Major publisher makes ancient forest vow
Wednesday 06 July 2005

Publisher Random House UK has announced that it is to become ‘ancient forest friendly’ in its book production, in a move that has been widely welcomed by authors and green campaigners.

As one of the largest publishing houses in the UK, Random House’s pledge represents a significant victory for Greenpeace’s Book Campaign, which was instrumental in the company’s decision. To meet the requirements of the move, Random House will work with suppliers to use Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accredited paper in its books.

Over 70 publishing houses around the world have now made the commitment to stop using ancient forest sourced materials in their books.

"The selection of the right paper is of vital importance from an environmental as well as a commercial perspective and I look forward to working with our suppliers to increase the availability of FSC certified paper,” explained Stephen Esson, Group Production Director at Random House. “Of course, any development of recycled grades more appropriate to the practical and commercial requirements of the book market would also be welcomed."

Greenpeace’s Belinda Fletcher praised the voluntary decision, and hoped that it would encourage other companies in the industry to adopt similar policies. "This commitment is the most comprehensive commitment developed by a UK publisher to date and sets a good example for other publishing houses to follow," she commented.


Major publisher makes ancient forest vow

Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book
By TANIA RALLI

When he has writer's block, John Battelle, author of the forthcoming book "The Search: The Inside Story of How Google and Its Rivals Changed Everything," keeps on writing. But not his book manuscript. Instead, he goes straight to his blog (battellemedia.com).

Mr. Battelle, a founder of Wired and The Industry Standard magazines, sometimes makes quick notes on the blog about a topic related to his book, and other times posts longer essays. "Writing for the blog is more like having a conversation," Mr. Battelle said.

For years, book authors have used the Internet to publicize their work and to keep in touch with readers. Several, like Mr. Battelle, are now experimenting with maintaining blogs while still in the act of writing their books.

"It is very satisfying to write something and get an immediate response to it," said Mr. Battelle, who calculated that last year he wrote 74,000 words for his book, and 125,000 words on his blog. "It is less satisfying to write a chapter and let it sit on the shelf for six months."

Instead of simply being a relief from writerly solitude, these blogs have turned into part of the process. Mr. Battelle said that he was surprised by the number of people who read his journal and offered feedback, correcting mistakes, making suggestions of people to interview or articles to read and contributing ideas that are finding their way into his finished manuscript.

"It has provided such a wealth of sources," he said. "The readers pointed me to things I might not have paid much attention to."

Authors' blogs also change the solitary mission of writing into something more closely resembling open-source software. Mistakes are corrected before they are eternalized in printed pages, and readers can take satisfaction that they contributed to a book's creation. The blogs can also confer some authority: Aside from drawing on the collective intelligence of its readers, Mr. Battelle's site has become a compendium of Google- and search-related issues.

Authors who have experimented with blogging in this way - and there are still only a handful - say they hope to create a sense of community around their work and to keep fans informed when a new book is percolating. The novelist Aaron Hamburger used his blog to write about research techniques he employed to set his coming book in Berlin (www.aaronhamburger.com). Poppy Z. Brite, another novelist, has written about her characters on her blog as though they have a life of their own, not just the one springing from her imagination (www.livejournal.com/users/docbrite).

Despite the encouragement some authors receive from their online readers, the steady stream of feedback can be paralyzing. For some, the open process invites criticism and self-doubt when there is research to be done.

David Weinberger, the author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined," a nonfiction book about the Internet, posted his daily progress online while writing that book. But as he frequently rewrote each section, Mr. Weinberger found it was not the best way to capture readers' advice. For his new book - "Everything Is Miscellaneous," about how information is organized in daily life - he is posting chapters only when they are complete, rather than in fragments (www.hyperorg.com). "And then I will beg for comments," he said.

Chris Anderson, who is writing "The Long Tail," a nonfiction book to be published next year by Hyperion, freely posts his ideas on his blog to solicit responses (longtail.typepad.com). His book grew out of an influential article he wrote - by the same title - last year for Wired magazine, where he is editor in chief.

"The Long Tail" examines the shift from mass markets to niche markets. Taking a cue from Mr. Battelle, Mr. Anderson has made his blog a source for anything related to the topic, whether written by him or someone else. The blog charts new applications for Mr. Anderson's theory since the publication of his article, and helps him collect ideas for the book.

"The conversation is happening whether you like it or not," he said. "To hope that it will pause for 18 months is unrealistic."

By introducing new ideas through his blog and inviting responses, Mr. Anderson is operating on the notion that if you give something away, you will get more in return. "I very much want people to take the ideas and improve on them," he said.

The question for these authors is this: By feeding and engaging their readers' curiosity, are they destroying the market for the books that they, after all, are paid to write?

"Blogs are a way to listen in and find out what people find funny and respond to," said Marion Maneker, editorial director at HarperCollins's HarperBusiness unit, who said it was too early to determine whether blogs would affect sales.

Michael Cader, who is the editor of two industry publications, Publishers Marketplace and Publishers Lunch, said he believed that, based on the limited examples, authors could build a much bigger audience for their work through blogging. While there is no evidence yet that blogs affect books sales, Mr. Cader said, anything an author could do to create a readership was beneficial.

Since the publication of their book "Freakonomics," an economic lens onto human behavior, Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner have fielded questions about the book with their blog (www.freakonomics.com/blog.php), debated topics with readers (anything baseball-related strikes a nerve), and contemplated readers' suggestions (one reader suggested that fluoride in the water may be the root of all evil).

While saying that he was impressed by the depth and complexity of readers' responses, Mr. Levitt added that it was unlikely he would float his book ideas for mass consideration on the blog.

"The concern we have is about having our stuff sound fresh," he said. In addition to the conversation it engenders, the blog is mostly a receptacle for the ideas not spun into magazine articles.

Steven Johnson has used his blog (www.stevenberlinjohnson.com) to keep readers informed of his appearances and readings of "Everything Bad Is Good for You," his thesis on how pop culture strengthens, not erodes, intellect nonfiction. He has also rebutted his critics, chronicled his book tour, and responded to reader feedback. Mr. Johnson decided not to blog about the book while writing it, however,

Mr. Johnson said that many people who seek out the blog have read his earlier books and are interested in reading about, or commenting on, how his work has evolved. The readers get a behind-the-scenes look at the author's thoughts on the book's reception and other topics.

"There is only so much you can get out of a book signing," he said. "I feel like people don't really go to promotional book sites. They want the live feeling of the author who's out there fending off the critics and confessing his sins."



The New York Times > Technology > Dear Blog: Today I Worked on My Book

Your Language Needs You

Did you eat a balti before 1984 or have a mullet before 1994? And do you know how they got their names?

A forthcoming BBC TWO series invites you to hunt for words and help rewrite the Oxford English Dictionary. We are appealing to the nation to help solve some of the most intriguing recent word mysteries in the language.

The OED seeks to find the earliest verifiable usage of every single word in the English language. The 50 words on the appeal list all have a date next to them, corresponding to the earliest evidence the dictionary currently has for that word or phrase. Can you trump that?

To join the word hunt, you might find an earlier appearance of the word in a book or a magazine, in a movie script, a fanzine, or even in a private letter. The most important thing is that it can be dated.

Sometimes the OED can't tell how a word was invented - so if you can fill us in, so much the better. We've indicated next to these words that they are 'origin uncertain'. If you have a convincing theory, we'd like to hear from you. If you can prove you're right, you might help in rewriting the dictionary.

For a list of the words click here:
BBC - History - Programmes - Wordhunt

Watchdog savages Paris's literary lions

Jon Henley
Tuesday June 28, 2005
The Guardian

The Paris literary scene was shaken yesterday when the government's anti-corruption watchdog warned that France's most prestigious book prizes were wide open to corruption.
In its 2004 report, the SCPA, part of the justice ministry, said it was "difficult to distinguish between jury members, who are generally the authors of literary works, and the houses which publish their books. There is a risk that fair competition rules may be being broken."

The report, seen by Le Parisien newspaper, continued: "There is an evident risk of a conflict of interest. Moreover, the conditions in which the jury members are recruited or co-opted, often for life, are not exactly transparent, which makes them suspect as a matter of principle."
France's major literary awards such as the Prix Femina, the Prix Médicis and - most prestigious of all - the Prix Goncourt have long been accused of rigging their votes, taking it in turns to reward big publishers.

Of the four best-known names in French publishing, Gallimard has won the Goncourt 34 times, Grasset 16 times, Albin Michel 11 and Seuil five. Perhaps in response to mounting resentment, the prize went last year to a small and relatively recent house, Actes Sud.

In another advance, the Goncourt committee co-opted one of France's most popular and respected literary critics, Bernard Pivot, on to the jury: unlike the Pulitzer or the Booker, the jury composition of the major French contests, particularly the Goncourt, changes rarely if ever.

Nor is it uncommon to find that authors in competition for a prize are not only literary critics for well-known newspapers or magazines and commissioning editors for renowned publishing houses, but also members of the jury for rival awards.

"When you realise the millions of euros that a good Goncourt winner can generate for its publisher, you start to see the immorality of the whole thing," said a series editor for a small, independent publishing house outside Paris who asked not to be named.

"French publishing, and particularly the whole prize charade, is all about mutual back-scratching. It's scandalous really, and if it gets cleaned up that can only be a good thing."


Guardian Unlimited Books | News | Watchdog savages Paris's literary lions

How The Waste Land was done

Donald MacLeod
Tuesday June 21, 2005

Faced with that literary troublemaker TS Eliot, a York University academic called in the FBI and now claims to have cracked the case of how The Waste Land was written.
Lawrence Rainey, of the university's English department, spent two years travelling across Europe and the US to sort out the sequence in which Eliot wrote the poem.

A sheaf of rough drafts for the poem surfaced in 1971 and Prof Rainey compared them with the letters and other writing that Eliot was producing in the years before its publication in 1922 - a task calling for forensic as much as literary investigation. He examined more than 1,200 leaves of paper, including 638 pages of letters, Eliot had written between 1912 and 1922, visiting 22 international libraries and several private collections in his two-year journey.

FBI agents Bill Brown and David Attenberg gave the professor copies of the transparent templates the agency uses to identify makes of typewriters, and he used a micrometer to measure the thickness of every sheet of paper, as well as recording their height, width, watermarks, chainlines and other properties. He was able to date and to reconstruct the poem's composition.
Prof Rainey argues in Revisiting 'The Waste Land' that Eliot wrote the poem between January 1921, and January 1922, and that the poet did not follow a plan in its composition. Instead, Eliot improvised to stitch together more than 50 drafts.

"When The Waste Land was published, its defenders insisted that the poem was planned from the beginning and that it was a poem of extraordinary unity. Now that we can trace the processes and the choices that Eliot is making, the poem turns out to be something quite different," Prof Rainey said.

"You can see him making false starts and because he writes in tiny units of 13 lines at a stretch he is then left with the problem of how to stitch them together. You can see that he uses incredibly obvious choices to do that.

"The Waste Land was not a seamless whole, but something more radical. It is, at once, wild and unruly, violent and shocking and yet deeply compassionate," he added.


· Revisiting 'The Waste Land' by Lawrence Rainey is published by Yale University Press at £22.50

Guardian Unlimited Books | News | How The Waste Land was done

Connelly stays true to crime
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
Ask best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly about his success, and the answer is deceptively simple.

"My stories," he says, "are very derivative of real life."

Indeed, his 15th novel, The Closers (Little, Brown, $26.95), is already a best seller (as high as No. 3 and currently No. 36 on USA TODAY's list) and is receiving rave reviews for its stark but detailed portrayal of life as an LAPD cold-case investigator.

Indeed, his 15th novel, The Closers (Little, Brown, $26.95), is already a best seller (as high as No. 3 and currently No. 36 on USA TODAY's list) and is receiving rave reviews for its stark but detailed portrayal of life as an LAPD cold-case investigator.

Back again is his protagonist, Harry Bosch, the hero in 11 Connelly novels. He has come out of retirement to join Open-Unsolved, a new unit that works to solve what TV's CSI, Law & Order and Cold Case refer to as cold cases — old, unsolved crimes that police still want to crack.

"The cold-case thing is the fad of the moment in entertainment because it's the fad of the moment in police work," says Connelly, 48. "Since the turn of the century, just about every police department has a cold-case unit. I just changed the name because it's so overused."

Advanced crime-solving techniques, though present, are not the meat of The Closers, Connelly says.

"There's a big difference between working fresh murders or fresh kills and working something that's really old. That's what really hooked me — that you could use this idea to take a look at the frayed social fabric that happens after a murder."

The reason Harry Bosch novels are so well received — multi-layered portrayals of cops and bad guys as well as colorful descriptions of life on the streets of Los Angeles — also helps explain why Connelly's next novel (The Lincoln Lawyer, due in October) will feature a never-before-used protagonist.

"My stand-alone novels are strategically placed to give my batteries a chance to recharge on Harry," Connelly says.

The Lincoln Lawyer is definitely different. It's a legal thriller, and for the first time, Connelly's main character is an attorney.

He got the idea about five years ago when he met a criminal lawyer who handled cases in sprawling Los Angeles County.

"He spent lots of time in his car. His car became his office," he says. "His driver was a client working off fees. The lawyer sat in the back and worked the phones and his computer. It seemed unique to me."

Connelly's eye for an interesting story dates back to his days as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times beginning in the late 1980s. His first novel, Black Echo (1992), won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers Association of America for best debut. All 15 of his books have been best sellers, and Bloodwork (1998) was made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood.

"The crime novel is becoming the social novel," Connelly says. "Many writers who are drawn to crime novels write fairly quickly, sometimes one book a year. ... So it seems to me that the crime writers and the mystery writers, however you want to call them, are the first to comment on what's happening in our world.

"Traditionally, this had been the role of the literary novel, and it still is. But those books kind of weigh in after the fact, whereas the crime novels come out right away.

"Yes, entertainment is important. ... But there's also an exploration of the world we're living in."

City of Angels, city of novels

Michael Connelly, of course, is not the only crime novelist using Los Angeles as his backdrop. Among other current novels set there:

Savage Garden by Denise Hamilton (Scribner, $22). Hamilton kicks off her fourth novel with fictional Los Angeles Times reporter Eve Diamond at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see a theater production. When the leading lady goes missing, Diamond works the case for the Times but also for her own sake. She suspects her boyfriend, Silvio, may have known the missing Catarina way too well.

A Venom Beneath the Skin by Marcos M. Villatoro (Justin, Charles & Co., $24.95). Romilia Chacón, the heroine in Villatoro's third novel about this feisty Latina law enforcement officer, is now an FBI special agent in L.A. When her boyfriend is found brutally slain, the top suspect is Tekun Uman, a drug lord with whom Chacon has tangled before.

Damaged Goods by Roland S. Jefferson (Atria, $23). Jefferson tells a fast-paced and original story about a group of seasoned thieves who pull a nearly impossible heist. The crew is led by Alonzo Crane, a federal inmate known as "The Motion Picture Bank Robber" because of his penchant for using details from Hollywood movies to plot out his robberies (think Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair). Caution: Damaged Goods contains gratuitous violence, illicit sex, coarse language, and drug and alcohol abuse.



USATODAY.com - Connelly stays true to crime

For This Author, Writing Is Only the Beginning
By EDWARD WYATT

ETNA, N.H. - Slouched on a sofa in a faded T-shirt and jeans, a tousle of dyed-auburn hair trending gray at the roots, Janet Evanovich looks less like the chief of a budding media empire than a mother trying hard to be her daughter's best friend.

And there, next to her, is the daughter, Alexandra, whose dyed platinum-blond hair befits her stint as a freelance graphics designer for a heavy-metal band's fan site and her love for her red Ducati motorcycle, looking nothing like a corporate marketing guru.

Yet the two women are all of those things - best friends, metalheads and meticulous businesswomen. Together with Janet's son and husband, both named Peter, who handle everything from investments to the packing of signed books for shipment to stores, they make up the family enterprise known as Evanovich Inc.

And they have transformed Ms. Evanovich, 62, from a failing romance writer who once burned a box of rejection letters on her curb into a mini-industry whose success is beginning to emulate the sprawling domains of authorial heavyweights like James Patterson.

Last year, she sold an estimated one million books in hardcover and three million more paperbacks, earning more than $3 million in royalties from the paperbacks and several million more in advances and royalties on the hardcovers. The empire now includes two continuing mystery series: one featuring the sharp-elbowed bounty hunter Stephanie Plum, published by St. Martin's Press, whose latest installment, "Eleven on Top" went on sale June 21, and a second, published by HarperCollins, which began last fall with "Metro Girl."

While her success speaks to her tenacity and devotion to family, it owes as much to marketing prowess. When fans, impatient for her next novel, began asking her to recommend other writers like her, Ms. Evanovich hired one instead. Thus began a separate line of paperback romance-thrillers with Charlotte Hughes as co-author and St. Martin's as publisher. Four books in that series became best sellers.

And rather than risk having a previous publisher reissue her romance novels from more than a decade ago, Ms. Evanovich bought back the rights from Bantam, an imprint of Random House Inc., and resold them to HarperCollins, which has begun publishing them in a revised and updated format.

Ms. Evanovich acknowledges that her strategy is little different than it might be for selling toothpaste. "When you're trying to expand your business, it's about real estate in the stores," she said in an interview at her hilltop home in rural western New Hampshire, and more products in more categories mean more shelf space.

But while her relentless self-promotion has attracted more fans, it has also created some tensions. Michael Morrison, the president of HarperMorrow, the HarperCollins division that published "Metro Girl," said the interplay of multiple publishers and product lines is not ideal. "I'm a believer that a publisher and an author should have one primary relationship," he said. The sales of "Metro Girl" did not match Ms. Evanovich's previous best sellers, but Mr. Morrison said that over all he was pleased with her work.

"It's much easier to work with an author and orchestrate a publishing career if you have all of the books under one house," he said.

But Ms. Evanovich does not apologize for flooding the market with a new book every two to three months, nor for her calculated efforts to send her new novels straight to the top of the best-seller lists.

It has now become a rite of summer: each of the last five books in the numerical series featuring Stephanie Plum - from "Hot Six" in 2000 through "Ten Big Ones" last year - was No. 1 on The New York Times's hardcover best-seller list its first week on sale. Last fall, "Metro Girl" also had its debut at No. 1.

To put that feat in perspective, long-running series by James Patterson and Sue Grafton cannot match that current streak of immediate No. 1's.

Ms. Evanovich plots her first week of promotion to include book signings at big stores that report their sales to publications that publish best-seller lists. As in past years, the publication of the new Stephanie Plum novel will include a Stephanie Plum Daze festival in Trenton, the setting for the novels. Featuring live music, food, a character dress-up contest and historical-society tours of Trenton sites mentioned in the series, a festival on June 25 is expected to attract several thousand fans. Barnes & Noble will be there selling books.

She does not simply plan an event and expect people to show up, however. Evanovich Inc. constantly reminds its audience of a coming book, using its Internet site and a snail-mail newsletter, television commercials and radio spots. Ms. Evanovich oversees the design of book covers and the production of advertisements; she recently fired the agency that was devising commercials for "Eleven on Top" and enlisted her family and publisher to come up with a new pitch.

Behind the marketing machinations is Alexandra, 32, who writes the newsletter and illustrates both it and the Web site, www.evanovich.com. Until recently, she also managed the online store that sells hats, mugs and other paraphernalia, but its growth forced the family to outsource the job to a company in Florida.

The task of running Evanovich Inc. has grown so rapidly that last year the family decided it needed office space away from their hilltop home, where all four family members live at least some of the time.

Ms. Evanovich's son, Peter, 35, who manages the finances, oversaw the purchase of a $480,000 fixer-upper ranch-style house in Hanover near the Dartmouth campus for office space. Other recent family acquisitions include a $6.2 million waterside estate in Naples, Fla., and twin $1.6 million Boston condominiums - one for Mom, one for daughter - overlooking Boston Common.

Ms. Evanovich's husband of 40 years, the elder Peter, applies his Ph.D. in mathematics to the study of her contracts and the sales and distribution information generated by publishers and bookstores.

"I feel like I never would have been a success and gotten published without my family," Ms. Evanovich said. Throughout the years collecting rejection slips, and even as she began to earn a few thousand dollars per book for her early romances, "they never said, 'Why don't we go on vacation like other families?' " She added, "They just told me, 'You take your time and write.' "

The fans clearly love it. According to Nielsen BookScan, they bought nearly 300,000 copies of "Ten Big Ones" and 175,000 copies of "Metro Girl" from traditional book outlets. Ms. Evanovich's publishers say the numbers are far higher, perhaps twice as much, because a large portion her fans buy their books at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and other stores that are not counted by BookScan. Clearly, her sales are big, though still well short of the levels reached by the likes of Nora Roberts, Mr. Patterson and John Grisham.

The critics have sometimes been less than enthusiastic. Writing in The New York Times, Janet Maslin said Ms. Evanovich's works were "the mystery-novel equivalent of comfort food." And more than once, her writing has been called formulaic.

Ms. Evanovich does not deny that; she simply wonders what is wrong with it.

"I'm a writer, but this is a business," she said. "You have to look at it in the way you would look at any business. You have to have honesty to the product. You have to meet consumer expectations. You give them value for their money and give them a product that they need. I don't see anything wrong with all these things. And I don't think it's a bad thing to meet consumers' expectations."



For This Author, Writing Is Only the Beginning - New York Times

Nancy Pearl's 'More Book Lust' gets 'Today' show nod

There will be even more book lust in July. Librarian Nancy's Pearl's second volume of her highly personal book picks, "More Book Lust," has been picked as the July featured title of the "Today" show book club.

It was chosen by best-selling suspense writer Lisa Scottoline.

Pearl, who recently left her longtime post at the Seattle Public Library, was in the NBC studios in New York Tuesday when the selection was announced. "This exciting moment is an open invitation for anyone to delve into the wonderful world of reading and find books to love," said Pearl.

"More Book Lust," published by Seattle's Sasquatch Books, follows in the trail of its best-selling predecessor, "Book Lust," which now has more than 80,000 copies in print. The new $16.95 paperback includes more than 1,000 book recommendations in 150 categories and lists.

"More Book Lust" is the second title by a Seattle author to be picked recently by "Today's" book club. Stephanie Kallos' debut novel, "Broken for You," was the club's January selection, chosen by popular novelist Sue Monk Kidd.


Nancy Pearl's 'More Book Lust' gets 'Today' show nod

Brazilian doctors uncover 'Michelangelo code'

Jun 16, 11:31 AM (ET)

By Carlos A. DeJuana

SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Two Brazilian doctors and amateur art lovers believe they have uncovered a secret lesson on human anatomy hidden by Renaissance artist Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel's ceiling.

Completed nearly 500 years ago, the brightly colored frescoes painted on the Vatican's famous sanctuary are considered some of the world's greatest works of art. They depict Biblical scenes such as the "Creation of Adam" in which God reaches out to touch Adam's finger.

But Gilson Barreto and Marcelo de Oliveira believe Michelangelo also scattered his detailed knowledge of internal anatomy across 34 of the ceiling's 38 panels. The way they see it, a tree trunk is not just a tree trunk, but also a bronchial tube. And a green bag in one scene is really a human heart.


The key to finding the numerous organs, bones and other human insides is to first crack a "code" they believe was left behind by the Florentine artist. Essentially, it is a set of sometimes subtle, sometimes overt clues, like the way a figure is pointing.

"Why wasn't this ever seen before? First, because very few people have the sufficient anatomical knowledge to see these pieces like this. I do because that's my profession," said Barreto, who is a surgeon in the Brazilian city of Campinas.

PAST DISCOVERIES

Barreto and his friend Oliveira are not the first physicians to see depictions of human organs in the Sistine Chapel, the Vatican church where popes are elected.

Fifteen years ago, U.S. doctor Frank Meshberger pointed out the figure of God and his surrounding angels in the "Creation of Adam" panel resembled a cross-section of the human brain.

He believes Michelangelo was equating God's gift of a soul for Adam with the divine gift of intelligence for mankind.

Packing up his desk as he prepared to move houses, Barreto came across Meshberger's theory.

"I said to myself, 'If there's a brain, he surely didn't just paint a brain. There have to be others,'" Barreto said.

Thumbing through books and pictures of the chapel all night, Barreto said he found five or six other anatomical depictions. He presented his findings to Oliveira the next day and the two probed further for three months.

The project culminated with their book "The Secret Art of Michelangelo," which was published in Brazil last year and has so far sold 50,000 copies, a very high number for Brazil. It is being negotiated for U.S., Spanish and Portuguese publication.

As part of their research, they discovered another U.S. doctor, Garabed Eknoyan, had found the figure of a kidney in the panel entitled "Separation of the Earth from the Waters."

CRACKING THE CODE

Eventually Barreto and Oliveira came to believe Michelangelo had left behind coded messages in each panel to help viewers find the hidden body part.

Some clues are thematic, such as "Creation of Adam" or "Creation of Eve," in which a tree trunk looks like a bronchial tube and God's purple robe is a representation of a lung when viewed from the side. One could say God is imparting the "breath of life" into Eve in the scene, Barreto said.

Another part of the code is to look at what figures surrounding the main character of each panel are doing.

In the "Cumaean Sibyl" scene, two cherubic figures embrace behind a bulky, muscular woman representing a mythological oracle. One cherub has his hands on the other's chest. Meanwhile, four other cherub-like figures underneath a painted pillar raise their arms to reveal their chest.

According to Barreto and Oliveira, a bag with a red frilly border and white rolled up scrolls inside hanging beside the Sibyl is a depiction of a heart, the diaphragm and the aorta.

Sometimes Michelangelo "points" to the hidden body part.

In the "Libyan Sibyl," a cherub pointing to his shoulder stands next to a twisting woman, her shoulder blade in the spotlight. Two other cherubs beneath the pillars point to their shoulders too.

If looked at upside down, the fold of the Sibyl's dress and the bottom of her trunk look like a rendition of the arm bone, or humerus, and the socket into which it fits on the shoulder.

"We've said it's actually a very infantile language, because it's all about looks, light, pointing," Barreto said.

When faced with the paintings and photographs of the anatomical body part side-by-side, Barreto and Oliveira's theory is conceivable, although some matches require a little bit of creativity. Some might say too much.

"The problem, and art historians too are certainly often guilty of this, is simply that we often see what we want to see," said Dennis Geronimus, a specialist on Renaissance art at New York University who had a chance to examine some of Barreto and Oliveira's "de-coded" matches.

Their proposals, he said, "stretch the visual evidence far beyond Michelangelo's own specific vocabulary of poses, gestures and symbolic relationships."

Indeed, why would Michelangelo hide drawings of human organs in the Sistine Chapel?

Barreto and Oliveira say they aren't sure, but it is well known that Michelangelo and other Renaissance artists were obsessed with human anatomy and the human body. There are also other examples of artists "hiding" objects in their paintings, images that can only be seen from a certain perspective.

Still, the two doctors have sent their book to art historians and anatomical specialists in Portugal to get their opinion, and plan to eventually get the Vatican's opinion too.

"We're not here to play around. We believe this is a great discovery for the arts," Barreto said. "The only thing we want to do is spread this knowledge."





Excite News

Victory! Freedom to Read Amendment Passes by 238 - 187 Vote

In a vote that sends a clear message to the Bush administration that Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act needs to be amended to protect Americans' right to privacy, the House today passed Rep. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) Freedom to Read Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State (CJS) Appropriations Bill by a vote of 238 - 187. The Sanders amendment cuts Justice Department funds for bookstore and library searches under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. On Tuesday, the Bush Administration had warned that it would veto the House Appropriations Bill if it included any amendments that would weaken the Patriot Act, as reported by the Washington Post.

Today's vote represents a significant victory for Sanders and the many free speech groups and civil liberties advocates, including the Campaign for Reader Privacy, who believe that Section 215 is a dangerous erosion of constitutional rights. "This victory clearly shows that you can fight city hall and win, and demonstrates the enormous power of booksellers to influence public policy," said ABA COO Oren Teicher. "We'd like to congratulate and thank Rep. Sanders, as well as booksellers and all those who participated in the Campaign for Reader Privacy. As was said at ABA's Celebration of Bookselling 10 days ago, America's readers have never had a better friend or stronger supporter than we have in Bernie."

While the victory was significant, Teicher stressed that today's vote does not mean the fight to amend Section 215 is over. "The battle will continue as Congress looks to reauthorize 215 and the other sunsetting provisions of the Patriot Act at the end of this year," he said. "We need to redouble our efforts, and we urge booksellers to continue to collect signatures on reader privacy petitions and to contact their congressional representatives to ask them to support an amendment to Section 215 to protect readers' First Amendment rights."

The debate prior to the vote was an intense one, with those in favor of the amendment emphasizing that civil liberties do not have to be sacrificed for the sake of security and those opposed to the amendment warning that it would give terrorists a safe haven in bookstores and libraries. "This amendment seeks to build a sanctuary for terrorists," declared Tom Feeney (R-FL), "that's all it does."

However, Butch Otter (R-ID) retorted that, like any former prosecutor who worked for the government, "my colleague seems frustrated by the Constitution."

And Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) cautioned, "It's time to remember where we come from as a nation … a nation that stands up for civil liberties!"

In conclusion, Sanders stressed that, not only are the American Library Association and ABA in favor of amending Section 215, but that "seven states in America have gone on record expressing serious concerns" regarding the provision. Furthermore, he continued, hundreds of thousands of citizens have informed their representatives that they are concerned about Section 215, as well.

For more information about the Campaign for Reader Privacy, go to http://www.bookweb.org/read/7679

Victory! Freedom to Read Amendment Passes by 238 - 187 Vote

In a vote that sends a clear message to the Bush administration that Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act needs to be amended to protect Americans' right to privacy, the House today passed Rep. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) Freedom to Read Amendment to the Commerce, Justice, State (CJS) Appropriations Bill by a vote of 238 - 187. The Sanders amendment cuts Justice Department funds for bookstore and library searches under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. On Tuesday, the Bush Administration had warned that it would veto the House Appropriations Bill if it included any amendments that would weaken the Patriot Act, as reported by the Washington Post.

Today's vote represents a significant victory for Sanders and the many free speech groups and civil liberties advocates, including the Campaign for Reader Privacy, who believe that Section 215 is a dangerous erosion of constitutional rights. "This victory clearly shows that you can fight city hall and win, and demonstrates the enormous power of booksellers to influence public policy," said ABA COO Oren Teicher. "We'd like to congratulate and thank Rep. Sanders, as well as booksellers and all those who participated in the Campaign for Reader Privacy. As was said at ABA's Celebration of Bookselling 10 days ago, America's readers have never had a better friend or stronger supporter than we have in Bernie."

While the victory was significant, Teicher stressed that today's vote does not mean the fight to amend Section 215 is over. "The battle will continue as Congress looks to reauthorize 215 and the other sunsetting provisions of the Patriot Act at the end of this year," he said. "We need to redouble our efforts, and we urge booksellers to continue to collect signatures on reader privacy petitions and to contact their congressional representatives to ask them to support an amendment to Section 215 to protect readers' First Amendment rights."

The debate prior to the vote was an intense one, with those in favor of the amendment emphasizing that civil liberties do not have to be sacrificed for the sake of security and those opposed to the amendment warning that it would give terrorists a safe haven in bookstores and libraries. "This amendment seeks to build a sanctuary for terrorists," declared Tom Feeney (R-FL), "that's all it does."

However, Butch Otter (R-ID) retorted that, like any former prosecutor who worked for the government, "my colleague seems frustrated by the Constitution."

And Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) cautioned, "It's time to remember where we come from as a nation … a nation that stands up for civil liberties!"

In conclusion, Sanders stressed that, not only are the American Library Association and ABA in favor of amending Section 215, but that "seven states in America have gone on record expressing serious concerns" regarding the provision. Furthermore, he continued, hundreds of thousands of citizens have informed their representatives that they are concerned about Section 215, as well.

For more information about the Campaign for Reader Privacy, go to http://www.bookweb.org/read/7679

The University of Minnesota Libraries presents the unveiling of the largest book ever made

Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom



Witness the unveiling of Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Last Himalayan Kingdom, the newest acquisition by the rare books department of the University of Minnesota Libraries.

Bhutan is the largest book ever made, according to Guinness World Recordsª, weighing more than 130 pounds and measuring 5 feet by 7 feet.

But Bhutan is more than just a big book. It features stunning, full-color photographs of the architecture, dance festivals, native costumes and people of Bhutan, a tiny kingdom northeast of India which some have called ‘the last shangri-la’ because of its rich ecology and unspoiled culture.

This unique book was printed in an edition of 500 copies, one of which was recently donated to the University of Minnesota Libraries. Creator and photographer Michael Hawley, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will discuss how his scientific expeditions to Bhutan led to the creation of this wondrous book.

For more information:
The University of Minnesota Libraries : Bhutan the largest book ever made

Risk-taking start-up company goes one up over publishing giants

From his tiny London office, Peter Ayrton is quietly snapping up books rejected by the world’s publishing giants and turning them into major success stories.

His Serpent’s Tail Publishing has now set the literary world abuzz by recently scooping two of the coveted spots on the shortlist for the Orange Prize, the English-speaking world’s top award for fiction by women.


That is a third of the shortlist, an impressive record for a company with four employees and a self-proclaimed commitment to “extravagant, outlaw voices neglected by the mainstream”.

But if editors at big publishing houses envy Serpent’s Tail’s Orange Prize shortlist success, Ayrton said they have no one to blame but themselves.

“People don’t sell us rights without having tried the big houses first. So most of these books have been turned down by quite a few editors before they come to us,” he said.

“The big publishers are cutting back on the number of titles they publish. They are counting more and more on big books that their marketing people think can sell a shed-load of copies. They’ve become more conservative, which is good news for us.”

Take We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver’s shortlisted novel, which is about a teenage mass murderer, described acidly through the eyes of his mother, who despises him, and suspects that he is evil from the moment he is born.

“A lot of women editors at big houses turned down Kevin because of what they perceived to be its narrator’s negative spin on motherhood. And that’s not their job,” said Ayrton.

With wicked satire of suburbia and an unflinchingly grim look at parenthood, Kevin became a lightning rod for debate, and a word-of-mouth hit on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I’ve been with Lionel Shriver to darkest Essex in the middle of winter with reading groups of 50-60 women. You should have heard the questions. They all had strong feelings about this book.”

So did critics. The New York Times called it “a fearless whack at the shibboleths of family”.

Now, some publishing giants that turned it down have been on the phone to Ayrton trying to buy the rights.

That Kevin ended up with a tiny publisher like Serpent’s Tail is a sign of the industry’s increasing impatience with authors who may take a few books to find an audience, said Liz Thomson, editor of trade journal Publishing News.

Kevin is Shriver’s seventh novel, and her earlier books were published by major houses such as HarperCollins and Faber and Faber. Although her previous sales were disappointing, once upon a time one of those big name publishers might have stuck by her.

Ayrton’s other Orange Prize candidate is Billie Morgan, a murder story about, and by Joolz Denby, a female ex-member of a motorcycle gang in tough working-class northern England.

Both books, with their body counts, give the lie to a media stereotype of women’s literature as tame, Ayrton explained. And they defy a cultural obsession with glamorous young female writers, promoted by major publishers looking for the next hit.

“There is a preconception that what women writers do best is write mostly about domestic issues,” he said. “I think the Orange Prize judges deliberately turned away from youth and ‘babes’.” – Reuters



The Star Online: Lifestyle

BookSlap
Something new. Something annoying. Something so rotten that it deserves the...

BookBitch BookSlap

And the first unlucky recipient is.... Otto Penzler

Sexism at the Edgars? The Debate on Whether Women Mystery-Writers Are Worthy
April 28, 2005
By Gerald Bartell

Genteel? Or bloody? That distinction between two sub-genres of mystery books—“cozies” and “hard-boiled”—may determine who wins the Edgar Award for Best Novel tonight. And the outcome could go to the heart of a debate within the industry: Are female mystery-writers—most often the authors of the more non-threatening, proper cozies—even worthy of the award? Otto Penzler, dean of mystery-writing in America, says no.“The women who write [cozies] stop the action to go shopping, create a recipe, or take care of cats,” he says. “Cozies are not serious literature. They don’t deserve to win. Men take [writing] more seriously as art. Men labor over a book to make it literature...
Read the rest of the article here: THE BOOK STANDARD. If you have the stomach for it.

Embarrassing Errors In Printed Matter Go to the Book Doc
Dunn & Co. Replaces Pages, Redoes Bindings by Hand, One Tome at a Time
Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg. Wall Street Journal. (Eastern edition). New York, N.Y.: Jun 8, 2005. pg. A.1

CLINTON, Mass. -- A publisher misspelled the word "Massachusetts" in the title of a guidebook, rendering it "Massatusetts." A bindery glue in a nursing handbook failed to hold, and the pages fell out. Thousands of copies of a quilting book printed overseas developed an awful smell while sitting in the hold of a ship during a dockworker's strike. A Chinese printer transformed "Grow Your Own Trees" into "Grow Your Own Tres."

All of these casualties found their way to a former cotton mill in this old industrial town, where a little business called Dunn & Co. has carved out an unusual niche it calls "book trauma."
Modern book publishers have high-tech distribution and just-in-time warehouses, but their wares remain old-fashioned products that roll off big printing presses. In writing and editing, mistakes can be taken care of with the click of a mouse, but books with problems must be fixed by hand, one at a time.

It is labor-intensive work few want to do. Some manufacturers and binderies do small repair jobs, but primarily as a courtesy to their customers. "I can't think of any other companies that do what [Dunn does]," says John Edwards, chief executive officer of Edwards Brothers Inc., a book manufacturer in Ann Arbor, Mich.

"If a book isn't ready for prime time, you call Dunn to fix it," says Andrew Weber, senior vice president of operations and technology at Bertelsmann AG's Random House Inc.

Dunn's caseload offers a window into a world of books gone wrong. A few years ago, John Wiley & Sons Inc. slipped up by providing the wrong academic credentials for an author on the title page of a new college textbook. "We put the books on hold at the warehouse, called Dunn and asked how fast they could pick them up, rip out the title pages, and tip in new ones," says Elizabeth Doble, vice president of production and manufacturing. Dunn fixed the problem by manually removing each title page with a sharp blade, and then inserting a newly printed, corrected page.

When the spine of a book called "Heaven & Earth: Unseen by the Naked Eye" wouldn't tear off, Dunn bought cans of compacted air, turned them upside down, and used the cold accelerant to freeze the glue so the spine would be easy to remove.

Esther Margolis, president of a small, independent New York publisher called Newmarket Press, a unit of Newmarket Publishing & Communications Corp., says she relied on Dunn to remove a printed exchange between an editor and an author that was inadvertently included in a finished book. "It was cheaper than reprinting, and quicker," she says. Dunn removed the page, printed a new one, and glued it in by hand. "Readers were never able to tell," says Ms. Margolis.
A salesman for a Buffalo, N.Y., phone book sold a full-page ad to an escort service, and it was printed in nearly 800,000 copies of the directory. Dunn was enlisted to replace the offending pages, which it did by hand. Dunn did the same service for a medical textbook that labeled a cancerous tumor benign.

Sometimes Dunn rescues publishers from their own miscalculations about how many books to publish. In October 2002, Random House's Villard imprint published "Mysterious Stranger" by magician David Blaine. The stacks that didn't sell were sent to Dunn, which converted them into paperbacks by tearing off the spine and hardcover "boards" and then gluing on a new cover. Every month Dunn transforms an estimated 600,000 hardcover books that way.

Founded in 1976 by David Dunn, a former book manufacturing executive, the company originally focused on book binding. In 1983, after several accounts went out of business, Mr. Dunn began targeting publishers' mistakes. The company employs about 125 people full time, including three of Mr. Dunn's nephews, a brother-in-law, Mr. Dunn's sister, his wife, his three daughters and their three husbands. The business generates about $7 million in revenue and grows an estimated 5% annually.

Its Web site features a hospital door with the words "Emergency Entrance" emblazoned on it. Viewers who click on the doors are then directed to a menu of specialists described as "book physicians." The list includes Head Book Nurse, Head Book Trauma Surgeon and Medical Book Billing.

It performed one operation earlier this year when Syracuse University Press sent 800 copies of Ghada Samman's novel "The Night of the First Billion" to Dunn. The problem: The last line of the book was inadvertently left out. "Nobody caught the mistake until it was too late," says Mary Peterson Moore, the press's manager of design and production. Inside Dunn's factory, a skilled worker used a blade to cut out the offending page. She then ran a line of glue to the area where the page had been excised. The new page was then set into the glue, and the book closed. The operation left no scar.