Texas Pages

For all you would-be writers out there, considering knocking off work this morning and heading out into a lovely spring day in Texas, here is some advice from Michael Chabon, as quoted in the afterword of the paperback version of The Yiddish Policemen's Union:

"Chabon's success traces to three requirements: talent, luck and discipline. 'Discipline," he says, "is the one element of those three things that you can control, and so that is the one that you have to focus on controlling, and you just have to hope and trust in the other two.'"

Lisa See makes an appearance 4 p.m. Tuesday (May 13) at Rosewood Mansion on Turtle Creek, 2821 Turtle Creek Blvd. Your $25 ticket includes cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. Call 214-443-4747.

I saw Lisa speak in New York last year at Book Expo America. It was an interesting presentation. We have an excerpt from her book here. You can also read our review of her book below.

Amazon.com says you can actually, finally buy one of the red-hot readers again.

If you're considering one, here's the most exhaustive review I've seen, from the tech blog MacInTouch.

(We've had posts previously from Andrew D. Smith, Judy Alter and others.)

Always interested in hearing your own experiences as well.

The Associated Press says:

A court ruling in favor of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has set the stage for a trial on whether publication of photos taken of her young son violates his privacy.
The Court of Appeal in London says children of famous parents have the same right to expect privacy as children of parents who aren't well-known.

We'll have more on The Bella Cullen Project of Arlington in days to come.

But we know fans will want to know about their MySpace hit, "Sexy Vampire," right away.

You heard it here first ... .

Almost lost in an e-mail outage here -- The Writer's Garret kicks off a celebration of Texas Writers month with Julianne McCullagh and Beatriz Terrazas, 7 p.m. at Paperbacks Plus
6115 La Vista Dr., Dallas.

The newly rediscovered e-mail says: "Bill Marvel will be our MC ... There will be wine and cheese to loosen our tongues, and friends, old and new, to brighten the atmosphere."

The Hollywood Reporter says BBC Films is planning to develop an adaptation of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. Ellen Page -- star of Juno and the upcoming Texas-based roller-derby comedy Whip It! -- is in line to star.
THR.com says the 1847 work (Jane Eyre, not Whip It! ) is among the most filmed English novels of all time, including BBC-produced miniseries in 1973 and 2006.

Alan Peppard's column today closes with mention of his pending memoir, Books. Alan notes:

"Some forget that more than two decades ago, Larry's Booked Up stores had an outpost in Dallas run by his friend Bill Gilliland."

That was in my pre-Texas era. Anybody recall this location?

For those who were dallying -- better hope that traffic is light on the tollway today. As of 4:30, the Stonebriar Barnes & Noble had about 120 tickets remaining for Stephenie Meyer's Saturday appearance in Frisco. A sellout by day's end is expected.

Rick Barrick was on dawn patrol this morning in Frisco as Stephenie Meyer's The Host went on sale -- and tickets for her Saturday appearance were made available.

He wasn't alone -- 200 people were in line at the Barnes & Noble at Stonebriar Center at 5 a.m.

Rick says:

The line started at 9 p.m. Monday outside the store. Girls and young women made up most of the crowd, because, one woman said, "the books are based on romance" and "peaceful vampires."

University of Texas at Dallas student Matt McKee was one of a few young men in line. "I like vampires. I own all of Anne Rice's books," Mr. McKee said. "There is nothing wrong with romance every once in a while. It's nice to read a paragraph and go, 'Ahhhh.' "

In today's Healthy Living, find reviews of For Keeps: Women Tell the Truth About Their Bodies, Growing Older, and Acceptance, and
Positively Ageless, by Cheryl Forberg, nutritionist for The Biggest Loser.

Plus, a story on men's health looks at virility through the eyes (and perhaps the glands) of Philip Roth and others.

The Mystery Writers of America announced their Edgar Awards were announced over the weekend.

Over at the Los Angeles Times' "Jacket Copy" blog, Carolyn Kellogg thinks mysteries are getting, well, literate. She notes
"that Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon, Man Booker Prize winner John Banville (writing as Benjamin Black) and National Book Award nominee Susan Straight were all up for Edgars this year. That's Literature with a capital L."

Here's a list of winning books:

Keep your eyes peeled for these literary gems, coming out this week:
* Audition: A Memoir, by Barbara Walters (Knopf, $29.95). Explores the life and career of the legendary TV journalist. Juicy tidbits apparently abound.
* Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History, by Ted Sorenson (Harper, $27.95) Memoir by the confidant of and speechwriter for President Kennedy.
* Secrets, by Jude Deveraux (Atria, $25.95). Romance follows a young woman who tracks down her childhood love interest.
* Phantom Prey, by John Sandford (Putnam, $26.95). The newest thriller with investigator Lucas Davenport.
* The Host, by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown, $25.99). Queen of the young-adult vampire genre turns her attention to adult readers. The Host takes place in a future where Earth has been invaded by parasitic aliens who control most of humanity. Superdelegates? Oh, different genre. Sorry.
* From Dead to Worse, by Charlaine Harris (Ace, $24.95). The eighth in Ms. Harris' hilarious Southern Vampire mystery series.
* Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown, $25) follows German refugees as they flee the advancing Red Army in 1945. Grim, but so well-written you just have to keep going.
* The Prince of Frogtown, by Rick Bragg (Knopf, $24). Concludes Mr. Bragg's trilogy of family stories that began with the utterly splendid All Over But the Shoutin' and Ava's Man.

The NBCC's quarterly list of recommended titles is out. Heres' what America's book critics say they are reading and enjoying:

For the first time in 10 years, there are no Harry Potter books on The New York Times best-seller list.

The post on The Times' blog notes how the paper had to keep inventing new lists to keep J.K. Rowling from overwhelming them.

(Thanks to Shelf Awareness for the tip.)

Spotted on NewWest.net:

The University of Nebraska has posted an extensive archive of Willa Cather's work.
From the site's self-description:

"It now includes, in a fully-searchable format, digital transcriptions of five Cather books (copyright law forbids digitally republishing her post-1922 works), all of her short fiction pre-1912, her interviews, speeches, and public letters, her uncollected nonfiction from the 1910s, the complete run of Cather Studies, the back issues of Teaching Cather, a large gallery of photographs, multiple biographies, announcements and news from the Cather scholarly community, virtual tours of Cather-related locales, and much more."

The Washington Post is reporting that the largest survey ever of youthful reading in the U.S. will reveal Monday that none of J.K. Rowling's popular Harry Potter books has been able to dislodge the works of longtime favorites Dr. Seuss, E.B. White, Judy Blume, S.E. Hinton and Harper Lee as the most read.

Books by the five well-known U.S. authors, plus lesser-known Laura Numeroff, Katherine Paterson and Gary Paulsen, drew the most readers at every grade level in a study of 78.5 million books read by more than 3 million children who logged on to the Renaissance Learning Web site to take quizzes on books they read last year. Many works from Rowling's Potter series turned up in the top 20, but other authors also ranked high and are likely to get more attention as a result.

I've always been a fan of young adult books and hope this study draws more attention to the genre.

How did your favorite books fare?

We had an excerpt from Infected (reviewed today in GuideLive) planned for this morning. But as Tom Dodge's review suggests, it had an awful lot of limb-severing and blood-gushing for a blog that is sponsored by a family newspaper.

But have no fear. Scott Sigler has an extensive site of his own that can provide you with sample chapters and more about his work.

Interesting observation reported on Galleycat -- tipsters say that the top 50 young adult science fiction/fantasy bestsellers recently outsold the top 100 adult sci-fi/fantasty bestsellers by two to one.

Blogger/author John Scalzi argues:

"That serious adult science fiction/fantasy readers don't seem to know any of this is a) a feature of the opaque nature of book sales, in which no one publicly talks about actual units sold and b) a feature of the apparent short-sightedness of adult sf/f readers, who are missing a genuine literary revolution in their genre because the YA section is a blank spot on the map to them, if not to everyone else."

As part of the opening weekend celebration of the Center for Creative Connections, the Dallas Museum of Art is offering free admission on Saturday and Sunday. As part of the fun, it's hosting a Define-a-Thon event where you can test your vocabulary. It's Saturday at 5 p.m. (registration is at 4 p.m. at the Arts & Letters Live table in the Councourse). For more details, check it out here.