Breaking news on authors, publishers, and book-related topics

No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency coming to HBO

Mar 12 2008: HBO recently completed a two-hour pilot based on the No. 1 Ladies Detective series; a further 13 shows will be filmed this summer on location in Botswana. Jill Scott plays Precious Ramotswe. Other cast members include Anika Noni Rose as Ramotswe's quirky secretary and ...

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Oprah likes it, so it must be good. Right?

Mar 11 2008: The Guardian UK comments in less than glowing terms on Oprah Winfrey's judgment in touting her latest book club pick, The New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, and suggests that "enlightenment in the U.S. has always come at a price." "Like any self-respecting guru, Tolle is ...

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Towards a greener future for publishing

Mar 10 2008: Publishers Weekly reports on the just-released report, Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry, which was coordinated by the Book Industry Study Group and the Green Press Initiative in an effort to establish benchmarks relating ...

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National Book Critics Circle Award winners

Mar 07 2008: The winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards, presented last night in New York City, are:

• Fiction: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Nonfiction: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from ...

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Rowling goes to court

Mar 05 2008: Library Journal reports that J.K. Rowling will be in court March 13 in an attempt to block the publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, written by librarian Steve Vander Ark. The book is based on Vander Ark's Harry Potter Lexicon website which, apparently, Rowling has ...

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Another fake memoir

Mar 04 2008: The New York Times reports that Margaret B. Jones, author of Love and Consequences, a memoir of growing up half-white, half-Native American in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child and joining the gang world, is not Margaret Jones but Margaret Seltzer - who grew ...

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Homeless men find shelter in a book club

Mar 04 2008: The Christian Science Monitor reports that at a time when book-reading is declining (1 in 4 people polled admitted to having read no books in 2006) and is especially low among poorer people, many of the homeless men at 2100 Lakeside Men's Shelter in Cleveland are ...

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Writer Admits Holocaust Book Is Not True

Mar 03 2008: Misha Defonseca, author of the bestselling Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years, published in 1997, has admitted that her book "was an elaborate fantasy she kept repeating, even as the book was translated into 18 languages and made into a feature film in France....

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