Women Win, Orchids Rule and Elvis Lives
By JANET MASLIN

This is how James Patterson looks in the flesh: wistful, sensitive, a little sporty, much the way he looks on the covers of his books. Amazingly, this is how he does not look: exhausted. The man is a publishing powerhouse, with best sellers that arrive regularly at four-month intervals. He has four brand-name ideas up and running: rhymes ("Roses Are Red"), numbers ("1st to Die"), houses ("The Lake House") and correspondence ("Sam's Letters to Jennifer," his latest). He averages three books a year, but next year there will be five.

How does he do it? "Mr. P." (as he is called on the cover of his next foray, "santaKid," a Christmas book for children) is not the only best-selling dynamo who brings this question to mind.

Actually, Mr. Patterson's trade secrets are more understandable than most. His sentences, paragraphs and chapters are famously short, so that the style of the children's book, despite illustrations and words like hiya and cool, is not so unlike that of the adult ones. And his marketing skills are not to be sneezed at. Sure, "santaKid" describes how an evil corporation tries to buy Christmas and take over the North Pole. But its own sleigh will be pulled by a million-dollar marketing campaign, according to Little, Brown & Company's latest catalog. Promotional Santa hats will be part of the holiday cheer.

Busy as he is (with a young adult novel also in the pipeline), Mr. Patterson is a lazybones by some lights. Danielle Steel works at an even more breathless pace. And if she seems to sell endless versions of the same romance to the same readers, perhaps that's because she has refined the art of glam-dropping to a science. "Second Chance," her latest, invites readers to identify with a heroine, one Fiona Monaghan, who is "an icon in the fashion world" and looks "like Katharine Hepburn with a little dash of Rita Hayworth."

Fiona is "constantly surrounded by photographers, assistants, designers, models, artists and a flock of hangers-on." She is "all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful and all-caring."

Caring is an interesting word there: Ms. Steel shies away from the selfish, ruthless, shameless home-wrecker type, preferring something more genteel. She would rather focus on inadvertent fabulousness, as in: "She had never paid much attention to the impact she had on men, she was always too busy thinking and talking about a variety of topics." That syntax makes sense only if you notice the 62 other titles on the current "Also by Danielle Steel" list and realize that the author hasn't much time to sweat the small stuff, like periods and commas.

Sustaining such popularity has unusual prerequisites. It is not entirely necessary to be alive, for instance. The Archy McNally novels of Lawrence Sanders have continued to appear well past Sanders's death, with the franchise handed down to Vincent Lardo, whose name appears in pint-size letters on the cover of "McNally's Bluff." Mr. Lardo also wrote five preceding books in the McNally series, which The Boston Globe has called "effortlessly written to be effortlessly enjoyed." Still, the effortlessness of Sanders (whose name appears in very large letters) falls into a special category.

Peddling the dead can be accomplished in other ways, too: "Such Vicious Minds" is the latest in a series of mysteries (including "Blue Suede Clues" and "Viva Las Vengeance") that star the post-mortal Elvis Presley as a character. As written by Daniel Klein, this latest installment features a real Elvis, a fake Elvis and a blurb for the series ("I enjoyed this sequel as much as the first book") from no less a Presley fan than Bill Clinton. As for Elvis, well, he's still talking about pink Cadillacs and saying "Ma'am."

The 42nd president of the United States is certain to have had more fun with this than he might with "American Evita," a hatchet job by the prolific Christopher Andersen. With "Madonna: Unauthorized," "Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot," "The Day Diana Died" and (his best title, for a book about Jane Fonda) "Citizen Jane" to his credit, Mr. Andersen is another speed demon, with tactics all his own. "Sex, power, money, lies, scandal, tragedy and betrayal were the things that defined the public lives of both women," he writes, by way of explaining how "American Evita" equates Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton with Eva Perón.

Mr. Andersen, a king of the clip job, recycles old news while adding a scandal-sheet spin. So sources like "one longtime ally," "someone" and "a close family friend" are relied upon. And words like consummate and ultimate set the tone of overkill. "Hillary would later recall" generally indicates a detail lifted from Senator Clinton's own book, although Mr. Andersen never slows down to connect quotes with specific sources. Every now and then (" `What do you mean?' she yelled, as Bill turned vermilion"), Mr. Andersen's creativity is all his own.

At least give him credit for filling 292 pages with printed words. "Woman Power," Dr. Laura Schlessinger's latest dose of nonfree advice, actually relies on the time-saving use of blank space. Throughout this book, there are nearly empty pages that the reader is supposed to fill in herself. Herself? I think it's fair to assume that no man is going to read a book that asks: "What less-than-positive wifely actions and attitudes did you recognize as yours?" In any case, Dr. Laura leaves room for a 10-line answer.

"What motivated you to read `The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands?' " she asks about her own most recent bossy best seller. (That one warrants 11 blank lines.)

Surely there are better ways for an author to be self-referential. Consider "Song of Susannah," the sixth installment in Stephen King's "Dark Tower" series, which is by now so complicated that it has spun off a book-length concordance explaining people, places, events and mutants — yes, mutants — from Volumes I to IV. Even Mr. King acknowledges that when he sat down to write Volume V, "Wolves of the Calla," in 2001, he needed the refresher course of listening to the first four installments on audiotape.

"The Dark Tower" may not be easily picked up in mid-epic, but here is a warning: Sept. 21, Mr. King's birthday, will be a red-letter day for its loyal readers. That's when all will be revealed in the final installment, called "The Dark Tower" and standing at 845 pages in prepublication galley form. Anyone already in possession of it has been asked to "Please respect the `Dark Tower' fans that have been waiting for over 30 years to read the conclusion of Roland's quest" and not give away the end of the story.

Unbelievably, this is the same on-sale date scheduled for the third and final volume of Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Cycle," "The System of the World," which is even longer: 912 pages, in smaller print. Truly, Sept. 21 will be a day for the girding of loins and the getting of glasses, because both these series are worth following to their finales. And both authors, however they did it, have managed to give Middle Earth a run for its money.

On a more modest note, Sue Grafton is merely working her way through the alphabet with Kinsey Millhone, private detective, one book at a time. Suspense still attends the question of what will happen when Kinsey gets to X — or Z! — but "R Is for Ricochet" is another of Ms. Grafton's sensible-sounding installments.  (A, B and C were for Alibi, Burglar and Corpse, respectively.) 

By now, at R, there are signs of fatigue: on the first page we learn about the weather. ("Morning cloudiness had given way to sunshine.") On the second it is revealed that Kinsey likes an olive and pimiento cheese sandwich for lunch. Descriptions are worrisomely flat. ("The lawns were wide and well tended, and the quiet was underlined by the twittering of finches.") Still, Ms. Grafton has much the same reliability as Janet Evanovich, not to mention much the same readership. Each of them dishes up the mystery-novel equivalent of comfort food.

Eric Jerome Dickey, whose latest is "Drive Me Crazy," specializes in steamier fare. He likes to describe a woman "head to toe, wedding ring to thong." He likes the kind of anti-hero who found himself "being a man in need of a new sin." And this novel's main character, an ex-con turned chauffeur called Driver, is the kind of guy who can say "you're silk and lace in a blue jean world" and get away with it. Mr. Dickey's characters have enough sultry self-confidence to suggest, at their best, a Prince song on paper.

"He didn't give you anything I can't take away with a phone call," the wife of Driver's boss threatens.

"And you didn't give me nothing I couldn't buy for a hundred dollars," Driver replies.

Even hotter than the previous exchange, "sticky and heavy with desire," with "a thick tongue-flap of tissue separating the mass from the moist female organs below," is . . . what? The vanilla orchid, that's what. Tim Ecott describes it so lovingly and elaborately that his "Vanilla: Travels in Search of the Ice Cream Orchid" joins the ranks of fashionably myopic scientific histories. The format's success relies on both the author's doggedness and the reader's curiosity. Salt, quinine, the color magenta: each has had its in-depth studies, and now the vanilla bean is ready to be in vogue. At least one other vanilla-ography will be published later this year.

At least vanilla won't hurt you. It does not turn up in the "V" section of Laura Lee's "100 Most Dangerous Things in Everyday Life and What You Can Do About Them," though vacations (you might die snorkeling), vegetables (watch out for the spud-shooting potato gun), vending machines (don't hit them or they'll fall on you) and vitamins (kids eat them like candy) do. In this, the perfect book for anyone who does not already have enough to worry about, Ms. Lee accentuates the hazardous in certain commonplace objects. Uh-oh: beware of books.

There are moldy old books that carry hallucinogenic spores. There are new ones — by Mr. King or Mr. Stephenson, for instance — that could fall and break your toe. And there are books that are absolutely harmless, like "Lunchbox: Inside and Out," by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett, which simply depicts collectibles from the wide world of vintage lunch containers. How did they do it? Sometimes there's an even better question: Why?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/books/30CROW.html?pagewanted=2&th

Being in the Zone Pays Off for First-Time Novelist

Jul 27, 2004

Raelynn Hillhouse will soon break into print with Rift Zone (Forge), an end-of-the-Cold War thriller bearing enthusiastic blurbs from half a dozen masters of her chosen genre [that is sitting in my to-be-read pile, but near the top!--bookbitch]. And this debut author's first novel has been chosen as an August Book Sense Pick.

Such developments might startle any other beginning novelist, but the resourceful Hillhouse seems to be taking all this well in her stride.

"I spent all my life getting into places that other people don't get into!" she said recently, from her home in Hawaii. "So I just put those same skills to work."

Her most dramatic acts occurred as a student in divided Berlin in the 1980s -- a place and period that looms large in Rift Zone.

But Hillhouse's break-in to her own life's interests began much earlier, in the Ozarks of rural-southwest Missouri, where she grew up the child of parents who ran a company that produced etching equipment for newspapers.

Despite her family's word-related work, she was not especially encouraged to read as a child. "I was always a self-starter, so I did it on my own," Hillhouse said. "Ours was a small town of about 5,000 people; the nearest bookstore was 35 miles away.... I was famous for skipping high school and driving 30 miles to the nearest university and sitting in the library there all day reading. If I had missed one more day at school, I think, I wouldn't have graduated; but as it was, I was valedictorian. I've always loved to read."

Hillhouse went to college for two years at Washington University, in St. Louis ("150 miles and a world away from the rural Ozarks"). Then, inspired by the tales of people from other lands who had done business with her parents, she moved to Europe when she was 20 and lived in that part of the globe for the better part of six years. "I'm good at working various systems and things, and managed to finish my degree while abroad."

Divided Germany drew her: "The whole idea that you could take one culture and, as kind of an experiment, impose two very different social systems upon it, was very interesting intellectually." At different times, Hillhouse had a Fullbright research grant and a scholarship through East Germany's League for Friendship of the Peoples, which she called "a pure propaganda organization." The latter saw her living and studying in East Berlin, in the early 1980s.

"These are the days," she recalled, "when Reagan is in office, and the Cold War is heating up.... It was not a good time to be an American in Eastern Europe -- not even in Western Europe, for that matter, because of the missile buildup that we were doing. It was in a time of great suspicion: there was great tension. And that's part of what made it exciting -- because I was there in my 20s, looking around, trying to learn everything I could about those very unusual places."

Adding to the "excitement" were the ways Hillhouse found to supplement her East German scholarship money: by smuggling goods from East to West.

"What I found out worked best, in Berlin, was taking Cuban rum from East Berlin to West Berlin," she said. "Like soldiers everywhere, [the French soldiers stationed in West Berlin] weren't paid a whole lot, and not enough to be able to go out drinking to the amount that they wanted. So," Hillhouse concluded with a laugh, "I was using Fidel to support NATO, in a way."

Hillhouse also smuggled jewels out of the Soviet Union, hiding the gems in the hollow heads of little souvenir busts of Lenin.

"I've carried everything from computer boards to lingerie," she said. "One of the things I found with the highest return was condoms: because you couldn't get them in Eastern Europe, but the demand was still pretty darned high!"

During and after such extracurricular activity, Hillhouse earned her undergraduate degree from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Michigan. Back in the States, she had a faculty position and was on tenure-track at the University of Hawaii when the Communist system in Eastern Europe all of a sudden disintegrated.

"I used to be laughed at," Hillhouse remembered, "for saying that change was going on in East Germany; no one believed it of that 'ultimate Stalinist society.' I had an article and grant proposals arguing that, just at the time everything started falling apart. I was quite well funded, for the last year of my dissertation! I ended up having to change galleys of my article coming out in Slavic Review, to past tense,because everything (in Eastern Europe) was gone!"

After the reunification of Germany at the turn of the '90s, Hillhouse determined to write a work of fiction about that now-vanished place she'd known and liked so well.

"I've traveled in over 40 different countries and lived in six different foreign cities, but divided Berlin was without exception the single most exhilarating, electrifying experience of anywhere. I wanted to try and capture that somehow, in a way you couldn't do in academic books. I didn't want to create something where readers are just going to read about Checkpoint Charlie. I wanted them to experience it."

Achieving her aim wasn't as simple as defining it, though. "I realized -- well after starting to recapture and create -- you really have to learn how to write, first," Hillhouse explained. She took several summer courses at Iowa and in Squaw Valley and (with Charlie Baxter) in Splitrock. When she at last felt prepared, Hillhouse wrote Rift Zone in about five months, and then spent another five months polishing and editing.

After that, Hillhouse (who holds an executive-level job now in Hawaii) put some of her system-working skills to work.

Author Gayle Lynds, whom Hillhouse had met at a writers' conference, put her in touch with an agent -- who, after four months, decided Rift Zone was not for him. Undeterred, Hillhouse sent e-mail queries to another group of reps.

"Within six hours, I had an offer from Bob Diforio, based on the first 50 pages," Hillhouse said. "Bob's the former president and chair of NAL, and I wanted an agent who was strong on the sales side; so that worked out really well."

Forge contracted to publish Rift Zone, and Hillhouse then went to work getting helpful blurbs from such star thriller-writers as Lynds, Nelson DeMille, Stephen Coonts, and Clive Cussler.

"I cold-contacted them," Hillhouse said. "Clive Cussler took three letters, though. The last one was two sentences long -- something like: 'No matter how insurmountable the odds, (Cussler series hero) Dirk Pitt will never give up; I know early in your career, you wouldn't either. I've learned from you both.' That was it. And he did it!"

But this new author thinks booksellers are the real key to whatever success her work will have: "The people who love books, and handsell them.

"It takes such strong motivation, and such love of books, to put one's whole self into creating a bookstore and to keep it running.... Those are the people that can really sell books with passion -- and that's what it takes, you know."

That's a quality the self-starting Raelynn Hillhouse can well relate to.

"This was a book written with a lot of passion," she said of Rift Zone (whose follow-up volume is well into its planning stage). "I hope that shows through." -- Tom Nolan



Bookselling This Week: Being in the Zone Pays Off for First-Time Novelist

Kidd covers design, murder in 'Learners'
By Whitney Matheson, USA TODAY

Kidd's new piece of fiction, The Learners, makes its debut today as part of USATODAY.com's Open Book series. A new chapter of his exclusive, seven-part novella will be published online each Thursday at openbook.usatoday.com.

The Learners serves as a sequel of sorts to Kidd's first novel, 2001's The Cheese Monkeys (Perennial, $13.95). Set in the early 1960s, The Learners follows a young graphic designer who decides to answer the first newspaper ad he creates.

What follows is "a murder mystery about a killing that may never have taken place," Kidd says.

Not only does Kidd draw on his graphic-design background for the narrative, but he also incorporates it into the text. Typography plays a crucial role in The Learners; font size and design pull readers into the action.

A few lessons from Kidd's college psychology classes also are thrown in: A central character in The Learners is real-life social psychologist Stanley Milgram, whose experiments during the 1960s still incite controversy.

Kidd plans to expand his novella into a full-length book, tentatively set for release in 2006.

"This really is the story I've been wanting to tell all along," says the author, who took a month-long break from his design job at Knopf to write The Learners at Bogliasco, Italy's Liguria Study Center.

Kidd also is working with book publisher Rizzoli to develop "a definitive coffee table book" of his designs. He also is an editor at large for Pantheon's graphic novels division. And then, of course, there are more book covers: "Designing is so rewarding in a way that writing isn't."

Look for Kidd's work on titles by Augusten Burroughs and John Updike in coming months — and, a couple years from now, on Kidd's next novel.


USATODAY.com - Kidd covers design, murder in 'Learners'

July 18, 2004

THE LAST WORD

How Many Books Are Too Many?
By LAURA MILLER

Brace yourselves, novelists and would-be novelists. Figures released this spring show that a new book of fiction is published in the United States every 30 minutes. Even if you don't count the titles published through print-on-demand and other fee-charging, vanity-press-type outfits, the total still comes to 10,000 books a year -- or one book published every hour or so. And that's just the fiction.

The statistics come from R. R. Bowker, the company that compiles the Books in Print database and assigns ISBN's (International Standard Book Numbers) to new books and editions. Every year, Andrew Grabois, Bowker's senior director of publisher relations, crunches the numbers this way and that, and this time around the killer figure is 175,000: the awe-inspiring total of new titles published in 2003, a jump of 19 percent over 2002.

So that's a good thing, right? Surely the whopping number of books reveals a robust marketplace of ideas? The problem is, the demand for trade books (that is, titles of general interest, as opposed to technical books or textbooks) is dispiritingly flat. As more and more books are offered to the same number of readers, the question hardly anyone dares to ask is: how many books are too many? For authors, are better chances at being published eventually canceled out by the likelihood that their books will get lost in the crowd? It's the question I put to several editors, most of whom -- unsurprisingly, given their answers -- chose not to be named.

''In all honesty,'' one told me, ''a lot of big publishers will say that not only are other publishers publishing too much, but they are, too.'' Obviously, no company wants to decrease the number of terrific books it publishes, and no one plans to produce outright bad ones. Where the going gets tough, or ought to, is among the books that are merely mediocre.

While another editor I talked to protested that there's a place in the world for so-so books -- minor works by major writers, for example -- most worry that too many readers feel burned after taking a chance on an unfamiliar title and getting stuck with a dud. Other readers, people who may buy one book a month and don't follow reviews, are daunted by the task of choosing from so many alternatives. (Hence, their reliance on mavens like Oprah Winfrey.) M. J. Rose, an author who parlayed the success of her self-published first novel into a contract with a large publishing house, told me about a vacation during which she met a few dozen women interested in contemporary fiction. ''All were frustrated and complaining,'' she wrote in an e-mail message. ''They had no idea what to do with the number of books they encounter in the store. Sometimes they leave the store empty-handed because they are too overwhelmed.''

Even editors speak wearily of ''The Wall,'' the long shelves of new titles that face shoppers in the larger chain stores. ''So many books,'' said one editor who specializes in literary fiction. ''And in three weeks, they'll be replaced by a whole new batch.'' Even the chains themselves have developed reservations. When they began expanding in the 1990's, superstores would stock nearly every title on a publisher's list. ''They had shelves to fill,'' a publishing professional told me. ''But even they have become more selective. Lately, they've been cutting back on the midlist,'' a word used for literary fiction and serious nonfiction. If the chains pass on a book, it becomes effectively invisible to a huge population of readers.

''Everyone is reading the same 20 books,'' Paul Slovak, the associate publisher of Viking, complains -- a problem most attribute to the shrinking press coverage for new books. ''It's become a winner-take-all situation.'' Especially for genres that rely heavily on reviews to drive sales, like fiction, the toll is grim. But vanishing reviews, an editor from a venerable house said, are only partly to blame: ''We just don't have any credibility left, when we're each putting out 15 novels a year and they can't all be good.''

Editors have many reasons for publishing books even they aren't really excited about. The accounting methods of most publishers don't reward selectivity. If you budget for 93 books per year and publish only 80, you might see next year's budget, or even your staff, cut; so, that editor continued, ''if the celebrity memoir you budgeted for doesn't come in because the author is in rehab, you have to find something else to fill that slot, fast.'' Publishers may buy a weak first book to get a crack at the stronger second one, and young editors often have to cut their teeth on manuscripts that senior editors have passed over. One prominent editor points to the growing number of nonfiction books bought on the basis of proposals: ''For every book that turns out better than you expected, there's one that's worse. That's spilled over into fiction. Now people are selling novels off 100 pages. Or off 30 pages, and they get a two- or three-book deal!'' Disappointing manuscripts are pushed through nonetheless: ''You have to write a real stinker to get canceled.''

BUT a reader pays the same price for the stinker as for the masterpiece, and probably invests as much precious leisure time in reading it, too. His or her willingness to do so isn't an inexhaustible resource.

Could the oversupply of books be hurting the demand for them? The difference between publishing and other businesses is that a great many people don't produce books just to make money. They want to introduce their words, or someone else's, to the world, and a lot of them see prestige and even romance in calling themselves authors or publishers. It sometimes seems everyone wants to take up writing, is (incorrectly) confident of success and plans to get to it any day now. But what good is a hammer in a world without nails? If everyone is writing and publishing books, who will find time to read them?


Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
The New York Times > Books > Sunday Book Review > The Last Word: How Many Books Are Too Many?

KANSAS CITY.COM

Read a good book lately? Tell us about it

Hey, book lovers: It's up to us to get people reading again!

Last week a survey by the National Endowment for the Arts reported that "literary reading" has suffered a dramatic decline. Between 1982 and 2002, the percentage of adults reading literature - novels, short stories, poetry and plays - dropped from about 57 percent to 47 percent. Men and women, young and old, all ethnicities - just about every demographic group is reading less literature.

But maybe we newspaper readers can do something about that, at least here in Kansas City. Just e-mail us with the title and author of a good book you've read this year. Then, in a sentence or two, tell us what the book's about and why you liked it.

Send e-mail to tengle@kcstar.com. Please put "good book" in the subject line. Deadline: 5 p.m. Monday, July 19.

Please keep your recommendation to one good book (fiction or nonfiction, new or old, doesn't matter) and be brief in your comments.

We'll make a master list of all these great reads and share them with you soon online and in The Star's FYI section.

(For more on the NEA report, "Reading at Risk," go to www.arts.gov/news/news04/ReadingatRisk.html.)




Kansas City Star | 07/14/2004 | Read a good book lately? Tell us about it

NEA study proves a difficult read for the book world
By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | July 15, 2004

The book world is still reeling with shock, puzzlement, and worry at last week's grim alarum from the National Endowment for the Arts about the decline of literary reading in America. In a survey of 17,000 adults, the NEA study, "Reading at Risk," found a 10-point drop over the last 20 years in the percentage of Americans who read novels, short stories, plays, or poetry. While the report found a decline in all book reading, literary reading saw the biggest decrease. Among adults aged 18 to 34, the rate of decline was especially steep -- 28 percent from 1982 to 2002.

In the report's foreword, poet and NEA chairman Dana Gioia wrote darkly, "Anyone who loves literature or values the cultural, intellectual, and political importance of active and engaged literacy . . . will respond to this report with grave concern." While citing no single cause of the trend, the report pointed to increased television watching, use of the Internet, and such diversions as video games and other electronic entertainments.

Underlying the questions what is happening and why is a deeper question: Who cares? Why is literary reading important? Gioia's answer, in a telephone interview, emphasized the social and political importance of literature. "Reading a novel puts you in the mind of another person," Gioia said. "It develops your ability to imagine the world from another perspective. It helps us work together to build a society in which all people prosper together."

"I found the report very distressing," said poet David Lehman, series editor of the "Best American Poetry" and professor at Bennington College and New York University. "The results tally with all the anecdotal evidence, with my experience as teacher and editor. I fear that we set too little value on our own cultural heritage, as expressed in the words that could be considered timeless -- works of literature, history, and philosophy. A person who has not read a poem has not read the Gettysburg Address."

One writer pointed out that fiction can get to the truth of things that nonfiction cannot. "I spent a night locked up in Haiti because I had a copy of `The Comedians' with me," recalled Norman Sherry, professor of literature at Trinity University in San Antonio and author of the three-volume "Life of Graham Greene." (Volume three will be published in September.) The Greene novel was confiscated by Haitian police.

"The Comedians" is Greene's devastating 1966 fictional indictment of the repressive Francois Duvalier regime. During the 1970s, Sherry was in Haiti researching Greene's visits there. Greene "was hated and detested by Duvalier," Sherry said by telephone, "because that book is a total life of the country. Greene puts four characters together, and you get the whole of life, the living experience of Haiti. A really great novel can give you more than a book of history."

Asked if we should care whether literary reading declines, Connecticut novelist and short-story writer Amy Bloom answered, "Who cares if all the oceans dry up? You still have a faucet in your house. It's part of being an imaginative, . . . empathic person. When I would stay up, as a child, reading [Charles Dickens's] `A Tale of Two Cities' by flashlight in bed, part of what happened was that I was [protagonist] Sidney Carton. There was no one else to tell me who Sidney Carton was. I could feel more that was outside my own range. I could roam my entire interior landscape with complete freedom, and that sense of endless internal possibility is only available with reading."

Some say that making it a duty can discourage literary reading in childhood. "There is a lot of required reading in school," said Leonard Marcus, children's book editor of Parenting magazine, "and children learn not to want to read books that way, because it is like taking medicine." Marcus says his son, at about age 10, had devoured the long novels of Brian Jacques, the British fantasy writer. However, "his teacher found out and discouraged him -- `Why aren't you reading something of importance or social value?' If children read less, it has to do with their not being given enjoyable experiences to make books feel valuable to them."

While some college teachers, such as Lehman, find that the NEA findings confirm their own sense of a decline in literary knowledge and interest among youth, others are not convinced. William Pritchard, biographer of poets Randall Jarrell and Robert Frost, has been a professor of English at Amherst College since 1958.

"I was talking to a colleague today," Pritchard said, "and we both said we couldn't perceive in the students we teach any falling-off in what they had read."

Though he did not contest the NEA numbers, Pritchard suggested that the report's tone of impending doom (it warned, for example, that "at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century") might be a bit over the top.

"Robert Frost said that every age likes to think of itself as the worst," said Pritchard. "In an essay in 1935 called `Letter to the Amherst Student,' he wrote, `It is immodest of a man to think of himself as going down before the worst forces ever mobilized by God.' "

Boston.com / A&E / Books / NEA study proves a difficult read for the book world

Spider-Man" star working on book adaptation
Thu July 15, 2004 04:17 AM ET

By Liza Foreman and Borys Kit
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Spider-Man 2" star Tobey Maguire is exercising his producer's prowess for Columbia Pictures, the studio behind the superhero franchise

The actor is teaming with Oscar-winning "Forrest Gump" producer Wendy Finerman to develop a big-screen adaptation of the novel "Everything Changes" by Jonathan Tropper, to be published next March.

Tropper's novel revolves around the twentysomething Zach, who is on the verge of marrying the perfect girl when he undergoes a life crisis as he faces feelings for his recently deceased best friend's wife and also deals with the sudden arrival of his flamboyant, womanising, estranged father. It will be published by Bantam's Delacorte Press.

Another of Tropper's books, "The Book of Joe", hit stores earlier this year and was optioned by Warner Brothers to be directed by Miguel Arteta ("The Good Girl").

Maguire was an executive producer of last year's "Seabiscuit", in which he starred, and producer of 2002's "25th Hour", directed by Spike Lee.

His Maguire Entertainment banner is also developing Len Williams' novel "Justice Deferred" at Warner Brothers. Also at Warners, Maguire Entertainment is producing "Urban Townie" together with Paula Weinstein. It is also among the producers of another book adaptation, "Electroboy".


Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

Online used-book sales concern some publishers
Bob Tedeschi, NYT Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Is Amazon.com becoming the Napster of the book business?

The analogy may not be far-fetched, some observers of the used-book industry say. Publishers, particularly textbook publishers, have long countered used-book sales by churning out new editions every couple of years. But the Web, particularly sites like Amazon and eBay, has given millions of consumers an easy way to find used books cheaply - often for less than $1 - without paying royalty fees to publishers or authors.

Mass-market publishers are not certain the used-book phenomenon is a problem worth addressing, but others in the industry have made up their minds.

"We think it's not good for the industry and it has an effect, but we can't measure it," said Paul Aiken, executive director of Authors Guild, a trade group. "There have always been used-book sales, but it's always been a background-noise sort of thing. Now it's right there next to the new book on Amazon."

Lorraine Shanley, a principal at Market Partners International, a publishing consultant, said that the industry was just starting to appreciate the dimensions of the problem.

"Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry," she said. "The question becomes, 'How does the book industry address its used-book problem?' There aren't any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here."

Shanley, whose company reported on used books this month in its newsletter, said that publishers were beginning to see the effects of online sales.

Greg Greeley, Amazon's vice president for media products for North America and Japan, strenuously disagreed with the notion that online sales of used books harmed the publishing industry. And Kathryn Blough, vice president of the Association of American Publishers, said that she "wouldn't jump to the conclusion" that used books were "eating away at the new-book market."

The publishers' association reported previously that sales of mass-market paperbacks and hardcover and paperback books last year were virtually unchanged from 2002, when they reached roughly $3.5 billion.

Amazon has listed used books alongside new books since late 2000. But analysts and industry executives said the momentum among consumers and newly minted used-book sellers was just now approaching the point of biting into new-book sales.

"We've not been able to pinpoint a definite effect, but my gut is that absolutely there's an effect," said Dominique Raccah, chief executive of the publisher Sourcebooks. "And it concerns me that we're not formalizing a reasonable, proactive response."

The industry's response so far has been to consider a study on the effects of the used-book market. But in the meantime, some research already suggests that used-book purchases are surging.

Based on consumer surveys, Ipsos BookTrends, a division of the research and consulting firm Ipsos-Insight, said that 15 percent of all books for adults and teenagers that were purchased from April to December 2003 were used ones - an increase of five percentage points from the like period in 2002. At the same time, the Web's share of sales rose to 12.7 percent from 9.7 percent.

Greeley, the Amazon executive, declined to cite statistics on the company's used-book effort, but he said sales had been growing nicely since Amazon started listing used books alongside new books and offering to sell its customers' used books for a 15 percent commission.

Greeley disputed the contention that Amazon could be hurting publishers or authors by selling books that yielded no royalties. "The lower prices of used books allow people to experiment with authors and genres in ways they might not have otherwise," he said.

But Albert Greco, a professor at Fordham University's graduate school of business administration who conducts research for the Book Industry Study Group, said he was "absolutely convinced" that used-book sales would "ultimately cut into an industry that's not growing at all."



IHT: Online used-book sales concern some publishers

At Fox News, it's Author! Author!
Anchors writing books - and shamelessly plugging them - is hardly news any more at the cable network

BY VERNE GAY
STAFF WRITER

July 11, 2004

The June evening must have been a perfectly pleasant one, and Roger Ailes must have been in fine Ailesian form (which is to say amusing and caustic). The guests had gathered at Studio D at Fox News headquarters, and the shrimp platters were running low. Time to get down to business.

The chairman of Fox News then took the stage to introduce his longtime friend and Fox News Channel anchor, Neil Cavuto, who was about to publish his first book, "More Than Money: True Stories of People Who Learned Life's Ultimate Lesson" (which, by the way, included a hagiographic chapter on one Roger Ailes).

And then, the Ailesian zinger. Cavuto, he observed, is "just the first person from Fox News Channel to put out a book this week."

An exaggeration? Well...

Consider the zinger of the long forgotten Duke of Gloucester, who once famously uttered to Edward Gibbon, the famously productive author of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire": "Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr. Gibbon? Another damn thick square book."

One wonders what the dear old dim-bulbed Duke would say of the publishing industry that has sprung up at Fox News headquarters, of all places?

Authors list goes on

The list is quite a list: There is Bill O'Reilly (scribble, scribble), who is banging out a new book for kids for the fall, as well as Sean Hannity (scribble), and now, Cavuto. But were you aware of "The Big Story" host John Gibson's book ("Hating America: The New World Sport?") or "On the Record" host Greta Van Susteren's ("My Turn at the Bully Pulpit: Straight Talk About Things That Drive Me Nuts"), which has been out since the winter. Alan Colmes' "Red, White & Liberal: How Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong," appeared in the fall. "Fox & Friends" co-host (and onetime jock anchor-reporter) Brian Kilmeade will become a publishing newbie in the fall with "The Games Do Count: America's Best and Brightest on the Power of Sports." Also in the works are books by Chris Wallace of "Fox News Sunday," "Fox News Watch" host Eric Burns (who already has several books to his name) and a White House correspondent James Rosen, completing a biography of Richard Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, a book that would impress even Mr. Gibbon.

Rosen began work on this big square book nearly 14 years ago, just after graduating from college. Forgetting anyone? Almost certainly, and to them, our sincere apologies, because it is said (by me, actually) that if you throw a rock inside Fox News headquarters, you will a) get arrested, and b) injure someone who has a book or book deal pending. Potential scribblers include Ailes, who has been approached on several occasions by HarperCollins' big imprint, ReganBooks, to write his own exceedingly colorful life story (so far, he's declined). It's believed that the anchor of "The Fox Report With Shepard Smith" also has been approached about a book. We won't even get into Fox's on-air consultants, most of whom are published authors or have become big-time bestselling scribblers since joining Fox News; political consultant Dick Morris is the most notable example, and even Chicago shock jock and "Fox & Friends" guest Mancow Muller has a book to his name.

You know the obvious question (why?) and can guess the obvious answer (money). The TV-star- as-author category has been a relatively hot one of late (Tim Russert's "Big Russ and Me" recently topped The New York Times' nonfiction list). Publishers like these authors because they have a ready-made audience and promotional vehicle - their own show - and that means publishers don't have to shell out big bucks themselves to hawk the books.

Loyal audience

Brad Miner, executive editor of American Compass, the conservative "wing" of giant book club Bookspan, adds: "The thing about the Fox books is that their authors have a loyal audience watching them and hanging onto their every word, week after week. That builds up a sense of authority, and those guys have it."

Overall, though, the trend's become a controversial one, simply because the TV news star authors have proven such relentless floggers, and that - say the critics - has subverted the objectivity of both author and news organization. An Associated Press column recently scoured NBC News and Russert for their in-house promotional zeal, while Salon.com also sent a well-guided bullet NBC and Fox's way.

But Fox News' lit stars have proven to be tub-thumpers beyond compare. Cavuto interviewed most of his book's "heroes" on his show and incorporated book plugs in numerous other ways. O'Reilly and Hannity are masters of the tout who especially use their huge radio shows to get out the word and boost sales. Anyone got a problem with this? Says Cavuto, who got his idea back in 1997, in the wake of the diagnosis of his multiple sclerosis: "When you can bring the heroes out and show them to people...then I think that's fine. But if you're trying to push something that's bad, with no added value to it, there's no question that then it's bad."

Burns (whose book on journalism in Colonial times will come out sometime next year), says, "I can understand why [critics] would be upset, but if you watch this guy, whoever he is, on the air, then it means you care about his view and probably want to know there's another forum" where those views have been expressed in greater detail.

Besides, he adds, "imagine how strange it would be for people to have a show on four or five hours a week and not mention the book? That would be anti-social."

Because no one at Fox News wants to be a party-pooper, it all comes down to this question, then: How much plugging is too much? As the lit industry has surged at FNC, the answer has become a sensitive one there, say industry observers (who ask not to be named or quoted). The reason, they say, are perceived inequities over who can flog and how much. There's a common-sense realization that the more on-air flogging you do, the more book sales you ring up. But Ailes has limited the tub-thumping. Van Susteren, for example, refused to tout her book (published by Crown, a division of Doubleday) on her show, "On the Record," because she reportedly thought it was wrong to do so. The book tanked.

There's also long-standing speculation at FNC that O'Reilly has been allowed to build an "O'Reilly Factor" industry - replete with volumes (published by Broadway Books, a division of Bertelsmann) and tchotchkes like doormats - because several years ago he spurned a huge offer from NBC News and instead opted to stay with Fox. Because he walked away from so much money - as much as $20 million, goes the speculation - Ailes allowed him to go hog-wild on the promo front.

'Everyone rows the boat'

Baloney, says Bill Shine, FNC's vice president of production, who declined to comment on O'Reilly but said, "Everyone rows the boat together" at Fox News. "Over eight years, the success of this company has come because Roger has avoided situations where someone thinks they can have more or get more." (Ailes, who hasn't talked to the press in about a year, was on vacation and couldn't be reached.)

Shine adds that there are no hard and fast rules on tub-thumping, because "you've got to look at this on a case by case basis....You can't have a cookie- cutter 'Everybody Follows This' approach."

As for Van Susteren: "From day one when she told me she was going to write the book, she told me and her publisher that she wasn't going to put the book on her television show. At the time, she was fairly new here and wanted to focus on the TV show, and if you know Greta more than 20 minutes, you'd know she'd want to make sure she puts her head down and into the show."

Meanwhile, Shine says the book logjam hasn't created any logistical (or ego) problems. To the contrary: "If you look at the process of this whole book phenomenon, it's never hurt ratings of a show with [?]

Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.


New York City - Entertainment

Waiting for the Movie
Reading's going out of style, even as publishers go wild
By Malcolm Jones

Newsweek
July 19, 2004 issue -

You don't usually go to government reports for arresting prose. But consider this sentence: "Indeed, at the current rate of loss, literary reading as a leisure activity will virtually disappear in half a century." Yikes. And that's not the half of it. According to a report on the reading habits of Americans issued last week by the National Endowment for the Arts, less than half of the adult American population now reads for pleasure. Using Census Bureau data, the NEA found that the number of Americans who say they've even opened a single book of fiction, let alone a poem or a play, over the course of a year has declined by 10 percent, from 56.9 percent in 1982 to 46.7 percent today. It gets worse. Young adults between 18 and 34, a category that once claimed the status of most-active readers, is now the lowest, dropping 28 percent since 1982. And by literature, "we're not talking about the number of people who reread Proust," says Dana Gioia, chairman of the NEA. "Literature" means simply any books that people read without guns pointed to their heads. "If people read even three pages of a Harlequin romance, it got counted."

One of the most troubling things uncovered by the NEA poll is that people who read are also more likely to do volunteer work or attend plays or ball games. "This study suggests that there are two groups of Americans emerging in this electronic age," says Gioia. "The first group takes a very active and engaged attitude toward information and society. The other group are increasingly passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Unfortunately, one group is growing—and it's not the readers."

Oddly, publishers have responded to the decline in readers by publishing far more titles for people not to read. Two decades ago the number of new books published annually hovered around 60,000, then climbed more than 100,000 in the early '90s. Last year saw a record 164,609 new titles. "Forty years ago you used to worry that a good book would not be published," says Dan Frank, editor in chief of Pantheon Books. "Now everything is being published, and a lot of good books are being overlooked."

Frank agrees with Gioia that publishers need to be more discriminating about what they print, and that the media and educators need to be more aggressive. "The great success that Oprah enjoyed with her book club was because she was performing a process of selection for her audience," he says. In the meantime the NEA report is enough to make you wonder not just if Americans will ever be on the same page, but if they'll be on any page at all.

With Devon Thomas and Jac Chebatoris

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.

MSNBC - Waiting for the Movie

Read 'em and weep
Being asked to judge a major fiction prize may be a huge privilege, but there's more to it than just reading a mountain of novels. As the winner of this year's Orange prize is announced, Katharine Viner, the editor of Guardian Weekend and one of the five judges, reflects on weeks of hard graft, moments of panic and at least one day spent in tears

Katharine Viner
Wednesday June 9, 2004

The Guardian

There was a moment yesterday when, having read up to eight books a week since January, I wondered what I was going to do today, now that there's no longer all this fiction in my life. As a judge for the Orange prize, the £30,000 literary award for women won last night by the brilliant Andrea Levy's book, Small Island, I have spent the past few months immersing myself in the following themes of the moment: loving brother-sister incest, the second world war, female teachers having sex with male pupils, staying with the man who makes you happy rather than promises hot sex, people "as old as the century", male narrators, armageddon and people who change their lives completely before ending up exactly where they started. How ever am I going to fill my time without it?
When I was asked to be a judge, I thought there was no way I could find the time - I have a full-time job, for a start - but then I was told that Helena Kennedy had already said yes, and she's a QC, a Labour peer, chair of the British Council, chair of the Human Genetics Commission, president of the School of Oriental and African Studies, and she's doing a book tour. If she had the time, what was my excuse?

The first judges' meeting was held in January in a London club which had some kind of naked floor show going on downstairs. Already my fellow judges had outgunned me; one had read 15 books already. (By this stage I had read four, and four very slim ones at that.) We discussed what we were looking for: good writing, good story, and a reason to read - a point or a message. Sandi Toksvig, the writer and broadcaster, and our chair, was down-to-earth and organised; she liked order and decisiveness and making charts, which I found thrilling. Minette Walters, the crime novelist, was into smoking and talking a lot. Helena Kennedy was very busy. And Karen Cunningham, the head of Glasgow libraries, was getting up at 5am every morning to read.

I left the meeting slightly hysterical, convinced that there was no way I would ever finish these novels - 46 in six weeks in the first batch, although I would read 71 in total - and certain that my swotty fellow judges would. So at 2am that night I realised I needed to make a schedule. Weekends were best - say, six novels - and then a couple in the week, in the odd spare evenings or on the bus.

This was the exact opposite of the languorous pleasure I usually take from reading, and the intensity had consequences. You become savage. There were a couple of books, for instance, which I enjoyed very much and would have been happy to read in normal life; reading them as a judge, their flaws were blatant and they had to go. And you become soft. Just when you're thinking, "My God, this is terrible, how could they bear to put pen to paper?", you also start thinking, "This person spent 35 years of their life writing this novel, sacrificing marriages, careers, relationships with their children. Surely I have to give it a chance?"

This meant I read all the novels right to the end. I enjoyed the well-written books, because they were rewarding and enriching (I wrote this with relief in capitals next to one novel: "ENRICHING. I FEEL ENRICHED"). And I enjoyed the badly written books, because I could read them fast and with a guilty laugh. It was the books that were just OK that were trickiest. Several times I thought that a book was fine, and might make the long list if it had a great ending. It never did, which made me think that if you can't write a good beginning, you can't write a good novel.

I started to become furious about small linguistic matters, such as cliches, and wildly judgmental about them. "Few and far between"; "cloud cuckoo-land"; "for good measure"; "I stood there, literally open-mouthed"; "a cathartic silk purse, if you will". In fact, anything ending in "if you will", which seems to mean, "I know it doesn't quite work as an idea or as a metaphor, but give it a go, won't you? Please?"

There were two particularly low points. One was when I had a run of books about nothing. These were usually by authors from the US, who have attended prestigious creative writing courses, often at the University of Iowa. They are books with 500 pages discussing a subtle but allegedly profound shift within a relationship. They are books where intricate descriptions of a man taking a glass out of the dishwasher, taking a tea-towel off a rail, opening out the tea-towel, then delicately drying the glass with the tea-towel, before pouring a drink into the glass, signify that he has just been through a divorce. At one point, I rang a friend and shouted at her, "I wish some of these bloody writers would write about Iraq!" Or anywhere with a bit of politics or meaning. Luckily, we settled on a shortlist of books that featured Soviet Russia, Nigeria, Jamaican immigration to Britain, the second world war, the New Zealand gold rush and the end of the world, so I got my desire for substance in the end.

The second low point, I remember very clearly, was on February 9. I was way behind schedule, so took a day's holiday from work with the aim of reading three novels - one each in the morning, afternoon and evening. The first book was Anne Tyler's fabulous The Amateur Marriage, which was about mistakes and regret and which I found deeply affecting. I cried in my local cafe. The second book was Julie Myerson's Something Might Happen, a superb but cruel book about terrible things. I sobbed the entire time I was reading it. This was in a different cafe. That evening, at home, I read Stella Duffy's devastating novel about terminal cancer and death, and how it is worse to die than be left behind, and, well, I could hardly walk. The trouble with really good novels is that they make you engage, make you experience the emotions of the characters as if they were your own. It was a terrible day, and yet these remained three favourites for me throughout the judging process.

I remember feeling irritated by the judges of last year's Booker prize, who complained heartily about all the reading they had to do, even though they were all being paid and appeared to have summer houses and holiday destinations to retreat to. Judging a big literary prize is a privilege: you get to influence what the public reads, you can make people's writing careers, you learn about what works and what doesn't, and you get a snapshot of what writers are writing about right now. I discovered new writers; and found that some writers about whom I had preconceptions were better than I'd assumed. I had always considered Anita Shreve to be bland, for example - it doesn't help that all her novels seem to have the same painting of a distant barn on the cover - but I found All He Ever Wanted far more profound and enjoyable than I expected.

The judging, naturally, was the most fun part. For a start, we got cakes and champagne and big dinners. Sandi made some excellent charts with pictures, bound in a plastic folder. Choosing the long list made me realise how judging is not about your own selection but the group's, which is how a couple of books that I considered fabulous didn't make it. I couldn't quite believe that the other judges didn't share my enjoyment of one particular novel. And if you think it's tough arguing with Helena Kennedy QC, you should try arguing with Minette Walters.

For a while, I thought that Helena and I had a fine, femininst allegiance: Guardian journalist, liberal-lefty lawyer. But then we started to disagree, and I found common ground instead with Minette - crime writer from the countryside. Sandi and I agreed on quite a bit, though I sensed she's not one for rows. And as for Karen: well, her reaction to Helen Walsh's sub-porn Brass was to come over all Miss Jean Brodie. "I can't read about all this sex! Don't they know I'm a librarian?" That meeting was a lot of fun.

The shortlisting was edgier: there was more at stake. We met at the genteel University Women's Club in Mayfair, and had been instructed by Our Leader Sandi to arrive with our top three from the long list, a tough call with so many great books. We had a considerable fight. No book was favoured by every judge. One book was named by three judges, but never as their favourite. I was very disappointed that a great novel of my choosing didn't quite get on to the shortlist - but I comforted myself with its subsequent success on Richard and Judy's book club. We all agreed that we had an excellent and ambitious shortlist, swapped gifts (do other judging panels do this? Eggs and honey, mugs, notebooks, House of Lords trinket boxes), ate the big dinner, drank, swapped salacious tales, invited each other on holiday. (I thought this was a joke, until I heard that the 2002 Booker panel had gone away together to a house in France a year after they had judged the prize. Apparently they read books together. This is an addiction!)

Our shortlist of Atwood, Tremain, Slovo, Levy, Adichie and Hazzard was met with acclaim in the press; it was praised for its strength and impact and muscularity. I think it's a brilliant group. There was some controversy about the exclusion from the shortlist of Monica Ali's much-lauded Brick Lane; the Evening Standard suggested this was down to me, because of a spat I had last year with Ali's publisher. This wasn't true; I like Brick Lane, and was perhaps the judge most in favour of it - and anyway, nothing is ever down to only one judge.

As you might expect, the final round of judging was the most stressful. We met in secret at a Danish restaurant serving white tomato mousse. Not much drinking this time - too nervous. Everyone cared very much about what won; everyone felt that with such a shortlist, there would be no bad winner. There were no tears, but there were cigarillos, and strolls away from the table. And we found our winner, a superb novel about postwar immigration into Britain from Jamaica, and I am thrilled with our decision.

A few postscripts. The best novel won. My favourite sentences were written by Sarah Hall (The Electric Michelangelo). My favourite description was in Louise Dean's Becoming Strangers: "The South African pulled his short shorts back up from round his ankles and positioned his genitals gamely inside the fishing-net interior." Mavis Cheek and Maggie O'Farrell actually care if a reader enjoys their books. Toni Morrison is still queen of all she surveys, and she and Margaret Atwood don't put a step wrong because they don't know how. Atwood and Maggie Gee (The Flood) are the scariest. Andrea Levy is a great British discovery. Women's fiction is at a high point. And I'm looking for a new hobby.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

Guardian Unlimited Books | Special Reports | Read 'em and weep

July 8, 2004
Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds
By BRUCE WEBER

Oprah's Book Club may help sell millions of books to Americans, and slam poetry may have engendered a youthful new breed of wordsmith, but the nation is still caught in a tide of indifference when it comes to literature. That is the sobering profile of a new survey to be released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, which describes a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans and a particular decline in the reading of fiction, poetry and drama.

The survey, called "Reading at Risk," is based on data from "The Survey of Public Participation in the Arts," conducted by the Census Bureau in 2002. Among its findings are that fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry; that the consumer pool for books of all kinds has diminished; and that the pace at which the nation is losing readers, especially young readers, is quickening. In addition it finds that the downward trend holds in virtually all demographic areas.

"What this study does is give us accurate numbers that support our worst fears about American reading," said Dana Gioia, the chairman of the endowment, who will preside over a discussion of the survey results at the New York Public Library this morning. "It quantifies what people have been observing anecdotally, but the news is that it has been happening more rapidly and more pervasively than anyone thought possible. Reading is in decline among all groups, in every region, at every educational level and within every ethnic group," he said, calling the survey results "deeply alarming."

The study, with its stark depiction of how Americans now entertain, inform and educate themselves, does seem likely to fuel debate over issues like the teaching and encouragement of reading in schools, the financing of literacy programs and the prevalence in American life of television and the other electronic media that have been increasingly stealing time from readers for a couple of generations at least. It also raises questions about the role of literature in the contemporary world.

The survey also makes a striking correlation between readers of literature and those who are socially engaged, noting that readers are far more likely than nonreaders to do volunteer and charity work and go to art museums, performing arts events and ballgames. "Whatever good things the new electronic media bring, they also seem to be creating a decline in cultural and civic participation," Mr. Gioia said. "Of literary readers, 43 percent perform charity work; only 17 percent of nonreaders do. That's not a subtle difference."

Still, in a world where information is more readily available than ever, where people know more than they ever have, and where visual acuity is becoming ever more crucially utilitarian, it is worth asking: What, if anything, does literature's diminished importance to Americans represent? The study has already produced conflicting reactions.

"It's not just unfortunate, it's real cause for concern," said James Shapiro, a professor of English at Columbia University. "A culture gets what it pays for, and if we think democracy depends on people who read, write, think and reflect — which is what literature advances — then we have to invest in what it takes to promote that."

On the other hand Kevin Starr, librarian emeritus for the state of California and a professor of history at the University of Southern California, said that if close to 50 percent of Americans are reading literature, "that's not bad, actually."

"In an age where there's no canon, where there are so many other forms of information, and where we're returning to medieval-like oral culture based on television," he said, "I think that's pretty impressive, quite frankly." Mr. Starr continued: "We should be alarmed, I suppose, but the horse has long since run out of the barn. There are two distinct cultures that have evolved, and by far the smaller is the one that's tied up with book and high culture. You can get through American life and be very successful without anybody ever asking you whether Shylock is an anti-Semitic character or whether `Death in Venice' is better than `The Magic Mountain.' "

The Census Bureau study upon which the survey was based measured the number of adult Americans who attended live performances of theater, music, dance and other arts; visited museums; watched broadcasts of arts programs; or read literature in the past year. The survey sample — 17,135 people — makes it one of the largest studies ever conducted on the subject of arts participation, and the data were compared with similar studies from 1982 and 1992. In the literature segment respondents were asked whether they had, during the previous 12 months, without the impetus of a school or work assignment, read any novels, short stories, poems or plays in their leisure time.

Their answers show that just over half — 56.6 percent — read a book of any kind in the previous year, down from 60.9 percent a decade earlier. Readers of literature fell even more precipitously, to 46.7 percent of the adult population, down from 54 percent in 1992 and 56.9 percent in 1982, which means that in the last decade the erosion accelerated significantly. The literary reading public lost 5 percent of its girth between 1982 and 1992; another 14 percent dropped away in the following decade. And though the number of readers of literature is about the same now as it was in 1982 — about 96 million people — the American population as a whole has increased by almost 40 million.

The survey found that men (37.6 percent) were doing less literary reading than women (55.1 percent); that Hispanics (26.5 percent) were doing less than African-Americans (37.1 percent) and whites (51.4 percent); but that all categories were declining. The steepest declines of any demographic group are among the youngest adults. In 1982, 59.8 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds read literature; by 2002 that figure had dropped to 42.8 percent. In the 25-to-34 age group, the percentage of literary readers dropped to 47.7 from 62.1 over the same period.

"This won't be news to publishers," said Jim Milliott, senior editor for news at the trade journal Publishers Weekly. "It just confirms what we've known from other fragmented surveys all along."

Last month the Association of American Publishers released worldwide sales figures for 2003, indicating that total sales of consumer book products increased 6 percent for the year. Much of the increase can be accounted for by sales of audio books, juvenile titles and nonpaper e-books, sold online. Adult hardbound books, adult paperbacks and mass-market paperbacks all showed relatively flat revenues, in spite of price increases.

The one category of book to rise markedly was that of religious texts, with total sales of $337.9 million, 36.8 percent over the previous year.



The New York Times > Books > Fewer Noses Stuck in Books in America, Survey Finds

HE'S BACK IN SOUTH FLORIDA --

'THE HOWARD STERN SHOW' Launches on Nine Infinity Broadcasting Radio Stations Beginning on Monday, July 19
Wednesday June 30, 9:49 am ET
'King Of All Media' Makes Long Awaited Return to the Airwaves in San Diego, Pittsburgh, Orlando and Rochester

NEW YORK, June 30 /PRNewswire/ -- THE HOWARD STERN SHOW, radio's most popular morning program, will launch in nine Infinity Broadcasting markets across the country, it was announced today by Joel Hollander, President and Chief Operating Officer, Infinity. This announcement marks his return to markets where he has been off the air since February 26. Stations in Houston (KIKK-AM), San Diego (KPLN-FM), Tampa (WQYK-AM), Pittsburgh (WBZZ-FM), Orlando (WOCL-FM), Austin (KQBT-FM), West Palm Beach (WPBZ-FM), Rochester (WZNE-FM) and Fresno (KRNC-FM). THE HOWARD STERN SHOW will debut on all stations beginning on Monday, July 19.
These nine additional markets brings the total number of stations that carry THE HOWARD STERN SHOW to 45, including 27 owned and operated by Infinity Broadcasting. The program is rated No. 1 Men 25-54 in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, among others.

"Howard has dominated the radio landscape for more than 20 years," said Hollander. "The millions of listeners who tune into the Howard Stern Show on a daily basis is unmatched in the industry. He delivers one of the most loyal audiences in radio who will no doubt embrace his return."

"I can't wait to get back into the markets where we were taken off," said Howard Stern. "I've missed my fans and judging from the countless emails and calls I've received, they've missed the show. Now we have the opportunity to be together again. It will be great."

In addition to his successful radio program, Howard Stern also starred in "Private Parts" based on his best-selling autobiography, and authored one the fastest selling books in publishing history, Miss America. His E! Entertainment Television show recently celebrated their 10th anniversary on the air and remains one of the networks highest-rated series.




'THE HOWARD STERN SHOW' Launches on Nine Infinity Broadcasting Radio Stations Beginning on Monday, July 19

The Secret Life of Newt Gingrich
Former speaker of the House by day, Amazon.com super reviewer by night.
by Katherine Mangu-Ward
06/16/2004 12:00:00 AM

NEWT GINGRICH has been leading a secret life. Night after night for years he's been slipping out of the headquarters of the vast right-wing conspiracy, wolfing down spy novels and then reviewing them for Amazon.com. So prolific and proficient has he been at this pursuit that he has attained the coveted title Amazon Top 500 Reviewer. Newt is number 488.

To earn this honor, Gingrich wrote 137 reviews, which were deemed "helpful" by 2,002 people. "Newt Gingrich," we learn from his extensive About Me page, "is an avid reader. He does not review all of the books he reads. You will not find any bad reviews here, just the books he thinks you might enjoy." From the same page, we learn that in addition to being called an "exceptional leader" by Time magazine (which made him its Man of the Year in 1995), Newt Gingrich is "credited with the idea of a Homeland Security agency," "widely recognized for his commitment to a better system of health," and that he was the March of Dimes 1995 Georgia Citizen of the Year.

Certainly no one could fault Gingrich for less-than-full disclosure about himself. But you can also tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps.

Gingrich shares the rank of Amazon reviewer #488 with "boudica" who describes herself as "Witch and Editor of the ZodiacBistro.com and a free lance reviewer." She's also a "Craft teacher with the CroneSpeak.com group" who has "recently published article in the Llewellyn Wicca Almanac."

Gingrich is slightly outranked by "Comrade Radmila", who doesn't "claim to be an expert on literature, films, or music" and notes in his About Me section that he's ticked off that "someone wrote to tell me I hurt their feelings because I did not like Mystic Pizza or something like that."

As advertised, Gingrich's book reviews themselves are disconcertingly positive. For fiction, Gingrich prefers stories of international intrigue--spy novels, mysteries, and thrillers. Clearly something of an addict, Gingrich finds that he "can't put down" dozens of "page-turners" that "grab you on the first page and carry you straight to the end" and so has to read "nonstop." Consuming speed-readable escapist international spy fiction occupies a significant chunk of Newt's downtime, it seems.

For non-fiction, Gingrich favors books about revolutions in ideas or politics. Though some of the books seem like odd choices taken separately (Trilobite: Eyewitness to Evolution), it's clear that Newt is fascinated by tipping points--moments where new technology or new ideas cause revolutionary change in the way the world works. No word on where To Renew America fits in this genre, since Gingrich avoids commenting on his own work.

Gingrich is non-partisan in his non-fiction reviews, awarding five stars to Andrei Cherny's The Next Deal: The Future of Public Life in the Information Age. He writes: "To have a 21-year-old Gore speechwriter mature into a 25-year-old public policy book writer and then have that book enthusiastically trumpeted by a conservative former Speaker of the House is a moment of unique achievement."

Gingrich rarely gives fewer than four stars to the books he reviews. One notable exception is Bob Woodward's Bush at War, which Gingrich deems "useful" and hits with a mere 3-star rating. Wesley Clark's Waging Modern War, on the other hand, gets five stars and the header "Required, timely reading."

Not all reviewers are as relentlessly positive as Gingrich. The first customer review that appears for Gingrich's alternate history of the civil war Gettysburg is rather harsh:

"We won you lost get over it" writes reviewer "thejaxs225".

"Last I checked the Union WON at Gettysburg and WON the war. And no matter how many times you want to rewrite history the fact STILL REMAINS the NORTH kicked the living crap out of the South. Get over it."

Still, only "1 of 22 people found this review helpful," so Gingrich can find consolation in the thought that "thejaxs225" will probably never rise to the exalted heights of Top 500 Reviewer.

Amazon's Number 2 reviewer Lawrance M. Bernabo, on the other hand, quite liked Gettysburg, which he describes as having been "written by fellow Amazon reviewer Newt Gingrich and military historian William R. Forstchen."

Gingrich modestly discourages speculation about how high might rise within Amazon's ranks, saying through a spokesman that while he'd like be an Amazon Top 10 Reviewer, that would probably require him to read romance novels, "something the speaker's not likely to do."

But hey, Gingrich already outranks "Kemspeaks", a self-proclaimed "combination of the serenity of jazz and the intensity of iron" who likes Stevie Wonder and Chaka Kahn's musical stylings, and favors squats and lateral raises when power lifting.

Besides "Kemspeaks," Gingrich has already beaten out 68,202 other reviewers. What's a measly 487 more to such a man? Gingrich is clearly someone to keep an eye on--he could be destined for great things.


Katherine Mangu-Ward is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.


© Copyright 2004, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

The Secret Life of Newt Gingrich

Bill Clinton's memoirs get editor's touch

He put the '22' in Catch-22, but publishing legend Bob Gottlieb says Bill Clinton's 957-page autobiography came in the president's longhand.

BY ALEXANDRA ALTER

Bill Clinton's handpicked choice to edit his autobiography, My Life, which comes out Tuesday in a first printing of 1.5 million copies, was New York publishing legend Bob Gottlieb.

Gottlieb's initial response: Well, maybe.

As editor of such renowned books as Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and Katharine Graham's autobiography, Gottlieb is a big enough name to turn an ex-president down.

''I said sure, but we have to meet first. What if he doesn't like me or I don't like him?'' Gottlieb recalled telling Knopf President Sonny Mehta.

As it happened, the two got along well. Their first meeting, which took place in 2001 at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, revealed that while they outwardly have little in common -- Gottlieb is famously disheveled and bohemian, while the former president dresses like a former president -- they share a bond: humor.

''He's funny and I'm funny, albeit in very different ways,'' Gottlieb said. ``We're very different types and are from different worlds, so we approached each other cautiously, but we ended up respecting and liking each other and having a very good time.''

Gottlieb, a Miami Beach resident when he is not living in and working from his midtown Manhattan apartment, said it was quickly obvious that he and the former president were on the same wavelength.

Clinton chose Gottlieb to edit My Life and received a record $10 million advance for the book. Clinton has said he chose Gottlieb because of his work on the late Washington Post publisher Graham's book, A Personal History, which won a Pulitzer Prize.

His admiration for the famously well-read editor, who allegedly finished Tolstoy's War and Peace in a single day, prompted Clinton to insert ''Robert Gottlieb is the greatest editor in the world'' into his manuscript.

Gottlieb's coy note in response: ``Cut -- reluctantly.''

Expectations for the book are high, and Gottlieb promised that readers will not be disappointed.

''The real success of Clinton's book will be a couple of weeks from now when people are actually reading it and are telling their friends what a good book it is,'' he said.

KNACK FOR GOOD READS

Gottlieb has a penchant for producing good reads, as well as high art. Formerly with the Simon & Schuster publishing house and New Yorker magazine, Gottlieb has edited John Cheever and Toni Morrison as well as blockbuster novels such as Michael Crichton's Congo and Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire.

Michael Korda, editor in chief at Simon & Schuster, wrote of Gottlieb in his 1999 memoir, Another Life:

``Bob had a kind of split personality as an editor: He pursued high culture and low culture with equal intensity and seemed to enjoy both. More extraordinary, he was good at both.''

His editorial range -- Gottlieb deftly edits popular potboilers as well as literary novels -- mirrors his eclectic personal interests. He is a fan of the opera as well as Elvis, and he acquires American kitsch such as plastic handbags from flea markets and thrift stores.

Gottlieb laughed when asked about his favorite literary genre. ''It's like asking a parent who the favorite child is,'' he said. In other words, he is not saying.

Gottlieb said he is irked at the number of people who have approached him to question whether Clinton did his own writing. The president wrote the manuscript -- a whopping 957 pages -- in longhand, his editor insists.

His friends and colleagues say Gottlieb's hands-on approach is an anomaly in today's publishing world.

''Most editors today are acquisition editors, and he's a hands-on editor,'' said Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books in Coral Gables and Miami Beach and a friend of Gottlieb's since the late 1980s. ``He's one of the great minds in publishing, and there aren't many like him.''

One of Gottlieb's strengths is his ability to draw out a writer's distinctive voice, said Charles McGrath, editor of The New York Times Book Review.

''He has a chameleonlike ability to understand what a writer wants to do and inhabits that writer's thoughts and intentions,'' McGrath said. 'INVISIBLE' MARK

Readers who pick up Clinton's book can expect to see a lot of Gottlieb's work -- and none at all, said McGrath, who edits Gottlieb's frequent contributions to The New York Times Book Review.

''Bob's stamp will be all over it, and it will be invisible,'' he said. ``If it's like anything else Bob does, you won't see Bob there, you'll see Bill Clinton.''

It's not that he doesn't leave his mark on thingsGottlieb famously changed the title of Heller's first novel from Catch-18 to Catch-22, arguing that ''22'' sounded funnier.

As hands-on an editor as he is, Gottlieb is reluctant to take too much credit for Clinton's long-awaited memoir.

''You cannot turn a bad writer into a good writer,'' he said. ``I did a normal editorial job for a long and complicated book.''

Herald.com | 06/20/2004 | Bill Clinton's memoirs get editor's touch