At last - the NYT review of that "Jewel of Medina" book

This weekend, Lorraine Adams reviews Sherry Jones's Jewel of Medina, the highly controversial novelization of the story of Muhammed's fourth wife, for the New York Times

She first goes over the ground already covered in this blog, as well as in a host of newspapers and other internet sites -- the warning issued by a pre-publication reader that the book could incite Muslim outrage -- the decision by the original publisher to halt publication -- the attempted firebombing of the London office of the publisher who took up the project -- and so on and so forth.

Then we get to the nitty gritty of her take on the book itself. In brief, Jones's research gets a B plus, while her writing gets a C minus.

Read it for yourself. Adams did a good job -- apparently a better job than the novel merits.

Heartwarming -- or just plain weird?

Nine-year-old Alec Greven hand-wrote a book, called it How to Talk to Girls, and sold it at a school fair for $3. Apparently it went like hot cakes, as it was a dating guide for kids, replete with hints about how to talk with the opposite sex. HarperCollins picked it up and turned it into a hardback, and the movie rights were sold to Fox, all within a week.

As GalleyCat comments, it is surely worth a disbelieving shake of the head that "during these topsy-turvy days for publishing, a 9-year-old kid struck gold."

History of the British Merchant Navy

Despite hard times, The History Press is bravely forging ahead with a multi-volume history of the British Merchant Navy, penned by eminent maritime writer Richard Woodman.

The first volume is Neptune’s Trident: Spices and Slaves: 1500-1807. It is divided into three sections – “The Trade of the World,” which covers English shipping from 1500 to 1707; “The Danger of a Seafaring Life,” which describes British shipping in the Atlantic from 1550 to 1807”; and “The Grandest Society of Merchants in the Universe,” spanning British shipping in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, from 1707 to 1793.

A great Christmas present for that Man in your Life.

Black October and British book sales

Major British bookstore chain Waterstone's reports that sales are down and getting worse -- and it can't all be blamed on the lack of a Harry Potter miracle.

The bookseller showed an operating loss of 9.3 million pounds for the period, 4.5 percent more than last year's loss of 8.9 million pounds, reflecting "a very challenging book market, which contracted by over 5 percent in the period, impacted particularly by poor performance in the non-fiction category."

Particularly worrying is the company's warning that "the book market has seen a marked deterioration in the five-week period to 29 November." Revenue from sales at high street booksellers (Waterstone's, as well as WH Smith and others) fell 12.7 percent in the single week ending December 6--almost five points worse than the overall decline in sales tracked by Nielsen BookScan.

The Telegraph newspaper noted in a story published yesterday (but no longer available on the internet) that "high street book sales are plummeting as discounting, the growth of internet operators such as Amazon and dwindling consumer spending hits retailers." The basic trouble, however, is the economic downturn.

Everyone in the book trade is crossing their fingers for a big boost in pre-Christmas sales.

Sea Quotations and Elevated Reading

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd reckons bookstores are the "temple of the soul," according to a story by John Elder in The Age.

And, sure enough, the eminent politician was surprised by a reporter from The Sunday Age while ferreting around in Readings bookshop in a Melbourne suburb, Carlton, where Mr Rudd bought a copy of Nuns Having Fun, although he tried to pass off his purchase as a "bit of Christmas shopping." Having delivered that prevarication, he headed for the new releases table at the front of the store, and became elaborately immersed in Edward Duyker's A Dictionary of Sea Quotations in an effort to avoid this unseemly interruption by the press.

The public foiled him, however, by demanding that he pose for photos with them, occasionally with babies in tow. The babies, he liked, but the inspection of his choice of reading matter was evidently unsettling. By the time he got to the cashier, Mr Rudd was also carrying Tom Holland's Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom and Simon Schama's The American Future: A History.

But how refreshing -- and what a wonderfully prime ministerial example for buying books for Christmas presents. Hopefully, Mr. Rudd is setting an international trend.

Tribune Company Files for Bankruptcy

The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the publisher of newspapers like The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune struggled to cope with rising debt and falling ad revenue.

A huge plus for the Auckland Writers and Readers Festival

The famous Auckland Writers and Readers Festival will truly glitter on its tenth birthday next May. While the program is always exciting, next year the winners of the 23rd Commonwealth Writer's Prize will be announced in a scintillating ceremony.

All eight regional winners -- who will be announced in March 2009 -- will take part in the activities, and visit schools and literary bodies while they are in the country. This Festival is always a big boost for the cultural scene in Auckland, with famous writers, critics, and journalists flitting here and there in the crowd. Next year, obviously, be bigger, brighter, and better than ever, with visitors arriving from all over the world.

While the first deadline for entry has passed, publishers are urged to make late entries. They can do this as long as they notify the relevant chair, and get the books in by December 31, 2008.

Woes in the media world continue

At Viacom and NBC Universal more than a thousand jobs are being shed before Christmas, according to the New York Times.

Sumner M. Redstone has announced that Viacom would shave seven percent of its workforce, and freeze salaries for top managers, in an effort to save about $200 million next year. NBC Universal, likewise, is going to lay off five hundred staff, including some veteran correspondents.

At Universal Studios, a memo from chairman Marc Shmuger announces that staff numbers will be cut by three percent, and the studios will be "scaling back on travel, overtime, consultants, premiers, conferences, newspaper marketing and general administrative costs."

"This kind of message is never easy," said Jeffrey A. Zucker, CEO of Universal (which is owned by the General Electric Company). Executives at the Walt Disney Company, the News Corporation and CBS are preparing themselves to issue that "kind of message," too, as sales and advertising revenue dry up.

Employees who have lost their jobs at Viacom, including those at Paramount Studios, will be paid until December 31, and then get some kind of severance payment. "Saying goodbye to friends and colleagues is always difficult," say the president, Philippe P. Dauman, and Thomas E. Dooley, the chief financial officer. It must be hard for them to feel their pain, though -- their salaries might be frozen, but they will still receive an end-of-year bonus for navigating the firm in rocky financial waters. Last year, Mr. Dauman's bonus was $7 million, and apparently the target this this year's sterling work is to be $9.5 million. Last year, Mr. Dooley's bonus was $5.6 million, and this year it is slated to be $7.6 million.

WORD OF THE YEAR

Actually, it should be PHRASE of the year. I learn to my amusement that Webster's New World College Dictionary runs an annual "word of the year" competition.

And the shortlist for the 2008 accolade has just been announced:

Overshare

Leisure sickness

Cyberchondriac

Selective ignorance

Youthanasia

You can vote for the winner at http://www.newworldword.com/

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

Chris Kelly, in an amusing blog on Huffington Post, headlined GET SARAH PALIN'S NEW BOOK -- FREE! breaks the news that magazine Newsmax is offering "Sarah Palin's new book" for just the cost of shipping.

"Except," as she found on clicking onto the offer, "it's an old book, it's not by Sarah Palin, you'll pay three times the cost of shipping, and you'll have to subscribe to Newsmax magazine.

Yes, it's the same old biography I blogged about myself during that long, riveting, and often mind-boggling presidential campaign, written by Kaylene Johnson and lifted out of obscurity when Sarah abruptly hit the headlines. Now, Newsmax is trying to get the same boost out of the Alaskan Belle -- but without the expense of updating the book.

As Kelly points out (did she succumb and buy the book to check?), John McCain's name doesn't make the index, though a quote from him now appears on the cover. Yes, the only revised bit of the book is the jacket. One word has been removed from the old title. See if you can find it.