The Morning News Tournament of Books has us on the edge of our seats. Wednesday's competition—between the formidable novelists Hillary Mantel and Nicholson Baker—was a thrill (Mantel's Wolf Hall won by a nose). On Thursday, Marlon James edged out Victor Lavalle. And soon, we'll get to know the literary taste of motivational speaker and party rocker Andrew W.K. Place your bets now: the winner will be announced on April 5.
Referring to e-books, The Village Voice proclaimed, "OK, here comes the flood." In 2000.
Though best-known as a writer of high-minded YA fiction, Philip Pullman is also a staunch atheist. His forthcoming book, a riff on the Jesus myth, has inspired some fundamentalists to condemn him to hell (and, worse, to threaten his life).
Groups of Kindle users are gathering to protest—on Amazon, at least. Right now, they're so mad that Michael Lewis's The Big Short isn't available on Kindle yet that they've been flooding the book's Amazon page with one-star reviews—apparently without having read the book.
David Grann wanted to be a novelist, but now he's content hanging out with real-life "stick up men, sandhogs, prison escape artists, imposters, squid hunters, mobsters, FBI agents."
Thanks to nasty new memoirs about Eliot Spitzer and Martha Stewart, the "literature of betrayal" is alive and well.
