When it comes to an author's career, the only thing worse than a bad adaptation of a book may be a good one. From Liz Miller's double-duty-review of Sideways, the novel and the film:

It's movies like Sideways that remind me of how valuable, how necessary film can be -- because sometimes, it seems that there are stories, big or small, that were never meant to be novels.

That may be -- putting aside its first half -- the cruelest sentence written about a book in 2005.

One of the more interesting online news sources I've come across in the past couple months is YPulse: "Daily news & commentary about Generation Y for media and marketing professionals." If it seems vaguely exploitive -- enslaving teens to cultural production, and selling the products of their labor back to them at extravagent prices -- it might not be in comparison to the products it describes. I especially like YPulse's post on Like We Care, if only for the unintentional irony of hyping a book about a teen who revolts against hype.

Music, television, cigarettes, junk food. These industries all rely on and take advantage of teenagers for a large proportion of their incomes. High-school senior Todd Noland has grown tired of it and develops a unique idea. Stop buying it. Stop buying the products, the hype, and the peer pressure. All of it.

Stop buying it, but remember to buy Like We Care!

In other news -- in the same post, no less -- YPulse also reports on another book that might help teens escape the pressures of materialism, and be more like Madonna and Britney: The Power of Kabbalah for Teens (Technology for the Soul), coming out in March.

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's profile of Mary Guterson, author of We Are All Fine Here (Putnam):

Debut novels written in the first person sometimes have a semi-autobiographical nature; this could leave readers wondering if there are hints of memoir lurking in "We Are All Fine Here." But when reached by phone at her Bainbridge Island home, Guterson made it clear this sort of a question merely amuses her.

(Those damned readers, coming up with the crudest questions and body-snatching me to ask them...)

"Actually, I get kind of a kick out of that. A few people who have already read it told me they know who such-and-such character is. And I totally laugh because they're so wrong!

"The thing is that if people stopped and really thought about the plot of the novel -- here's a married woman who's had an affair with her old boyfriend -- and then asking me if it's autobiographical. I'm thinking 'What do you think about me?'

The next sentence has Guterson explaining she's "been with the same man for 20 years" -- very much unlike a married woman. Damned readers, what were they thinking?

(First, an apology:)

My patience this morning has been worn thinner than wet tissue by ... wet tissues, and, in my state, I'm prone to mistaking sources of annoyance for the source of physical pains. Consequently, I take articles' dumbest passages personally.

From the Independent's Whitbread report, also linked by my last post:

McCaughrean, who has written nearly 140 books, said it was good to prove she had not been a flash in the pan with her first Whitbread win in 1987. This book, for teenagers, was one of her most serious and had a 'horrible topicality' in its story of Noah and vast floods.

I'm not sure the similarities between the two events should really be stressed, given that the first flood was premeditated punishment of an evil population.

Levy had previously expressed her delight at getting a chance to prove herself in competition against men, because some commentators still downgraded the Orange Prize for being for women writers only.

Whether or not the sentence's second half is paraphrasing Levy or a general understanding, I wish the article's author allowed herself to hit just one allegro-quick note of disdain for the paraphrased sentiments. (Newspapers' mandate of "objective" reporting: again turning reporters not into incorruptible chroniclers of fact but dumb spokes-pawns). So, here's a PSA: the Orange Prize is not the WNBA.

"This year women won three of the five Whitbread categories." Where's the outrage?

That's Rick Moody behind Hugh Grant's mask, you know.