Author, Kong Yalei, celebrates the Chinese New Year with a wonderful essay on reading. (Granta)

Big day for children’s literature: Caldecott and Newbery Prizes awarded today! (The New York Times)

The bestseller lists, explained. (The Sacramento Bee)

The New Republic dissects the shade and nuance of journalistic language. (The New Republic)

Those sexy Canadians and their sexy literature. ‘Tis true. Check it out. (January Magazine)

Stephen King uses all his fingers to count up his favorite books. But, with as much as he reads, I’ll bet he wished he had a lot more hands. (The Christian Science Monitor)

The San Fransisco Chronicle lets the first lines of a few novels speak for themselves. (SFGate.com)

Barack Obama’s reading habits are scrutinized across The Pond. (The Telegraph)

If we write it, they will come: American authors and their sports novels. (Slate)

NPR chews on “predatory” Amazon. (NPR)

Simon Doonan is a little bit crazy, but he’s got a funny book and he’ll tell you how to get your picture taken flatteringly. (USA Today)

“On this day in 1930 Derek Walcott was born on St. Lucia. Walcott’s two-dozen collections of poems and plays — one recent work, Tiepolo’s Hound, widens the range by including his paintings — earned the 1992 Nobel…” (Today In Literature)

The National Book Critics Circle posts their list of finalists for its 2011 honors. (bookcritics.org)

The plot thickens: Salman Rushdie accuses the police of inventing the threats against him to keep him from the Jaipur Literary Festival. (The Daily Beast)

A look at the pending Costa Awards and its current shortlist via (The Guardian)

By today’s standard, Robert Burns might have been a terrorist. (The Scotsman)

Somebody’s buying a lot of ebooks, but nearly a quarter of the Christmas Kindle-gifted say they haven’t turned the thing on yet. (pocket-lint.com)

3M holds court at The American Library Association’s Mid-Winter event to showcase its Cloud Library for ebooks. (Yahoo Business)

While the ALA powers schedule a session with half of The Big Six to chew through more tangles in ebook lending policy. (Library Journal)

The Writers Guild is set to honor achievement in video game writing. (GalleyCat)

Richard Ketchum, author and editor, dead at 89. RIP. (The New York Times)

“On this day, fifteen years apart, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (1953) and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town (1938) premiered. Although both were poorly reviewed to start, The Crucible would win a Tony and Our Town a Pulitzer; and both would become not only classics of American theater, but classic, opposite statements on the idea of community living…” (Today In Literature)

Jennifer Egan is the poster child for the upside of failure. (CNN)

January Magazine gets a kick out of the New York Daily News’ headline on BELOVED banning. (January Magazine)

French publisher, Flammarion, may soon be up for sale, as RCS considers heaving ballast. (Bloomberg)

A first edition copy of Audubon’s, BIRDS OF AMERICA, stretches towards $8 million at auction. (nydailynews.com)

The New York Times hosts a book discussion podcast. (The New York Times)

The U.S. Naval Observatory donates a rare volume to Thomas Jefferson’s Library. (loc.gov)

New book explores how our attitudes towards sex and morality aren’t as new as we might think. (The Guardian)

Waterstones picks eleven authors to watch in 2012. (The Telegraph)

“On this day in 1950 George Orwell died, aged forty-six. Whatever Orwell achieved in his last years seems over-balanced by what he suffered. Against the acclaim earned by the two famous novels — Animal Farm in 1945 and 1984 just seven months before Orwell died — stands a withering series of personal challenges…” (Today In Literature)

51 years ago today, Robert Frost didn’t read the poem he’d written for JFK’s inauguration. (Library of Congress)

SOPA & PIPA on hold while Congress mulls. And hopefully reads and listens, too. (The Atlantic)

Salman Rushie issues a statement regarding the opposition to his appearance in Jaipur. (The New York Times)

Do you want to pad your to-be-read list with unputdownable books? Come see what books readers say they devoured in one day. (GalleyCat)

The American Library Association’s midwinter event kicks off in Dallas. (Publishers Weekly)

Harvard’s library staff don’t know which way the wind’s blowing over their employment status. (LibraryJournal)

Jason Boog hosts a discussion with Aaron Shapiro on book promotion. (MediaBistro)

It’s nice to have writer friends. Richard Russo pings his friends on their opinion of Amazon’s predatory campaigns. (The New York Times)

And here’s a closer look at the growing trend of enhanced ebooks. (The Wall Street Journal)

“This is the Eve of St. Agnes, on which young virgins obedient to various bedtime rituals — having eaten only a salt-filled egg, or having put sprigs of thyme and rosemary in their shoes-are granted a vision of their future lovers. Agnes is the patron saint of virgins, martyred at the age of twelve (ca. 305) for choosing to die rather than become the wife of a Roman prefect. In Keats’s famous “The Eve of St. Agnes,” Madeline retires dressed in white, pledged to look only heavenward for her vision of the forbidden Porphyro; this allows Porphyro, who has hidden himself in her bedroom closet, to have full view of her…” (Today In Literature)

Strictly speaking, AuthorScoop is not a book review site, but occasionally we’ll come across something in our private reading that really calls for a crowing. As such, here I go.       -Jamie Mason

I’ve always loved mythologies. Like most of my American contemporaries, Greek and Roman myths were part of our school curriculum. On my own, I sought out Native American and Norse tales. As I let them, they spilled the secrets of the forces and spirits that put color and flourish over the grey cogs of physics and rationalism. I’ve loved these stories for the freedom from the strictly literal that they offer; the chance to swim in what it says of humanity in the stories we invent to explain the universe.

I had certainly heard of India’s rich fables and parables, particularly, the Bhagavad Gita. But I didn’t know of its larger contextual epic, The Mahabharata. And I also didn’t know that I was poorer for it.

I had read Sharon Maas (writing here as Aruna Sharan) several years ago. Her gorgeous and riveting, OF MARRIAGEABLE AGE, is a treasure to me, as it is currently (but perhaps not for long) out of print. I was delighted for the opportunity to read a new work of hers.

SONS OF GODS: THE MAHABHARATA RETOLD is kaleidoscopic in its beauty and intricacy. The hurdle of the tale’s massive scope has always daunted translators, and the difficulty of prising the right tone from an ancient grand epic to suit a modern and Western audience has relegated it to largely academic obscurity.

What’s saved it for us is that Aruna Sharan knows full well that love, betrayal, lust, envy, pride, devotion, and heroism never go out of style. SONS OF GODS is a literary soap opera with a soul that spans the full horizon.

Love for the panoramic story itself and the patience of more than three decades of careful crafting has solved the literary puzzle of how to present it for an audience in the digital age. Aruna Sharan is well-suited in both talent and passion to deliver a new classic for lovers of mythology.

The unique category of mythology also makes SONS OF GODS a clever fit for Amazon’s Kindle publishing as a proving ground for its appeal. The price is incredible for a work of such excellence. Still, I hope for the day to hold it hardbound in my hands, as well. This isn’t just a book, it’s the Universe explained.

If you’re a man, being a novelist is hard. Have a look at a different take on gender-inequality in the publishing world. (Salon)

The Horror Writers Association nominates a list for consideration for the Bram Stoker Vampire Novel of the Century Award. (GalleyCat)

Arthur Phillips buys a writing desk. (But he was doing pretty well without one.) (The New York Times)

The UK’s Pearson is cautiously optimistic for 2012 sales. (The Guardian)

Jill Biden’s tribute to the troops to be published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. (YahooNews)

Jaipur’s Literary Festival has more security tangles than just Salman Rushdie. (The Los Angeles)

Simon Callow earns a standing ovation for reading Seamus Heaney’s poem, THE PENINSULA. (The Telegraph)

Author, Brad Taylor, puts names to crime fiction cliche pains. (The Huffington Post)

Dicken’s London viewed through the lens. (The Telegraph)

Occupy Las Cruces causes a small ruckus outside a New Mexico Barnes & Noble. (Las Cruces Sun-News)

Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, dies at age 64. RIP. (Gutenberg.org)

“On this day in 1946 Julian Barnes was born. When in his mid-thirties Barnes was featured in Granta magazine’s ‘Best of Young British Fiction’ issue. If this did not exactly launch his career (Barnes protests the claim), it certainly put him in good company - Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Graham Swift and others. The prize-winning Flaubert’s Parrot was published the next year (1984)…” (Today In Literature)

The safeguarding of intellectual property and the enforcement of copyright protections is important. People in the publishing world know this better than most. But the ham-fisted provisions of the Stop Online Piracy Act and its cousin, the Protect IP Act, are igniting long-reaching concerns in many technology experts and everyday users.

That’s why the internet might look all jacked-up today.

Read up on it.

Don’t let the black flag warning fool ya: the protest against SOPA and PIPA explained. (AbsoluteWrite.com)

… and here’s more info and a way to join the protest. (sopastrike.com)

Why creativity isn’t really a group sport. (The New York Times)

Poetry readers have the power to buoy independent bookstores. Here’s how. (GalleyCat)

More good news regarding people being expressing their interest in ebooks - with their wallets. (sourcebooks.com)

Cormac McCarthy pops up with a script, not a novel. (deadline.com)

Not sure that the man himself would approve, but Salon looks at what J.D. Salinger was working on when he died. (Salon)

“On this day in 1936 Rudyard Kipling died at the age of seventy-one. Although one of England’s most popular writers at the turn of the century, and a Nobel winner in 1907, by the time of his death Kipling was not merely forgotten but scorned and cartooned. To the intellectuals and political Left he was a dinosaur of Empire, a jingoist of pith-helmet patriotism and white-man’s-burden racism…” (Today In Literature)

John Burnside has won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Here’s a couple of poems to show us why. (London Review of Books)

Atlantic Books takes a deep breath and pushes back the date on Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, MORTALITY. All the better to do it justice. (The Bookseller)

Here’s a look at some science books to keey an eye out for this year. (NewScientist.com)

The Library of Congress celebrates Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. (loc.gov)

Patricia Cohen’s new book contemplates the cultural fiction of the concept of “middle age”. (The Huffington Post)

The New York Observer has a look at editor Amy Einhorn’s Midas touch. (observer.com)

The editor blogs at Writers Digest unveil their new look. Nice! (WritersDigest.com)

Jim Henson has been gone from us for twenty years, but one of his undeveloped screenplays will soon be a new graphic novel. (The Wall Street Journal)

McSweeney’s has a chat with author, John Horgan, on his latest, THE END OF WAR. (McSweeney’s)

Active fiction isthe next big thing, presumably. (MarketWatch.com)

“On this day in 1775, Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals premiered. This was Sheridan’s first play; below is the first entrance and first malapropism of his most famous character, at this point walking in on and then all over niece Lydia’s choice in books and beaus…” (Today In Literature)

Jessica Brody broke on the fiction scene back in 2008 and is quickly becoming a go-to writer for novels that spark YA readers to un-put-downable late nights. We’re fortunate to get a glimpse of how she got here and how she works it onto the page.

We’d like to thank her for taking the time to be part of our “5 Minutes Alone” interview series.

AuthorScoop: What was your very first publication credit?

Jessica: Well, I wouldn’t call it a “credit” necessarily but my first “publication” was when I was seven years old. My second grade teacher had us “publish” our short stories using cardboard, electrical tape and wallpaper. Here is a picture of mine. (attached). It was called “The Puppy and the Kitty” (not the most creative title, I realize) and it came complete with illustrations. It was about a puppy and a kitty who ran away from home and got the chicken pox. So I guess the moral of the story is obvious. Don’t run away from home or you WILL get the chicken pox.

AuthorScoop: Tell us about your latest release.

Jessica: MY LIFE UNDECIDED was a very fun book to write. It’s about a fifteen-year-old girl, notorious for making terrible decisions, who enlists blog readers to vote on how she should live her life. But she soon discovers that some things in life simply aren’t a choice…like who you fall in love with. It’s mostly a comedy…with a little bit of serious stuff baked in.

AuthorScoop: Aside from your own hard work, who (or what) else do you feel has contributed to your success?

Jessica: I owe much of my success to a very wise man named Blake Snyder. He wrote a book called SAVE THE CAT!: THE LAST SCREENWRITING BOOK YOU’LL EVER NEED. And although it’s a screenwriting book, it works wonders for outlining and plotting novels as well. It’s really all about story and Blake lays out 15 essential beats that make up any great story. Since I started using it to outline my books, I’ve sold eight novels. And I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

Blake recently passed away (which was a great loss), but his company contacted me to teach workshops about how to use his method to write novels. It’s called the SAVE THE CAT NOVEL-WRITING WORKSHOP. You can find more information about them here:

http://www.blakesnyder.com/services/novel-writing-beat-sheet-workshop/

AuthorScoop: At what time of day or night do you do your best writing?

Jessica: Morning for sure! I run out of creativity at about 2:00 pm. So I save my more mundane tasks for after lunch and try to get my daily word count done first thing when I wake up. Before getting sucked into emails and twitter!

AuthorScoop: Finally, what advice would you give to new or unpublished writers?

Jessica: “You can’t fix a blank page.” I can’t take credit for this brilliance, though. It’s a quote from Nora Roberts. But I have hanging on my wall above my computer so I can always see it. It’s absolutely the best writing advice ever! Sometimes you’ll get stuck, sometimes you’ll write crap, but no matter what, you just have to keep going. Keep writing. Even if you end up throwing it all away at the end. Because more often than not, you have to write through the bad stuff to get to the good stuff. And you can always go back and revise later. But you can’t revise something that’s not there!

***

MY LIFE UNDECIDED is available at bookstores and her website makes getting to online retailers for it just too easy. Find Jessica on Facebook and Twitter to track a rising star in contemporary fiction.

Ah, the internet. Writers and reviewers in instant electronic proximity. What could go wrong? (The Guardian)

Bloomsbury had a decent return on 2011, and a 38% increase in ebook sales didn’t hurt. (Bloomsbury)

Author, Zadie Smith, lends a writer’s eye to the fact and soul of the prosperity gap between nations. (Guernica Magazine)

The New Yorker profiles author, Roberto Bolaño. (The New Yorker)

A look back on the life and career of Edith Wharton. (The Telegraph)

Library Journal points readers to a few books on North Korea. (Library Journal)

James Gregor remembers his time in the employ of George Whitman at his fabulous and famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. (The Millions)

Lionsgate doesn’t see an end to the TWILIGHT books as any reason to stop make Twilight films. (The Guardian)

Jerome Rubin, who predicted ebooks back in 1989, dies at age 86. RIP. (The Los Angeles Times)

“On this day in 1874, Robert Service — the Kipling of Canada” — was born in Preston, England. When he was twenty-one, Service quit his bank job in Glasgow and hit out for Canada, serious enough about fulfilling his dream of becoming a cowboy that he brought his Buffalo Bill outfit along with him. Ten years later he was back working in a bank…” (Today In Literature)

“Leisure without literature is death and burial alive.”

-Seneca

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In 1911, ‘The Ladies’ Home Journal’ cast its imagination a hundred years into the future, otherwise known as last year. (Buzzfeed)

So a few days ago, we found that college students prefer paper books, but today it’s that little kids like digital ones. Shift ahoy! (GalleyCat)

Take cover or strap on your battle gear. Apple and Amazon go to war this coming week. (Cult of Mac)

The Wall Street Journal chats with sci-fi great, William Gibson. (The Wall Street Journal)

Independent bookstores get some words of encouragement in the struggle against online retailers from the Poetry Foundation. (The Huffington Post)

And GalleyCat chimes in with a guide to buying ebooks from independent bookstores. (GalleyCat)

GOOSEBUMPS script to be written by Darren Lemke of, JACK THE GIANT KILLER fame. (perezhilton)

“On this day in 1891 the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam was born. While by no means the only writer driven to death by Stalin’s Reign of Terror, Mandelstam has become, for many, the symbol of all those so destroyed. This is partly due to his poetry — most rank him among the best Russian poets, some among the best of all 20th century poets…” (Today In Literature)

David Foster Wallace’s ten favorite novels is a surprising mix of some very popular works. (The Christian Science Monitor)

Arab writers reflect on last year’s Arab Spring. (The Guardian)

The Chicago Tribune Celebrates Ezra Jack Keats’ milestone childrens’ book, THE SNOWY DAY, and its effect, fifty years after it landed. (The Chicago Tribune)

Toni Morrison’s, BELOVED, is in the censor’s crosshairs. Again. (GalleyCat)

A panel of contemporary authors discuss the books they love to give as gifts. (The New York Times)

CNN anchor, Soledad O’Brien, mixes it up with Jodi Cantor, author of the hotly-debated, THE OBAMAS. (KHQ.com)

Author, Jeffrey Zaslow, chats about his examination of weddings in his latest, THE MAGIC ROOM: A STORY ABOUT THE LOVE WE WISH FOR OUR DAUGHTERS. (The Chicago Sun Times)

Novelist, Reginald Hill, dies at 75. RIP. (The News & Star)

“On this day in 1886 Hugh Lofting, writer of the Doctor Dolittle series of children’s books, was born. While growing up in Berkshire, Lofting kept “a combination zoo and natural history museum” in his mother’s linen closet, but Dab-Dab, Gub-Gub, Too-Too, Jip, Polynesia, et al. of Puddlesby-by-the-Marsh were born more from Lofting’s desire to forget adulthood than recall his childhood…” (Today In Literature)

Spot the difference between Waterstone’s and Waterstones. Now, hold on to your ones and zeros, here’s why they did it. (The Independent)

Yesterday it was novels. Today, seek out the poetry that’ll put you in mind of Downton Abbey. (GalleyCat)

It seems as though college students prefer carrying heavy books. (The Daily Bruin)

A trove of no-nonsense about the industry is a good way to kick off the weekend. (How Publishing Really Works)

UK department store chain, Selfridges, puts a library inside its store. Clever. (The Telegraph)

An unknown Brahms composition is discovered tucked into an old book. (Melville House)

The Andrew Lownie Agency clues hopeful writers into what editors are looking for in 2012. (andrewlownie.co.uk)

A publisher weighs in on the state of the ebook. (American Libraries Magazine)

The Horn Book Magazine shows us what we’d find if they picked the Caldecott ballot. (hbook.com)

Rare book dealer, John McWhinnie, dies in a snorkeling accident. He was 43. RIP. (The New York Times)

“On this day in 1898 Emile Zola published his ‘J’Accuse’ letter on the Dreyfus Affair in the French newspaper L’Aurore. In his letter Zola listed eight politicians and military personnel (including the President of the Republic) whom he held responsible for the scapegoat, anti-Semitic conviction of Captain Dreyfus for treason three years earlier…” (Today In Literature)

Kim Jong Nam is poised to spill some ink and opinions over his father, the late Kim Jong Il, in a new book released in Japan. (Japan Times)

The New Republic considers putting a ‘For Sale’ sign in their yard. (The Wall Street Journal)

The popularity of PBS’s ‘Downton Abbey’ spawns an Edwardian book-frenzy. (The New York Times)

A lucky librarian gets an Amazon platform to revive her favorite out-of-print books. (GalleyCat)

Will the kiddies be delighted to get a book in their Happy Meals? We’re about to find out. (The Telegraph)

But they’ll likely be thrilled to hear of the return of CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. (Publishers Weekly)

Microsoft scales back its gripe with Barnes & Noble’s Nook by one patent. (zdnet.com)

Amazon wrangles a new erotica plagiarism scandal. (Fast Company)

NewsCorp weighs in with the details on the News of the World bribery allegation. (Bloomberg)

“On this day in 1876 Jack London was born, and on this day in 1893, London’s seventeenth birthday, he signed on for an eight-month stint as deck-hand aboard the “Sophie Sutherland,” a San Francisco sealer heading for the China Seas. The sealing voyage gave London his first published story, and eventually his second best-seller — The Sea Wolf…” (Today In Literature)

Lisbeth Salander and her Dragon Tattoo? Yeah, there’s an app for that. (USA Today)

Are you a good writer? Great! That’s about a third of the battle. (The Atlantic)

Thriller writer, Charlie Newton, has good fun sifting real life for his characters’ names. (The Chicago Sun Times)

‘The Joy of Books’ video goes viral, so here’s a look at Sean Ohlenkamp, the man behind the bookstore after-hours party. (Quill & Quire)

The books were so good, the Man Asian Literary Prize committee couldn’t pick just five. (The Los Angeles Times)

Annie Liebovitz finishes her labor of love, PILGRIMAGE, a volume of literature-inspired photography, conceived with her partner, writer, Susan Sontag, before she died. (The Houston Chronicle)

io9 has a look at the new CONAN THE BARBARIAN comics. (io9.com)

McClelland & Stewart, one of Canada’s most prestigious publishers, becomes part of Random House. (The National Post)

JULIE AND THE WOLVES, the 1972 bestselling childrens’ novel, stokes the digital rights scuffle. (The Wall Street Journal)

And because we needed a comic book of the US Constitution… (Publishers Weekly)

“On this day in 1903, novelist and reformer Alan Paton was born in the KwaZulu-Natal region of South Africa. Paton was the Principal of Diepkloof Reformatory in Johannesburg for twelve years; his first and most famous novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, was written in 1946 while he was away from home…” (Today In Literature)

Courtesy GalleyCat, for your viewing pleasure, here’s what happens after the lights go out in the bookstore:

Salman Rushdie is persona non grata with an Indian Muslim group at the Jaipur Literary Festival. (Reuters)

Bestselling fantasy author, R.A. Salvatore, entertains The Boston Globe in his tidy lair. (The Boston Globe)

The BBC adds an ending to Charles Dickens’ last, unfinished work, THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. (The Telegraph)

Penguin’s online writer community hatches an author’s first book deal. (GalleyCat)

The free and unfettered children of literature: are we inside looking out? (The Guardian)

Rick Riordan warps up his series, The Kane Chronicles, with an enormous print-run of THE SERPENT’S SHADOW. (BusinessWire)

Anna Burnside sits down with author, Dennis O’Donnell. (The Scotsman)

Writers and Twitter, a partnership made in, er, somewhere. (The New York Times)

Pennsylvania sports writer, Bob Black, dies at 67. RIP. (PennLive.com)

Pelican Publishing’s, Milburn E. Calhoun, dies at 81. RIP. (NOLA.com)

“On this day in 1845 Robert Browning wrote his first letter to Elizabeth Barrett, so inciting one of the most legendary of literary love stories. The letter belongs to the ‘fan mail’ category — the praise of a thirty-two-year-old up-and-comer for one just six years older and already internationally famous — but it was more than just poet-to-poet…” (Today In Literature)

There will be much excited squealing in certain ranks as LABYRINTH gets a graphic novel prequel. (The Guardian)

George Orwell was a medical guinea pig for a new wonder drug back in 1948. (The Scotsman)

Want a free ereader? Subscribe to the electronic edition of The New York Times. (The New York Times)

Elton John steps up for a book on the AIDS epidemic. (GalleyCat)

With a new edition of Virginia Woolf’s ORLANDO, the actress who played the lead writes an illuminating article on the birth of a modern classic. (The Telegraph)

John le Carré’s backlist moves to Penguin and gets some shiny new cover art. (The Wall Street Journal)

Roald Dahl is honored on British postage stamps. (The Guardian)

Political writer, Tony Blankely, dies. He was 63. (Fox News)

“On this day in 1324 Marco Polo died in Venice, at the age of seventy. The Travels of Marco Polo, dictated by Polo around 1300, several years after his return from decades in the land of Kublai Khan, became an influential book in Renaissance Europe. So dubious were some contemporaries of a vast and grandiose empire to the East that they published Polo’s account as Il Milione, meaning ‘The Million Lies.’…” (Today In Literature)