Short Takes

by John Baker -- Publishers Weekly, 9/6/2004

An account of Canadian author Ryan Knighton's progressive blindness, beginning at age 18, made sales to Lisa Kaufman at Public Affairs here and to Diana Turbide at Penguin Canada. It's called The View from Here: Dispatches from the Edge of Blindness and is described as an unusually frank, sometimes sardonic, account of the contrasts between the worlds of the blind and the sighted. Toronto agent Denise Bukowski made the sales.... A new book by a rock groupie who made her name with a racy memoir of her adventures called I'm with the Band was bought by Yuval Taylor at Chicago Review Press. The author is Pamela Des Barres, the new title is Let's Spend the Night Together, and Taylor's deal also included the right to reprint the earlier title, originally done by Morrow. Peter McGuigan at Sanford Greenburger made the deal.... Viking's Jane von Mehren bought a book called God on Trial: America's Religious Wars, in which author Peter Irons examines a range of religiously oriented issues that currently divide the country, including school prayer, abortion, stem cell research and the overtly expressed faith of a president. Coast agent Sandra Dijkstra made the North American rights sale, for publication early in 2006.