The PW Morning Report, July 11, 2008
By Dermot McEvoy -- Publishers Weekly, 7/11/2008 5:33:00 AM
Friday, July 11, 2008
A daily rou
nd-up of the latest publishing news: American Wife: Porno or No?; "The Serenity Prayer" and Elisabeth Sifton; U.S. Torture War Crimes?; Rushdie Wins "Best of Booker"; Canadian Revenues Down; Paper Potter Debut; and Kiss and Condi
"Pornographic" Laura Bush Novel, sez New York Daily News
Geez, is this novel dirty or not? Maureen Dowd thought American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld was "not salacious." Sherryl Connelly in the Daily News says "the prose is close to pornographic." Nothing like a couple of Irish girls debating—and rating—smut, bringing new meaning to the term "Irish Uprising"
Elisabeth Sifton In Controversy Over "The Serenity Prayer," reports New York Times
The prayer was apparently written by Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, Sifton’s father. Sifton, senior v-p at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, wrote a book about it, also called The Serenity Prayer (Norton, 2003). Now there is a question about the prayer’s authorship
New Book: Red Cross Thinks Torture Makes Bush Officials Guilty of War Crimes, reports New York Times
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer (Doubleday) documents America’s adventures into Dick Cheney’s saturnine vision of the world
Salman Rushdie Wins "Best of the Booker," reports Reuters
Midnight’s Children won the online poll in which 8,000 people participated
Canadian Book Publishing Revenues Down, reports Statistics Canada
Canadian book publishing industry revenues dropped 1.2% to $2.1 billion in 2006
Bloomsbury "Delighted" With Potter Support, reports The Bookseller
Yesterday was pub date for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in the U.K. and some booksellers were concerned about the "low key" nature of the launch
One for the Books: Gene Simmons and Condoleezza Rice
Cindy Adams outdid herself today with her column on Kiss and his lust for Secretary of State Condi Rice. Simmons is out plugging his new book, Women of the Night, and Michael Viner of Phoenix Books is getting ready the next, Gene Simmons’ Act of War. I guess Madalyn Albright was busy
