The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
PBS plans to stream live coverage of the Miami Book Fair International later this month, according to The New York Times. A potpourri of events from the massive festival – brimming with more than 500 authors and likely some 200,000 attendees — will be featured in coverage available on PBS.org, local station websites and several other sites from 4 to 9 p.m. ET on Nov. 21, and from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET on Nov. 22 and 23.
Rumble, Center-Stage: Because it seems even the big screen is not enough for Suzanne Collins' mega-hit, Katniss and company will be stepping on stage next year in London. The Bookseller reports that The Hunger Games series will be adapted for the theater and put together by Broadway producer Robin de Levita.
In The Shadow Of Black Friday: In The Wall Street Journal, Jeffrey Trachtenberg explains the lay of the literary landscape as Black Friday approaches. According to publishers and retailers, the window for big sales is small but well defined.
"If you want to make a splash, you've got to have your book out before Black Friday," Sarah Bagby, owner of a bookstore in Wichita, Kan., told Trachtenberg. "With the elections over, people are ready for entertainment."
Lit And Lyrical: Novelist Michael Chabon has taken to a new medium, lured by musician Mark Ronson to pen the lyrics to more than half of the tracks on Ronson's upcoming album. Ronson told The Guardian that he approached Chabon after reading the author's Pulitzer Prize winner.
"The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was the first book that I can really say I didn't want to ever end and when it did I was in tears," Ronson said. "Since then, it's been a book I've bought for everyone I love."
The new album, Ronson's first in four years, is due out in January.
Flipping Ahead
New in print (and screen)
Actress Anjelica Huston is out with Watch Me, the follow-up to her 2013 memoir, A Story Lately Told. That Story, which ended with Huston's arrival in California, resumes in Hollywood — and stays there, examining Huston's relationship to Jack Nicholson and packing its covers with plenty of glitz and glamorous characters. NPR reviewer Meg Wolitzer calls it "an enjoyable but thin story about big Hollywood players in a golden era that's starting to feel like it took place as long ago as silent pictures."
This week in print brings a president's take on another president, a son on his father, as George H.W. Bush gets a book-length profile from George W. Bush. Grounded in anecdotes, 41: A Portrait of My Father understandably plays more as tribute than investigation. And in the considerable media tour surrounding the book's release, conversation has inevitably turned to talk of yet a third Bush — W's brother Jeb — and whether he'll run for president. In an interview with Morning Edition set to air later this week, George W. Bush dwells on the notion of political dynasties. "Jeb has to think about whether he wants to be president, just like Hillary Clinton has to think about whether she wants to be president. ... The point is that these may be the two best candidates their party has to offer."
Stephen King is publishing a new novel. Need any more be said? Well, just in case, this is what John Freeman adds in the Boston Globe: "[Revival] is a moving novel because it shows how religion's assurances are just that, hardly guarantees of outcome. On that score, there is only one we can count on, and it's that none of us know what's coming in the beyond, not even this marvelous novelist."
Musician, noted crowd-funder and general Renaissance woman Amanda Palmer has picked up the pen to publish a book of her own, The Art of Asking, a memoir born from her popular TED talk of the same name.
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