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Children’s Books 2007-08-11 18:06:00 Thirteen-year-old boys are mysteries. By and large, they don’t keep diaries and no, they don’t want to talk about it, thank you very much. According to booksellers and parents I’ve met, they don’t read books either, but this may be just a nasty rumor.“The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California,” by Mary Hershey, has a title that works as a pretty nifty plot summary, too: Alastair, a 13-year-old amputee who calls himself Stump, spends the summer with his estranged father in California. Five years before the start of the story, Stump’s leg was amputated following a premature jump from a ski lift. The mystery here, of course, is why did he do it? And why does he hate his father so much? And oh yes, why has his father up and married a double leg amputee? If you’ve ever read a coming-of-age novel, you can probably imagine how these stories resolve themselves, and that’s not a criticism so much as a function of the genre: kid moves from inexperi Read more:Children
, Books
Lists of Best-Selling Books 2007-08-09 18:10:00 1. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPre (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic) (F-H)2. "Almost Dead" by Lisa Jackson (Zebra) (F-P)3. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPre (Scholastic) (F-P)4. "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPre (Scholastic) (F-P)5. "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne (Atria Books
/Beyond Words) (NF-H)6. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Hardcover) (F-H)7. "Ricochet" by Sandra Brown (Pocket) (F-P)8. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" by J.K. Rowling (Scholastic) (F-P)9. "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen (Algonquin) (F-P)
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Two new books on Italian fare give the jaded cook a boost 2007-08-08 05:26:00 Appetites don't get jaded in summer, but cooks do, fed up with everyone else gobbling up their food and then deserting the kitchen to enjoy the holidays and get hungry for the next meal.This jaded cook, frazzled by turning out many meals and trying to think up new dishes to serve, spent a recent holiday reviving culinary energy with the help of two new Italian
cookbooks from top U.S. authors.The review copies arrived just as I was about to leave for the country and my first thought was, "Not more Italian!" But then I noted the writers and took their books along, certain that the combination of Italy's love affair with fresh, local food and the writing and cooking skills of these two Italian residents would liven up my summer cooking.
The tricky web woven around discount books 2007-08-05 18:14:00 Readers had one set of questions about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Does Harry kill Voldemort? Is Snape good or evil? — but the book industry had more pecuniary concerns.To discount, or not to discount? And did any bookseller make a profit on the hottest book of the year?You could buy the book for $17.99 from amazon.com, and less than $20 at stores all over town. Independent bookstores offered small discounts or none at all, so maybe the question is, why did anyone pay full price?Consider the screwy economics of publishing, where selling 150 books might be more profitable than selling millions. And where personal service occasionally trumps price."The retail book business is sort of unusual," explains Dan Neale of Brazos Bookstore. "If a book becomes real popular, the major retailers cut the price."
Pirated Potter books hit stores in Malaysia 2007-08-03 19:45:00 KUALA LUMPUR, Aug. 3 (Xinhua) -- The price war surrounding the last installment of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter
series has taken another twist when pirated copies surfaced in the Malaysia
n market, local press reported on Friday. Cashing in on the popularity of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, pirates have mass-produced paperback editions which are retailed at 48 ringgit (14 U.S. dollars) each, the New Straits Times reported.They are available at selected newsvendors and bookstores
, some of whom are selling the books at 60 ringgit (18 U.S. dollars) but with a 20 percent discount. Checks at several newsvendors and bookstores showed that the pirated book copied the original version wholesale, from its front and back covers and publisher's logo to even the barcode.
Books about Katrina start to pick up steam 2007-08-01 23:24:00 Perhaps it was inevitable that Dave Robicheaux, Louisiana's most celebrated fictional detective, would deal with the anarchy that followed Hurricane Katrina
. But Robicheaux's creator, James Lee Burke, says he initially thought the destruction of New Orleans was "just too big for me to deal with adequately" in a novel.
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Books on how and what to read 2007-07-30 22:29:00 Weekly, as I continue to contemplate this dilemma, I have come to the realization that it was time to revisit and again share with you some of the books I had written about addressing factors that go into that determination. These books are not only informative and well written but also insightful and engaging for the quality of future reading. Let me discuss three of them, all available in paperback, each somewhat different in style and focus, but all passionate and rewarding.I will begin with a wonderful book by Harold Bloom, “How To Read and Why”. Bloom is a Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, having previously taught at both New York University and Harvard. He has written over twenty books, was a MacArthur Prize fellow and is considered by many as one of the great literary critics of his time. John Banville, of The Irish Times and author himself states “Bloom is one of the last …of his kind…one of the greatest educators of our time…Wonderful…Bloom wri Read more:Books
Harry Potter author working on two new books 2007-07-28 17:43:00 British author J.K. Rowling, who published the final HarryPotter
book a week ago, is already back at work.She says she's sad the series is over, but will not stop writing."I'm writing two things at the moment," she told USA Today."One is for children, the other is not."This is how I started. I was writing two things simultaneously for a year before Harry took over."Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows sold an estimated 8.3 million copies within 24 hours of release, its publisher says.
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Lists of Best-Selling Books 2007-07-26 16:59:00 1. "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPre (Arthur A. Levine/Scholastic)2. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead Hardcover)3. "The Quickie" by James Patterson, Michael Ledwidge (Little, Brown and Company)4. "High Noon" by Nora Roberts (Putnam)5. "Up Close and Dangerous" by Linda Howard (Ballantine)6. "Lean Mean Thirteen" by Janet Evanovich (St. Martin's Press)7. "The Tin Roof Blowdown: A Dave Robicheaux Novel" by James Lee Burke (Simon & Schuster)8. "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" by J.K. Rowling, art by Mary GrandPre (Scholastic)9. "The First Commandment: A Thriller" by Brad Thor (Atria)10. "Eclipse (Twilight)" by Stephenie Meyer (Little Brown)
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, Lists
Travel books 2007-07-24 16:51:00 "Rome With Kids: An Insider's Guide," by J.M. Pasquesi (Synergy Books, $16.95) Eternal City meets eternal youth in this smart, comprehensive guidebook that could make a family experience in this 3,000-year-old metropolis last a lifetime. J.M. Pasquesi is a Rome expert for the Trip Advisor Web site, and the contributing editor for three Northstar travel guides. She knows Rome well. For more than a decade, she lived there with her two kids. Now she and her husband reside in Chicago, where the dolce vita is not quite as sweet. Pasquesi combines her academic background in classical studies and her maternal knowledge of children's attention spans to make this slim little book a travel gem. "It is my passionate wish that no one towing kids should have to stand in front of a bunch of rubble and figure out what to make of it," she writes. To that end, she's packed this 237-page book with time-saving tips, walking tours, restaurant and accommodation advice, color photographs, curious facts, Read more:Travel
Author-athletes score big with books geared to children 2007-07-22 18:29:00 Kids scream his name at the ballpark, and kids beg for his autograph after batting practice. But the kids who make Alex Rodriguez feel like a rock star, the ones who give the Yankee slugger the warm fuzzies, are the kids who know he's an author."The biggest thrill I get is when a kid comes up to me and says, 'I love your book,' " the third baseman -- and, yes, writer -- says. "I never thought I could write children's books."Kind of how parents probably never thought that sitting on their bookshelves, next to Dr. Seuss, would be a Yankee. Or a Giant. Or Terrell Owens.
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The really dangerous books 2007-07-20 18:38:00 IF YOU WOKE THIS MORNING with a recently fired revolver by your bed, not long since returned from Las Vegas where you and your attorney disgraced yourselves, believing the carpet had turned to lizards and the air was full of screaming bats, if you lay there groaning weakly, recalling lechery and cowardice through a hangover, vaguely hoping for a butler with a miracle cure containing egg, then your best course is easily advised. Drop the dangerous
books. Not that red thing of the same title “for boys” that has sold 900,000 copies in this country alone (it is not dangerous in the least). Your problem is the hard and vivid stuff, the funny and the thrilling. Jeeves and Flashman, Hunter S. Thompson, perhaps a touch of Alistair MacLean.
Potter books create new records 2007-07-18 20:35:00 Making and breaking records has become synonymous with Harry Potter
books, the seventh and last instalment of which is slated to be launched on July 21. With less than 72 hours left for its release, the final book in the series Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has already received a pre-order for about two million copies across the globe, which is well above the previous record of 1.5 million for the sixth instalment, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
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Kids reading fewer books despite Harry Potter hoopla 2007-07-15 02:04:00 Despite what has been dubbed the "HarryPotter
Effect" -- which credits J.K. Rowling's blockbuster book series with turning Game Boy addicts into lifelong readers -- reading is in serious decline among teens nationwide, according to a forthcoming federal study.A decade of Potter-mania peaks at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when 12 million copies of the seventh and last book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," go on sale in the United States. Thus far, the books have sold 325 million copies in 64 languages worldwide.
Read more:despite
Dan full of praise for Harry books 2007-07-12 17:35:00 Daniel Radcliffe has paid tribute to JK Rowling while speaking about the latest movie in the Harry
Potter franchise. The young actor has resurrected his role as the teenage wizard in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix - the fifth film in the popular series.
Six million books a year . . what's that in trees? 2007-07-10 17:44:00 WITH the Book Festival looming, I wonder if director Catherine Lockerbie is losing sleep over the six billion books printed this past year. We in the UK buy 296 million
books annually. That's one helluva lot of trees."The figures are staggering, agreed," she says, "but a significant amount of publishers are using recycled paper. While the number of trees sacrificed to meet the industry's needs must be staggering, I can't say I've scurried over to Charlotte Square today to plant one."
JK Rowling: Learning to live with fame, fortune and life without Harry 2007-07-08 19:48:00 JK Rowling
is richer than the Queen and feted across the globe for her magic-filled books. But once the final 'Harry
Potter' hits the shelves later this month, what on earth will she do with herself? John Walsh peeks into the author's increasingly glamorous, yet frostily guarded, private world
Read more:Learning
Finding a niche in erotic books 2007-07-06 18:49:00 Her second bedroom has been converted to an office, where a mismatched desk and chair serve a laptop laced with wires. Scuffed lever-arch files lean against the wall and the bay-window area is piled with nondescript cardboard boxes, contents unseen.
Read more:niche
Cheap books? Thanks to piracy 2007-07-05 04:18:00 KATHMANDU, July 5 - Surprised that you can buy expensive foreign books at cheap prices in Nepal? It's not that foreign publishing houses reprint cheaper editions for Nepal. The books are dirt cheap, thanks to a growing book piracy
industry in Nepal - at least one industry seems to be booming amidst the economic slump. Leading book distributors in Kathmandu say pirated books account for up to 30 percent of space in most bookstores here. And the price of the pirated version is often less than half the original price.
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, Thanks
Student books are from the heart 2007-07-02 17:21:00 There are class projects done strictly for the grade and the lesson that sinks in. Then there are projects that become art from the heart. At Severn River Middle School in Arnold, even the stuffed shark mascot in the lobby knows Principal Patrick Bathras' younger son, Griffin, 7, has been battling Ewings sarcoma, a rare form of cancer, for nearly two years.
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Harry Potter and the Gyrating Book Sales 2007-07-01 21:29:00 Sales of children’s books rose last year at a rate that disappointed the industry, according to a report released in June by the Book Industry Study Group, a publishing trade association. Sales revenue for hardcover books, the format in which new books typically reach the market, increased just 2.5 percent over the previous year, compared with the more usual 5 percent to 6 percent. And by some measures — units sold, for example — hardcover sales were almost flat.
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, Harry
, Sales
Parragon to bring Disney books to India 2007-06-28 20:13:00 Illustrative books publisher Parragon will introduce popular titles for kids from the Walt Disney
range in India
to tap the growing pictorial content market as it looks at launching country-specific content to nearly double its sales here.
God's gift to the world of books 2007-06-27 02:13:00 The humourist Alan Coren once complained to his agent that his books weren't selling. There were only three subjects guaranteed to shift copies, the agent told him - golf, cats and Nazis. Coren called his next book Golfing for Cats and put a swastika on the cover. But this publishing holy trinity is no longer enough: the new hot topic is God.
CHILDREN'S BOOKS 2007-06-24 19:09:00 There is nothing like the voice of experience, and baseball fans are lucky that Cal Ripken Jr. has turned his attention to writing books for children. (Perhaps if more celebrities wrote about things they knew, they would write better books.) Although Ripken, known as "Iron Man," is most famous for playing a record 2,632 consecutive Major League games in 21 seasons with the Baltimore Orioles, in "The Longest Season" he writes about another streak. 1988 was going to be a dream season for Cal: His brother, Billy, was also playing for the Orioles, and his father had been hired as manager. The dream started to crumble when the team lost its season-opener, 12-0. This was bad enough, but they kept losing games, until it seemed they couldn't ever win one.
Books offer look at postwar Japan 2007-08-15 19:41:00 OSAKA--A GHQ photographer provides a lens on post-World War II Japan
in two recently published volumes of photographs edited by Yoneyuki Sugita, associate professor of Osaka University of Foreign Studies. "GHQ Kameraman ga Totta Sengo Nippon" (Japan After World War II by a GHQ photographer, Volume I), published in May by Tokyo's Archives Publishing Co., features postwar scenes from Tokyo intermixed with images of famous figures such as Emperor Showa and Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and focuses on daily life in Tokyo and the political and social situation of the nation at the time.
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Three books about animals 2007-08-13 19:09:00 "Kangaroos are, in my opinion, the most interesting animals that ever lived," writes Australian scientist Tim Flannery, who then goes on to attempt to prove that statement in Chasing Kangaroos, his comprehensive love-letter of a book to the animal that fascinates him. Flannery (author of "The Weather Makers") casts his net so wide in his research and travel across five continents that at times this book can be exhausting, although at the same time it remains engaging.Anyone who ever loved a dog will find something to enjoy in Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog by Ted Kerasote. Kerasote found Merle, a lab mix and apparently a stray, while on a camping trip. He took the dog home and life was never again the same. Kerasote writes well about their rich 13-year relationship.
Read more:Three
Books your kids must read before they turn 12 2007-08-19 20:34:00 Sharing the wonder of discovering a magical world at the back of your wardrobe, the adventures of a reckless Toad or the mischief of a puddin’ in a pot will do more for your children’s education than any amount of TV, says WA Education Minister Mark McGowan.
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Scarlett Johansson books roles in 3 films 2007-08-17 17:52:00 According to The Hollywood Reporter, ScarlettJohansson
has lined up a series of roles
that will see her moving quickly from modern relationships to comic strip noir to costume drama. Johansson has joined the all-star cast of New Line Cinema's ensemble comedy He's Just Not That Into You, which she will shoot first before then materializing as a femme fatale in Will Eisner's The Spirit, being directed by Frank Miller for Odd Lot Entertainment and Lionsgate.
Read more:Scarlett Johansson
One in Four Americans Doesn't Read Books 2007-08-22 13:36:00 Ipsos poll released Tuesday showed that one in four Americans
read no books in 2006. Women and older people were more likely to read, with religion and popular fiction among the most read.
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