Nora Ephron adapts and directs Julie Powell’s memoir Julie & Julia, in which she attempts to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Vol. 1.
Here’s the trailer
Personally, I’d rather see this on the big screen. I’d embed it here, but Hulu won’t let me.
Well, the apron doesn’t seem to be working, so I recommend natural coagulants, such as chicken liver.
The NY Times says it’s a good thing that Amazon is opening itself up to more e-book platforms, writing-
The Lexcycle team should also help Amazon stake out ground on Google’s Android phones, the Palm Pre and Windows Mobile devices — and perhaps eventually turn to more open e-reading formats.
Dennis Johnson at MobyLives seems to agree.
Kassia Krozser at Booksquare begs to differ-
Consumers are slowly being locked into a single vendor. Publishers are being backed into Amazon’s corner.
I guess time will tell who is right, but I will say that I think there is a big difference between having to deal with an 800 lb. gorilla and being handcuffed to it.
Too bad somebody beat me to it!
Check out this preview of Peter (Hate) Bagge’s collection of reprints.
(via The Beat)
The unhinged savants over at io9.com have posted an awesome quiz: Classic Rock Album Cover or Book Cover-You Decide.
Sadly, in this mp3 world, album covers are a thing of the past, and when ebooks rule the world, so will book covers. Then what will we judge a book by (and what will teenagers look at when they listen to music and get stoned)?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sudden urge to listen to Hawkwind.
Sorry, I couldn’t resist dropping a reference to the Herman’s Hermits classic.
I have to admit that I had fun reading Joanne Kaufman’s piece in the New York Times on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader last week. At first, I kinda scoffed at the comments of former PW editor Sara Nelson, where she says if you have one, “… you’re probably not using it to read a mass market paperback”, in light of the fact that five of the ten best-selling Kindle editions feature vampires (six if you count Liberty & Tyranny by Mark R. Levin), but I guess it’s the noble sentiment behind the quote that counts.
But what I liked about the piece is that it avoids the “we’re all gonna die and it’s Kindle’s fault” (I guess that job’s been taken by the swine flu), and is delightfully tongue-in-cheek.
Basically, the piece can be summed up in this quote: “If people jettison their book collections or stop buying new volumes, it will grow increasingly hard to form snap opinions about them by wandering casually into their living rooms”.
That’s the real bugaboo about Kindle: it deprives us of our literary voyurism.
Not to worry, once I’ve had a chance to fully digest the news that Amazon has purchased its main iPhone e-reader rival Stanza, I’ll be back to my normal doomsday self.
(photo credit: Lexuh, taken on the streets of Seattle)
Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro has written the first of a proposed trilogy of vampire novels called The Strain, and it’s scheduled to be published June 2nd.
In this video, del Toro describes how he was inspired by vampires, but that his novel will be as far from the traditional romantic vampire motif as possible.
People I know who have read the galley (sadly I have not) have said it is quite good and it features some unsettling imagery that stick in the brain long after they finished reading.
After the craptacular prequel The Phantom Menace, I swore that George Lucas was dead to me. But I keep coming back to this franchise that should have been allowed to die with dignity.
The Vader Project is happening from now until May 3rd at Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum (perfect venue), and it features contemporary pop artists re-imagining Darth Vader’s helmet.
While I really like the Unabomber Vader, and the Vader with antlers, I think this one is my favorite: it strikes the perfect balance between menace and whimsy.
(via Gizmodo)
And it was a shoplifter!
Proprietor/bookseller/blogger Daniel Golden wrote about the woman who asked to see a copy of The Four Day Diet by Ian K. Smith, sat down in one of the store’s comfy chairs (below), and vanished with the book after stuffing the dust jacket under the cushion.
To add insult to injury, the author (Dr. Smith) contacted Goldin, offering to give a copy of the book to the person who stole it, unaware that the thief was successful.
Would it not have made more sense to offer a copy to the bookseller who suffered the actual loss?
I’ve complained, at length and to anyone who will listen, about what I feel is the frequent banality of NPR. It’s not that I don’t agree with them, but frequently, their reporting just drives me crazy.
However, more than once I will flip it on in the car and hear a publishing-related story, so I guess it can’t be all that bad, right? I mean, I hear more about books and publishing on that network than I do about, oh say taxicab drivers, baristas or pipe fitters.
Tuesday, on All Things Considered, a woman was interviewed who made wallets and handbags out of old books.
My gut instinct was thinking about those poor books falling victim to her X-acto knife. But, then I got to thinking about how she is not only saving books from the recycling bin, but finding another way to make books fashionable.
Not something I would buy personally, but I can see the appeal.
This was a book I was looking forward to selling (and reading), but I didn’t think would sell as well as it has so far.
This gloriously sprawling (800+ pages) autobiographical manga has been getting all sorts of respectable media attention.
The New York Times featured it on the front page of its arts section last week, writing “It’s among this genre’s signal achievements”.
Adrian Tomine, creator of Optic Nerve and Tatsumi’s American designer, speaks with the mangaka on PRI’s The World.
I suspect this book (D&Q PB 9781897299746 $29.95) will have legs, and could rear its head again when gift-giving season rolls around again.