Oprah Succumbs to A Book Gadget

We know Oprah loves books. The written word is one of her best friends and the only one she can't give jewelry measured in carats. But books now can be a high tech accoutrement that blinks, beeps and whirls through a slew of books at her command. Oprah has fallen in love with the Kindle. She is right about Barack Obama, but I love written works where pages ruffle in the breeze and the heft provides a certain creature comfort. An ebook, blech. What's wrong with her?

"I'm telling you, it is absolutely my new favorite thing in the world," she said in the post, which notes that she first received the Kindle this past summer.

Oprah also gave away a Kindle to everyone in her audience on Friday, which oddly enough, caused one woman in the crowd to tear up.

"There are not any keys in there," Oprah said telling them to look in a box under their seats. "But something equally as good."

She can afford to leave the thing on her personal plane or in a hotel suite. But the longer a poor person invests in Kindle, then pays the fee and downloads electronic version of whatever catches their fancy, the thing becomes even more valuable. Losing it, smashing it or dropping it in the tub is the actuality of watching hard earned money go down the drain. At what point would therapy be needed when the Kindle goes on the blink. An iPod cost a fair bit and the songs et al are package priced. Each electronic book averages about $10. It's a bit like buying a cheapy printer and then paying more for the ink cartridges. Cool strategic mouse booktrap, if one can make it work. But hey, its one of Oprah's new favorite things. If so compelled to be Oprah-hip, click here to happily fork over the first $350, but don't stop there get her recommended Oprah Book Club The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. Lady O may need to work on a label issue there because that's a mouthful of a sticky label to get on a download.

Obama Supporter Warren Buffett Sells Books

Warren Buffett gave one lone business analyst turned biographer unfettered to study him like a fully feathered $62 billion pheasant under glass.  Buffet is a cottage industry in books as his ideas and advice are sought from the world's elites.  He made all of his files, business contacts and private thoughts transparent before each secret and pearl of Buffet wisdom transformed into the written word.  Years passed as the author, Alice Shroeder, slogged through meetings, listened in as he advised and followed the gold brick labyrinth that is the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. The book is The Snowball:  Warren Buffet and the Business of Life.  Interestingly, she left off the name most know him by, The Oracle of Omaha while following his dictum that if another version of a story about him put him in a more unflattering position, use that one.  She did.

This son of a hardcore republican business man became a leading liberal philanthropist with a rapier mind geared towards business and presidential politics.  Being flush with cold hard cash during the economic times, WB, poured at least 8 billion dollars into the US stock market with Goldman Sachs being the beneficiary of at least 5 billion bucks.  On the political front as the premier honcho on business, he squarely came down in supporting future president Barack Obama.  Yesterday, the 78 years young political insider did a fundraiser for Barack Obama in California's chic Century City for the still well-heeled. His advice is straightforward.

Mr Buffett wrote: "A simple rule dictates my buying: Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

Warren Buffett was at the California Woman's Conference with 14,000 attendees.  In a moment of irony, Buffet was on an all guy panel with Chris Matthews between Buffet the Obama supporter and the McCain supporting governor and husband of the conference organizer, Maria Shriver.  All three have known problems with relating to females.  Michelle Obama was a great hit last year in the hall, but no one knew as California was in the midst of its worst firestorm.

King Family Feud Over Book Deal

The first family of nonviolence is practicing legal judo on each other, hoping for a clear take down of a brother or sister decision. Martin Luther King Jr.'s family have hamstrung and headlocked each other in courtroom combat over control of the King legacy and who has the right to authorize publishing what. The situation keeps boiling over every year. Their mother, Coretta Scott King's death and the sudden demise of oldest sister Yolanda in California, have added yet another breach between two siblings Bernice & Martin Luther King III and their brother Dexter. A very angry Penguin Group paid King Inc, run by Dexter Scott King, $1.2 million for a Coretta Scott King biography to be written by lecturer Reverend Barbara Reynolds, formerly of USA Today. Reynolds is the notorious figure that also shoehorned Reverend Jeremiah Wright into speaking with a surfeit of hubris at the National Press Club which made the Obamas drop him like a hot rock as their pastor.

Bernice, a licensed lawyer, mediator and Baptist preacher, has some of her Mom's private papers she has been shopping around for a separate book deal. About $300,000 of the advance was given to King Inc and split equally while Martin III and Reverend Bernice King say dexter did some wild and crazy stuff with the money that did not include them. Of which Dexter basically called them liars and said here is the evidence to show a split as outlined by Coretta Scott King's last will and testament which left ALL of her papers to King Inc and Bernice doesn't have the authority to get her own deal with items owned by King Inc.

The siblings are feuding over whether the documents should be turned over. Bernice King and Martin Luther King III maintain that their mother no longer wanted to work with Reynolds on the book. They are asking that the documents be distributed among Coretta Scott King's heirs and not given to the publisher.

"He signed the contract, but that's his job," Frankel said. "No one questioned when they got their share of the sale from the King papers whether Dexter had the authority to sign a contract. Nobody complained when they got their millions."

This follows years of feuding from even before Coretta Scott King's death. Word up publishing idiots, wrong book, the better book is about how the King family degenerated to this point and why the legacy is being tarnished by King's children in this way. I even have the title for you as a freebie, The Content of Their Character. Pulitzer Prize winning historian and the seminal biographer of MLK has a few things he would want to say, sure enough about how the King legacy is being handled and that includes Coretta's contribution to this family Armageddon.