A feature by P.E. Logan
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As Hurricane Franzen bears down on the coasts, no matter where you point the literary compass, and words are lashed to typewriters for deconstruction of the deeper meaning the new novel Freedom, readers are feeling more pressure to perform intellectual feats of comprehension. Folks, it's the last hours of summer, mere days are left until we reload the real world into our highly scheduled lives this Tuesday morning. So chill baby chill.

If you failed to read The Imerfectionists back in May or this summer's de rigueur Stieg Larsson books, please come up from the root cellar and shake it off. Put down that TV remote and any Jersey Shore worship for these two books that will entertain you this weekend and that you can turn into some bon mots on the final days' cocktail circuit.

As for those cultural ravens whose ids can't help but peck at you for being under read in the Franzen category, here's a line to drive them back to their perches: I only read Bildungsroman when it's officially fall. Then ask the ravens to make you an Old Fashioned highball. They will be quiet for hours. And while they're gone, sneak off to the glider on the porch and enjoy either of these books that were largely ignored this summer.

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The GalleyCat team will relax this holiday weekend, returning bright and early on Tuesday morning. In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you had plenty of publishing headlines to keep you busy over the weekend. Email GalleyCat to get all our publishing stories, book deal news, videos, podcasts, interviews, and writing advice in a daily email newsletter.

Barnes & Noble announced they will close the Upper West Side superstore in New York City, reminding some readers of You've Got Mail (trailer embedded above)--a fictional look at different era for bookselling.

Suzanne Collins sold an awe-inspiring 450,000 copies of Mockingjay in a single week.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs bragged that his company counted 35 million eBook downloads.

We took you behind the scenes of the new mashup book, Dick and Jane and Vampires.

Borders posted a net loss of $46.7 million for the second quarter.

We interviewed one reader who found love through a bookstore dating service.

Kaplan Publishing extended its free eBook deal for readers.

Novelist J.K. Rowling (pictured) has given £10 million to the University of Edinburgh to build a multiple sclerosis (MS) research facility. The new building will be named the Anne Rowling Regenerative Neurology Clinic, honoring the memory of Rowling's mother, who died at 45-years-old from MS.

The clinic will research treatments for MS (currently incurable), Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and other degenerative neurological disorders. Rowling told the Guardian: "I have supported research into the cause and treatment of multiple sclerosis for many years now--but when I first saw the proposal for this clinic, I knew that I had found a project more exciting, more innovative, and, I believe, more likely to succeed in unraveling the mysteries of MS than any other I had read about or been asked to fund."

Rowling's personal wealth is estimated to be £519 million. Despite not having published a new book last year, Rowling still managed to rake in nearly £6.49 million--making her the tenth highest paid author.

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Paul "Bear" Vasquez has earned 13 million views for his video of a double rainbow in Yosemite Bear Mountain, the viral hit embedded above. As you can see by the video posted below, Microsoft has used his online celebrity to promote photo editing software.

The original video earned 13 million views because it contained a completely unique mix of enthusiasm, craziness, and laugh-out-loud oddness. Compared to the giddy charm of the first video, the Microsoft advertisement embedded below feels flat.

That's why this GalleyCat editor thinks authors should avoid using actors to recreate scenes from your novel in book trailers. No actor can ever reproduce the unique mix of imagination and personal voice you created inside your book--so why spend the money to produce a video that won't inspire readers the same way as the original? (Via AgencySpy)

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McSweeney's is accepting entries for two contests, the the 2nd Annual Columnist Contest and the 2010 Amanda Davis Highwire Fiction Award.

With the Columnist Contest, the publisher seeks a writer who has "some hot, fresh blood to fill the semi-regular columns that run at the bottom [of their site page]." The editors require a short description of your intended column, a sample of a fully-written column, three future column ideas, and a short author's bio. The deadline is September 10th.

Since 2003, the fiction award memorializes Amanda Davis, a novelist and short story writer who passed away earlier this year. The award will aid "a young woman writer of 32 years or younger who both embodies Amanda's personal strengths--warmth, generosity, a passion for community--and who needs some time to finish a book in progress."

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Author Amy Bloom's new short story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out, starred in a recent Amazon Kindle ad. In the television spot, an eBook reader enjoys Bloom's book on the beach.

Watch the whole ad in the video embedded above. Over at Popisms, you can read the page featured in the Amazon ad, beginning with the line, "I reached across the table but he shrugged me off."

Bloom has published stories in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The Atlantic Monthly, but nothing can beat a 30-second television spot. (Via Me and My Kindle and Smart Bitches)

Labor Day weekend is the perfect time to catch up on your reading. Our Facebook users have posted more than one hundred upcoming books on our New Books page for you to choose from.

Just Friends With Benefits by Meredith Schorr: "A humorous women's fiction novel." (September 1st)

Flaws & All by Shana Burton: "Faith, family, and friendship have always been a top priority to four lifelong friends, but each woman is about to be put to the test during one turbulent year. Will they have the strength to hold on to their friendships and put their trust in God?"

An Inconvienent Elephant by Judy Reene Singer: "A sequel to Still Life with Elephants."

Want to include your book? Just follow the easy directions on our Facebook Your New or Upcoming Book post. Please remember to include your title's exact release date when posting.

Reviewed by Louise Leetch
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As a lifelong admirer of Eleanor of Aquitaine, I'm always excited to see a book about her and her remarkable family. The Sixth Surrender, a novel by Hana Samek Norton, focuses on her son, King John, who acceded to the throne of England after his brother Richard I and father, Henry II.

Author Norton chooses a minor player, Juliana de Charnais, as a link to the machinations of Alienor (the French spelling used by the author), her son and the nasty old Lusignan dynasty. If you've avoided the more scholarly tomes about the Plantagenets, this is just the book for you.

It's light and simple and the players are easy to keep track of by the author's animated descriptions. Norton scrupulously delivers her 13th century history characters well woven into a story that's sure to tantalize the casual reader to press on to a bit more serious history.

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Hailey Glassman, the ex-girlfriend of reality television star Jon Gosselin, fired off an informal book proposal during a guest post at Radar.com. In her piece, Glassman suggested that she had enough dirt on the former star of Jon & Kate Plus 8 to float an entire book.

Here's an excerpt: "I figured I'd save this torture I went through and life lessons and all the real juicy crazy stuff the media did not get a hold of for a BOOK. It will make everything make more sense -- time lines, evidence of time lines. Just the whole nightmare of this annoying, traumatic, hurtful Soap Opera, which encumbers so many lives around us with the media and public hating and talking so much smack that it made 'nobodies' into 'notorious.' SUE ME if there's not one true thing in the book it will be all 110% TRUE. I have kept all evidence and people, you would be SHOCKED!"

This seemed like the ideal topic to discuss a couple days before a long holiday weekend. What do you think? Can the ex-girlfriend of a minor reality television celebrity land a book deal in this economy?

North Atlantic Books and Evolver LLC have joined forces to create a new imprint, Evolver Editions. The first titles will launch in fall 2011.

Based in California, the non-profit North Atlantic Books focuses on alternative health, new consciousness, raw foods, spirituality, and martial arts titles. The imprint includes the Evolver Editions Manifesto series, a series studying contemporary world issues in an accessible format.

According to the release: "Evolver Editions presents leading voices of the transformational movement, the new spiritual counterculture that explores humanity's most visionary potential and the tangible, pragmatic steps we can take to access it. Evolver Editions authors range over a wide variety of subjects--from shamanism to environmental design, cutting edge theories in cosmology to strategies for political organizing--and share a hopeful, developmental outlook on the current state of the world and our opportunity to co-create a planetary culture based on empathy, higher consciousness, and collaboration."

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Who is your favorite writer on Facebook? Share your recommendation in the comments section and help us build a brand new GalleyCat Reviews directory.

Our Facebook page has grown rapidly this summer and more than 100 writers have already posted to our "New Books" section. However, a number of previously published authors emailed us wondering if they could include their work as well. Our Best Authors on Facebook directory will help them--allowing both published and self-published authors to connect with readers.

We've started the list with a few writers from our summer reading list, but the directory is hardly comprehensive. Share your favorite author on Facebook in the comments section below and we'll add them to our growing directory. NOTE: This is a BIG list, so please be patient as we add authors.

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Scholastic announced that Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay has sold 450,000 copies counting both hardcover and eBook sales since its August 24th release. That's an average of 45,000 books sold per day.

The final installment of the Hunger Games trilogy has topped both the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists. The publisher will print 400,000 additional hardcover copies. The first printing was 1.2 million.

Lionsgate has bought the film rights to the Hunger Games and is in the process of developing the first book of the series. Fans of all ages gathered at Books of Wonder's midnight release party, and Collins made a personal appearance.

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