Archives: July 2010

New mother and concept designer Adele Enersen melted hearts with her super cute picture of a baby bookworm (embedded above).

Amazon announced a $139 Wi-Fi edition of the Kindle eReader.

GalleyCat readers began posting literary events on our brand new Facebook page.

Ballantine acquired a new biography of the great Muppet creator, Jim Henson.

Stieg Larsson unseated Malcolm Gladwell on Amazon’s Most Highlighted Books of All Time List.

Novelist and famous convert Anne Rice declared: ‘I Quit Christianity.’

Fidel Castro will publish his memoirs.

Check out the biggest eBook headlines of the week at eBookNewser.

Still want more? Check out our Weekend Reading archives.

Create a social media strategy, launch your campaign, and track the results in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. The online event and workshop will feature speakers including The Onion‘s Baratunde Thurston (left), Facebook’s Morin Oluwole, and bitly’s Tim Devane. Register now.

Today Barnes & Noble announced they will install 1,000 square-foot boutique areas in stores to show off the Nook eReader. The “full-service” boutiques will contain trial devices, a video screen playing demos, and a staff member dedicated to device support.

Just in time for the announcement, cartoonist Jeff Koterba drew a bleak cartoon about the bookshelf of the future. We hope the Barnes & Noble of the future has a few more books than those cartoon shelves. Follow this link to see more of Koterba’s work.

Nevertheless, electronic services are becoming more a part of the brick and mortor store plan. The bookseller estimated that it “averages more than 2 million free Wi-Fi connections per month in its stores.”
Read more at eBooknewser. (Via Mike Cane)

Yesterday our sibling blog WebNewser reported that the blog network True/Slant has been shuttered. The network included blogs by journalists, authors, and publishing bloggers–as the site closes, we wanted to remember some True/Slant writers.

Journalist Colin Miner wrote about the future of publishing at Gutenberg Revisited. Author Caitlin Kelly blogged about books and culture at Broadside. Skeptic magazine founder Michael Shermer blogged at Skeptic. Journalist Michael Humphrey discussed books, memory, and journalism at Past Imperfect. Add any publishing and book related True/Slant authors in the comments section.

Here’s an excerpt from Humphrey’s final post: “It remains to be seen whether there’s a lasting memory of True/Slant, the brilliant experiment of Lewis Dvorkin, Coates Bateman, Andrea Spiegel, Michael Roston, Steve McNally, 300 contributors and tens of thousands of engaged readers. It certainly competed with, and may very well inspire, those publications that will define this era. But finding the Independent is also a reminder of how ephemeral this business is, as it is meant to be. And yet…”

Nick Santora–co-creator of the television series Prison Break–just signed a deal with Mulholland Books for his novel, Fifteen Digits.

Here’s more about the novel: “Fifteen Digits is the story of five ‘invisible’ thieves who work under the radar at a white shoe New York law firm and perpetrate a multi-million dollar heist. Each one of the thieves has three of the digits of the off-shore bank account where the money is being held.”

In addition to Prison Break, Santora’s credits include acting as a producer for Law & Order and Beauty & the Geek. More recently, he co-created the forthcoming A&E drama, Breakout Kings. Both Fifteen Digits and Breakout Kings are set to come out in fall 2011. Next year Mulholland Books will also publish a paperback edition of Santora’s debut novel, Slip and Fall.

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This afternoon actor Timothy Hutton announced that his TNT show Leverage would return for a fourth season.

Earlier this year, we dubbed Hutton the most literary celebrity on Twitter–based on his dedicated following of bookish bloggers. Follow this link to see a list of his many literary fans on Twitter. Are you a fan? Sound off in the comments.

The actor tweeted the news: “very happy to be coming back for a fourth season of #leverage — it was announced on set this morning and everyone thrilled!”

Like everyone else, GalleyCat likes a good party. McNally Jackson Bookstore hosted the launch party for the literary magazine, Granta in celebration of the issue, Granta 111: Going Back. The theme of this issue is “memory.” Highlights of the night included a full house, cups of wine, and a wonderful reading session enjoyed by all.

In attendance were the editor, John Freeman and three contributors to the issue, Nicholas Christopher, Joseph O’Neill, and Claire Watkins. Each contributor offered a different medium of art that they read to the eager audience. Nicholas Christopher read his narrative poem, On Jupiter Place. Joseph O’Neill read the caption accompanying his photograph, Losed. Claire Watkins offered the longest piece of night, a short story she wrote entitled, The Last Thing We Need.

When asked how she invented the story for the character, Watkins answered: “To be honest, I stole this story from an old boyfriend I had. He actually went out to the desert and found the debris featured. A lot of the things found are included in the story. I had the list of debris pieces. The first letter is from him. Everything else was completely mine.”

GalleyCat is grateful to our Facebook readers for sharing events. Keep it up. Here is today’s edition of our Booked feature.

The Musers–featuring authors Bethany Griffin, Hannah Moskowitz, and Suzanne Young–are planning on a fabulous reading night at Open (located in Long Beach, CA) on Monday, August 2nd at 7pm.

He’s happy, he’s jolly, and he’s excited to meet you! It’s Bozo the Clown. Come meet the world’s most famous clown, play some cool games, and learn about the amazing story of the man behind the nose. Larry “Bozo” Harmon’s book signing will be held at Borders on 830 North Michigan Avenue (located in Chicago, IL) on Tuesday, August 17th at 7:30pm.

Stephen Fried will be signing copies of his book, Appetite for America at Atlantic Books (located in Beach Haven, NJ) on Thursday, August 5th at 11am.

Lisa Dalby, author of Hidden Buddhas, wants to meet you at Orinda Books (located in Orinda, CA) on Thursday, August 5th starting at 4:30pm.

To get your events posted, visit our Facebook Your Next Literary Event page for more information.

How do you review a book trailer? For a special Friday afternoon edition of GalleyCat Reviews, we are comparing two book trailers that reenact scenes from their respective books.

Both trailers are embedded below for your weekend viewing pleasure, The first video (currently with 9,330 views on YouTube) is for Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach. The second video (currently with 1,257 views on YouTube) is for The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody

How do you feel about book trailers that use actors, props, music, and digital effects to recreate moments from a book? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

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David Toberisky has announced he will retire as HarperCollins VP, director of inventory management in January. Next month, Sheryl Moore-Anderson will come back to HarperCollins to serve as director of inventory management.

Toberisky started as a managing editor at the Children’s Division. He soon moved up to Director of Operations and attained his current position in 2006. He has been with HarperCollins for twenty-three years.

President and Publisher, Susan Katz had these words for Toberisky: “David’s role in the Children’s Division has been truly unique. His knowledge of our list, our authors, illustrators, and staff extends far beyond the role of inventory planning and management. David’s contributions to the Division and HarperCollins are tremendous, despite his ‘behind the scenes’ presence; he works tirelessly to provide excellent results. I know I speak for the Division when I say we greatly appreciate David’s contributions and we will miss him dearly.”

Using social networks to broadcast her message, novelist Anne Rice declared “I quit Christianity” yesterday.

From the comments section to our Facebook page, a number of GalleyCat readers responded to her controversial comments. Gabe Lyons, the author of the forthcoming book, The Next Christians—The Good News About the End of Christian America defended Christianity in a message for Rice (pictured).

Lyons wrote GalleyCat: “The good news about many younger generation Christians (who’d agree with Anne by the way), is that they aren’t defined by political activism and moral grandstanding. The next Christians live with a humble posture and are embracing the issues their faith’s originator would support. They care about more than just abortion and gay marriage; they want to work on restoring every corner of the earth through promoting justice, fighting poverty, caring for the lonely, opposing nuclear weapons, curbing environmental destruction and so on. If Anne Rice was exposed more to this kind of restoration-minded Christian, she might even re-evaluate her position.”

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