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Think of 30 Rock, first season, third episode. Jack the-Great-and-Powerful Donaghy is setting up Liz No-I-Don't-Need-Any-of-Your-Help-Especially-Not-with-Dating-which-I-Don't-Have-Time-for-because-I'm-All-About-My-Career-Thanks-a-Lot Lemon with his friend from out of town. Jack catches her in the hall and tells her the name of the fancy restaurant where he's set up the blind date. A pause. He takes in her typically casual attire [i.e. unglamorous sweatshirt and jeans]. "What are you going to wear?" he asks (as though he doesn't know). Exasperated with his overbearing behavior, Liz insists "I don't have time to change." Jack shakes his head gravely, "That won't do." He hands her cash and tells her to go to a women's clothing store during her lunch break. Liz grudgingly accepts and turns up looking elegant for a change. More »
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Does the world really need a book penned by Kate Middleton's sister? If it was a guide to turning one's ass into an international sensation through the (alleged) use of Spanx, we could see it, but there's already a book about butts and Pippa Middleton wasn't consulted. More »
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If you spent your childhood reading about the adventures of a spunky girl from America's past and longing for an overpriced doll, there's a good chance you're familiar with Valerie Tripp's work. The prolific American Girl writer penned all of the books in the Molly, Felicity, Josefina, and Kitt series, and half of the Samantha books. Now she's working with two D.C-area moms on a series that they hope boys will find just as engaging. More »
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Director Spike Jonze and accessory designer Olympia Le Tan teamed up to make this creepy-romantic, Halloween-appropriate short. Mourir Auprès de Toi ("To Die By Your Side") is set in a bookstore — actually, the famous English-language Paris booksellers Shakespeare & Company, to be precise — where the covers come to life after dark. It stars a skeleton from the front of Macbeth (King Duncan, ahoy) and a lady from the cover of Dracula (Mina?). Moby Dick of Moby-Dick fame also makes an appearance at a climactic juncture. More »
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Tyra Banks says it took five years to write her New York Times best-selling sci-fi Young Adult novel, Modelland. Characters like Tookie de la Creme don't name themselves, ladies! (Seriously though: her poor, ignored ghost-writer.) Ty-Ty got the idea while in the back of a car, wrote it down on a piece of paper, and promptly lost the piece of paper until she cleaned out her purse. Once she got serious, it sounds like she really got into the research. "I love Roald Dahl. On my nightstand right now is James and the Giant Peach, which I'm reading for the second time. I just finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I read three Twilights." Now we're picturing Tyra Banks in bed with her banker boyfriend, furiously reading all the YA she missed out on as a kid. She worked on the book while shooting Top Model and initially produced a draft of over 1000 pages. She says the stress made her hair fall out. [WSJ] More »
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Last year, four out of the National Book Foundations prestigious "5 under 35" were women. And this year, ladies lead the field again. More »
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A typo can change everything: More »
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When J.D. Salinger scribbled a note to his maid in 1989, he had no way of knowing that some day it would be worth about $1,600 a word. A Nevada-based company is selling the nearly-illegible note on eBay for $50,000. It reads: More »
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Now that we've gotten past criticizing President Obama for simply taking a vacation, the nation has moved on to critiquing his summer reading choices. Perhaps there's just nothing going on this month (oh, sorry Kim Kardashian's wedding), or maybe we've become accustomed to nitpicking everything the President does. For whatever reason, several pundits have declared that Obama's book list contains too much fiction, and now there's a new complaint: Too few female authors. More »
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The first chapter of Tyra Banks' much-anticipated writing debut has hit the net, and, well, it's pretty much exactly as-advertised. Banks had hyped the Young Adult series as a mix of the life of a model and the Harry Potter series, and from what we can garner from the sample selection at Barnes & Noble, her description sounds about right. In fact, the text reads so much like Tyra Banks speaks, it's almost impossible not to her her voice as you read along. More »
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Famed music producer Jimmy Iovine has partnered with famed photographer Raphael Mazzucco to create a new coffee table book called Culo. And what will this new venture by the chairman of the Interscope-Geffen-A&M music label and a world renowned photographer be about? Exactly what it says: butts. More »
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A rare correspondence from Virginia Woolf to her nephew Julian has surfaced, and in it, Woolf takes a critical eye to his poetry: "My dear Julian. I like the poem very much. It still wants CURRENCY I think. When did you write it?" The letter most likely dates back to 1929. [The Paris Review] More »
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It is unknown whether it was Mark Twain's actual intention for little girls to read this humorous short story published in 1867, and with selections like "You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you are indebted for your food," we think it's safe to say this work wasn't ever meant to be published as a children's book. That hasn't stopped author/illustrator Vladimir Radunsky from turning his piece into a fully illustrated work. In fact, the artist has taken on many other works from different authors and provided illustrations for them as well. More »
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When award-winning novelist and author Adam Mansbach was dealing with his daughter's countless sleepless nights, he took to writing down his feelings on the fairly-frustrating matter. What resulted was Go The Fuck To Sleep, a children's book parody of that gut-feeling that a lot of us feel as we read our children stories at bedtime. And now we have the audio book, read by Samuel L. Jackson. It is, in a word, perfect, and you can download the whole thing for free. More »
]]> http://jezebel.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5812109&view=rss&microfeed=true Rielle Hunter, whom you'll remember from her creepy GQ photo shoot and that time she had John Edwards's baby, is reportedly shopping a book about her experiences. She will apparently discuss her relationship with Edwards but not the resultant coverup. No word on whether she will provide more of her patented "allow a man to be a man" dating advice. More »
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It's not that he likes vampires — he "doesn't know any, personally," — but he does try to keep up with the "silly stuff" that the grandkids are into. Famous Mormons unite! More »
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America's collective jubilation over the death of the leader of al Qaeda has evolved into fascination with the men (and dog) who successfully pulled off one of the Jason Bourne-iest operations in recent memory. Of course, now everyone wants to know what it would be like to have sex with them*. More »
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Many of the best-loved works of western literature feature catastrophically unhappy marriages — and, more specifically, women who marry — or almost marry — the wrong man. Why do we love reading about badly-married ladies? More »
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In a recent New Yorker article about actress Anna Faris, Tad Friend cites a test for gender bias in movies. The test, outlined by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in a 1985 Dykes to Watch Out For comic strip (Bechdel credits her friend Liz Wallace for the original idea), asks three simple questions: More »
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It's always a big deal when Harper Lee comes out of seclusion to make a statement. More »
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! Here the legendary scribe sharing his unique dancing with the world. More »
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An extremely addictive new Internet toy allows you to track the frequency of specific words in books going back all the way to 1500. We decided to check out how words like "depression," "ho," and "vagina" fared through the ages. More »
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Wonderful website The Rumpus needed a good, brand-new book by a woman writer for its book club, but couldn't find one. So it commissioned a book of essays by some of its women contributors, including Michelle Tea and Michelle Orange. More »
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Mine, Citrus County by John Brandon, did not make the cut :( But the annual release of the year's "100 Notable Books" list remains a beloved Thanksgivingtime tradition. Which have you loved, and which should be avoided? [New York Times] More »
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The author, artist, and last wife of Norman Mailer died of gastrointestinal cancer. Her memoir, published this year, detailed her affair with Bill Clinton and described how Mailer returned her first love poems marked up with corrections in red pencil. More »
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Penguin Press has bought Sapphire's sequel to Push and plans to release the novel next summer. The Kid focuses on Precious' son "as he approaches manhood - alone, brutalized and with the soul of an artist." More »
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Much of the past decade's popular young adult literature geared towards teen girls reads like a PG-13 version of Sex and the City. But Nini Simone's characters deal with crack-addicted mothers, runaway siblings, and teen pregnancy. More »
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Known "perfect stylist" Jane Austen might not have been so perfect after all, says an Oxford prof who studied the novelist's writings and found "blots, crossing outs and 'a powerful counter-grammatical way of writing.'" Also, a dude heavily edited her. More »
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Today New Statesman published "Last Letter," a previously unseen Ted Hughes poem about the three days before Sylvia Plath's suicide. Drafts of the poem, which begins, "What happened that night? Your final night," were found in the British Library's archive. More »
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Thanks to free e-book downloads, a new fiction genre is showing up on Kindle best-seller lists: erotic fiction aimed at men. Since Amazon is essentially distributing free literary pornography, it seems only a matter of time before conservative groups protest. More »
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Five letters in which Oscar Wilde "propositions" magazine editor Alsager Vian will be auctioned later this month in London. Alan Judd from Bamfords auction house says the letters, "help to fill in pieces of Oscar Wilde's tempestuous jigsaw." More »
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A kerfuffle over Jonathan Franzen's new book has exposed a controversy in the literary world: to hear some writers tell it, women may get the money, but men get all the praise. Except when men get both. More »
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A recent essay in the Times points out that "rules for drinking are not so different from rules for writing." If that's true, then clearly famous literary stars need their own drinking games. A few suggestions, after the jump. More »
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"Nervously, I approach the novelist, carrying the best box of chocolates I could find," writes Sharon Churcher. "I start to apologise that I hadn't brought more but a beaming Nelle, as her friends and family call her, extends her hand..." More »
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On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's masterpiece of children's literature, it appears some critics are itching to provide a corrective to all the millions-sold adulation. What's the matter with liking To Kill A Mockingbird? Well. More »
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Today, the Guardian presents us with a list of "the most troubled males in fiction." Are we the only ones who think Patrick Bateman is kind of a glaring omission? [Guardian] More »
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Because he's holding a book, I mean. The existence of this blog, Hot Guys Reading Books, suggests that many women might indeed want to bump on the basis of books alone. More »
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Herewith, Lapham's Quarterly brings us a handy-dandy cheat-sheet the favored drugs and booze for literary icons, all in the pursuit of greatness. Carson McCullers' tipple of choice — hot tea and sherry — was especially ladylike. [Lapham's Quarterly] More »
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Robin Black's debut story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This features older women as heroines, which she points out is unfortunately unusual. Other good bets for those seeking older heroines: Alice Munro and Amy Bloom. [TAP] More »
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While in St. Croix, Paul Krugman wears the same plaid shirt for days. Another lesson from the this week's The New Yorker profile of the Times op-ed columnist: Krugman has a symbiotic relationship with his (far-lesser-known) wife, Robin Wells. More »
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