AOL's Book Maven

We knew this was coming. No matter how often Alibris or eBay try and remove listings, there will be someone out there who has an ill-gotten copy of that illness-inducing manuscript 'If I Did It' by O.J. Simpson from ReganBooks. (Oops, make that once of ReganBooks... )

From the News article: "Catherine England, eBay spokeswoman, cited policies aimed at offensive items and 'murderabilia.'

'Out of respect for murder victims, eBay may remove items closely associated with murder cases dating over the last 100 years,' she says. 'We reached out to the publisher who holds the copyright; they said they did not intend to distribute this book.'"

About 400,000 copies were printed by HarperCollins, and that publisher says the books are its property and "we haven't sued anyone yet but reserve the right to do so."

What an egregious mess. Now, your Book Maven does not approve of book burning, or turning books into censored items -- so my opinion is that once sold, it's the buyer's responsibility. But HarperCollins, where are these thousands of copies? If they were not for sale and the book deal was cancelled and you are not officially publishing the volume, can't something be done? Hmmmm... "If The Publisher Did It," might we all not be better off immediately?

IMHO, here's what should happen to the books, with a nod to my editor colleague Dan Kulpinski, of 'Down to Earth' on AOL Journals.
 

bookmaven2005 at 11:00:51 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 14 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

 

Here's our news story on "truthiness" as Word of the Year for 2006, along with a really fun gallery.

 

Here's the scoop from Merriam-Webster:

 

"Visitors to Merriam-Webster OnLine Choose 'truthiness' as 2006 WORD OF THE YEAR"

 

SPRINGFIELD, MA, December 2006 -- Merriam-Webster OnLine, the leading source for English language reference on the Web, has revealed the results of its first Word of the Year online survey. For the past few years, the site has tallied the millions of anonymous hits to its free online dictionary and thesaurus to come up with the most frequently looked up words of the year. This year, however, Merriam-Webster decided to ask its visitors to send in their own nominations for the one word they think best sums up the past eleven months. By an overwhelming 5-to-1 majority vote, the company’s online community has chosen the word “truthiness” to take top honors as Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2006.

 

Truthiness  became popularized after the October2005 debut broadcast of Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, when the show’s host Stephen Colbert defined the word as "truth that comes from the gut, not books." In January of 2006, the American Dialect Society chose the word as their own 16th annual Word of the Year, defining it as "the quality of preferring concepts or facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts or facts known to be true."

 

 "I think there’s a serious issue lurking behind the popularity of the word truthiness," said John Morse, President and Publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc. "What is it exactly that constitutes truth today? This isn’t just a political question—it’s relevant to a broad spectrum of social issues where our ideas on the nature of authority are being challenged. Adopting the word truthiness is a playful way to deal with this important question."

 

There are not many similar examples of playfulness in theremaining nine top words of the year chosen by Merriam-Webster’s site-users. The #2 position on the list, for example, is held by the word war -- a common word that, remarkably, has never before shown up on any of the site’s monthly lists of Top 50 most-frequently looked up words. Last-place winner corruption is particularly interesting because of the first sense of its definition: "the impairment of integrity." Integrity  was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2005.

 

Traffic to Merriam-Webster OnLine now encompasses 100 million individual page views per month. On average, the company responds to approximately ten lookup requests in the Merriam-Webster OnlineDictionary  or Thesaurus per second. During peak hours, this may increase to more than 100 requests per second.

 

For the complete list of Merriam-Webster’s Words of the Year, including definitions, please visit http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/06words.htm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bookmaven2005 at 10:08:50 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

...is the title of "Author!"

From Tori Spelling to yes, even Renee Zellweger, now, stars are hopping on the publishing bandwagon. Zellweger told an Austrian site that she is an aspiring author and has written several books -- but can't hit the "Send" button, evidently. She says: "I have written every day since I could pick up a book. I'm not sure that i'ts for toher people's eyes. Would I publish it? I don't know, I don't plan it to be for anyone else, but we'll see... we'll see."

Spelling, of course, has announced that she's writing her memoirs -- at 33.

According to Simon Spotlight, Spelling "will let readers experience the truly unique life of Tori Spelling -- from childhood privileges to tabloid misperceptions, success and regrets, and ultimately her quest to define herself on her own terms."

What do you think?

 

bookmaven2005 at 10:23:32 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

                                         

This is the first novel from Jody Shields since 2001's 'The Fig Eater,' and it's a read that is more about detail, evocation and atmosphere than it is about plot. Not that nothing happens; plenty does. A grand English estate is transformed into a military hospital for World War I soldiers with the most grotesque of facial injuries. Two women in mourning for their marriages (for very different reasons) discover new loves. An elderly doctor tries desperately to keep his young protege out of battle. And so on.

However, the plot strands and character interactions are nowhere near as charged as the descriptions of things. In fact, the entire novel feels most alive when it is living up to its title -- it is a portrait of a time and place, an entirely unexpected one filled with tensions, moments of great ugliness and great beauty and the futility so many people experience in trying to connect.

Catherine, the young, beautiful and very spoiled lady of the manor sees her exquisite home taken over by the learned Dr. McLeary, whose firm belief in stripping the place of anything reflective so that his patients can hold on to hope is countered by Bostonian Anna Coleman, whose sketches and sculptures of injuries reflect the reality of the slow progress of cosmetic surgery until a devastating war requires its practitioners to accelerate their learning. Meanwhile, the Harvard-trained yet foreign-born Dr. Kazantjian struggles to use any bits and bobs he can find (crinoline tape, wire) to fashion maxillofacial supports for his poor patients. Finally, Julian, whose ruined face will become the locus for the other characters' obsessions.

It is in the detailing of those obsessions -- Catherine's perfect objects, Anna's artist tools, McLeary's attempts to argue for the boy Artis's life -- that 'The Crimson Portrait' lifts away from its canvas and truly comes alive.

bookmaven2005 at 7:45:41 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I appeared in the blog of the National Book Critics Circle, 'Critical Mass' last week -- but completely neglected to mention my Book Maven moniker... I'm going to email NBCC president John Freeman and have him edit my entry!

In the meantime, scroll down to read it here; I've been trying to post a small screenshot, but no success. Please take a few minutes to read some of the other entries, too!

 

bookmaven2005 at 3:44:26 PM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

How did I manage to miss the end of last week entirely? I'll be blogging again today and probably churn out a LitNotes entry about a bunch of things, including my holiday books list, my fave picks of 2006 on the National Book Critics Circle blog, and finding out what all of you are reading this week (for me, it's 'The Crimson Portrait' by Jody Shields). More to come as soon as I get in to the office!

bookmaven2005 at 7:06:28 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

I'm sure many of you are familiar with 'Outwitted' by Edwin Markham:

"He drew a circle that shut me out--
        Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
        We drew a circle that took him in!"

Well, I have "a thing to flout" this week, and it's the new Thomas Pynchon novel.

'Against the Day' is "the mysterious author's" first book in ten years. Like many Important Novels, it received not one but two reviews in the New York Times: a long paean by Liesl Schillinger in this past Sunday's Book Review, and a briefer and bitterer mention by Michiko Kakutani last Monday.

                                    

Will love and Liesl have the wit to win me over so that I actually read this looooong (1,120 pages) novel? I do like the fact that the Publisher's Weekly review calls it "Knotty, paunchy, nutty, raunchy." But I'm simply setting reasonable boundaries for myself. I can't read everything...

Which leads me to today's question: what Big, Important Book will you flout this year? In case you need to jog your memory, here's the NY Times Top 100 List...

bookmaven2005 at 8:51:24 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I found this via Gawker, but wanted to share the original link: Penguin Books has come out with a new line called 'My Penguin' that allows readers to design their own covers for six different titles (all rather highbrow ones, including 'The Picture of Dorian Grey' by Oscar Wilde and 'The Waves' by Virginia Woolf). There's an online gallery, too, which I found irresistible mainly because the first entry is by a five-year-old girl.                                       

But where does one buy them? Are they available only in the UK? Your maven is on the case...

bookmaven2005 at 7:01:09 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I'll have my Holiday Gift Books List up later today (I talked about it on WABC-TV NY last weekend, and I have to tell you -- just buy the Scharffenberger chocolate book -- you won't be sorry!). I have a lot of different things on it and am already thinking of the many books I couldn't include, overlooked, etc. Sigh. Such is the Thanksgiving holiday of a book maven, who visits her friends' and families' homes mainly to prowl their bookcases.

However, it's "Cyber-Monday," that media-coined term for the day when Internet holiday madness begins in earnest, so I am wondering what books you are planning to buy for gifts. Will you order them online? Or do you prefer to do your gift-book shopping in real bookstores? (OK, Majbeck, I'm ready for the R.J. Julia plug and wishing I could be there shopping right next to you!)

bookmaven2005 at 8:57:19 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 1 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

If anyone else wrote these words before, I don't want to know; but I will probably find out. Because now there is a way to know.

While reporter Paul Collins shows that the likelihood of sentences being accidentally replicated winnows with length, I still believe -- having studied enough medieval and Renaissance authors who tore hunks of each other's manuscripts off as freely as Henry VIII did turkey legs -- that the real problem is not with copied words, sentences or paragraphs -- it's with copied ideas. If, like Herman Melville (Collins includes his example, too), you take long technical passages from maritime authors (look! I used Collins' phrase "maritime authors" -- take me away!) and then weave them in to Moby Dick, I don't think you're plagiarizing. I think you can weave something entirely new by using some recycled material. I'll say it again: Shakespeare did this a lot.

Perhaps I'm too heavily under the influence of blogging -- because, after all, this is what we bloggers do. We take other people's words and cut and paste them into links, chunks and other bits and bobs and then weave our own ideas and opinions around them. I try very hard (as do most of the responsible bloggers out there) to point out when and where I'm citing someone else.

Should fiction writers all emulate Dave Eggers' trope of footnotes whenever they're including someone else's material? What do you think?

bookmaven2005 at 7:51:00 AM EST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own