Cooking the Books with Luisa Weiss

Cookbook editor and food blogger Luisa Weiss recently sold a memoir, My Berlin Kitchen, to Viking. On her blog, The Wednesday Chef, Weiss explained, “I'm moving back to Berlin and I'm writing a book, about Berlin, about my life, about cooking and home and family and love.” She talked to PW from her office at Stewart, Tabori and Chang, where she’s wrapping things up before departing for Berlin.

Vook Launches First Cookbook

The new Emeryville, Calif., company that blends text and video last week announced the arrival of its first cookvook, The Breakaway Japanese Kitchen by Eric Gower, which Kodansha first published in 2003. The vook features recipes and professionally-shot videos showing Gower preparing contemporary Japanese dishes such as roasted hamachi with miso-apricot glaze and udon with herby pesto. For $5.99, viewers can stream the vook from the Web or download it to their iPhone or iPod touch.

The Best Food Books of 2009

Last week’s issue of PW listed our editors’ picks for the best books of the year. Five out of the 100 were books about food: Ad Hoc at Home, Born Round, Gourmet Today, Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy and Momofuku. While we’re the first to agree those books deserve props, here are 10 more (plus 10 honorable mentions) from this year that also warrant attention.

Recipe Report: Crème Brûlée from French Feasts

Crunchy, creamy, sweet and a little burnt—who doesn’t like crème brûlée? The iconic French dessert is actually easy to make, and, if you do it right, entails firing up a blow torch for a little drama. This recipe, from French Feasts: 299 Traditional Recipes for Family Meals & Gatherings by Stéphane Reynaud (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), is simple and elegant.

Short Order: November 9

In this issue's round-up of cookbook-related news, pierogi lovers celebrate The Veselka Cookbook; a food-centric series of discussions, readings and tastings takes place in New York; Diane Sawyer greets her sister-in-law, Su-Mei Yu on air to talk Thai recipes; Pioneer Woman signs on for a memoir, a new cookbook and two kids' books; Californians party for My Nepenthe; and Eleven Madison Park gets a book deal.

Comic Book Reviews: 11/9/09

Riordan Sets His Sights on Egypt

Like his Lightning Thief star Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan is a demigod—at least in the eyes of his readers. With the release next May of the first title in his new middle-grade fantasy series, about ancient Egypt, he is set to become a pharaoh, too. In The Kane Chronicles, Book One: The Red Pyramid, kids will meet Carter Kane, 14, and his sister, Sadie, 12, descendants of Egyptian magicians who battle gods accidentally released in the present...

Back To The Future: Tor.com Buys Book-Size Webcomics to Serialize

In an unusual acquisition deal, Tor.com, an experimental Macmillan website/publishing venture focused on launching original science fiction, fantasy and comics, has acquired web-only publishing rights to two full-length 192 page graphic novels and will serialize them over 6 months through the Tor.com website.

Marvel Makes Theirs iPhone

The growing array of comics available for iPhones got a Hulk-sized addition last week when Marvel Comics, the leading US comics publisher, announced deals with four iPhone applications. Comics both recent and classic are now available for download from Comixology, iVerse and Panelfly. Scrollmotion, another leading app for iPhones that distributes books, will also have Marvel Comics available.

Boom! Studios’ Mark Waid is Unstoppable!

Mark Waid started out in the superhero camp, as an editor at DC and then as a freelance writer, shaping such iconic series as The Flash and Captain Marvel. Now, as editor-in-chief of independent comics publisher Boom! Studios, Waid is transforming the paradigm of monthly comics publishing.

Life in Comics: The End of Adolescence?

In 2004, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Michael Chabon gave the keynote speech at the Eisner Awards. Speaking about the maturation of the industry, he referred to some of the excesses of the 1990s as comics "adolescence": "An excess of desire to appear grown up is one of the defining characteristics of adolescence. But these follies were the inevitable missteps and overreachings in the course of a campaign that was, in the end, successful."

Comics Briefly

November Comics Bestsellers

The fourth book in Jeff Kinney's Wimpy Kid Series, Dog Days, takes the top slot from, Last Straw, the third book in the Wimpy Kid series. It's followed by Naruto vol. 46; Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks; Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Predators and Prey and Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth

Panel Mania: Casper and the Spectrals

For the 60th anniversary of Casper the Friendly Ghost , Ardden Entertainment is releasing a new version of the classic Harvey comic. Casper and the Spectrals will feature Casper's friends Wendy the Witch and a devil, Hot Stuff and is set in Spooky Town, a part of New York City that normal people can't see. This preview features five pages of the first issue, due out on November 11th, as well as the variant covers.

Assouline Finds Upscale Niche

When Wall Street faltered last October, so did the demand for luxury goods. Even so, 15-year-old Assouline Publishing, founded in France by Martine and Prosper Assouline, has managed to maintain its footing by publishing books that are intended to be just as much a luxury brand as watches at Cartier.

Lorena Jones New Publishing Director at Chronicle

Chronicle Books announced yesterday that former Ten Speed Press publisher Lorena Jones has taken over as publishing director. In her new role, Jones will initiate a digital food and drink publishing program, and oversee Chronicle’s food and drink list as a whole.

Editing R. Crumb’s ‘Genesis Illustrated’

W. W. Norton executive editor Robert Weil has overseen the publication of R. Crumb’s new work, 'The Book of Genesis Illustrated', a dazzling effort by Crumb to transform the words of Genesis into comics.

Geek-Speak Japanese Style: ‘The Otaku Encyclopedia’

An American journalist based in Tokyo, Patrick Galbraith combines a scholarly devotion to studying Japanese popular culture with a, well, otaku-like enthusiasm and love of cosplay. This month Kodansha International published Galbraith’s The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan with a foreword by renowned Japan expert and translator Frederik L. Schodt.

Kanye West, Bill Plympton Create Book of Illustrated Lyrics

Superstar singer, rapper and producer Kanye West has reunited with animator/cartoonist Bill Plympton to create Through the Wire: The Words and Lyrics of Kanye West, a hardcover book collection of West’s hit lyrics, illustrated by Plympton, that will be released in November by Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

Comics Briefly

Wimpy Kid: Dog Days Tops Bestseller Lists; Logicomix Creator Christos Appears in New York; 2010 MoCCA Festival Open for Business; Spiegelman and Mouly's Toon Treasury on NPR; Domo Creator Comes to USA; This Week @ The Beat; and This Week @ Good Comics For Kids