There are two phases that most kids go through at some point in their young lives. The first phase begins when they decide reading is boring. The second begins when they decide that “bathroom humor” (as my mother always diplomatically called it) is an endless source of hilarity. So what do you do when these two phases happen simultaneously?  Read More →

Freckleface Strawberry on Stage: Julianne Moore 's popular picture book, Freckleface Strawberry , is set to be turned into a family-friendly musical . The show will officially open in October. In the Jailhouse Now: Former prison librarian Avi Steinberg offers his humble (and eclectic) recommended reading list for Big House-bound celebrity Lindsay Lohan. [ The Daily Beast ] A Cleary Classic: Ramona and Beezus , the big screen adaptation of Beverly... 

Northern Ontario may not be the first place Omni readers think of when it comes to planning summer vacations, but it’s the only destination for me. This summer, my family will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our cabin in the woods, and part of what makes this place so special is its bookshelves. There are covers and spines throughout the cabin that I have vacationed with for years: Nabokov and Stephen King share a shelf; Sophie’s Choice... 

Almost a year ago, Publisher's Weekly wrote about an ambitious author selling his book one copy at a time.  Read More →

We've devoted a lot of attention here, from time to time , to book covers. I love hearing the story behind a cover's creation, but few are more charmingly quixotic than the letter sent to Ian Fleming's editor, Michael Howard, by the jacket illustrator Richard Chopping, explaining why finding an actual toad to model for his cover for the original edition of You Only Live Twice was proving a bit more of a challenge than expected. Harper's... 

 Read More →

The lively new blog that The Paris Review has launched under new boss Lorin Stein has featured this week, back-to-back but without remark on their connection, two tales of meeting your literary idols, one encouraging and one cautionary. First, there's PR editor Caitlin Roper, who considers Katherine Dunn's Geek Love “the most singular, evocative, twisted, hilarious book I have ever read,” and who in good editorial practice started... 

Earlier today, with the six finalists gathered here in Seattle, we were happy to announce the winners of the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award . Congratulations to Patricia McArdle and Amy Ackley ! Amazon customers voted for Patricia's novel, Farishta , as the General Fiction winner and Amy's Sign Language as the Young Adult Fiction winner. Expert reviewer Julie Barer called Farishta “a moving and fascinating story of one woman’s... 

If you're in the book business, your inbox was filled up all last week with reports from this year's BookExpo America (posted by many of the same people you were elbowing past in the crowded aisles). If you want to catch up on what the talk was apparently about, you can check out show summaries and dispatches from Jacket Copy , Publishers Weekly , and the Associated Press . But everyone's show is different, and mine was largely spent... 

Today was the conference day of BookExpo, but I didn't make it close to the Javits Center, thanks to visits with Oliver Sacks and Stieg Larsson's editors, which you'll be able to see the fruits of when I get back home to my editing software. And my first visit to the offices of my long-time publishing crush, Farrar Straus Giroux. No, not their old Dickensian cold-water offices, as described…  Read More →

Earlier this morning, we announced the six finalists vying for the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award . A few weeks ago, I mentioned that this year's contest has an exciting new element: a Young Adult Fiction prize, in addition to the General Fiction prize. Editors at Penguin have selected the six finalists–three in General Fiction, three in Young Adult Fiction–and now the fun part starts. …  Read More →

Hello Omnivores: just a short note to let you know that many of us here will be in New York all week at BookExpo America, the big annual book convention, and related events. That means some of our regular features, like Old Media Monday and Omni Daily News, will be on hiatus this week. But it also means that, whenever we can squeeze it in, we'll be making a few blog posts, and Twitter updates , from NYC during the week. And we're doing a... 

In the bustling comments section for my last post, on Tyler Cowen, Kathy threw out a question that seemed like it deserved its own separate forum: Here's a question I've been asking people and they were very interested in the answer – which I do not have. We (liberal and conservative relatives) were discussing the splits in the country and I was saying that we'd do better if we learned the basics of the other side's arguments... 

I've always been fascinated by “speed readers.” I'm not sure there were any magazine ads when I was growing up that I was more drawn to than those ones for Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics. (Am I right? Did Bill Cosby endorse them?) I can't find an image of the ads on the web, but I can still see them in my mind: white pages with short paragraphs of large type with circles and underlines and ovals and the promise that, with... 

Earlier this week, we announced the names of 100 semifinalists for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award –50 in General Fiction , and 50 in Young Adult Fiction . (The Young Adult award is new to this year's contest, but has generated quite a few tantalizing entries .) Several of our favorite authors are expert reviewers this year, including Tana French , whose highly anticipated Faithful Place is already one of my must-reads for the...