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...

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.

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.

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. 

China's Knickers In Knots over Book Mentions

China is excising any mention of His Holiness, the Dalai Lama and the China-Tibet border dispute in Australian nonfiction books published for export to China. Memo to China censors: Facts are stubborn things and denying them does not make them less true, just the population of Chinese readers more ignorant.

All of this publishing drama because of a biography written by an ancestor, Felicity Jack, about an Australian, Robert Logan Jack that made a reference to the China-Tibet border. Amazing their eagle eyes can catch book references, but not the tons of algae problem at an Olympic site right beneath their uptight noses. China massacred Tibetans demanding freedom and blame the Dalai Lama for the heaps of censuring remarks tossed their way in the aftermath. China's One China policy goes for Taiwan and Tibet.

It is one of those things that make you go hmmm, as Australian publishers got this message before. Now UNSW Press and Melbourne publisher, Hardie Grant, have seen this issue before. Keeping 1,500,000,000 people under intellectual lock and key is going to get harder not easier, somebody should tell the Chinese bureaucrats.

LA Times Kills Book Coverage

For the Love of Money, literature shall fall behind Oliver Twist to ask for a second helping chance.  The newspaper business in general suffers the bonfire of the inanities as alternative media grows in power in scope.  Little reason to wonder why subsections of the newspaper are suffering humiliating removals from their pages as dollars shift to cover the inane rather than the profound.  The LA Times announced their latest cutback by shoving Books deep inside the Calendar section, struggling like a tired soldier behind enemy lines.

One pertinent issue is the business model allowed for a small cadre of professionals to choose which books were reviewed without encompassing book reading communities.  More focus on what were people anticipating and their involvement is/was necessary, especially in markets that show potential and growth (people of color), rather than a focus on important works appreciated by an erudite few.  Publisher Condé Nast is freaking out that they even needed to get 40,000 more copies of the Vogue Italia edition featuring an all black sumptuous edition after a brown out in recent years, thinking it permanent.  The still necessary book section being dissed and squeezed smacks of the wayward quest for nonexistent profits chasing the wrong model.  Quality of life issues involve culture, but hey, The LA Times don't need no stinkin' book culture.

One thing they did well under former editor Steve Wasserman was the LA Times Festival of Books. How do you have a Book Fair when the book section is dead, killed by its own publishing parent?