Some Libraries are Pulling “Shades of Grey”

The steamy novel , “50 Shades of Grey, has become wildly popular with many women, and currently tops the Amazon.com Best Seller List.

But not everyone’s a fan of the book.  Because of negative reviews, some Florida libraries pulled the first of the popular trilogy saying reviews considered the book to be pornographic in nature, and they don’t collect porn.

Library patrons disagree with the decision.  Patricia McCarron says,  “We deserve to have access to these books whether other people like them or not.”  Doreen Sley says, “I think that’s a shame because that’s why we live here. You know, freedom of speech and there’s nothing horrible about this book.”

Author of “Where the Wild Things Are” died at 83.

Maurice Sendak, widely considered the most important children’s book artist of the 20th century, who wrenched the picture book out of the safe, sanitized world of the nursery and plunged it into the dark, terrifying and hauntingly beautiful recesses of the human psyche, died on Tuesday in Danbury, Conn. He was 83 and lived in Ridgefield, Conn.

In September, a new picture book by Mr. Sendak, “Bumble-Ardy” — the first in 30 years for which he produced both text and illustrations — was issued by HarperCollins Publishers. The book, which spent five weeks on the New York Times children’s best-seller list, tells the not-altogether-lighthearted story of an orphaned pig (his parents are eaten) who gives himself a riotous birthday party.

The Ten Grumpiest Living Authors

In the last five years, Jonathan Franzen has become increasingly grumpy, griping about things like Twitter and eBooks, and building a reputation as an unrepentantly prickly author with a constant bone to pick. To celebrate the release of another book filled with Franzen’s complaints, we’ve put together a list of the ten grumpiest, crankiest and most cantankerous authors still living today.

And then there’s Maurice Sendak, author of highbrow kids’ book standbys such as Where the Wild Things Are. He outlined his stance on children in an interview on the Colbert Report: “I didn’t set out to make children happy, or make life better for them, or easier for them… I like them as few and far between as I do adults.”

Millions of Books will be Donated Tonight for World Book Night

You won’t need to visit a store or library tonight to see a book change hands or receive a free copy yourself.

Thousands of towns and cities around the country and beyond are participating in the second annual World Book Night, when some 2.5 million free books are expected to be donated, whether at a children’s shelter in Texas or a crisis center in Tampa, Fla. Among the works being given are Suzanne Collins’ ”The Hunger Games,” Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” Michael Connelly’s “Blood Work” and Leif Enger’s “Peace Like a River.”

400 Authors Will be at the L A Times Festival of Books

The 17th annual Los Angeles Times Festival of Books offers a two-day program of writers and celebrity authors unmatched by any other literary event across the country. More than 400 authors are scheduled to appear in panel sessions and on eight stages set up across USC’s University Park Campus this Saturday and Sunday.

This year’s festival blends familiar features with newer events reflecting what’s hot today in the literary marketplace. While festival goers can stroll once again with their families in the Target children’s area or listen to novelist Anne Rice discuss her latest supernatural fiction (Sunday) and Ben Fong-Torres’ memories of his Rolling Stone days (Saturday), actor John Cusackwill discuss not a book but his latest book-related project, the film “The Raven,” in which he portrays Edgar Allan Poe on Saturday. Read more…..

No Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this Year

The Pulitzer Prize Board had three fiction finalists to choose from but they couldn’t pick a winner.

Maybe they should have settled on Karen Russell’s “Swamplandia!” — a first novel about an odyssey through the Everglades.  The heroine is Ava Bigtree, who has grown up wise beyond her 13 years in her family’s alligator theme park. Agile and inventive, the book is also incredibly funny, and a clear winner over “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson and “The Pale King” by David Foster Wallace.

BusinessWeek picks five more works of fiction worthy of the prize:  Read more…….

BusinessWeek

J.K. Rowling Moves on to Adult Fiction

After selling an estimated 450 million “Harry Potter”  books, J.K. Rowling is moving on to adult fiction.

Her new book will be called “The Casual Vacancy.”

Ms. Rowling’s new publisher, Little, Brown and Co., called the novel “blackly comic” and says, “When Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly in his early forties, the little town of Pagford is left in shock. Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war. Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupils…Pagford is not what it first seems. And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?”

Facebook says it owns the word “book”

Facebook  is trying to take over the world. Or, at least, the world where people can use the word “book” without facing copyright penalties.

Indeed, if Facebook’s newest user’s agreement, released in late March, is anything to judge by, Mark Zuckerberg’s nefarious aims have no bounds. The agreement included the word “book” in its list of effectively trademarked terms – a savvy way to enable lawsuits galore against users who Facebook feels have “misused” the term.

Delightful History of Fiction

British critic John Sutherland has written a delightful history of fiction.  He begins with John Bunyan, who was born in 1628 and wrote “Pilgrims Progress” and ends with Alice Sebold, who was born in 1963 and wrote “The Lovely Bones.”   The book is more than 800 pages and covers the biographies of 294 English language authors.

Sutherland talks about the expected literary greats including Jane Austen, Edgar Allan Poe, Anthony Trollope, the Brontes, Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Henry James and George Orwell.

Commercial Fiction: James Patterson Explains Why His Books Sell Like Crazy

According to Nielsen, James Patterson ranks as the country’s top-selling author.  He has 13 books coming out this year. He had 11 last year. To date, the 65-year-old author has published 95 books—his most recent, “Guilty Wives,” hit shelves this week.

Patterson says his work is commercial fiction. It’s a little different from really serious literature.  He has a well-practiced system: he writes a detailed outline and then hires someone—often a former colleague from his advertising days—to write the ensuing scenes, usually in 30 to 40 page chunks. He will review those pages every few weeks, sometimes providing notes on them and other times re-writing them entirely.