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Hot Topics for 04.30.08

>> William W. Warner, Chesapeake Bay Author, Dies at 88
The former Smithsonian administrator and Pulitzer-winning author (for Beautiful Swimmers) died at home.

>> Par, Plan B addicted to memoir pair
In adaptation news, the father and son meth memoirs (Beautiful Boy and Tweak) have been optioned by Brad Pitt's Plan B as a single film; the big-screen version of Eat, Pray, Love will star Julia Roberts. Meanwhile, Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons is also in production.

>> Simic stepping aside as U.S. poet laureate
He's asked not to be considered for a second term and is ready to get back to writing poetry.

>> James Bond's TLS
In honor of his centenary, Fleming's favorite periodical, the Times Literary Supplement, has put together "an exclusive collection of articles, reviews and commentaries, documenting his long history with the paper."

“The Marrow of Tradition” by Charles W. Chesnutt

The Year of Reading Politically | #4 of 12: the 1900s
By Paul Clark

The long process of picking a Democratic presidential nominee drags on, with the next significant primaries on May 6, in Indiana and North Carolina. The United States may elect its first black president this year, but even if Barack Obama doesn’t win in November, his strong showing throughout the primaries so far has ensured that race and questions of racial identity have been a regular part of the political debate.

So, what’s new?, I thought to myself, as I read Charles W. Chesnutt’s 1901 novel The Marrow of Tradition. Written in the wake of what has been called, variously, the “Wilmington (N.C.) race riot of 1898” or the “Wilmington coup d’état,” Chesnutt’s novel takes the events in Wilmington as a starting point for his tale of racial identity, family secrets and political upheaval.

Hot Topics for 04.29.08

>> Find of Sun King's secret diaries sounded almost too good to be true. And it was ...
A biographer gets fooled; now copies of her book, just off the press, are being sliced apart and new pages glued in.

>> You’re an Author? Me Too!
Fewer people may be buying and reading books, but the number of people self-publishing them is through the roof.

>> Re: LATFOB
If you weren't able to attend the LA Times Festival of Books, James Marcus has written a whopper of a recap.

>> Lit Lions
The NYPL's Young Lions award has gone to Ron Currie, Jr., for his novel God is Dead.

James Frey's Last Interview — Ever!

>> James Frey's Morning After
In the June issue, Vanity Fair has what Frey says will be his last and final interview. Mm hm. They've made it available online early.

In his first U.S. interview since Oprah nailed him, in 2006, Frey tells his version of the story, including how his new novel, his family, and the late Norman Mailer helped him survive the resulting maelstrom, sober all the way.

"Siddhartha" by Hermann Hesse

Most Coveted Covers #172
By D.G. Strong
[Part 1 of 3]

Alvin Lustig, who has previously been Coveted for his A Streetcar Named Desire cover, was probably the greatest book jacket designer of the Modernist era. He had an innate sensibility that allowed him to boil down the essence of a book into a few very simple shapes, along with an uncanny sense of how to place type in a way that both conveys information and creates visual tension. It's the Holy Grail of design, this idea of not sacrificing a great layout in the service of having to actually, you know market. Take a look at his 1951 cover for Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. The design is ludicrously abstract: it tells you nothing about the book, unless it's about an amorphously shaped eyeball, or a birds'-eye view of an island in a river. Either of which it might be — I've blocked out all the Hesse I ever had to read, or felt compelled to read in my clove-cigarette-and-beret phase. To paraphrase Laurie Anderson, "Hermann Hesse, you are not my favorite author ... by a long shot." But it's hard to not want this book in my collection, simply because it's almost impossibly beautiful. It's one of those covers, though, that wouldn't work if Lustig had had to blurb it up. He had one thing on his side: he was pre-blurb. "This book made me cry! And not in a good way!" — Michiko Kakutani. "The political, social and economic ramifications of this novel really make me want to vomit!" — Gore Vidal. You see? Where would he put those? The best thing about Lustig's covers is that New Directions let him do it his way, and they left him alone. They are little works of art, every one of them.

—D.G. Strong is a regular contributor to The Readerville Journal and Forum.

[To view the Most Coveted Covers 2001-2007 click here.]

Hot Topics for 04.28.08

>> Nebula Award Winners Announced
Michael Chabon took home the top prize for The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

>> Poets laureate bloom like spring in San Francisco area
Charles Burress reports that "the job of community poet laureate may be the Bay Area's fastest-growing profession."

>> You are the river: An interview with Ken Wilber
Well, when was the last time you heard anything about Ken Wilber?

I Thing I Love You

By David Abrams

Illustration by D.G. Strong

As of 2:23 on the afternoon I am writing this, my home library consists of exactly 4,530 books. Of those, 387 were first published in the 1980s, 650 were written between 1900 and 1949, and 245 come from the 19th century. I own four Hardy Boys mysteries, 32 featuring Hercule Poirot and six with Nero Wolfe. Out of the 4,530 volumes on my shelf, I have assigned them to one or more categories, including short story collections (467 books), westerns (180), biographies (123), and books about Alaska (65), Hollywood (66), the Iraq War (24), the Vietnam War (17) and Christmas (13).

I know all this and can report it to you with full authority because in just five clicks of the mouse, I have visited my profile at LibraryThing, a site I first joined in April 2006 and which, like the best of most-useful sites, has grown like a virus in my life ever since. Not a day goes by when I don't log on and gaze with pride, love and reverence at my online catalog of books.

The Week in Reviews

A compendium of notable reviews
by Karen Templer

>> "Dictation" by Cynthia Ozick
from B&N Review
Mark Sarvas finds that "themes of deception, posterity, and, above all, the glory of language ... knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent."

>> "Shakespeare's Wife" by Germaine Greer
from The New York Times
Greer puts her doctorate in Elizabethan drama to use in this dissection of the critics' construction of Ann Hathaway. Katie Roiphe is the Times' reviewer.

>> "Unaccustomed Earth" by Jhumpa Lahiri
from The New York Review of Books
Sarah Kerr takes an NYRoB-length look at Lahiri's latest in the context of her oeuvre.

>> "Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America" by Rick Perlstein
from The Atlantic Monthly
Ross Douthat found Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus a "near-masterpiece" and dubs this follow-up "a great success."

>> Plus Daniel Mendelsohn for The New Yorker on a pair of new Herodotus volumes

The Trove

Great reads and other finds for the literary-minded
Compiled by Pat D'Amico

Graphic novels and comics have always enjoyed a dedicated fan base, but recent literary treatments and dark, sophisticated film adaptations (the hottest, most anticipated summer blockbusters are about superheroes) are bringing scores of new fans to the genre. WOWIO is offering graphic novels and comics for free (and a mere registration). New additions every day make it a Web site to watch.

Few will argue Ursula K. Le Guin's status as the reigning grand dame of genre-busting fiction. In preparation of her latest release, Lavinia, a fascinating, imagined story of Aneas' second wife, she talks about her first publications, how the Vietnam War influenced her best-known series, and how her book's heroes became women, all in an email interview for Guernica, with Andrew Chee, author of Edinburgh.

Ryszard Kapuscinski's journalistic career is both heralded and controversial. Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow's review of Travels with Herodotus utilizes a critique of the seasoned reporter's final book as a platform for a fascinating overview of his life, contributions, and controversies.

Hot Topics for 04.25.08

>> Guillermo del Toro to direct 'Hobbit'
The "Pan's Labyrinth" director heads to New Zealand to make two live-action Hobbit films.

>> Enright takes another top prize
The Gathering has won the Irish Novel of the Year award.

>> Page turners
Blake Morrison on livres d'artistes, or "works of art conceived in book form."

Nabokov Echoes

>> Saving Laura, Part 2; Or, Nabokov's Walled Garden
Nice bit of NYT archive mining from Steve Coates over at Paper Cuts, wherein he digs up some lovely early reporting on The Original of Laura. This is a perfect example of what a treasure trove an online archive can be.

Hot Topics for 04.24.08

>> Cynthia Ozick wins 2 lifetime achievement awards
The author has won both the PEN/Malamud and PEN/Nabokov.

>> Putting faces to fiction
It's the timeless question: Should the lives of writers be considered when reading their works?

>> How Daphne du Maurier wrote Rebecca
Speaking of which, here's a look at du Maurier's personal story as it relates to her most famous novel.

>> Idiot’s Guide
Gregory Cowles on his favorite radio show for booklovers.

>> London critics pan "Gone with the Wind" musical

Little Book, Big Punch

The Odd Shelf #72
By Sarah Rocklin

I love a sprawling multigenerational family saga; love multi-volume fantasy epics. I number Moby-Dick and War and Peace among my favorite reads ever. But lately, just by chance, I have read a number of slender little volumes, most of them small both in page number and in physical size. These are books for slipping into a pocket, for reading one-handed while standing on the subway, for toting with ease back and forth to work. But their small size doesn't indicate insubstantial contents.

Hot Topics for 04.23.08

>> Walking With His Muse, a Poet Becomes His Own Destination
Really lovely essay by Edward Hirsch on how a walk becomes a poem. (Thanks to DG for the pointer.)

>> California dreaming
Isabel Allende talks about her daughter's death and her new memoir.

>> Bob Miller, Making The Rounds
Miller is trying to sell his profit-sharing concept to the most reluctant parties: the agents.

>> A Slice of German Wikipedia to Be Captured on Paper
Talk about your counterintuitive concepts ...

What Do You Know About Rex Ray?

[click for additional images]

Excerpted from Rex Ray: Art + Design
By Douglas Coupland

Back in 1997, I was in the Bay Area and on the town one night with my friend Liz, and she said, "Come on, Doug, we have to go to this art opening tonight." I asked where, and Liz said, "In a hair salon up on Fillmore Street. Just come. It'll be great."

To be honest, I managed my expectations way downward for this one, and the hair salon opening was supposed to have been only one small event in the larger scheme of the night. When we arrived it was still just light out, and not many people had shown up yet. I just wanted to flee. ... continue reading

Hot Topics for 04.22.08

>> Refuting Fitzgerald With a Literary Comeback
The Times talks to Pulitzer-winning poet Philip Schultz.

>> Stan Lee to create superheroes for Virgin
Lee is having a big year, the most recent deal being the creation of ten new superheroes.

>> Writers guild president presses Congress over Web freedoms
Writers Guild of America, West, president Patric Verrone is on Capitol Hill today.

>> Nabokov's last work will not be burned
The author's son has decided to publish Laura despite his father's wishes.

>> A literary glass ceiling
Roxana Robinson crafts a he-said/she-said on men's fiction versus women's.

"The Second Plane" by Martin Amis

Most Coveted Covers #171
By Karen Templer

You're standing at the new releases table, running your eyes across the rows of stacks, when your attention is halted by a petite volume in graphic glassy black and matte blue. For a split second you wonder if it's a bow tie but then you notice the little puff of cloud at the left edge and, instantly, you locate yourself at ground level between two very tall, very shiny buildings. As you look "up," you see not a plane but The Second Plane: September 11: Terror and Boredom by Martin Amis, floating there eerily and quietly in the sky. The book may be getting wildly mixed reviews, but the cover, credited to Peter Mendelsund and Chip Kidd, is magic.

—Karen Templer is the founder and editor of Readerville. Any day now, she'll be cracking open The French Lieutenant's Woman.

[To view the Most Coveted Covers 2001-2007 click here.]

A Rare Denis Johnson Sighting

>> Onstage With Denis Johnson
Great report by Gregory Cowles from the belated reading the author gave last week in conjunction with his National Book Award win.

Hot Topics for 04.21.08

>> Joy Williams's 30-Year-Old Comeback Novel
Dwight Garner on the printed-once-then-left-for-dead second novel that has been reissued at long last.

>> Nice work
David Lodge talks to the Guardian about his depression and deafness and his new novel.

>> Every Effort Helps
Critical Mass on the AAUP's efforts to get newspapers to use local reviewers rather than running sydicated material.

>> Libraries get their due in two very different books
Bob Minzesheimer takes a look.

>> Romance writer, publisher split up over plagiarism claims
Signet decided what Cassie Edwards was doing was plagiarism after all.

>> The 50 Greatest Crime Writers
Patricia Highsmith tops this list of the all-time greats.

The Two Miss Pettigrews

Adaptation Nation
By D.G. Strong

Editor's note: Readerville contributor D.G. Strong is the type who believes (mostly rightly) that books and movies are two different things, and that a faithful adaptation isn't likely to be a very good movie. Still, readers want to know: How is the movie different from the book? So today we launch D.G.'s semi-regular column on adaptations. Adaptation Nation assumes you've read the book and seen the movie or that you're not concerned about "spoilers." If that’s not true of you, read at your own risk.
—kt

When it comes to film adaptations of books, there used to be just four varieties (given here in order of likelihood): 1. bad adaptations of bad books, 2. bad adaptations of good books, 3. good adaptations of bad books and 4. good adaptations of good books. Now, which qualify as which is always fodder for lively discussion, maybe drinks thrown in the face and perhaps — if you're lucky — mild fisticuffs. ... continue reading

A Trio of Greats

Three terrific author-related links for this Sunday afternoon.

>> The Last Laugh
The Irish author pseudonymously known as Flann O'Brien is finally getting his due.

>> A dark mirror
Richard Rayner reevaluates Richard Yates.

>> The Art of Fiction No. 196
The Paris Review interviews Kazuo Ishiguro

The Week in Reviews

A compendium of notable reviews
by Kat Warren

>> "A History of Histories" by John Burrow
from Slate
Anglocentric but worthy.

>> "Wit's End" by Karen Joy Fowler
from Salon
Louis Bayard likes Fowler's ear and voice but is puzzled by her choice of the mystery format.

>> "Wild Nights! Stories About the Last Days of Poe, Dickinson, Twain, James, and Hemingway" by Joyce Carol Oates
from The New York Times
Hilarious and harrowing.

>> "The Journey Home" by Dermot Bolger
from The NYT Book Review
A "fiercely beautiful" novel.

>> "Cathedral of the Sea" by Ildefonso Falcones
from The Independent
An "exciting, very readable adventure novel, enriched by realistic descriptions of medieval life, work, finance and politics."

>> "Diego Rivera: The Complete Murals" edited by Luis-Martin Lozano and Juan Rafael Coronel Rivera
from The Spectator
"A triumph, the first complete and scholarly account." Careful, though, it's a coffee-table breaker weighing in at 20 pounds!

>> "The Enchantress of Florence" by Salman Rushdie
from The Australian
It's all about magic.

>> "The Third Angel" by Alice Hoffman
from The Economist
The august Economist liked it!

>> And the Los Angeles Times looks at a pair of "complex new mysteries" set in Africa

Hot Topics for Friday 04.18.08

>> Speed Vogel, Author's Aide, Dies at 90
Sometimes it's obits of people you've never heard of that are the most interesting of all.

>> "11 Central Ave" Features Rick Moody and Others
The four-minute weekly radiostrip strives to "get a better cross pollination between fiction writers, playwrights and public radio."

>> Fear of Family
Elaine Showalter: 35 years later, Erica Jong's first novel still stirs controversy.

Steampunk

The Odd Shelf #71
By Kaethe Douglas

The Victorian era isn't my favorite by a long shot, but the rigidity of its cultural roles makes it mighty fun to play with. I think the repression of the individual gave rise to the delightful flowering of the adventurous genres, bringing us horror, mystery, science fiction and fantasy in abundance. More recently, storytellers are returning to this milieu, for bespoke computing and aether-ship swashbuckling and the sheer thrill of removing stupidly impractical long skirts in order to do something. ... continue reading

Hot Topics for Thursday 04.17.08

>> Studios turn to books, magazines
Having mistakenly expected a windfall of spec scripts as the writers' strike ended, the studios are snatching up books to adapt.

>> Amsterdam: literature's capital city
Amsterdam has been crowned World Book Capital 2008.

>> Where is the digital world taking us?
Gayle Feldman on the challenges technology is presenting to the book world, as seen in the Rowling and Georgia State lawsuits.

>> Bush's '09 Budget Elminates Reading Is Fundamental Funding
The program has now been omitted from the budget entirely.

>> Book Sales Lifted Obamas' Income in 2007 to a Total of $4.2 Million
$3.9 million of it came from books.

Hot Topics for Wednesday 04.16.08

>> Translated from Arabic
On the increasing awareness and popularity of contemporary Arabic authors.

>> Novelists shine in Samuel Johnson non-fiction prize
The longlist includes memoirs by novelists Ballard, Naipaul and Barnes.

>> Wired plots a new style for Web journalists
Out with AP and Chicago Manual of Style — the revered technology mag is planning a stylebook for the digital age.

>> A Creator of Captain America, Fighting On
94-year-old Joe Simon talks to the Times.

>> New book saves Rushdie from "wrecked" private life
Rushdie on writing The Enchantress of Florence.

Paperbacks and iPhones

>> Don't abandon hardbacks
Interesting post by Damien Walter on the Guardian's blog, wherein he argues that "In the age of the iPhone it is the paperback, not the hardback, that seems most under threat" — a response to the rumored demise of the hardcover book. More in comments below ...

Hot Topics for Tuesday 04.15.08

>> First-time novelists honoured in Orange shortlist
Three of the six nominations are for first novels.

>> The Atlantic to Rebrand for the Digital Age
Apparently Britney Spears on the cover of the mag was an omen of some sort after all.

>> Rowling Testifies in Lawsuit Over Harry Potter Encyclopedia
... tells judge it's not about the money.

>> Eugene Ehrlich, 85, Word Connoisseur, Dies
The self-educated lexicographer who wrote 40 dictionaries, thesauruses and phrase books for the "extraordinarily literate."

"Panic" by Helen McCloy

Most Coveted Covers #170
By D.G. Strong

Look, I'll admit it: I don't know who Helen McCloy is. I've never read this book. But she has the type of name that makes me think of that particular kind of author who came to New York City and got wooed by a 1950s publishing house and then published a fabulously successful novel and upon seeing where she was on the bestseller list, went down to 21 to have a steak and a martini. Or ... she ended up a waitress at a midtown coffee shop where one might order a tuna melt and a chocolate malt. But whatever. She's also an author whose Panic is one of those great paperback covers that everyone cites as the sort of thing they love. But why is that? Let's look. You get that groovy hand-drawn title type, with the P casting a slight shadow on the following A. You get that giant hand shadow that seems to be menacing the tiny lady (wearing one of those I Love Lucy cocktail cloak/peg pants combos) in distress. And best of all, you get the phrase "A pretty girl faces unknown peril in stormy woods ..." That sure beats the current ubiquitous "a novel" as far as I'm concerned! So take that to heart, modern novelists. We know you write novels! What we really want to know is: how many of your characters are facing unknown peril in the woods? In peg pants?

—D.G. Strong is a regular contributor to The Readerville Journal and Forum.

[To view the Most Coveted Covers 2001-2007 click here.]

Hot Topics for Monday 04.14.08

First the news bits:

>> Andrew Morton's UK publisher surrenders to Tom Cruise

>> Zinio Puts 100+ Classics Online as E-Books

>> "Lonely Planet" writer made up his travel tales

>> Cornwell's fingerprints all over Lifetime

>> Chess Book May Have Leonardo Illustrations

And at the more readerly end of the spectrum:

>> The Playboy Was a Spy
Stephen Koch on Noel Coward's double life.

>> Engine of destruction
Alberto Manguel on Jack London's unfinished novel The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

>> The Girl in the Tower
Alison Lurie on the lasting (and increasing) popularity of the tale of Rapunzel.

A Library Divided

Flashback | The Readerville Journal, January/February 2003
By Nancy Weber

Illustration by D.G. Strong

For the first time in 20 years, my books stand in crisp rows and the shelves have room to spare. It's awful.

In theory, a constant goal of the marriage was an orderly library. In reality, the abiding aesthetic was piles and heaps all over our Far West Village loft, the smart chaos typical of two people who are each reading six different books at any given time and persist in buying more. With so many sentences waiting, who had time to separate the plays from the short stories, much less alphabetize? If the collected poems of Yeats didn't come to hand when needed, we'd buy another copy; a marriage can't have too much Yeats. And in case of divorce, we dared joke — because we were that sure of each other — a second copy would simplify the divvying up. ... continue reading

The Week in Reviews

A compendium of notable reviews
by Kat Warren

>> "Bright Shiny Morning" by James Frey
from Publishers Weekly
A page-turning train wreck.

>> "Clean: An Unsanitized History of Washing" by Katherine Ashenberg
from The Guardian
All the fascinating dirt on cleanliness.

>> "Dictation: A Quartet" by Cynthia Ozick
from The Washington Post Book World
Color Michael Dirda impressed.

>> "Dog Years" by Mark Doty
from The London Times
Illuminating and perceptive.

>> "Lush Life" by Richard Price
from The New York Review of Books
Michael Chabon discusses Price's latest and his oeuvre too.

>> "Pilcrow: A Novel" by Adam Mars-Jones
from The Financial Times
This clever writer's latest novel is a bit of a "trudge" but also "intelligent, linguistically brilliant and, at times, funny."

>> "The Rain Before it Falls" by Jonathan Coe
from The NYT Book Review
This new one by Coe is "peculiar" and disappointing.

>> Marilyn Stasio on some tasty thrillers
from The New York Times

More Hot Topics for Friday

>> 25 Books to Remember from 2007
The NYPL's list of last year's standouts includes some titles you may have missed altogether.

>> Publisher enjoys paperback hits
AP's Hillel Italie looks at Penguin's ability to make bestsellers of books that "don't appear to have a lot in common except that none has won major awards or sold brilliantly in hardcover or was written by anyone famous."

>> Bob Miller's Studio 'Experiment' Already Tried and Tested — On Small-Press Scale
Small press insiders take issue with the notion that what Bob Miller is proposing is in any way revolutionary.

Hot Topics for Friday 04.11.08

>> Cairo's greatest literary secret
Exiled Egyptian novelist Bahaa Taher has won the Booker for Arabic fiction. Maya Jaggi applauds the decision.

>> Penguin's frontlist goes digital
Penguin UK will be the first publisher to attempt to publish every new title simultaneously in print and digital formats. That is, assuming the authors agree.

>> Arizona Legislators Reject Bill Targeting "Dangerous" Media
The Arizona bill that would have permitted crime victims to sue those who published or distributed materials that "caused" the crime has, thankfully, failed to pass. The bill's sponsor will be trying again.

>> Authors Rally Online to Raise Funds for Rape Victims
Author Tayari Jones' idea to auction off a manuscript critique to raise funds has prompted others to join in with various bookish contributions of their own.

>> Also:
Toni Morrison will be given the PEN/Borders Literary Service Award at the PEN Literary Gala on April 28th:

The PEN/Borders award honors a truly distinguished American writer whose critically acclaimed work helps us to understand the human condition in original and powerful ways. "Toni Morrison is a truly American writer, dealing frankly yet poetically in her work with the sweeping themes of identity, race, class, and gender in our society," Jones said. "Above all, it is her determination to expose the use of language for racist, sexist, and other manipulative ends that have made her the heroic writer she is today."

Hot Topics for Thursday 04.10.08

>> Norman Mailer's memorial echoes his life, writing
Bob Minzesheimer reports on the star-studded memorial service, which was held at Carnegie Hall.

>> How I fell in love with Wikipedia
Nicholson Baker reveals his "advanced Wikipedia dependency."

>> 'Misha' Publisher Files to Overturn $33 Million Judgment
Just click the link — it's too hilariously convoluted to believe.

>> Rowling and McEwan win Nibbies
Other Galaxy winners for this year include Khaled Hosseini, Russell Brand and Patricia Cornwell.

Biography in Fiction

The Odd Shelf #70
By Carl Rollyson

Half the drama of biography occurs within the biographer. Yet how many biographers include themselves as characters in their books? Norman Mailer could do so in Marilyn because he had already established himself as a character in earlier work. But for most biographers, the idea of dramatizing themselves, or inventing a persona for a biography, is anathema, since they dread the hostility that would greet their self-advertisements. Just ask Edmund Morris! So we turn to fiction for the skinny on biographers. The trouble is, novelists often use fiction as a form of revenge on biographers — a case in point being William Golding's The Paper Men, which features a callow biographer rooting through his subject's garbage. The novelist's retaliation against biographers begins, of course, with Henry James' classic, The Aspern Papers, narrated by a guilt-ridden biographer who has cravenly insinuated himself into the life of the late Jeffrey Aspern's mistress, Miss Bordereau. What follows is my top ten list of those novels that augment and adjust the portrayals of what James Joyce was pleased to call "biografiends." ... continue reading

Hot Topics for Wednesday 04.09.08

>> Dylan wins rock's first Pulitzer
The LA Times finds that Dylan's fellow Pulitzer winners are happy to share the limelight with him. Dylan was given a special award for his "lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

>> WEbook Launches Collaborative Book-Writing Site
The latest attempt to create "the American Idol of books."

>> Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick Flicks (Hoping to Lure the Guys)
Books by Sophie Kinsella, Nicholas Sparks and Julie Powell are all currently being adapted for the screen, with big names behind them.

Zora Neale Hurston, Tweaker of Facts

>> Novelist, Scholar, Tweaker of Autobiographical Facts
Wednesday night's American Masters documentary focuses on Zora Neale Hurston. The Times tries to tie her to the current rash of phony memoirists by making perhaps a bit too much hay of the fact that she lied about her age.
The show airs Wednesday on most PBS stations.

"Florence Broadhurst" by Helen O'Neill

Most Coveted Covers #169
By Karen Templer

It's not so much that I covet this book as that I have a minor (and growing) obsession with it. What is it? Helen O'Neill's Florence Broadhurst: Her Secret & Extraordinary Lives. Who designed it? I wish I knew. (I would ask the editor but she would definitely get the idea I'm breathing down her neck about the book.) I'd never heard of Florence Broadhurst before seeing this written up in some shelter mag a few months ago, and it was the gorgeous cover that caught my eye. I've not had as good a look at it as I'd like, but Broadhurst was a pattern designer famous for her wallpapers, and she was also mysteriously murdered. So the book is some sort of crazy cross between a wallpaper catalog and a murder mystery — and I'm quite certain I've never encountered a book that meets that description before. (Who knew that description could be so enticing?) Between the set-up and the captivating red-patterned cloth cover (with unapologetically disposable wrapround band), what's not to covet? Every day I have to live without it I want it even more.

—Karen Templer is the founder and editor of Readerville, who is still reading Richard Russo.

[To view the Most Coveted Covers 2001-2007 click here.]

And the Pulitzer goes to ...

You'll never guess: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, who's hardly had time to digest last week's win of the Tournament of Books. Does anyone know if this book's broken any prize records yet? The list of awards it hasn't won is surely shorter at this point than the list of those it has.

Manufactured Memoir of the Week

>> House of Cards
Here we go again: Now that the "memoir" Bringing Down the House has been remade as a hit film ("21"), its veracity is being challenged.

Hot Topics for Monday 04.07.08

>> How "Slaughterhouse Five" was born
Steve Almond says the new posthumous Kurt Vonnegut collection (Armageddon in Retrospect) "reveals the seeds of a modern masterpiece."

>> Helen Yglesias, Who Wrote of Women, Is Dead at 92
The Nation editor turned novelist — she wrote her first book at the age of 54 — died of natural causes.

>> And it will happen to you
David Hare writes about bringing Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking to the stage.

>>