What is President Obama Reading?

According to the New York Times, President Obama is heartily sick of dense briefing books.  While filled with facts and figures that demand solutions, required  presidential reading does not fire up the imagination.  Joseph O'Neill remedied all that with a ready to go book.  Netherland: A Novel is what Obama reads in his new Treaty Room office digs inside the private residence.

It is a meaty novel from an Irish author who explores the complexities of diversity in an immigrants traumatic life who shares his thoughts with some one so unlike himself that shares the immigrant experience.  Layered atop that is a touch of tilting at cricket windmills as the protagonist rebounds from the bumps in his life journey.  Book sales for the award winning book ought to jump significantly with the Obama acknowledgment.  Not sure yet of Obama will give books an Oprah-like swarm affect. The book is older than the Obama puppy by about 6 months.  In the past year several awards accrued to Netherland.

Not exactly sure where the book Hugo Chavez gave him falls in the line up.  One thing is clear, President Obama would have to get an English version if he was so inclined.

Other nonfiction books by Pultizer Prize Winner Steven Coll and Fareed Zakaria's latest, The Post-American World, have been seen in Obama's hands.  Click here for books that shaped Barack Obama's youthful thinking while living the life that led to his own Grammy-winning memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Books About Bo, The First Pooch

Okay, somebody may have found out the Obama family got a Portuguese Water Puppy, eventually Dog, this week. Malia & Sasha settled on Bo, rather than the Frank or Moose that distressed Michelle Obama enough to issue Mommy vetoes. Bo debuted showing he is going to be a bundle of energy, muscular by playfully pulling the president, the first lady and Malia around the South Lawn and now publishing GOLD. Notice Sasha was let nowhere near Bo's leash in front of the cameras. In Doggy years, the two youngest Obamas are almost equivalent.

Bo will learn in White House Puppy school that the late literate Socks wrote a book to answer the onslaught of tiresome fan mail before exile away from Buddy, the now dead Clinton chocolate Lab, and Barbara Bush was Millie's stenographer as outlaw Barney bit reporters and presidential staff. Newcomer Bo already has FOUR books dedicated to a puppy nobody knew anything about until a week ago today. Bo has poverty stricken publishers counting $ signs in hopes of igniting a barking Bo Boom that licks them into publishing's pearly gates. Doggy Breath is the least they will put up with in the search for a market niche.

Bo, the super photo magic celebredog, has to acquire an agent first. But that ain't happening. Michelle Obama has said no celebrity princesses (or princes) in her household. That goes for the newest and youngest Obama, Bo. Look around there's a publisher right now reading a query to do an unauthorized Bo biography... Ugh, just make it stop...

President Obama Signs Another Book Deal

A book deal received the President-elect's signature to do a modified version of Dreams From My Father for the young adult (YA) audience, making that best-selling memoir a franchise itself. Now that Barack Obama is the official 44th Commander-in-Chief, disclosures show that one nonfiction written work is also optioned for his post-presidency. That won't be discussed until near the end and the big green numbers for that book are going to be stratospheric no matter where he lands in the pantheon of presidential rankings. Bill Clinton can hug that $15 million he got for My Life as the record for just a bit longer. It will be interesting to see what Michelle's memoirs and her fashion creds bring in a stripped down, hand me down publishing market.

The craft of writing is masterful from a keyboard or pen wielded by President Obama, that is a bonus. The presidential memoirs touted most as literary works were from a dying and broke Ulysses S Grant who passed away just days after retiring his pen on the project. President Theodore Roosevelt was no slouch in the writing department either. Ronald Reagan wrote charming letters. One of the most unpopular presidents ever is doing his obligatory writing trying to explain some of his inexplicable decision-making. But had he had the gift of time, Abraham Lincoln may have gone down in history as the writer to which all aspire.

Last year's wheelbarrels full of dollars, just from books, for the First Family was a backbreaking $2.5 million. Yesterday, during President Obama's California town hall in one of the wealthiest counties in America, Orange County, he confessed to the fact that he would be raising taxes on himself as he was now part of the welthy class. Interesting for a community organizer guy who had holes in the soles of his shoes from all the walking during the campaign. Reading his take on life in the White House will be at a premium because he is seeing it through such a different lens with a background unlike any of his predecessors.

Ted Kennedy His Life in New Books

Senator Edward Kennedy is a prolific author and writer in his own right.  He wrote a children's book about
his two Portuguese Water dogs, Splash .  His life encompasses everything from cheating on a Spanish test getting him ejected from Harvard to the shameful Chappaquiddick to rising to become a gifted orator worthy of being the everyman Cicero from Massachusetts to the People's Champion on Labor, Health Care and Human Rights as well as passing the Camelot mantle to President Obama. Ted Kennedy comes form a richly storied and well chronicled family with an interesting take as the youngest son.  It occurs to me that, at times, he must have felt a bit like Ron Weasley minus the carrot top. 

At the time of John F. Kennedy's assassination, Robert Kennedy had had enough of their domineering mother and told Ted to go "call your mother and our sisters." Ted was the only Kennedy who seemed to relish his mother's daily notes about his grammar and appearance. He stopped being the baby of the family only when fate intervened. In the span of less than five years, Ted went from being the "other Kennedy" to being heir to the political legacy of his slain brothers, surrogate father to their children and head of the entire Kennedy clan.

Now his twilight years are upon us as he fights a malignant brain tumor, a number of people, including the remaining scribes at the Boston Globe, are writing their version of his story, Last Lion:  The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy.  Lisa Tucker McElroy's version, Ted Kennedy:  A Remarkable Life in the Senate,  is due out in April of 2009.I would love to see in the fullness of time what Caroline Kennedy would state for the record.  

Oprah Should Make 2009 Book Resolution

If your Oprah with bookstores gumming up book jackets with the "Oprah Good Reading Seal Of Approval" slapped on to entice the literate public, 2008 was not the best year. Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived and A Million Little Pieces kind of describe Oprah Winfrey's life, but they are really two Rocky Mountain speed bump books on her literary creds. James Frey wrote a biographical tale that was pseudo and the Rosenblat faux holocaust romance was just psycho. That's just gotta make a busy billionaress cry who already jettisoned books from her TV confab once before. Today, would be a great day for Lady O to make a New Year's resolution on checking the fine print of every single author AND publisher due diligence before putting her name out there. Er, sloppy staff work possibly?

Oprah's had some whoppers when it comes to book issues. Ms. Winfrey put the amazing not in stock very often Kindle on her new favorite things list. Ugh. Then the Frey grilling she gave the author after the lie became public a while ago left him in a million little muscle knots. Then right before taping Oprah to augment the books February release, the bombshell exploded, that oops, we have an octogenarian impostor or rather collaborating impostors. Angel Girl by Laurie Freidman was a published children's story inspired by Herman & Roma Rosenblats' not so true recollections.

Christmas Book Messages - Bah Humbug or Stocking Sugar Plum?

Christmas a time of giving and receiving. What - is open to interpretation. For many that morphs right into Consumerism and Capitalism, which in a state of Holiday irony had the two jaded C's receiving their grimy lumps of coal back in September when the world's markets crashed. Dirty hands mess up the ermine cuffs of the Christmas stockings of the really wealthy - they'll go for the whiz bang Kindle gadgetry. What should go into the stocking hung by the chimney with care is another matter entirely. My vote is a book, a real one with paper pages. What the book is about is left up to the giver. Less courageous givers keep it all cool with gift certificates. Givers who want to deliver a message tailor the offering. Tis the season and books send multiple layered messages.

Ebeneezer Scrooge had to have three nightmares before getting with the program right in time for Christmas Day. Dickens sends a bell ringing message to a stingy boss or an ungrateful co-worker. Dr. Seuss makes it easy to introduce children to the spirit of the day while watching a Grinch's ten sizes too small heart do horrible things in the community. A modern Cindy Lou is out there needing some encouragement - give them the book. Truman Capote shows people how to make a holiday memory in bad times without a direct family that lasts and warms the heart. Just stay away from a fruitcake - they seem to have a perfectly rum soaked shelf life of a hundred years.

A book. The Season. Tough times. Make a memory and send a message. The giver chooses the message.

Books About Michelle Obama

From everywhere the Obama books are rushing off the presses and onto brightly lit display tables in brick stores and featured as blinking commodities on the click sites. Michelle is in for the Full Monty Obama treatment of being stripped down and taken apart like a classic Model T. For two years, she campaigned, cajoled new voters and chalked up countless air miles all across the US & its territories to make her hubby, America's El Jefe. She of the legal mind, community organizing and social impact world is now a cross between Jackie O with the Martha Washington newbiness of being the Black First "Mrs. That One" with a dash of a heart warming Oprah thrown in to offset her Harriet Tubman laser focus. What makes her tick and tic (her kid's privacy) is explored in the newly released, Michelle: A biography by Liza Mundy. That book jacket photo - it's destroying Michelle's nascent iconic fashion creds. Yikes.

Mundy, a Washington Post Magazine reporter, is sympathetic to the next first lady but does not gush. We get the facts in this unauthorized biography, but we also get context.

We get a pretty good idea of what kind of person the next first lady is, and we get it without the portentous tone of a formal, big-foot biographer. Which is fine, since we're in a hurry, anyway. This book is a quick read, in the style of a long magazine piece so well-written that you barely notice the length as you sprint toward the end.

Mundy also is lucky in her "girl-friendy" subject, as the author calls her. Michelle Obama, no shrinking violet she, fairly leaps from the page. She is warm, funny, smart, passionate, conflicted, irrepressible, grounded, organized, maternal, authoritative, spicy, authentic and normal. (COOL Image from Paris Match)

However America chooses to purchase their latest intelligence about the new First Lady, it is selling. Elizabeth Lightfoot has her just 72 hours old book (12/11) offering with Michelle Obama: First Lady of Hope. Then, David Bergen Brophy presents Michelle Obama: Meet the First Lady is a book version for the Malia aged crowd. With corset held breaths, the fashion world is waiting to see who the designer du jour will be based on her choice for the 44th president's inaugural. The designs from some of America's best have been viewed over 4,000,000 times on WWD.

Happy Birthday Rhonda!

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.

Book Festivals & Book People

Bibliophiles come in all sorts of skin bindings, page palettes and an assortment of thicknesses and tallness.  Gathering book people together happens when local folks organize to put on a book fair or festival.  Those come in all sizes and genres too.  Even the current First Librarian Lady gets into the gig with her big event on the Washington mall named the national Book Festival.  For the past eight years, this event kicks off for the bow tie and formal gown bookies with Laura Bush inviting a host of authors - this final year including herself and her daughter, Jenna, to present works at various pavilions.

On the other side of America, the 7th Annual West Hollywood Book Fair has 400 authors playing to an erudite, hipster laid back LA crowd in a park.  In San Francisco, home of the West Coast cultured literati and big earthquakes comes the aptly named Litquake.  Litquake morphs into Litcrawl then deigns to visit the outpost of Manhattan. 

Book gatherings of this sort are manna for booklovers like me for the panel discussions.  It affords the deeper understanding of author intent and displays the scope of detailed research that goes into penning book, be it a novel or footnoted seventh wonder of the nonfiction world.  The other bonus is being around authors and seeing how their forceful writing may come from somebody who mumbles.  Great stuff.

Barack Obama's Latest Book - What Happened?

Barack Obama is running for president and the gasbags who get paid to blow hot hair all over the public have not even mentioned his latest book. I wonder why. Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise is the latest compilation from Team Obama. The rather long-winded title presents a book split into two parts. Barack uses his extraordinary gifts as a writer to pen the forward to shape the policy section written by his legislative advisers.

Maybe it's just me, but here is a $12 foundational paperback that lays out the infrastructure for an Obama presidency. For good or for ill, it seems serious people would want to know what's in it, especially after all the pasty pundits are focused on his superlative rhetorical skills and the size of his, uh, crowds.

Brisingr: The Inheritance Cycle Opening Day

Science Fiction and Fantasy make for some of the greatest books ever written or read. The line divider from good book to great novel is the amount of an author's fired up imagination allowed to light great sparks in a reader's mind. Montana teenybopper Chistopher Paolini unleashed the gift with a teenage boy and his blue iridescent dragon, Saphira with the plague of King Galbatorix and his evil minions in Eragon. Saphira is a law unto herself and quite the conversationalist telepathically.

Formerly, Paolinis' books were to be three in the Inheritance Trilogy, which magically morphed into the Inheritance Cycle. Hormones, sacrfice and sibling rivalry marked Eldest as Eragon becomes elven in his pursuit of justice among friends and foes. Good stuff. Potter people say their stuff is better. Paolini fans think great first start in a kid who invented a whole world complete with maps, a la Tolkien.

Whatever happens, I shall wait interminably until enough people hit my tip jar to get my own copy of Brisingr. The name will make no sense whatsoever to the Inheritance virgins. Its elven, meaning fire - which is blue when it come s from Eragon, not Saphira, who is perfectly capable on her own of blowing smoke rings.

Unfortunately, the movie divebombed - though I liked it well enough.

Textbooks Cost Too Much Money

Textbooks, a staple of educational systems worldwide, cost way too much damn money. Because textbooks are must-haves, the cost of each of them increases as if the pages were dipped in gold leaf and their bindings were made from the gossamer wings of rare fairies and wood sprites. It is shameful and appalling. In some countries textbooks are shared commodities. Copyrights in South Korea belong to the government and bias as well as content come under fire. There are file sharing websites that some students take advantage of to get their exorbitant class-required materials for free. It has come to a Napster music model for textbooks named Textbook Torrents that is making the US textbook industry overlords nuts. Their overpriced books are being ripped off on the internet while they rip off students at the counter, legally charging the same price for a used book that could have been bought new online.

Pricing on textbooks have gone so round the bend, Congress stepped in
legislating some changes included in the Higher Education Act.

Durbin created the College Textbook Affordability Act for three reasons.

Durbin says the cost of text books is rising four times the rate of inflation.

In America, they change editions requiring more expenditures. College students feel like they are getting their first mortgages as they react to the sticker shock to what one pre-owned textbook costs. Publishers are wielding the prices of the books as if their entire business is about hosing students. Almost 85% of the US distribution of textbooks comes from the monopolistic Association of American Publishers which cast creativity, innovation and the consumer in the circular file. Cornering the market also limits who writes the scholarly works, meaning diversity of ideas is kept to the same old authors writing the same old thing, year after year. It's a crying shame that they charge MORE for the repackaged goods.

Good Grief.

Olympic Sized Book Deals

Michael Phelps will get 1.6 million dollars to chronicle his 23 years on the planet in a memoir on becoming the world's best swimmer.ever.with 7 world records. This is his second book after an Olympic showing and he still has the 2012 London Olympiad to go before he's done collecting all his hardware and royalties. Several times in Beijing, his quest to earn eight gold medals almost died a premature death. One, one hundredth of a second slower and he would still have tied the still cocky Mark Spitz, which is a feat in itself.

Dara Torres on the other hand completed her fifth Olympics in her fifth decade at 41, earning three sliver medals against teenyboppers and twenty something sprint racers. After winning medals twenty years ago, Dara returned to swimming to keep fit during and after her pregnancy. The serious speed racers is where she she planted her fins to return. That first book has the potential to have a meatier look and heftier advance from Random House for both books at $3,000,000 US acknowledging the changes in Olympic swimming over twenty years, her battle against being accused of doping and her fight for the sport.

Not sure about his or a potential Simon & Schuster ghost writer's skills, but Phelps leaves no doubt about the damage he can do eating or racing in an Olympic sized pool.

Peeping Bob Woodward, Behind the Bush Curtain, Again

DC Bubble wrapped Bob Woodward is not in any danger of giving heavyweight author Robert Caro a run for his money on well written presidential biographies. The only thing they have in common is a years long fixation on a president each chose to chronicle. Woodward does his from a self serving political infotainment insider Bush perspective while Caro strives for the true LBJ essence with a million word army of fab footnotes in an investigative fashion smarmy Woodward gave up hope on achieving. Woodward's "Bush Period", started with fawning to oops, public opinion is changing sharply negative - must change my take in the last one for continued long term stay on bestseller list.

President Bush's detestable presidency will receive its fourth Friday the 13th treatment next month in The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008 a $21.12 book Woodward penned while protecting his ongoing access to Bush cronies, especially inside the Dick's Vice presidential suite. Woodward famously withheld information pertinent to America's security so his third sequel would not be compromised at the bookstores. It landed the journalistic ethically challenged Bob as a witness at the trial for convicted, then partially pardoned felon and vapid author Irving "Scooter" Libby, the shoot em in the face Veepsters piece-of-crap chief of staff.

Now Bob's unleashing on America his latest purported sussed out findings from the King Iraq Surge Sockpuppet, General David Petraeus with inside details on the callowness of the Bush administration and the access the general enjoyed as part of their seven year coup. His books have a breathless Marilyn Monroe tone as real life characters speak in hushed tones as if Woodward was right in the room at the time, his trademark. The fact that Woodward is/was a highranking executive at the Washington Post at the time he wrote his last book, knew Bush felons were lying, withheld info during the federal investigation while prattling on to Larry King and other DC outlets that there was no outing while sticking up for the Bush/Cheney clan, never made him think ethically or critically about the inconsistencies of what he was saying, doing and writing. Once an intrepid reporter who doggedly pursued the details of Watergate, he has gone on to hack for the Bush administration making money off of book
deals when concurrently deciding which reporters covered what for his newspaper. How Washington. And that's exactly the lens through which his work should be judged on September 8th even as much as his information exposes the question will always be what did he leave out and why.

Corsi - Portait of A Smear Merchant Sleaze Addict

On the matriculation front, Harvard has to figure out how to get the rogue scalawag alumns from tainting other fine scholars that normally emanate from its august environs. Imagine having to own up to a screw loose author preening from his crap-filled primordial ooze about his second dull Lizzie Borden candidate ode plus a historian-authenticated worst.president.ever as two Harvard slimy examples of being able to graduate, but wholesale incapable of Grace. Harvard's pig pen dwellers, Corsi & Bush, used their faux conservative alligator arms to throw mud that lacked consistency of facts or merit at another Harvard legal scholar running for president, Barack Obama. Bush tried and failed rhetorical sophistry in the Knesset while Corsi tried and failed as sleaze peddling author to portray Barack & Michelle Obama as equals in rightwing political squalor.

The gobbledygook served up for the huddled lemmings yearning to read stood on its tippy toes, whined for a twisted fact or two to aid it in making the cut into a (non)fiction remainder bin came from the robust personage with slim pickings in the small copy and paste mind of Jerome R. Corsi. Harvard granted him a PhD in Political Science. He used the discredited intelligent design science version. Barack Obama's campaign wasted 40 pages refuting Corsi's cartoonish, poorly-sourced blasphemy on truth, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. I shall ignite but three paragraphs on a jowly auteur unfit to aspire to be the dingleberry on the backend of a leftover ampersand. Waldman already kicked and pinched both sets of Corsi's clinched cheeks on LKL.

Corsi is addicted to political spotlights fads of which, he is perennially the old style dunnyman, happily carrying the flaming refuse of George Bush's & John McCain's Republican Party. He claims he is an independent. Corsi opened his poison inkwell, dipped in his shriveled quill and penned a 'book' used by his BFF AWOL George Bush to defeat a real war hero, John Kerry, in 2004. This year, following his flirtation with the Minuteman and all their racial drama, he was unable to stop himself from swallowing the most scurrilous crud to fashion another book in an attempt to lend credibility to his faded literary pretensions. Less than three years ago, Corsi, The Commode Dipstick Specialist First Class, tried to bamboozle people on the idea that there was not a looming peak oil issue in a 'book'. This publisher, Threshold Press, is trying to stay sewer level as Jerome Corsi sprays golden showers on all their behalve$.

Senator Barack Obama defines his plans in the foreword of Change We Can Believe In: Barack Obama's Plan to Renew America's Promise,to be released in paperback September 9th. His staff pulls together the policy details of what an Obama Administration will do in remaining chapters.

Harry Potter in Arabic A No Go In Israel

In many cases all over the world, Harry Potter fans wait a YEAR or more for translations of the original books. Arabic reading Muggles in Israel are getting their supply cut off just as they about to learn the fates of Harry & Lord Voldemort. Israel's Ministry of Magic Pureblood Publishing (Trade Industry & Treasury) objects on legalities to the source of the Arabic translations originating from Israel's most undiplomatic version of Death Eaters, Syria and Lebanon.

Arab-Israeli publisher Salah Abassi told Israeli public radio on Monday that authorities ordered him to stop importing Arabic-language children's books from the two longtime foes of Israel.

"The trade and industry ministry and treasury warned me that importing those books is illegal," said Abassi, who imported the books through Jordan.

Let's see in the last two years, Israel destroyed the ominous threat of a Syrian nuclear facility and tried to bomb Lebanon back to the Phoenician era as the IDF chased down kidnappers and terrorists. Whether a state of war exists is important to the wooden puppet turned into a lying boy and the sacrificial boy lamb turned into a wizard as it forms the foundation of the Umbridge-like decree. Since 1939, before Israel was a vested nation, laws were set that prohibited trade with any nation at war with Israel, even if it involves selling beloved children's books. Seems the boy wizard, Hermione Granger & Ron Weasley caused other trouble last year in Israel on the Sabbath with some booksellers, risking fines, opening to meet the demand. Whatever will happen with Rowling's December's release of The Tales of the Beedle the Bard with all that commentary from the late Professor Dumbledore?

Maybe, Jiminy Cricket at the Ministry of Translation Magic can get the Italian born Pinocchio to join the IDF.

uh, oh who's translating...

Random House Afraid of Book

Good golly Miss Molly, controversial books have been arbiters of fierce debate and discussion the world over since presses could belch them out. Good books are not about gentility or saving the sensitive readers sensibilities from a shock. Somebody, somewhere, will ALWAYS be offended. Now, a yellow bellied publisher fears doing what better independent publishers have done for a lifetime - put a perspective out there for the public to decide come what may. Instead, we have a vanguard of fraidy cat editors weighing a subset of a subset of the public reactions against a book they had already decided to publish. Then, they ran away from their decision. Truly, it would have been better to never say yes to the author Sherry Jones if the benchmark is somebody is going to be mad in academia.

"We decided, after much deliberation, to postpone publication," it added.

The decision was taken "for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel," said the company's deputy publisher Thomas Perry in a statement.

The novel traces the life of A'isha, who is often referred to as Muhammad's favourite wife, from her engagement at the age of six, until the prophet's death.

Salmon Rushdie got a fatwa, a biographical book blathering security detail plus award worthy recognition on a lasting literary work. More context to comprehending the Islamic faith in all its permutations is a worthy publishing endeavor. Not everyone agrees within the faith, hence, Sunnis and Shias. There are degrees that are helped with a novel or book that advances the dicussion rather than staying stuck at a low level of knowledge. Now Random House has decided staying on empty think tanks to keep their speed right where it is, oh what will we do to make money off of more paper trash nobody will remember after the last page. Based on the objections of one non-Muslim Professor Spellberg with puritan pride issues deep in the heart of Texas. RH is trying to sugar coat it as we are oh so concerned about everybody in our supply chain, except the Muslim professor who was in favorite of publishing the book.

Ludlum Franchise Fritters Away Bourne Legacy

The quill of Robert Ludlum developed a style that made him a legend in his lifetime of the spy thriller.  After his  departure to a permanent heavenly psyops, the Ludlum Enterprise hired folks to write under his banner - blech.  They should have just become a publishing company and offered an endorsement and let the author rise or fall off a cliff from their own lack of merit.  One of Ludlum's iconic characters, now a Jason Bourne movie franchise, exists on a one dimensional monetary plane that isn't taking off for this reader. 

Ludlum once lamented the draconian and dreary traditions of the staid publishing prison that decreed fast writing reflected poorly and too many books in a certain amount of time must be kept in abeyance to protect the public from becoming bored.  There's a reason publishers get into trouble, their thinking is still remains lodged in controlling a Gutenberg press and who gets to use it.  Ludlum or his heirs sped this disaster along by letting his name be used sort of like ghostwriting in reverse.  Please make them stop after releasing the one from last week.  If you have it at the beach, take mercy on it and leave it buried in an abandoned sand castle. 

Eric Van Lustbader have you no pride or imagination for your own brand or styling yourself as original.  Killing Bourne's life anchors to scribble a new story arc was predictable.  I really hate the Bourne books now.  My respect remains for the Bourne books Robert Ludlum wrote and has only his name on the jacket.  Whether with a speed typewriter or painstakingly, I appreciated his work. 

The One Time Only Tell All Tall Tales

For goodness sakes, since time immemorial the wannabe parasites have sold bits or anything that wasn't nailed down of others lives to interested third parties since the invention of people.  For the person being done up like a cherry-topped Christmas ham on paper, that doesn't make it easier to swallow.  It goes to who do/did you trust for all the good, bad ugly and indifferent reasons.  Filthy lucre beckons maiden and maven alike.  It spends the same.  That certainly isn't going to make the four time married Salmon Rushdie quiver with excitement or Madonna to name a children's hospital after her trash talking brother or get Princess Di's butler off the cooking sherry.  The tell all you can while you can book can only be written once, so avaricious publishers hype the hell out of them when they score one.

Not sure if the best selling Satanic Verses author would rather have a fatwa or give one on his ex-bodyguard once removed.  Said bodyguard may have been around for the Salmon Rushdie breakup with wife # 4, Top Chef Palate Princess, Padma.  Or maybe, Madonna just forgot to give a handsigned A-Rod baseball to her brother before he decided dishing on Life with Madonna paper was his path to the Ritchie riches.  The butler to Princess Diana lied at her inquest and wrote two fawning books to honor her as the world never imagined during her royally twisted ménage à trois marriage that everybody knew about because Andrew Morton got her version down on tape.  Can't imagine the Queen staying up late reading that one in bed with a flashlight.  But Her Majesty might note this:

The book, On Her Majesty's Service, published this week, claims the was locked in a cupboard while the officers went to a pub for a drink because they were "so fed up with his attitude".

It also claims that Rushdie was nicknamed "Scruffy" because of his unkempt appearance and that the author billed the police force £40 a night for putting up officers in his home. "We were paying, or rather the taxpayer was paying, Rushdie to protect him," the book says.

Some times the vipers are family or faux friends or household help.  But in today's book market, there is some sort of obsession with the inside scoop about the lives of people who garner some level of success.  Call this book genre what it is: payback gossip.