Category: Books

Publishers Putting Out Too Many Books
NEW YORK – The publishing industry continues to put out more books than the public is prepared to buy, according to a report issued Monday by the Book Industry Study Group.
The number of books sold dropped by nearly 44 million between 2003 and 2004, even as the annual number of books published approaches 175,000.
“People are reading less, so what you’re seeing is the same phenomenon that has hit magazines and newspapers, a massive shift toward home video, DVD, internet and cable,” said Albert N. Greco, an industry consultant and a professor of business at the graduate school of Fordham University.
The Book Industry Study Group, a nonprofit research organization, reported estimated sales of 2.295 billion books in 2004, compared to an estimated 2.339 billion the previous year. Higher prices enabled net revenues to increase 2.8 percent, to $28.6 billion, but also drove many readers, especially students, to buy used books, Greco said.
The BISG anticipates a better year in 2005, thanks to the new Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” and to a surge in high school and elementary textbook sales, with many states due to order new editions.
“We see that as a temporary spike,” Greco said.
After 2005, the BISG expects a flat market for the following four years. Religious titles are an exception, with both dollar sales and the number of actual books sold expected to average more than 6 percent annual growth into 2009.
“The key isn’t so much Bibles and prayer books, it’s what we call `other’ religious books,” says Greco, citing such multimillion sellers as Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Life” and the “Left Behind” novels of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
An especially troubled area, Greco says, is college textbooks. While no hard statistics have been compiled, many believe that students are increasingly turned off by prices for new books and instead buying used editions. The BISG anticipates a steady drop in sales for new works, from 68 million in 2004 to 64.4 million in 2009.
“It’s an unbelievably sophisticated business,” Greco said of the used textbook market. “You get people visiting campuses and sending students e-mails, encouraging them to sell their books once they’re done with them. You have instructors selling their exam copies of textbooks so that students have used editions within a very short time after a new book comes out.
“Another problem is online piracy from abroad, kids downloading texts from Web sites in Asia and other places. I had one student come in and show me the book he was using for my class. It looked exactly like the textbook I assigned, except the illustrations were in black and white.”

Terry Fox book a profile in courage
It’s a Canadian uniform as sacred as any battle-scarred Canadiens or Maple Leafs jersey: Terry Fox’s familiar white T-shirt and grey running shorts.
In his new book Terry, author Douglas Coupland tells the story of Fox’s mom Betty taking her son’s brittle and aged shorts and shirt out of storage so they could be photographed.
In doing so, some of the red lettering on the T-shirt flaked off and landed on her carpet.
Anyone else would have been aghast. Not Betty Fox.
“It’s 25 years later and that kid is still messing up my living room,” she cracked.
The impact of Terry Fox’s brief life continues to be felt, in more positive if less humorous ways. His Marathon of Hope remains a signal event in Canadian history which created a new kind of hero.
He didn’t score a big goal, shoot down a World World I flying ace or pirouette behind the Queen’s back. He merely captured the imagination of an entire nation and mobilized millions in the war against cancer.
His goal was to raise $24 million — a dollar for each of Canada’s citizens at the time — for cancer research. Fundraising through all the years since has reached over $360 million as millions take to the streets each spring to keep the Marathon of Hope rolling.
Coupland, best known for his 1991 work Generation X and, like Fox, a child of the Left Coast, profiles the best of Canada’s Boomers in this lovingly assembled album. He points out that cross-country fundraising expeditions today go largely unnoticed and unacclaimed. But the scope and scale of Fox’s achievement remains breathtaking, cash tallies and charisma aside.
It began with two friends and a borrowed van — no cellphones, no fax machines, no media strategy. Just a map and a long red line.
Those of us who have run marathons know the months of training, and the period of recovery, that go into the supreme effort of running 26 miles – once. In today’s extreme-sports-mad world, supermarathoners may run 400 miles or more.
Fox ran the equivalent of a marathon a day – for 143 days — with one leg! All the while meeting thousands of us, delivering speeches and giving hundreds of media interviews.
His familiar hopping gait, using a fairly primitive prosthetic limb, proved slow torture for his body.
“Nobody — nobody in recorded history — had ever run this many consecutive marathons, so there were no examples to learn from,” Coupland writes.
“Terry had shin splints, he lost many of his toenails, his knee was inflamed, his stump was endlessly bruised and chafed and developed many cysts.”
In an early personal diary entry of his marathon reproduced here, Fox betrays alarm — and courage — when he records an episode of dizziness on the 15th day of his journey on the road in Newfoundland.
“I was feeling pretty good and the first 2-and-3/4 miles went quite nicely then all of a sudden I was seeing 8 pictures of everything. I was dizzy and lightheaded but I made it to the van. It was a frightening experience,” he wrote. “I told myself it is to (sic) late to give up. I would keep going no matter what happened. If I died, I would die happy because I was doing what I wanted to do. How many people could or can say that?”
Deciphering Fox’s handwriting is one of the thrills of this interesting collection of ephemera. The book is also illustrated with a number of intimate family pictures – some never-before published — including some of those grainy, out-of-focus, round-cornered ones we all used to take with cheap 110 cameras back in the ’70s.
In these pictures Fox looks like anyone’s brother, mugging or moody, a kid with endless possibilities. Coupland writes about a boy who had to try harder to fulfil his dreams of making the soccer and basketball team, who had the focus and determination to make it happen.
The book is also about us, the people he met on his journey and those he continues to touch. Homely cartoon drawings from kids, and well-wishes from their parents, are sprinkled throughout.
Coupland says he was staggered by the collection of get-well cards he encountered while sifting through the Marathon of Hope archives in Vancouver. When Fox suffered his relapse, putting an end to his cross-country quest on a highway in Northern Ontario, the outpouring of support swamped his local post office and it kept coming from Canadians who very badly wanted him to know he mattered to them.
Terry resembles Coupland’s earlier Souvenir Of Canada projects, which pulled together an eclectic mix of True North images ranging from stamps and stubbies to the contents of his mom’s pantry.
Some of the choices here are equally odd — a picture of the hi-tech space station Canadarm is packaged together with Fox’s decidedly lo-tech prosthetic leg. To illustrate the recollection of Fox’s 1976 car accident, a smashed model of a Ford Cortina is offered — along with a cutline confessing Fox’s mishap didn’t look as serious.
But the fender-bender that November day in Port Coquitlam just might have changed his destiny. Fox seemed lucky to walk away from the crash with just a sore right knee, but the pain persisted and months later X-rays detected shadows that turned out to be an osteosarcoma.
It’s a form of cancer that strikes males between the ages of 10 and 25 during growth-spurt periods, and it’s possible the crash may have triggered it.
Today, a young man with Fox’s symptoms would likely get to keep his leg and live a long life, thanks to the huge strides made by cancer research over the past 25 years. Terry Fox, as a continuing symbol to inspire fundraising, can take much of the credit for that.
Coupland is donating his royalties to the Terry Fox Foundation to support cancer research.

Book gives new insight into Trudeau
Arrogant, shy, charming, rude, kind, thoughtless — all the contradictory traits of Canada’s best-known 20th century prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, show up in this collection of anecdotes by friends and colleagues, edited by Nancy Southam.
A close friend and fellow spiritual seeker, Southam has covered more that 150 reminiscences from Canada and around the world, from journalists, bodyguards, world leaders, girlfriends, canoeing buddies and prime ministerial staff.
While all have their own unique take on Trudeau, whose death in 2000 ignited a brief burst of Trudeamania once again, the consensus is that his great love in life were his children (he never got over the untimely death in an avalanche of his youngest son Michel), that he was a noted tightwad, and that as a politician he was one of a kind.
To economist John Kenneth Galbraith, he was “perhaps the most delightful person I ever met in the world of politics.”
To actor Christopher Plummer: “What Glen Gould was to Bach, Trudeau was to Canada.”
While he could be abrasive and hostile to people who disagreed with him (he once slugged a man who cursed him in B.C.), to others he was one of the kindest of men. While he could be witty and had a keenly developed sense of irony, to journalists like Jim Ferrabee, who covered him for 14 years, “he had very little sense of humor about himself or anyone else.”
Love him or hate him, Trudeau was a one-off, and Southam’s book shows him in all his vaunted complexity.

McMahon to write memoir about Johnny Carson
NEW YORK (AP) – Ed McMahon, the longtime sidekick of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, is writing a memoir, titled, of course, “Here’s Johnny!”
“The stories he shares, with Johnny’s blessing given before his death, paint a picture of the enigmatic Carson, so cool before the camera, yet genuinely shy and self-effacing,” according to a statement issued Wednesday by McMahon’s publisher, Rutledge Hill Press.
“McMahon recognized Carson’s gift early in their partnership and felt blessed to ‘hitch his wagon’ to this rising star. These never-before-told stories reveal Carson’s talent and comedic timing as well as his nervousness, admitting ‘making it look easy is a hell of a strain.”‘
McMahon’s book is scheduled to come out in October.
Carson died in January at age 79.

Fisher To Reveal ‘Star Wars’ Secrets
Actress-turned-novelist Carrie Fisher is set to expose the secrets of the original Star Wars films in a behind-the-scenes expose of the classic sci-fi trilogy. Fisher, 48, kept a diary during the late 1970s and early 1980s, when she played Princess Leia Organa opposite Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill. She explains, “My publisher has told me not to talk about it… oh what the hell. When I was in Star Wars, I kept diaries. Big books full of what went on, what I thought, what I did. I am going to write them all up as a narrative. It will be riveting. Once I get started, that is. I’m months behind already.”

Defiant doughnut survives diet trends
Doughnut, anyone? Of course you want one, maybe two if they’re hot. Fact is, the USA is a nation of glazed gastronomes who gobble 10 billion doughnuts ó that’s $2 billion worth of fried dough ó each year.
Indeed, doughnut shops served about 150 million more people in 2004 than in the previous year, according to food-industry surveys.
“It’s not a big mystery,” says Sally Levitt Steinberg, author of The Donut Book: The Whole Story in Words, Pictures & Outrageous Tales (Storey Publishing, $14.95). “Everybody likes sweet, fried cakes.” Blame the country’s obsession on Steinberg’s grandfather, Adolph Levitt, aka the Doughnut King, who invented the doughnut machine after he started frying cakes in a pot in Harlem. “Everybody has a doughnut story, about the first or the best doughnut they ever ate,” Steinberg says, explaining why she wrote the book. “You don’t find this kind of commitment to, say, lemon meringue pie.” Here, she demystifies the doughnut as she chews the fat with USA TODAY.
Q: What is the enduring appeal of doughnuts?
A: The answer is not in their taste; it’s about their shape. The circle is so universal, and the doughnut is very appealing physically and metaphorically. Of course, there are doughnuts that are not shaped in circles, and fritters are really doughnuts, but we don’t categorize them like doughnuts. The doughnut is in a class by itself; it transcends mere food appeal.
Q: Can you explain the increase in consumption at a time when many people are trying to eat healthier and decrease their fat and carb intake? Why is the doughnut impervious to diets?
A: Doughnuts represent a timeout from dietary considerations. They are not a staple; they’re a treat. And sometimes, diet or not, you just have to have a doughnut.
Q: Do doughnut machines produce better doughnuts than those made by hand?
A: No, not better, but a doughnut machine is more efficient in terms of standardization of doughnuts produced and quantity. My grandfather could not make enough by hand, so he figured out a way to mass-produce them. Still, the best-tasting doughnuts are handmade. And the hot ones are the big things now. Fried stuff, especially dough, is good hot because the fat becomes heavy (when cold).
Q: Can home bakers buy doughnut machines?
A: Yes, there is a company called Lil’ Orbits (lilorbits.com), which offers home doughnut-making equipment such as fryers and cutters that can be used with the machine that mixes the mix, cuts the dough and the hole, drops the doughnut in oil, fries it, then places it on a conveyor belt.
Q: You say in the book that doughnuts are very persnickety, needing perfect humidity and temperature for just-right rising and frying. How can home cooks ever hope to create them?
A: It’s really so hard, I don’t even do it. My kids and husband made them once, and it was a huge mess. Back in the old days on American prairies, women cooked and baked constantly and then did it so many times they got good at it. Frying doughnuts in vegetable oil is tricky (old-timers use lard) because the dough is so delicate yet it has to absorb so much.
Q: What is your favorite kind of doughnut in general?
A: I love a glazed raised (yeast) doughnut, provided it doesn’t have too much sugar in it. It’s easier to find good raised doughnuts. But if you can get a good cake doughnut, it’s an amazing and wonderful experience.
Q: There’s a lot of controversy about the origin of the doughnut’s hole. Is there a definitive answer?
A: There are many stories, and in the 1940s, a big debate erupted between two camps: Did a whaling captain stick a piece of dough on his ship’s wheel to create the hole? Or was it a Native American who shot a doughnut out of a pioneer woman’s hand? All I know is that the hole has been around for a long time, and there is evidence in paintings that round cakes with holes existed in Europe in the 17th century. In America, there has been a doughnut with a hole since the 19th century.

‘Harry Potter 6’ Cover Revealed
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – What has Harry Potter gotten himself into this time?
Judging from the cover — yes we dare — of the latest J.K. Rowling book, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” the world’s favorite boy wizard will confront something eerie and possibly glowing.
The image of the book’s cover, which Scholastic released on Tuesday, March 8, depicts Harry and Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore peering into a basin emanating a green light. It’s possible that Harry and his mentor are scrying, or trying to divine the future. Scrying is often done with a crystal ball, mirror or something reflective like liquid that shows images of the future.
“For the cover of ‘Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,’ the mood of the art is truly eerie,” says artist Mary GrandPre, who also created the artwork for the U.S. versions of the first five books in the series. “I wanted the colors to be strong and I chose upward lighting and dramatic shadows to convey a kind of surreal place and time.”
“Individually, each jacket is like a concentrated visual taste of the book inside, and collectively they form a portrait gallery of a boy growing up very much in the public eye” says Arthur Levine, Vice President, Arthur A. Levine Books, Scholastic and editor of the Harry Potter books.
“Half-Blood Prince” is the penultimate volume in the seven-book children’s series that picks up where the previous installment left off, with Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge finally acknowledging what a 16-year-old Harry and his pals have known for five years: evil wizard Lord Voldemort didn’t die after all and is wreaking havoc once again.
The book will be released on July 16, along with the simultaneous release of the deluxe edition, which includes a 32-page insert featuring near scale reproductions of GrandPre’s interior art, as well as a never-before-seen piece of full-color-art for the frontispiece. The deluxe edition, which retails for double the regular book at $60.00, will also come in a foil-stamped cardboard slipcase and will include a blind-stamped cloth case, full-color endpapers printed with the jacket art from the regular edition, luxurious foil, and a wraparound jacket featuring exclusive, suitable-for-framing art by GrandPre.
The “Harry Potter” books have been adapted for the silver screen, with the fourth book, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” heading to theaters on Nov. 18.

Da Vinci Code goes on ‘trial’ at hands of Italian art experts, clergy
ROME (AP) – Art experts and conservative clerics are holding an unusual “trial” in Leonardo da Vinci’s hometown aimed at sorting out fact from fiction in the The Da Vinci Code after many readers took the smash hit novel as gospel truth.
The event in Vinci, just outside of Florence, began Friday with an opening statement by Alessandro Vezzosi, director of a Leonardo museum. He said he will produce photographs and documents as evidence of the mistakes and historical inaccuracies contained in Dan Brown’s best-seller.
“Leonardo is misrepresented and belittled,” Vezzosi said in a telephone interview hours before the event began.
“His importance is misunderstood. He was a man full of fantasy, inventions and genius.”
The novel’s contentious allegations – namely, that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and sired a bloodline – have provoked unprecedented protest among Christian conservatives, who said Brown’s characters inaccurately malign Christianity.
The book portrays Roman Catholic leaders demonizing women for centuries and covering up the truth about the Holy Grail, which the novel said is Mary Magdalene.
Vezzosi said he will produce evidence through 120 photographs based on documents and paintings with the aim of “reassessing and disclaiming the author” of the mystical thriller, a mix of code-breaking, art history, secret societies, religion and lore.
Vezzosi said one example of the mistakes contained in the book is the statement the Mona Lisa was made in Leonardo’s image.
“There’s a very big difference between Mona Lisa’s and Leonardo’s noses, mouths, eyes and expressions,” he said, adding he will compare two portraits to prove it.
Brown in the past has not said much about the controversy surrounding the blockbuster book but he told NBC’s Today in June 2003 that while the novel’s main character, Robert Langdon, is fictional, “all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact.”
Organizers said there would be nobody speaking in the book’s defence and the “verdict” would be contained within the presentations of the speakers.
But that does not mean the book will be completely hung out to dry: hundreds of fans are expected to attend the trial.
“This initiative has received a lot of interest with people calling to confirm their attendance,” Vezzosi said.
The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 7.5 million copies worldwide and is expected to be made into a movie. Its success has inspired guided tours in Paris that take fans to sites described in the novel and it also has spawned a cottage industry in books seeking to debunk it.
More than 10 books have been written trying to discredit the historical and theological content of Brown’s novel.
Msgr. Renato Bellini, vicar of Vinci, said the book reveals nothing about religion and contains a mystifying and inaccurate portrait of the conservative Roman Catholic movement Opus Dei.
“This book depicts the movement as a mysterious centre of political and economic power that tries to hide the historical truth on Jesus and Magdalene, which is absurd,” Bellini said.
A representative of Opus Dei is participating in the mock trial in an attempt to reassess the historical truth about the movement, Bellini said.

A BOOK FROM BILLY
Warner Books set to publish in November, 2005, 700 Sundays, a tome written by Billy Crystal inspired by his hit Broadway one-man play which offers up an entertaining look at his family history.

J.K. Rowling Completes 6th Potter Novel
NEW YORK – Harry Potter readers, here’s an extra special holiday gift: J.K. Rowling announced Monday that she has completed the sixth Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”
“I know you all expected this to happen on Christmas Day, but I was sure that those of you who celebrate Christmas have better things to do on the day itself than fight your way into my study, whereas those of you who DON’T celebrate Christmas would definitely prefer not to wait until the 25th,” the British author wrote in a message posted on her Web site.
Rowling noted that while she is pregnant with her third child, she has had the time “needed to tinker with the manuscript to my satisfaction and I am as happy as I have ever been with the end result. I only hope you feel it was worth the wait when you finally read it.”
Rowling’s U.S. publisher, Scholastic Inc., said a release date would be announced Tuesday morning.
With the new Potter book almost certain to come out in 2005, fans should be spared the seemingly interminable three-year wait between Potter IV, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” and Potter V, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” which came out in the summer of 2003. Rowling did not say whether the new book’s length would top the industrial-sized 870 pages of “Order of the Phoenix.”
Rowling’s announcement is also great news for booksellers, who have endured another year of slow sales. More than 100 million copies of the fantasy series, which debuted in 1997, are in print, and “Order of the Phoenix” sold an astonishing 5 million copies within 24 hours of publication. Sales have remained phenomenal even as Rowling’s books have grown longer and darker, reflecting the boy wizard’s maturation into adolescence.
Hollywood has benefited, too; the first three Potter books have been made into hit movies. The books have also inspired countless Potter paraphernalia, including candy, cakes, capes and toys.
Rowling has said that one of her characters will not survive her sixth book, but she refused to identify that character.
Potter himself is safe, at least for now. Rowling has said her teenage hero will survive until the seventh and final book in the series, but has refused to say whether he will reach adulthood.
Only recently, the book’s completion seemed far away. In a message posted Dec. 10, Rowling said she had nothing “noteworthy to report, because I have been spending nearly all my time sitting in front of my computer writing, rewriting and taking the occasional break to bang my head off the desk in frustration or else rub my hands together in fiendish glee (I think the latter has happened once).”