July 27, 2005

J.K. Rowling Talks About Harry Potter

(Filed under: Book Buzz)

For all the flurry of articles about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, perhaps the best one is a virtually word-for-word interview transcript with J.K. Rowling and a few fan sites. She goes into great detail and shows a lot more of her personality than you'll see in most interviews.

But for those who have finised the sixth book, the real question is when will the seventh and final book come out? Rowling has said she's started pieces of the final book, but will probably spend most of 2006 writing it.

Posted by kevin at 2:36 PM | TrackBack

July 14, 2005

NYT on Jeff Bezos & Amazon.com

(Filed under: Industry)

Amazon.com turns 10 years old and the New York Times takes a look at the Internet giant and their bold, risky-happy founder, Jeff Bezos. Best detail in the story is that billionaire Bezos has a salary of only $81,000. He's got to be one of the cheapest CEOs in the country.

Posted by kevin at 5:54 AM | TrackBack

July 13, 2005

The Book Proposal Book

(Filed under: Industry)

The Adfreak blog talks about a failed book proposal (yawn), but the interesting part is the idea of a book collecting book proposals. Not every book needs to be written, but sometimes the proposals themselves are interesting. Fun idea.

Posted by kevin at 8:48 PM | TrackBack

July 7, 2005

Why Children Love Roald Dahl

(Filed under: Extracurricular)

The New Yorker asks why children love Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach, and why adults generally don't like the curious children's writer. It's a long piece, but includes lots of lovely details about Dahl, including bits about his writing hut:

The adults who looked into the hut were less impressed. The walls, lined with Styrofoam, were stained sepia from all the cigarettes Dahl smoked; there was a grotty wing chair; and wires for a jury-rigged heating system dangled from the ceiling. “You’d expect it to be grander,” one woman said. But the kids saw more possibilities in a musty old hut of one’s own. They liked the fact that Dahl, unsatisfied with desks, had designed a baize-covered writing board, to balance on his lap just so. And they loved that he kept, on a side table, a jar containing gristly bits of his own spine, which had been removed during an operation on his lower back. Next to the jar was a waxy-looking knob that turned out to be Dahl’s hip bone, along with a titanium replacement.

“It makes a good letter opener,” one little boy said of the prosthetic hip.

“Has it got blood on it?” another asked hopefully.

Several young visitors asked for permission to hold the ball of chocolate-bar wrappers that Dahl had made as a young man; he scrunched a new one into the ball each day, after eating his habitual lunchtime treat. (Now hard and surprisingly heavy, the wad resembles a small cannonball.) Still, what seemed to excite the children the most was the paperback collection of Dahl’s own work. “Look!” several of them cried. “There are the books!”

Posted by kevin at 3:33 PM | TrackBack

Jon Scieszka's Guys Read

(Filed under: Extracurricular)

Children's author and former teacher Jon Scieszka, author of Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, has been concerned about the reading habits of boys. So he started Guys Read, a web site recommending books for guys, with everything from picture books to novels. Scieszka recently talked with USA Today about Guys Read, what boys like to read and the differences between boys and girls.

Posted by kevin at 10:22 AM | TrackBack

July 6, 2005

Amazon.com is 10 Years Old

(Filed under: Industry)

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos talks about the giant online retailer on their 10-year anniversary. Nothing groundbreaking here, except more about lowering prices and looking at long-term growth.

For an inside look at Amazon.com, check out Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut or Amazon.com: Get Big Fast.

Posted by kevin at 9:52 AM | TrackBack