Book Buzz

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S " PROFESSOR BINGO PRESENTS DAY " I'M EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THIS TUESDAY'S "PROFESSOR BINGO PRESENTS DAY " CHILDREN/YOUNG ADULT BOOK CHOICE IS..... VAMPIRE CRUSH BY A. M. ROBINSON ABOUT THE BOOK: I swear, my life was always totally normal. Normal house, normal family, normal school. My looks are average, I don't have any superpowers, no one's showing up to tell me I'm a princessyou get the picture. But when my junior year started, something not normal happened. There were new kids at school . . . new kids with a wardrobe straight ! out of a 19th-century romance novel, and an inexplicable desire to stay at school until sundown. And on top of that, James Hallowell showed up. James, who stole my sandwiches in fourth grade and teased me mercilessly through middle school. James, who now seems to have the power to make my heart race any time he comes near. But something weird is going on. Because James r...

Another Monday, Another Mailbox!! This is a feature where we all share with each other the yummy books that showed up at our doors! WARNING: Mailbox Mondays can lead to extreme envy and GINORMOUS wishlists!! Mailbox Monday is hosted by Marcia at The Printed Page , but for the month of December MM is on tour and hosted by Rose City Reader . Yours truly will be the MM host for April! Hey all! I hope you are all doing fabulously! I only have one addition to my TBR mountain to report, but it's a good one! I won a copy of Stephanie Dray's Lily of the Nile from my girl Liz at Historically Obsessed and I received it this weekend and it was sweetly signed by the author! Thanks Liz and Stephanie, I'm really looking forward to reading it! Lily of the Nile by Stephanie Dray Publication Date: January 4, 2011 SYNOPSIS With her parents dead, the daughter of Cleopatra and Mark Antony is left atthe mercy of her Roman captors. Heir to one empire and prisoner of another,Pri...

Illustration for the Guardian by Neal Fox. A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. You don't allow them to have any friends, you stop them from playing sport or watching TV and you waterboard them if they get less than an A* in every subject. Brideshead Abbreviated: The Digested Read of the Twentieth Century byJohn Crace Buy it from the Guardian bookshop Search the Guardian bookshop Sophia is our first born. At three months old, I left her for days on her own to learn Poincare's conjecture while I rewrote the US constitution, and by the time she was three she could speak seven languages, play Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and had never so much as smiled. She was the ideal Chinese Tiger Mother's daughter.My second child, Lulu, was more of a handful. Even though she, ...

This week, author Ted Conover leads us on a tour of roads across the globe; Motoko Rich has notes from the field; The Times’s Richard L. Berke remembers the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host. Popout Original audio source (19bookupdate.mp3)

LATE FOR TEA AT THE DEER PALACE The Lost Dreams of My Iraqi Family BY TAMARA CHALABI ABOUT THE BOOK: In the tradition of Jung Changs Wild Swans and Bhutto Benazirs Reconciliation comes Tamara Chalabis unique memoir of returning to her familys homeland, Iraq. In this epic story of one daughters journey through the annals of her familys tumultuous history, Chalabis powerful voice and piercing vision illuminate her country and its people as never before. For Tamara Chalabi, Iraq is more than a country of war and controversy; it is a place of poignant memory. For much of the twentieth century, the Chalabis were among the most influential families in Iraq. In the 1920s they were at the forefront of their country's awakening to modernity, and they played an integral part in the establishment of its monarchy. As courtiers, politicians, businessmen, rebels, merchants, and scholars, the Chalabis enjoyed vast privilege until the end of the 1950s, when they were forced to flee to t...

Visitors to the 2007 Cairo book fair. Photograph: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images Literature has been caught up in the protests that have now entered their seventh day in Egypt. The annual Cairo book fair, due to have been held this week, has been abandoned, with many foreign exhibitors left stranded after failing to secure flights to take them out of the country.The fair the largest and oldest in the Arab world, usually attracting two million visitors and a host of authors was due to be opened on Saturday 28 January by President Hosni Mubarak, who has hitherto raised the curtain each year. But with protesters demonstrating on the streets against his rule, and curfews imposed across the city, the event was summarily abandoned. The guest of honour, China, withdrew its delegation on the eve of the scheduled opening.Salwa Gaspard, director of small independent publisher Saqi Books which has offices in both London and Beirut, said: "There was no official announcement by fair...

Have you ever been inside a money booth? People rent them for parties and events. If not, let me describe it for you: Youre in a clear glass booth and money is swirling in a breeze all around you. Bills are brushing your cheeks, your hair. You want to get as much money as you can in the thirty seconds youve been given, so you grab for the fattest clumps. But as you reach for them, they disperse. Twenty seconds left. You keep grabbing after new clumps and clusters, trying to make up for lost time. You lunge for a fat bundle with both hands but it flutters away. Ten seconds. You grab again. Seven, six, five. All too quickly your time runs out, leaving you empty-handed. How can you beat the money booth? Go after individual bills. Methodically, systematically. One at a time. Youll feel a stack amass in your hands, instead of ending up with a fistful of nothing. Strangely enough, the same thing happens with writing. Instead of painting a picture with individual details, we try to go for a...

Haruki Murakami in Tokyo. Photograph: Sutton-Hibbert / Rex Features Great news for Haruki Murakami fans: the long-awaited English translation of 1Q84, the writer's epic novel in three volumes that has proved a huge hit in his native Japan, will be published in English in October. All three sections are to appear together in a single 1,000-page volume, translated by Harvard professor Jay Rubin.The news came in an exuberant Tweet from Knopf US publicity director Paul Bogaards. "Haruki Murakami's long-awaited magnum opus, 1Q84, out from Knopf 10/25," he told the world. "In one volume. Booyah! Midnight store openings for this one?"Harry Potter-style late-night bookshop openings may be pushing it, but such is the passion of Murakami's loyal readers that publication will certainly be an event. The appearance of the first volume of 1Q84 in Japan in 2008 was met with near-hysteria thanks to the five-year hiatus since the arrival of Murakami's previou...

A guest post by Larry Brooks of Storyfix.com One of the Oscar nominated films this year is The Fighter, conceived by and starring Mark Wahlberg. See it even if youre not into boxing it is a triumph of writing and acting based on a true story known by few outside of the boxing world. You probably know a thing or two about Wahlberg, that he used to sling his pants just above his butt crack as a lil white boy rapper named Marky Mark, and that he went on to become a bonafide Movie Star and become richer than God as the producer of cable hits like Entourage, which is loosely based on his acting career. Heres what you may not know about Mark Wahlberg. It took him five years to get The Fighter made, all of them at the height of his career. It was his baby, and in the face of continued rejection he continued to prepare for the day when someone said yes. And when I say prepare, Im not talking about taking meetings. Im talking about blood and sweat literally. There are two lessons here for...

Here's some advice to reporters that may not work too well in the digital age: "Take well-ground Indian ink as much as suffices and a camel hairbrush proportionate to the intersperse of your lines. In an auspicious hour, read your final draft and consider faithfully every paragraph, sentence and word, blacking out where requisite. Let it lie by to drain as long as possible. At the end of that time, re-read and you should find that it will bear a second shortening. Finally, read it aloud alone and at leisure. May be a shade more brushwork will then indicate or impose itself. If not, praise Allah, and let it go and when thou hast done, repent not."The "tutor" was Rudyard Kipling , and the quote is taken from a feature in today's issue of the Indian newspaper, The Pioneer , to mark the 75th anniversary of the great man's death.In his early 20s, Kipling was an assistant editor at The Pioneer, and later worked as a (leisurely) correspondent for the paper...

DIRECTIVE 51 BY JOHN BARNES ABOUT THE BOOK: The first book in a new post-apocalyptic trilogy from "a master of the genre" Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse and radical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatred for the "Big System" and their desire to take it down. Now, seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the world are in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy modern civilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top government personnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program...Directive 51. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: John Barnes is the award-winning author of Orbital Resonance, A Million Open Doors, Mother of Storms, Earth Made of Glass, The Merchants of Souls, Candle, and many other novels. With Apollo 11 as...

To Serve a King by Donna Russo Morin Publication Date: January 25, 2011 Kensington Publishing 384p SYNOPSIS From her earliest days, Genevieve Gravois has known one fact above all: Francis I, king of France, is her enemy. Raised by her embittered aunt after her parents' deaths, Genevieve has been schooled in things no woman should know: how to decipher codes, how to use a dagger and a bow, and how to kill. For Henry VIII has a destiny in mind for the young girl--as his most powerful and dangerous spy. When the time is ripe, Genevieve enters the magnificent world of the French court. With grace to match her ambition, she becomes maid of honor to Anne de Pisseleau, King Francis's mistress. Yet neither the court--which teems with artistry and enlightenment as well as intrigue--nor Francis himself are at all what Genevieve expected. And with her mission, her life, and the fate of two kingdoms at stake, she will be forced to make deadly decisions about where her heart and...

How did one of the greatest chess players of all time end up a paranoid, hate-filled old man? By Laura Miller Ulrich Kohls/Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) Bobby Fischer The life of Bobby Fischer was a compendium of secrets and puzzles from the very beginning. Who was the biological father of the 11th World Chess Champion, possibly the greatest player of all time, and certainly among the top five? Why did he retire from the game after winning his historic match with Boris Spassky in 1972 and refrain from playing publicly for 20 years? What was he doing during those two decades? Why did he espouse a venomous anti-Semitism despite being Jewish himself as well as close to and reliant upon many Jewish friends? Why did those friends put up with him and why, over and over again, did they run to his aid, when his behavior toward them was often contemptuous? And, above all, was he insane and, if so, did his genius have some connection to his madness? Fran...

This week, novelist Cathleen Schine tells us about "The Three Weissmanns of Westport"; Motoko Rich has notes from the field; Andrew Young, former aide to John Edwards, discusses his new memoir, "The Politician"; and Jennifer Schuessler has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host. Popout Original audio source (12bookupdate.mp3)

And the awesome releases just keep coming!! Take a peek at what you can look forward to in February! <A HREF="http://ws.amazon.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&MarketPlace=US&ID=V20070822%2FUS%2Fpasstothepast-20%2F8003%2Fd803d66f-937b-4477-9b8e-8b062198a924&Operation=NoScript">Amazon.com Widgets</A> HISTORICAL FICTION Pale Rose of England by Sandra Worth (2.1.11) The Tudor Secret (Elizabeth I Spymaster Chronicles) by C.W. Gortner (2.1.11) The Irish Princess by Karen Harper (2.1.11) Heresy (Paperback) by S.J. Parris (2.1.11) The Creation of Eve (Paperback) by Lynn Cullen (2.1.11) The Postmistress (Paperback) by Sarah Blake (2.1.11) The Matchmaker of Kenmare by Frank Delaney (2.8.11) Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran (2.15.11) The Raven Queen by Jules Watson (2.22.11) HISTORY / NON-FICTION From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847-1929 by Julia ...

The most exciting thing that happened this week is that my husband redeemed his frequent flier miles to buy tickets for us to go to Hawaii this summer. So far we know that we are going to spend a day or two on Oahu, and that we'll spend the rest of our time on one of the other islands. We've never been to Hawaii before, so we need to do a little research to try to figure out which of the other islands is the one we don't want to miss seeing. Any suggestions for which island to travel to? Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, my husband and I had originally planned to go to Paris this month, but once again our plans fell through. (We had also planned to go a couple of summers ago.) Both of the trips to Paris would have been business trips for my husband and both fell through for different reasons (the first because of the economy, the second because of scheduling conflicts). But hey, I can't be that disappointed because we're planning our trip to Hawaii now, and how...

WELCOME TO BOOKIN' WITH BINGO'S " BRUNCH WITH BINGO DAY " I AM EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE THIS SUNDAY'S "BRUNCH WITH BINGO DAY" FOOD BOOK CHOICE IS..... PAULA DEEN: IT AIN'T ALL ABOUT THE COOKIN' BY PAULA DEEN WITH SHERRY SUIB COHEN ABOUT THE BOOK: You may think you know the butter-loving, finger-licking, joke-cracking, queen of melt-in-your-mouth Southern cuisine. You may have even heard some version of her Cinderella story (a single mom with two teenage sons started a brown-bag lunch business with $200 and wound up with a thriving restaurant business, a fairy-tale second marriage, and wildly popular television shows), but you have never heard the intimate details of her often bumpy road to fame and fortune. Courageously honest, downright inspiring, and just a little bit saucy, Paula shares the highs and the lows of her life in her inimitable charming and irreverent style. She talks about her childhood, the difficulty of her first marriage...