“He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.”

-John Ray

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A college admissions officer as protagonist?  Doing nothing but her job?  You betcha.  ADMISSION, by Jean Hanff Korelitz, gets the good nod over at American Chronicle.

Publishers Weekly offers up a whole plateful (pageful?) of fiction reviews.

Sports anchorman, Bob Costas, lend his perspective on baseball in FAIR BALL: A FAN’S CASE FOR BASEBALL.

Monsters & Critics is well impressed by BBC crime correspondent, Simon Hall’s, newest thriller, THE DEATH PICTURES.

Library Journal selects Paul Davies’, OUT AT THE MOVIES: A HISTORY OF GAY CINEMA, as its spotlight feature.

Times Online is reporting that Dan Brown’s first book since The Da Vinci Code will hit shelves this September with great expectations:

Literary stylists and Christian groups can prepare to have their protests drowned out in a stampede to bookshops: Dan Brown, the author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, has finally written a new book.

The Lost Symbol, Brown’s first new book since The Da Vinci Code burst on to an unsuspecting world five years ago, was announced at the London International Book Fair today.

It is scheduled for publication on September 15, when it will inevitably sparking the sort of hysterical scenes last witnessed with the publication of the seventh and final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, in 2007.

The Lost Symbol will have a global English-language print run of 6.5 million copies, and it will once again feature Brown’s protagonist, the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon.

Courtesy of the fine folks at Booktin… A two-part interview with Congolese writer Alain Mabankou promoting his new novel Broken Glass:

Part One:

Part Two:

Kathryn Stockett scores best-seller with debut novel.

Hugo Chavez’s gift to Barack Obama of Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano pushes the decades-old book up the Amazon bestseller list.

4,500 pages omitted from Flaubert’s Madame Bovary published online.

Toby Litt, writing for the Guardian Book Blog, remembers the life of JG Ballard and the profound effect on his own literary growth.

Today in Literature: On this day in 1912 Bram Stoker died.

JG Ballard

1930 - 2009

Crash author JG Ballard, ‘a giant on the world literary scene’, dies aged 78 (Guardian)
J.G. Ballard, 1930-2009 (LA Times)
‘Empire of the Sun’ author Ballard dies at 78 (AP)
Cult author JG Ballard dies at 78 (BBC)
J.G. Ballard: ‘he loved the edges of cities, the psychosis of suburbia’
(Times Online)
Author JG Ballard Dies After Long Illness  (Sky News)

“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

-Robert Benchley

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Julie Morgenstern tweaks the self-help shelf with SHED YOUR STUFF: CHANGE YOUR LIFE - A FOUR-STEP GUIDE TO GETTING UNSTUCK.

Alec Baldwin writes a memoir, A PROMISE TO OURSELVES, and The Atlantic gives us three pages of review to decide whether we need more of it.

In, SLANG: THE PEOPLE’S POETRY, Michael Adams makes sense of why we bend words and phrases the way we do.

Dave Cullen’s, COLUMBINE, is reviewed by Cullen’s former Salon editor, who makes the book sound riveting and important.  I’m sold.

The court scene from Orson Welles’ masterful adaptation of Franz Kafka’s classic:

The Guardian’s James Campbell takes a sometimes uncomfortable look into the mind of poet August Kleinzahler.

The Irish Repertory Theater in New York revives all 26 of William Butler Yeats’ plays to mark the 70th anniversary of his death.

Times Online posts an excerpt from Bill German’s book on the Rolling Stones, Under Their Thumb.

Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter releases a biography in verse of her esteemed ancestor.

Mary Beard draws on the parallels between the book trade in our time and in ancient Rome.

CNet reports on an iPhone app sure to please any lover of classic literature.

Today in Literature: On this date in 1928, the final volume of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

-Don Delillo

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DESTINATION WILDLIFE, by Pamela K. Brodowsky and the National Wildlife Federation, will tell you where to go to sate your fauna-viewing cravings, or conversely, where not to go if you’re afraid of bears, snakes, bobcats, coyotes, big spiders, chipmunks…

I can’t help it.  I like that there’s a website out there called BloodyElbow.com.  It gives me nightmares and the giggles.  And they do book reviews; here’s one now: GUERRILLA JIU-JITSU: REVOLUTIONIZING BRAZILIAN JIU-JITSU, by Dave Camarillo and Erich Krauss. I know.  It’s a lot.

Leah Hager Cohen reviews fellow novelist, Joanna Scott, in The New York Times for, FOLLOW ME.

THE GIRLS FROM AMES spotlights the depth of friendship of a group of women in North Carolina, which in turn, lets author Jeffrey Zaslow, underscore the importance of friendship everywhere.

Roberto Pachecano reads his poem “Life Begins on Page 6-B”.

From the YouTube description:

Roberto Pachecano was born and raised in the heart of San Antonio’s Westside, a predominantly Mexican-American barrio. Shortly before Christmas of 1965, at age 17, Roberto dropped out of Edgewood High School and joined the Marines. He earned a GED diploma before being honorably discharged from military service in 1969. Many years later Roberto returned to St. Marys University where he graduated Cum Laude with a degree in English Communication Arts and was inducted into Sigma Tau Delta (International English Honor Society). Roberto’s essays, poems, and short stories have been published in amarillobay, Distant Echoes, Dupage Womans Newspaper (Chicago), LupusSA, Pecan Grove Review, San Antonio Express- News, Texas Hispanic Journal, and Texas Vietnam Veterans Magazine. A chapter from Vietnam State of Mind: No Rotation Home (work-in-progress) was recently published in Telling Tongues: A Latin@ Anthology on Language Experience, a collection of works by writers from throughout the Americas (April 2007).

The Internet Archive gets nervous about the Google Books settlement and seeks permission to file a motion “that would ask the court to alter the proposed settlement to give other companies that have scanned printed books the same copyright protection of orphan works that would be granted to Google in the settlement.”

Former editor of The Washington Post’s Book World Marie Arana makes her case for scrapping the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The Guardian has more on Seth Grahame-Smith’s Abraham Lincoln/vampire tale.

Penguin India lays out its biggest-ever advance for a debut novel to snare Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills.

R.I.P. Kathleen Flowers

Today in Literature: On this day in 1394, Chaucer’s pilgrims gathered at the Tabard Inn in Southwark to prepare for their departure to Canterbury.

“Everything that doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.”

-Tapani Bagge

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Having taken up pounding the pavement myself, I wonder what it means to be “the best novel ever written about running”?  To find out, Runner’s World and The Kansas City Star recommend John L. Parker Jr.’s, ONCE A RUNNER.

DomesticFuel.com thinks Daniel Sperling and Deborah Gordon have a pretty good handle on what to do with TWO BILLION CARS.

William Wordsworth’s was oft inspired by his sister.  And so then, in turn is biographer Frances Wilson, resulting in THE BALLAD OF DOROTHY WORDSWORTH: A LIFE.

Chuck Klosterman starts making things up to good result - a novel, DOWNTOWN OWL.

Today marks the one year anniversay of AuthorScoop, and what a year it’s been.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve linked to nearly 2,500 news stories and 1,500 book reviews, posted 350 videos about books and the writing life, and have collected nearly 300 quotes by and about writers. This in addition to exclusive interviews and essays, poetry by both classical and up and coming poets, and a variety of other goodies.

I’d like to express my sincere appreciation to Jamie Mason, who’s been a rock-solid partner from day one, and contributors Rob McCreery and Graeme Cameron, who have provided engaging pieces of their own.

Thanks also to our loyal readers and commenters—who not only share their humor and insights, but also point us to items of interest to make the site better. Finally, thanks to Oscar at Intuitive Intertextuality and MacAllister Stone at Absolute Write for their mentions of this milestone.

We look forward to another great year and, as always, appreciate and welcome input from our readers.

-William

 A trailer for Kelley Armstrong’s The Awakening, Book Two in ‘The Darkest Powers’ trilogy:

‘Overdue’ library book returned after 145 years.

From the “what the hell were they thinking?” files: Lulu tries to explain that its new poetry site is not a scam, even though they bought the URL of a notorious poetry scam site.

Former Houghton-Mifflin publisher and Doubleday editor Janet Silver has joined Zachary Shuster Harmsworth as a literary agent and editorial director.

Obama reports $2.6 million in 2008 book earnings…

…and his dog is now apparently the star of his own book.

The BBC presents a video report on prison poetry.

R.I.P. James D. Houston

Today in Literature: On this day in 1981, the University of Pennsylvania issued an edition of Dreiser’s Sister Carrie intended to reflect the original manuscript and author’s intent.

“The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.”

-John Burroughs

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