It's billed as the world's most expensive, most beautiful new book. Valued at well over $100,000, a 62-pound handmade tome depicting the life and work of Michelangelo has arrived at the New York Public Library, fresh from publication in Italy. The velvet- and marble-bound book will go on public display next Tuesday, December 2. It takes six months to make each book, using Italian artisan skills dating to the Renaissance. The copy on display was donated to the library, but more than 20 books have been sold. "I love books," Marilena Ferrari, the Italian publisher who produced the extravagance, said in a telephone interview from Bologna, Italy, where she's president of a company called FMR, which publishes fine books about art. "Books are being destroyed by the Internet, they're losing their identity — it's the modern, Internet version of burning books," she said. "Today, things last so little before they disappear. " The book, titled "Una Dotta Mano" or "the learned hand," has a front cover made of white marble from Michelangelo's favorite quarry, in Carrara. The binding is covered with a red silk velvet handmade by the same Italian shop that made the main stage curtains at The Metropolitan Opera and Milan's Teatro Alla Scala. The book is filled with photographs of Michelangelo's drawings and sculptures. The text is by Michelangelo biographer Giorgio Vasari, with essays by the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci.

RANDOM HOUSE TO DIGITIZE THOUSANDS OF BOOKS
[AP, 11/26/08]
With e-book sales exploding in an otherwise sleepy market, Random House Inc. announced Monday, November 24 that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series. Random House CEO Markus Dohle said in a statement that "more people everyday are enjoying reading in the electronic format and Random House wants to extend our reach to them with more of our books."

CANADA READS ANNOUNCES BOOKS, PANELISTS FOR 2009
[CBC, 11/26/08]
Canada Reads announced the contenders Tuesday, November 25 for its annual contest to choose a single book all Canadians would enjoy reading. The field has five Canadian books, including two debut novels and works by Quebec's Michael Tremblay and New Brunswick's David Adams Richards. CBC Radio One, host of the Canada Reads series, also announced members of the panel who will defend the five books in an effort to get theirs chosen. They are: TV personality Avi Lewis defending The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill; Singer Sarah Slean defending Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards; Actor Nicholas Campbell defending The Outlander by Gil Adamson; TV host Anne-Marie Withenshaw defending The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant (La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte ) by Michel Tremblay, translated by Sheila Fischman; Author Jen Sookfong Lee defending Fruit by Brian Francis. Both Western Canadian adventure-mystery The Outlander and Fruit, a gay coming-of-age story, are debut novels. Campbell is currently starring in theatre production Festen at the Berkeley Theatre in Toronto and just finished shooting the 2008-9 season of CBC-TV's The Border, where he has a recurring role. The books are announced in November so Canadians have time to read them ahead of the Canada Reads series. Canada Reads is scheduled for March 2-6, 2009, on CBC Radio One.

"THE HIPPOS WERE BOILED IN THEIR TANKS"
[AP, 11/23/08]
"The Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks" (Grove Press, 214 pages, $24), by William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac: More than 60 years ago, when Jack Kerouac was 23 and William S. Burroughs was 30, they were arrested in New York City for helping a friend cover up a murder. Although neither had written anything worth mentioning yet, they fancied themselves writers. So, after they beat the rap, they collaborated on a novel based on the case. Kerouac, for one, thought the book was darned good. America's publishers unanimously disagreed. And so the manuscript was tucked away, unloved and forgotten, until, at long last, Grove Press published it this month. It was not worth the wait. The real crime, which caused a sensation in 1944 New York, gave Kerouac and Burroughs a lot with which to work, but they failed to do much with it. The story is plodding, the characters uninteresting and the writing listless, with few hints at the innovative styles that would later make these writers icons of the beat generation. Perhaps the book will be of interest to literary scholars, but Grove could have posted it on an obscure internet site and spared the rest of us. The real killer was Lucien Carr, a youth from a well-to-do family. The victim was David Kammerer, who had become infatuated with Carr years earlier in St. Louis while serving as his Boy Scout leader. Kammerer apparently came to New York to pursue Carr, their dance ending when the youth stabbed the older man in the chest with a scout knife, put stones in his pockets and shoved him into the Hudson River. Carr promptly confessed to Burroughs and Kerouac, who did not call the police. In fact, the latter helped dispose of the murder weapon. Carr was later found guilty of second degree murder, but he was given only a two-year sentence after his lawyer argued that he had committed the crime to defend his honor from a homosexual predator. Carr served his time and went on to have a distinguished career as an editor. He died in 2005. The crime, with its bohemian characters and hints of pedopilia, was a lot more interesting in the newspapers of the day than it is in the novel. Kerouac and Burroughs changed the names of all the characters, including themselves. Inexplicably, they also changed the murder weapon, turning the delicious detail of the scout knife into a hatchet.

MATTHIESSEN WINS NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FICTION PRIZE
[AP, 11/21/08]
The economy hung like a cloud over the 59th annual National Book Awards. Barack Obama was the silver lining. "It's a good time to be alive," announced author, Obama fan and fiction committee chair Gail Godwin, as she gracefully pulled out an envelope Wednesday night_ in stated emulation of the president-elect — and revealed that Peter Matthiessen had won for "Shadow Country," a thorough revision of a trilogy of novels released in the 1990s. As the book industry faces a holiday season that Barnes & Noble Inc. head Len Riggio has said could be the worst in memory, it gathered on Wall Street, of all places, under the 70-foot ceiling and Wedgewood dome of Cipriani, dining on baked tagliolini and roast filet of beef, referring nervously to a ruinous stock market. "Wall Street is not at the moment a street of riches, but of ruin and broken dreams," attendee Ron Chernow, the business historian and former book award winner, told The Associated Press before the ceremony. "We're having cocktails and wearing tuxedos and it doesn't feel completely right." In his opening monologue, awards host Eric Bogosian joked about the gilded venue: "This was a bank once, and they built banks like this because banks never fail." But the night turned in to a virtual crowning of Obama as writer-reader-in-chief, a friend to book people in so many ways: as a fellow liberal and the first black president-elect; as the author of two million-selling books; as a public thinker who has boosted sales for Doris Kearns Goodwin's Lincoln biography, "Team of Rivals," and for a work about the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt's administration, Jonathan Alter's "The Defining Moment." Matthiessen, a world traveler, naturalist and founder of the Paris Review, is one of the great names in modern letters, but few — including Matthiessen — expected to see him nominated this year. His novel, neither new nor old, condenses and deepens his epic about a ruthless landowner from the Florida Everglades. The awards, founded in 1950, are sponsored by the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization that offers numerous educational and literary programs.

"JUST AFTER SUNSET" - by STEPHEN KING
[AP, 11/15/08]
"Just After Sunset" (Scribner, 367 pages, $28), by Stephen King: For a generation, we have associated Stephen King with darkness, or at least with an absence of light. He is the national summoner of darker instincts, darker thoughts, darker realities bleeding into our own. But perhaps we have missed the point a bit. If you take a more lingering look, the most powerful tales spun by King are about not darkness itself, but twilight — that gray, uneasy land that lies between the prosaic texture of human days and the unending desolation of our nights. Think "The Green Mile" or the two novellas that gave us the movies "Stand By Me" and "The Shawshank Redemption." For this reason, King's latest anthology of short stories, "Just After Sunset," is quietly dazzling. It is a snapshot of his ability to erode that membrane between light and dark, to make us believe that any of us, given the right (or wrong) circumstances, could slip into somewhere that's not quite right. Weird things happen in these stories, but they are not necessarily horrifying things. The main characters are people living, sometimes unawares, on the edge of reality. It's the part of King's inner workings that is neither H.P. Lovecraft nor Peter Straub, but Rod Serling. So this happens: King's unfortunates tumble into strange pockets and find themselves unable to get out. Or the opposite happens: Redemptively, they manage to flee against all odds and reclaim normality, or at least a tenuous substitute. They don't always die. That's because a positive undercurrent runs through King's shorter works of fiction, a sense of control amid the lack of it. Sure, people in his 100,000-worders sometimes survive, but here survival seems like one of several options, and in short stories each choice really matters. In novels — Stephen King's and in general — you're given characters and asked to stick with them through thick and thin across many, many pages. But short stories offer more flexibility to draw from an author's own internal Central Casting. That's what King does here, tapping into his mind and offering us a Whitman's Sampler of regular Americans who exist just beyond the light. As with his previous collections going back to "Night Shift" and "Skeleton Crew," this collection presents the feeling that there are these masses of Americans out there waiting to be manipulated by him, to be dragged unawares into something that will change, even end, their life as they know it.

"PEACE IN COLOMBIA" FIDEL CASTRO RELEASES BOOK
[CBC, 11/14/08]
Cuban officials gathered for a prominent book launch in Havana Wednesday, November 12, though the author of Peace in Colombia — Fidel Castro — was a no-show for the ceremony. A host of government representatives, including parliamentary chief Ricardo Alarcon, assembled for the launch of the 265-page book by the ailing ex-president. According to Cuban Communist party newspaper Granma, Peace in Colombia chronicles Cuba's role in Colombia's peace process and blends in the 82-year-old Castro's own memories of the country. Castro, a recluse since falling ill and undergoing intestinal surgery in 2006, formally ceded his leadership status to his younger brother Raul in February. However, essays signed by Castro are regularly published in state newspapers and on websites. Over the years, Castro has published a lengthy list of books, largely on political topics, but he also co-authored a memoir of his former colleague Che Guevara. His autobiography Fidel Castro: My Life appeared in 2006.

"THE PARIS ENIGMA" IS A COMPLEX WHODUNIT
[AP, 11/14/08]
The Paris Enigma" (Harper/HarperCollins. 244 pages. $24.95), by Pablo De Santis, translated from Spanish by Mara Lethem: This is a whodunit that provokes thought as well as entertainment, on subjects from waterproof shoeshine cream to ancient Greek physics. It fires multiple, intense bursts of crime stories at the reader, some only a page or so long. And it climaxes with serial murders that tie into the building of the Eiffel Tower and the Paris World's Fair of 1889. It's the first book to appear in English by Pablo De Santis, the first winner of the new Casa de America Prize for best American novel. Another by De Santis, "Voltaire's Calligrapher," will appear in 2009. A prominent Argentine writer, he used to be editor-in-chief of Fierros (Brands), a Buenos Aires magazine devoted to comics. "The Paris Enigma" is based on the exploits of a cartoonishly improbable club called The 12 Detectives. It's an almost priestly brotherhood — "the most elite detectives in the world," the book calls them. Membership consists of a private sleuth from each of a dozen countries including the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Argentina. Publisher HarperCollins compares it to the Justice League, a fictional DC Comics superhero team that included Superman, Batman Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern. The detective from Buenos Aires and co-founder of the club, Renato Craig, publishes an ad inviting young people to a course on solving crime — he's looking for an assistant. Club members' assistants are called "acolytes", a term that brings to mind: devoted, innocent-looking altar boys in long vestments. And the acolytes, with one exception, do turn out to be less violent than their fiercely competitive masters. The American detective's acolyte is a taciturn Sioux warrior who can speak excellent French when he wants to take the trouble. Among those who reply to Craig's ad is the narrator of the novel, Sigmundo Salvatrio. His father, a shoemaker, had regularly given him jigsaw puzzles of increasing complexity for his birthday. They may have helped cause the young man's addiction to detective stories. Sigmundo eagerly joins the course, becomes Craig's acolyte and is sent to Paris for a meeting of the club, to represent his ailing master. It's a case of whodunit.

OBAMA-MANIA IN THE BOOK WORLD
[AP, 11/10/08]
Barack Obama is the hottest name in publishing. On the weekend after he became the country's first black president-elect, Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" and "Dreams from My Father," both already million sellers, ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. Both hardcover and paperback editions of "Audacity of Hope" were out of stock Sunday, November 9 on Amazon. Sales are up even in Arizona, home state of Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain. "People are generally much happier this week than they were last week," Gayle Shanks, co-owner of the Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, said Sunday. Demand also has surged for "Change We Can Believe In," a collection of Obama's speeches and policy proposals that had been selling modestly; for "Barack Obama in His Own Words" and for such works about him as "Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope," a children's book by Nikki Grimes, and Robert Kuttner's "Obama's Challenge," a call for a sweeping, progressive economic agenda.

JONAS BROTHERS PROMOTE THEIR NEW BOOK
[Aceshowbiz, 11/10/08]
Jonas Brothers are having a new book to be released later this month. Titled "Burning Up, On Tour With the Jonas Brothers," the set reportedly is the first and only authorized book written by the brothers. Nick Jonas, Joe Jonas, and Kevin Jonas say the book will give fans a peek of their lives behind-the-scenes and their on-stage performances around the world. It, moreover, also includes 200 never-before-seen photos of the threesome. In an attempt to boost the sales of their book, the Jonas boys have scheduled a book signing event, set to take place at Golden Dreams, Disney's California Adventure park, Tuesday, November 25. The book signing will be held from 11 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. More information about the event and the "Burning Up, On Tour With the Jonas Brothers" book can be seen on Walt Disney Parks & Resorts' website.

"NO PICTURES": HOLLYWOOD PAPARAZZO PIONEER SAYS HE HAS NO REGRETS
[Reuters, 11/10/08]
A Hollywood paparazzo famous for being sued by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and getting his teeth knocked out by Marlon Brando is unapologetic about the guerrilla celebrity photography culture he helped pioneer. But Ron Galella, who at 77 still has an active press pass, says he has little interest in being part of a celebrity photo industry that now values controversy over glamour. Galella has a new book titled "No Pictures" that shows famous faces like Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger and actors Sean Penn and Elizabeth Taylor shielding themselves from his lens. He says celebrities who act like they do not want to be photographed are hypocrites who secretly adore the attention. Galella says the paparazzi business has changed since his heyday. "When I started, it was one to one. Me and Jackie. Me and Liz Taylor," he told Reuters in an interview in his New Jersey home, which is decorated with pictures of just about every major celebrity. "I like glamour. I'm a romantic person. "The photographers today ... they go for bad pictures, cellulite. I think it's a negative thing," he said. "No Pictures," published this month by powerHouse Books, is Galella's sixth book and it shows how unpopular his technique often made him with some of his subjects. Penn is shown spitting on him and Jagger sticks up his middle finger. To Galella it was all an act, especially in Onassis' case. "I think she loved being pursued," he said. "It's true that she was not the first lady anymore but she was still famous. And people want to know about her. She didn't face reality." Galella first photographed Onassis in 1967, four years after the assassination of her first husband, President John F. Kennedy, when she was living next to New York's Central Park. Over the years, he took thousands of images of Onassis and her children, Caroline and John. After a 1972 trial, Galella was ordered to keep 100 yards away from her home and 50 yards, later reduced to 25 yards, from her and her children. He said the trial made him more famous and helped him earn more money. Galella has never shied away from being called a paparazzo, derived from the Italian word for mosquito. He used to carry a business card that referred to him as a "photographer with the paparazzi approach" and specialized in photos that took his subject by surprise. He caught Greta Garbo sunbathing by snapping a photo through her neighbor's hedge. After a day spent tailing Marlon Brando in 1973, the actor knocked out five of Galella's teeth so he took to wearing a helmet when photographing the actor. Born in the Bronx in 1931, Galella started taking pictures while serving in the military in the 1950s. At first, he shot pretty girls posing on the beach for the Air Force base newspapers but soon learned celebrity shots brought money. His most audacious stunts were designed to get Onassis, who he called "my obsession." He once hid in the coat closet of a restaurant where she was dining and would dress as a fisherman to photograph her vacationing on the Greek island of Skorpios. "When I discovered where she lives, that's all you have to know. You stake out her apartment and you follow her wherever she goes -- shopping, to the ballet or jogging. So that was my start," Galella said. "The rule is, you don't go in their house," he said, "(but) if they live in a glass house, that's different."

"CALL ME TED": TED TURNER MEMOIRS
[AP, 11/8/08]
It wasn't religion that broke up his marriage to Jane Fonda, Ted Turner declares in a new memoir. He says he was "upset" when he discovered his wife's "conversion," but "it wasn't because she had become Christian," the 69-year-old Turner writes in "Call Me Ted," which comes out next week. The Associated Press obtained an early copy. He was upset because Fonda didn't talk to him about it. Turner's 433-page book, co-authored with former Turner Broadcasting executive Bill Burke, reviews his loquacious, multi-pronged rise as yachtsman, baseball team owner, cable visionary and philanthropist. The book includes commentary from fellow America's Cup racers, business moguls such as Bill Gates and former Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin, friends such as former President Carter, family members and Fonda, his wife for 10 years. Fonda wrote at length about her marriage to Turner in her memoir "My Life So Far," and Turner adds a similar take without referring to the infidelities alleged against him by the Academy Award-winning actress. The two say they remain good friends. He remembers their impulsive courtship, beginning in 1990 with his learning of her divorce from activist Tom Hayden and immediately calling her, a virtual stranger, for a date. The son of a demanding advertising magnate who killed himself when Turner was in his mid-20s, he acknowledges his own disturbing mood swings and writes that in the 1980s he was told he was bipolar and placed on lithium. After a couple of years, feeling little change, he tried a new psychiatrist, who reversed the earlier diagnosis and canceled the prescription. Turner also looks back on his unlikely friendship with Fidel Castro (they hunted together, then argued about politics over rum and cigars) and his reconciliation with former rival Rupert Murdoch over a mutual concern about the environment. He looks back proudly on building his cable empire, including the founding of CNN, and sadly on his eventual departure from Time Warner, which bought out his Turner Broadcasting Systems in 1996. He still insists he was "fired" by Levin in the wake of Time Warner's 2000 merger with AOL, and Levin, allowed to offer his side, still denies it (They no longer speak, Levin adds, regretfully). Turner says he has "very few regrets," vows to live long and well enough to fill a second book and wonders what should be inscribed on his tombstone. As an older man and published author: "I Have Nothing More to Say."

"THE QUEEN UP CLOSE" A BIOGRAPHY OF SPAIN'S QUEEN SOFIA
[AFP, 11/3/08]
Spain's Queen Sofia celebrated her 70th birthday Sunday, November 2 with a private family gathering as a controversy continued to swirl in the press over a new biography that quotes her as criticizing gay marriage. Top-selling daily newspaper El Pais said the Greek-born monarch, a cousin of Britain's Prince Philip, was "very upset" over the flap over her statements and "the birthday dinner which her family planned for today will be really sad". In excerpts of the new biography, "The Queen Up Close", published Thursday in the left-leaning newspaper, Queen Sofia was quoted as opposing the word marriage to describe same-sex unions and criticizing gay pride marches. "I can understand, accept and respect that there are people of other sexual tendencies, but should they be proud to be gay? Should they ride on a parade float and come out in protests?," she said according to the book, written by conservative Spanish journalist Pilar Urbano. "If those people want to live together, dress up like bride and groom and marry, they could have a right to do so, or not, depending on the law of their country, but they should not call this matrimony, because it isn't," she added. The queen is also quoted as saying in the book that she opposes abortion and euthanasia, but said she welcomes the possible election of an African-American, Barack Obama, as president of the United States, describing him as a "sincere, intelligent and effective" leader. Urbano said the book, which hit bookstores on Sunday, was based on 15 interviews with Queen Sofia and the Royal Palace approved a draft copy before it was published. The Royal Palace did not deny that the encounters took place but issued a statement deploring "the inexactitude" of the remarks attributed to the queen, which it said were made in private. In 2005, Spain became only the third member of the European Union, after Belgium and the Netherlands, to allow same-sex marriages giving couples the same rights as married heterosexuals. The monarch was scheduled to attend a classical music concert conducted by India's Zubin Mehta later on Sunday with King Juan Carlos. Spain's king and queen are widely respected as figurehead representatives of the state in part because they have traditionally avoided speaking out on political or social issues.

AUTHOR, ACTIVIST STUDS TERKEL WHO HAD HOPED TO LIVE TO SEE BARACK OBAMA ELECTED PRESIDENT DIES AT 96
[AP, 11/2/08]
Studs Terkel captured the essence of Chicago in the pages of his best-selling oral histories, chronicling common people and celebrities alike. Along the way he became an ageless master of listening and speaking, a broadcaster, activist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Terkel died Friday, October 31 at age 96. "He found his home in Chicago and he found it in the gritty aspect of Chicago life," said Russell Lewis, chief historian at the Chicago History Museum. "The ne'er-do-wells, the outcasts, the bums, all these people were people he was curious about. They intrigued him." Dan Terkell said his father died at home, and described his death as "peaceful, no agony. This is what he wanted." "My dad led a long, full, eventful, sometimes tempestuous, but very satisfying life," Terkell, who spells his name with an extra letter, said in a statement issued through his father's colleague and close friend Thom Clark. Terkel was a native New Yorker who moved to Chicago as a child and came to embrace and embody his adopted town, with all its "carbuncles and warts," as he recalled in his 2007 memoir, "Touch and Go." He was a cigar and martini man, white-haired and elegantly rumpled in his trademark red-checkered shirts, an old rebel who never mellowed, never retired, never forgot, and "never met a picket line or petition I didn't like." "A lot of people feel, 'What can I do, (it's) hopeless,'" Terkel told The Associated Press in 2003. "Well, through all these years there have been the people I'm talking about, whom we call activists ... who give us hope and through them we have hope." The tougher the subject, the harder Terkel took it on. He put out an oral history collection on race relations in 1992 called "Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About The American Obsession," and, in 1995, "Coming of Age," recollections of men and women 70 and older. Said Andre Schiffrin, Terkel's longtime editor, publisher and close friend: "He liked to tell the story of an interview with a woman in a public housing unit in Chicago. At the end of the interview, the woman said, 'My goodness, I didn't know I felt that way.' That was his genius." Alton Miller, an associate dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago and a friend of Terkel's for more than 20 years, said Terkel hoped to live to see Barack Obama elected president. Obama called Terkel a Chicago institution and national treasure.

ANNE RICE GOES FROM VAMPIRES TO JESUS BIOGRAPHER
[AP, 10/31/08]
It's Halloween, and Anne Rice has a new book — a memoir in fact — that's climbing best-seller lists. Everything is normal, then. Normal if it were 1994 — the height of Rice's mega selling fame as a queen of Southern Gothic pulp. For those who haven't been paying attention lately to vampire lit, America's most famous chronicler of bloodsuckers doesn't live in New Orleans anymore — and hasn't since before Hurricane Katrina hit — and she's riding new waves of enthusiasm: the memoir and Christian lit. Her memoir, "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession," is the latest piece of evidence that Rice is reinventing herself in an attempt to build a reputation as a serious Christian writer. In the memoir, the 67-year-old writer doesn't disavow the two decades she spent churning out books on vampires, demons and witches — with a batch of S&M erotica thrown in — following the breakout success of her first novel in 1976, "Interview With the Vampire." But she's clearly moved on. In a telephone interview from her mountain home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Rice laid out her goal: "To be able to take the tools, the apprenticeship, whatever I learned from being a vampire writer, or whatever I was — to be able to take those tools now and put them in the service of God is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful opportunity," she said. The memoir follows the release of two books in a planned four-part, first-person chronicle of the life of Jesus. And in this new 245-page memoir, Rice presents her former life as vampire writer as that of a soul-searching wanderer in the deserts of atheism; as someone akin to her most famous literary creations — Lestat, her "dark search engine," Louis the aristocrat-turned-vampire and Egyptian Queen Akasha, "the mother of all vampires." By the late 1990s, when she went back to Mass, Rice — the author whose books sold in the tens of millions and who had recharged Hollywood's appetite for vampire-inspired horror — had fallen on hard times. Her husband, poet and artist Stan Rice, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And she had become victim to diabetes. In The New York Times, Christopher Buckley slammed Rice's memoir as "a crashing, mind-numbing bore. This is the literary equivalent of waterboarding." For her devotees, whatever she writes invariably goes down like a smooth bloodbath, that favorite Goth beverage sometimes made with raspberry liqueur, red wine and cranberry juice.

"UNHOLY BUSINESS" SPINS A GOOD YARN
[AP, 10/30/08]
"Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land" (Harper, 288 pages, $27.50), by Nina Burleigh: In November 2002, an article in The Biblical Archaeology Review heralded the discovery of an ancient Judean ossuary — a limestone box intended for the storage of human remains. The story was immediately picked up by CNN, ABC, and many of the world's major newspapers. Media attention of that kind is quite rare in the sleepy precincts of archaeology, but this was no ordinary ossuary. Found in Israel, it appeared to be the earliest known artifact attesting to the existence of Jesus Christ. An Aramaic inscription on the side of the ossuary stated that it contained the bones of "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," an unmistakable reference to St. James the Just, who is described in Galatians 1:19 as "the Lord's brother." Over the centuries, that phrase has been interpreted to mean many things — a close follower of Jesus, a stepbrother of Jesus, a cousin of Jesus. The inscription on the newfound ossuary went a long way toward confirming that interpretation. So much so that it seemed plausible to think the bones inside the box might share Jesus' DNA — a physical link to the biblical past unprecedented in historical significance and sheer emotional force. Thousands clamored to see the James ossuary when it toured museums in the United States and Canada in 2003. Measuring just 20 inches by 12 inches by 10 inches, this small, oblong stone vessel seems, however, to have contained more secrets than anyone initially supposed. In her engaging new book, "Unholy Business: A True Tale of Faith, Greed, and Forgery in the Holy Land," Nina Burleigh, a staff writer for People magazine, narrates the case of the James ossuary in detail and with a zestful sense of adventure. Drawing upon original research and extensive interviews with principal participants, Burleigh illuminates a shadowy network of dealers, looters, forgers and middlemen who have turned the antiquities market into a place where seekers of truth, history and the foundations of faith are often met with fraud. Still, "Unholy Business" spins a good yarn. It offers a window onto a world about which few of us know very much, and although it isn't likely to become the definitive book on the James ossuary or the larger subject of forged antiquities, it's an entertaining and worthwhile read.

10 EMERGING AUTHORS RECEIVE $50,000 AWARDS
[AP, 10/30/08]
Novelist Mischa Berlinski, one of last year's finalists for the National Book Awards, is among the 10 recipients announced Wednesday, October 29 of the Whiting Writers' Award for authors of "exceptional talent and promise in early career." The winners each will receive $50,000. Berlinski, whose "Fieldwork" came out in 2007, is among five fiction writers to win a Whiting in 2008. The others are Laleh Khadivi, Manuel Munoz, Benjamin Percy and Lysley Tenorio. The remaining five winners are poets Rick Hilles, Douglas Kearney and Julie Sheehan; playwright Dael Orlandersmith and essayist Donovan Hohn. The Whiting awards were established in 1985 by The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, a New York-based organization "dedicated to the support of the humanities and of creative writing." Previous honorees include Denis Johnson, winner of the National Book Award for fiction last year, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jorie Graham.

AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS SETTLE SUIT AGAINST GOOGLE
[AP, 10/29/08]
Eager to cool the debate over copyrighted text online and anxious to make some money, Google and the publishing industry announced Tuesday, October 28 that they have settled their three-year legal battle over the Internet giant's book search program. Under an agreement reached by Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, librarians and the public will have an easier time tracking down millions of out-of-print books. At the same time, Google and the book business will have greater opportunities for online sales. "We're trying to create a new structure where there will be more access to out-of-print books, with benefits both to readers and researchers and to the rights holders of those books — authors and publishers," Richard Sarnoff, chairman of the publishers association, said Tuesday in an interview. "This is an extraordinary accomplishment," Paul N. Courant, university librarian for the University of Michigan, said in a statement. "It will now be possible, even easy, for anyone to access these great collections from anywhere in the United States." Under the Google Print Library Project, snippets from millions of out-of-print, but copyrighted books have been indexed online by Michigan and other libraries. Google has called the project, which also scans public domain works, an invaluable chance for books to receive increased exposure. But in a class-action suit filed in 2005, the Authors Guild alleged that Google was "engaging in massive copyright infringement." Within weeks, publishers also sued, citing the "continuing, irreparable and imminent harm publishers are suffering ... due to Google's willful (copyright) infringement to further its own commercial purposes." The settlement expands the amount of text to be scanned, makes it available for free online at "designated" libraries, available for subscription for colleges and universities, and allows readers to pay for full online access of copyrighted works. Google is to contribute $125 million, including about $34.5 million for a non-profit Book Rights Registry that will store copyright information and coordinate payments. Google will also pay for the millions of copyrighted books already scanned — $60 per complete work to the rights holder — and for the legal fees of the Authors Guild and publishing association. [read full story]

HOOVER HEIR'S WIFE SUES SISTER OVER NOVEL
[Reuters, 10/28/08]
The wife of an heir to Hoover appliances sued her sister on Monday, October 27, accusing her of stealing credit for her new novel, "Hedge Fund Wives," and releasing stolen chapters of the book onto the Internet. The novel by socialite and freelance writer Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover, wife of Max Hoover, is due to be published by HarperCollins Publishers, a unit of News Corp, in May 2009. Hoover alleges that her older sister, Natasha Boncompagni, misrepresented herself as the novel's co-author after stealing a copy of the manuscript from Hoover's personal computer while visiting her New York apartment. The novel has two active copyrights, according to the U.S. Copyright Office website. Boncompagni obtained joint copyright protection in September for herself and her sister, and, in October, Hoover obtained an exclusive copyright for the novel. An "exclusive excerpt" of the novel is available on a website, Hedgefundwives.com, which names the sisters as co-authors of the book, which details the lives of the "newly minted rich." But according to Hoover, the two women were never co-authors. She said that Boncompagni learned about the book during family gatherings. Boncompagni could not immediately be reached for comment. The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, asks for a declaration that Hoover is the sole author, an injunction against Boncompagni's further use of the manuscript and money damages. Earlier this year, HarperCollins published Hoover's first novel, "Gilding Lily," about a New York socialite. Hoover appliances, which manufactures vacuum cleaners for home and commercial use, is owned by Techtronic Industries Co. Ltd.

"WACKY PACKAGES" SHOWCASES THE EARLY AGE OF IRONY
[AP, 10/28/08]
"Wacky Packages" (Abrams, $19.95, 240 pages): When it comes to creating parody in the post-ironic world, the tools available to us are plentiful and democratic. Spend a half hour with Photoshop and your throwaway burst of creativity can convincingly skewer American brand identities that have been decades in the making. Today, when anything without a wink or a nudge is either suspect for its naivete or genius for its retro sensibility, it is difficult to imagine a world in which satirizing the country's most established advertising icons was subversive. But there was such a time: the early 1970s, at the dawn of the age of irony. The product was called Wacky Packages. For the uninitiated, Wacky Packages ("Wacky Packs" to their Gen-X fans) were sticker cards introduced by Topps Chewing Gum, most renowned for its status as the standard bearer of American baseball cards since the early 1950s. Effectively one-panel comic books for your back pocket, they came in wax-paper packs with a brittle slab of pink bubble gum just like sports cards once did. But while the baseball and football cards were pure American pastoral, Wacky Packages seemed more of a burnout sibling. They were a gross, exuberant gallery of familiar American consumer products bastardized in the name of Mad Magazine-style humor and lovingly committed to full-color stickers. It seems like heresy to collect such images into a gift book printed on thick, shiny stock, but that's what we do with childhood memories these days. And the eponymous "Wacky Packages," which includes an interview with Art Spiegelman, master of the highbrow-lowbrow balancing act, pulls it off — right down to the waxy cover that captures the feel of buying the stickers in a corner drug store when you were 7 or 8.

NAVAJO POLICE MYSTERY AUTHOR DIES
[BBC, 10/28/08]
The American author Tony Hillerman, best known for crime novels featuring Navajo Indian police officers as their main characters, has died aged 83. His most famous book was Skinwalkers, published in 1987, midway through a 36-year long writing career. Hillerman said he wanted to change people's views, to stop them thinking of Navajo Indians as primitive people. He had survived two heart attacks and surgery for cancer before he eventually died of pulmonary failure. His novels were set in the rugged landscapes of Arizona and New Mexico and he once said he was attracted to places that were empty, lonely and had a fierce inhospitality. His first famous character was Lt Joe Leaphorn, who made his debut in the 1970 book The Blessing Way. Leaphorn was an experienced officer who understood but did not share his people's belief in the spirit world. Eight years later his other famous character, Jim Chee, made his first appearance in the novel People of Darkness. Both officers struggled to bridge the divide between the dominant Anglo-American culture and that of the impoverished native people, who call themselves the Dineh. In all Tony Hillerman wrote 18 books in the Navajo series. Skinwalkers, published in 1987, sold 430,000 in hardback. His most recent work, published in 2006, was called The Shape Shifter. But he also wrote a novel for young people, a memoir and books on history and nature. His daughter Anne described her father as a 'born storyteller' with a wonderful curiosity about the world. "He could take little details and bring them to life, not just in his books, but in conversation too," she told the Associated Press. Some criticised Hillerman for exploiting the Navajo for profit - but the Navajo Tribal Council eventually honoured him as a Special Friend, an honour he described as more important than any of his literary awards.

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