Books

"I'm not going to pick a book simply because it's the It Book of the moment that everyone is talking about or because some juicy or controversial excerpt is making news or because it's just been published. Instead, I'm going to pick the books that captivate and excite me, that make me want to run out and buy multiple copies to give to my friends."

-Arianna Huffington on how she'll pick the books for her book club, "Arianna's Reading." Her first read is In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed by Carl Honore.

I wonder how much influence Huffington will have on book sales...

Richard Wolffe is looking to publish a second book on President Obama, a "fly-on-the-wall" glimpse into his presidency tentatively entitled, "30 Days: A Portrait of the White House at Work."

The book would follow Wolffe's recent "Renegade: The Making of a President." According to The New Republic, Wolffe's ICM agent Kristine Dahl explained that the proposal is one of a few Obama-related ideas being considered by the journalist. (h/t GalleyCat)

Wolffe, a frequent MSNBC contributor, was in the "media news" this week when Salon raised some red flags about his guest-hosting stint on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann." Olbermann responded that Wolffe would not be appearing on the program until his role at Public Strategies, Inc. was clarified.

When the hardcover of Cathy Alter's "Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over" was released last year, Alter did a FishbowlDC interview that sadly never made its way onto the blog. Alter, who freelances for WaPo and Washingtonian was kind enough to dig up her old Q&A to post in honor of the paperback release of her book. For more on Cathy, check out her website here. Her lost interview is below.

What word do you routinely misspell? Maintenance. In fact, I just spelled it wrong in answering this question.

What's the name of your cell phone ring? I bought my phone in Hong Kong, so I call my ring, which sounds like the opening credits of a bad chop suey movie, the Suzy Wong.

What time did you get up this morning? 9:07. Ah, the life of a writer.

When did you last cry and why? I cried Saturday afternoon, after a friend read me the nastiest two-sentence review of my book in the Post's Media Mix. It felt really personal to me. Plus, the reviewer spoiled the ending.

How many emails do you receive a day, roughly? Now, with my book out, at least 100. On normal days, probably 15.

What's your favorite letter? This feels like a trick question. My first thought was the letter my mother sent me while I was away at sleepover camp, suffering from terrible homesickness. My second thought was Q.

What single person played the biggest role / had the biggest influence on your journalism career? Mr. Harris, my seventh-grade English teacher. He used to give us paragraphs from classic literature and tell us to change every word to its synonym. At 13, I became a walking thesaurus.
When's the last time you volunteered? Where? I volunteer every Thursday from 10-1 at the Christ Child Opportunity Shop, in Georgetown. The average age of their volunteer is 80. It's the best job I've ever had.

Who is your favorite active journalist? Jennifer Senior. When people talk about having girl crushes on Megan Fox or Angelina Jolie, I think, what are they crazy? I am totally in love with Senior's writing and range of knowledge.

If you could have one superpower, which one would it be? I'd like to be able to read minds. That power would have saved me a lot of time while I was still dating.

Red or white wine? Red, preferably from Italy.

Jenna or Barbara? Jenna. She always looks like she has something dirty on her mind.

More after the jump.

continued...

Excerpts are now available on WashingtonPost.com of Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson's new book "The Battle for America 2008."

Balz and Johnson (a college professor of mine, by the way) will be on "Meet the Press" this Sunday for an additional preview before the book hits shelves Tuesday.

Join us after the jump for an excerpt on President Obama, and check out the paper and website for excerpts on Sarah Palin on Monday and on Senator Ted Kennedy's endorsement on Tuesday.

continued...

Regnery Publishing has signed a contract with former Miss California Carrie Prejean, the Miss USA contestant that attracted national attention after answering a question from Perez Hilton about gay marriage.

Slated for release in November 2009, Prejean's book Still Standing promises to answer such questions as:

"What happened behind the scenes at the pageant, why she answered the Perez Hilton question as she did, what really led to her losing the Miss California crown, and how she has been forced to battle the left's double-standard on free speech and the bias against conservatives - particularly conservative women - who stand up for their beliefs."

Sounds riveting.

"My 'great loves' are my wife, my son and writing -- but becoming a father is the closest I've come to figuring out the meaning of life," CNN's Deputy Political Director of Digital Content Alex Wellen told FishbowlDC when we chatted with the newsman about his new novel "Lovesick."

Wellen's life sounds simple enough now but his past is littered with all the makings of an identity crisis. His road to clarity included an engineering degree, a law degree and a brief stint as an intellectual property lawyer. He is the inventor of a double-sided table tennis paddle, a tactile timepiece that lets users secretly check the time and the author of a critically-acclaimed memoir, "Barman"- that chronicles the nine-month metamorphosis from law student to lawyer.

Wellen explained how he landed on news and novels, telling us "I'm addicted to the 'runner's high' I get from creating." And though his latest creation will be released as fiction, Wellen admits that he based the protagonist, Andy Altman "loosely" on himself. When we asked him about the object of Andy's lovesickness, Paige Day, he said "she's totally inspired by my wife Kris."

Wellen penned his new piece to dispel myths about masculinity and marriage. "I was tired of the way movies and novels portrayed men - always running from marriage," he told FishbowlDC. Now married six years, we asked the multifaceted man of CNN if we should expect his next book to be about fatherhood. To which he replied, "Perhaps...but right now I'm just enjoying my son. I rarely say 'I want to be the best at anything' but I'd love to be the best dad."

CNN will toast Alex Wellen and "Lovesick" at a book release party tomorrow night. For more info on Alex, check out his site here.

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Bob Schieffer opened his interview with "Mortal Friends" author Jane Stanton Hitchcock with the same question on every long-time Washingtonian's mind...

"I'm going to ask the obvious question- am I in this book?"

On CBS' webcast "Washington Unplugged," the novelist, and wife of WaPo foreign affairs editor Jim Hoagland, described her latest as "a book about how Washington really works, how friendships really work and how old haunts of the past can come back to you."

"Mortal Friends" hits bookshelves today and is a murder-mystery (Hitchcock prefers to call it a novel with a murder in it) set to the background of Washington. She says DC makes the perfect backdrop because life here is like "high school with wrinkles." Hitchcock says there's an official and a superficial Washington- her novel is about the superficial, which is "where most of the work gets done."

And just how is Washington run? "Honey, it is run by the women," she told Schieffer. "They may look like wonderful accessories in pastel suits but, honey, they are artfully concealed weapons of mass destruction."

Hitchcock starts her "Mortal Friends" media blitz this week, and from what we can tell so far, it's a Washington must-read.

NPR's Michele Norris, host of "All Things Considered," will take this summer off to work on a book of essays about race in America. She announced this at the end of her show Friday (h/t NYO).

The book is tentatively titled "Say What?" and Norris says in an interview with the New York Observer, "People talk about race one way in public and they often- not always but often- talk about it in a different way and at a different tempo in the private sphere... And I just want to pull back the curtain a little bit."

Norris will travel around the country this summer as research for the book, making her first stop to see and interview her family in Alabama. Her NPR co-hosts Melissa Block and Robert Siegel, as well as Madeline Brand whose show Day to Day was canceled on NPR last December, will fill in for Norris until mid-September.

Read more of this New York Observer interview here.

Grim's book (left) Members of Merle Haggard Haggard (right)

Saturday night at American Legion #8 - Capitol Hill, DC journos and a few stray winos gathered to toast the release of Ryan Grim's new book, "This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America."

The HuffPo reporter and new author inked copies of his book with the help of wife Elizan Garcia while barefooted band, Merle Haggard Haggard rocked Legion 8.

Spotted: Michael Steel, Jared Allen, David Mark, Ken Vogel, Bob Hillman, Anne Marson, Mike Allen, Jennifer Kohl, Leonard Roberge, Dave Jamieson, Mike Debonis, Jason Cherkis, Gail Ross, Howard Yoon, Marissa Newhall, Matt Mackowiak, Rachel Morris, Sarah Courteau and Amos Snead.

Not since the release of Britney Spears' "Heart to Heart" has a book signing boasted bare feet and banjos with such klass. Well done, Mr. Grim!

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell and husband Chef Geoff Tracy are working on a cookbook "Baby Love," recipes for infants. Tracy, who owns Chef Geoff's, has been cooking meals for their three children since they got off the bottle, he tells the blog "Eat Me Daily."

And apparently baby food is quite lucrative-- they landed a six-figure book deal, Publishers Weekly reports.