The film is based on Wallace's experiences saying "yes" to everything for a year.
"If this were a novel, we would probably shake our heads and call it ridiculous. But it's all true...and it's thoroughly entertaining," declares Booklist.
Take the Plunge: First, the bad news: Powell's Books lost to Plunging Necklines in the Oregonian's Best Thing In the World poll.
In fact, we kinda got our butts kicked: 37% to 63%. Owie.
Here's how we get our revenge. People want plunging necklines? Fine, we'll give it to 'em — right, guys? That's right, I'm sending an army of men into the streets of Portland with necklines plunging past their furry chests, right to their shaggy belly buttons!
Hey, the poll didn't specify male or female, right? So let's give those readers what they never knew they absolutely didn't want!
Meanwhile, we have a handful of nominees for our very own Best Thing In the World Tournament, which will be featured in this week's Hump Day Poll for all to decide.
Got any other ideas, readers? Send 'em my way before 12 p.m. PST on Wednesday, July 30th for inclusion!
Posted by Frederick Do in Riverside, CA: I have never read any of your books but if you could only choose one for me to read, which one would it be?
Posted by tien bischoff in arizona: ur gay right
Posted by Frederic Turner in Cambridge: Why are your novels so awful?
For God's sake, people! Murakami is going to run screaming from the Internet forever if we don't redeem this travesty. Somebody ask the man about his favorite jazz music or talking animal, stat!!
King of All Media: A handful of notable media entities have teamed up to bring a little Stephen King to your cellphone, in the form of "made-for-mobile-phone video episodes" adapting a story from King's next collection, Just After Sunset, due in November.
Drawn by a team from Marvel, adapted by TV show creator Marc Guggenheim with King, and featuring a full cast of voice actors, the approximately two-minute episodes will be released one per weekday beginning Monday July 28 and ending August 29. The episodes will be available to mobile phone users at no extra charge through CBS Mobile; on the Web through CBS Audience Network and its partners, including AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo; and at www.NisHere.com. Episodes will also be available for paid download, at $.99 for five, or $3.99 for all 25.
It appears that King is fully embracing the possibilities of the Internet. He's also judging a book trailer contest for the Shomi line of "modern-day fantasy fiction."
I would have mentioned this story earlier in the week, but when I read about it my first thought was, "I wonder what makes Stephen King a good judge of a film's quality." At which point I went looking for a certain trailer to a certain really awful movie that King actually directed... only to discover that GalleyCat beat me to the punchline.
I hate when that happens. Anyway, it's Friday, which makes it the perfect day to feature a hilariously bad trailer, so:
It really does scare the hell out of me... that someone actually made that film.
A few days ago, in an interview about Bargaining for Eden, the reporter's last question was: "What do you want the impact of your book to be?"
I know what the impact was on me. Weaving together these stories has been my greatest challenge as a writer — to integrate the historical context, the characters, the journalistic tracking down of details, the greater implications on policy, and my own literary voice into something that really works as a piece of writing.
Contemplating these stories has made me a more effective citizen. Sure, I can still be a fierce advocate when government or developers go too far. But I'm more respectful of local knowledge. I keep looking for ways to stand together with people who tend to dismiss me and my second-home-owner cohort as newcomers irrelevant to the "real" community. There's just got to be a way for ranchers and environmentalists to realize that they share more than they think, that both groups treasure many of the same experiences in wild country....
The Forger's Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Edward Dolnick
Reviewed by Daniel Stashower
Washington Post Book World
In Amsterdam at the close of World War II, a dapper little man named Han van Meegeren, a noted art dealer, faced a charge of collaboration with the Nazis. At issue was a painting by Johannes Vermeer that had found its way, with Van Meegeren's help, into the hands of Reich Marshall Hermann Goering, Hitler's second in command. If the court found him guilty, Van Meegeren faced a death sentence. For several days the prisoner had been vague about his role in the transaction, but at length, under persistent questioning, his composure broke: "Idiots!" he yelled. "You think I sold a Vermeer to that fat Goering. But it's not a Vermeer. I painted it myself!"
"This is the true story of a colossal hoax," writes Edward Dolnick at the start of this gripping historical narrative. "The time was World War II. The
Jon Land's action thriller, published last month by Tom Doherty Associates' Forge imprint, centers on a Las Vegas casino owner, Michael "The Tyrant" Tiranno, the adopted son of an Italian crime lord who is called upon to defend the gambling mecca from terrorist attacks.
Land has said that the character is loosely inspired by [Las Vegas entrepreneur Fabrizio] Boccardi's life story and is designed as the first of a series of James Bond-like adventure tales.
Graves said the thriller's protagonist "is not your normal lead; he's a little off-center, a little unusual."
"Nonstop action and a dizzying array of exotic locales make this great fun," proclaims Publishers Weekly.
Dustin Diamond, who played the lovable Screech...is writing a tell-all book about his thirteen years on the show....He'll detail the sex and drugs that went on behind the scenes with castmates — noted thespians such as Mario Lopez, Elizabeth Berkeley, and Tiffani Amber-Thiessen. It will be called Behind the Bell.
I confess, I was just old enough to be physically incapable of sitting through an entire episode of Saved by the Bell, even in its first season, but I'm sure curious to hear some fun stories about Ms. Amber-Thiessen.
All about All about Lulu: Jonathan Evison, whose novel All about Lulu made Powell's own Gerry Donaghy sing with superlatives, offers his "Book Notes" for Largehearted Boy, creating the perfect playlist to accompany his book.
Fifteen feet past our bedroom window is our woodpile. Three feet past the woodpile is our property line. That's where public land begins — land that belongs to you and all other Americans, managed for you by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. It's continuous BLM land for the next few miles east, to Capitol Reef National Park. Indeed, in my county — Wayne County, Utah — just 3.6 percent of the 2500 square miles captured by the straight-line county boundaries is private land. More than 85 percent of Wayne County is Federal land; some 11 percent is state land. There are only 2500 people, one person per square mile. There are no stop lights.
Westerners live on islands of private land embedded within the public domain — national forests, national parks, wildlife refuges, military reservations, BLM public lands. Nearly 65 percent of Utah is federal land, the second highest total in the nation. Next door in Nevada, 83 percent of the state is owned by all of us.
Throughout the West, public lands are out there — ...
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
Reviewed by Jonathan Chait
The New Republic Online
It seems like a very long time -- though in truth only a few years have passed -- since the most sinister force on the planet that the left could imagine was Nike. In 2001, Time proclaimed that the anti-globalization movement had become the "defining cause" of a new generation, and that the spokesperson for the cause was the Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein. For puzzled outsiders grasping to understand why bands of youths had begun following the World Trade Organization wherever it went, brandishing oversize puppets and occasionally smashing up the local Starbucks, Klein was there to explain. She has always downplayed her place within the movement, but in fact her influence is as considerable as her press clippings proclaim. Her achievement, and it is no small feat, has been to revive economicism -- and more grandiosely, materialism -- as the central locus of left-wing politics.
From the time of Marx, and through the Depression, the left concerned itself primarily with
In middle school we were made to memorize the U.S. presidents, in order. Useless busy-work, right? Of course it was. Yet I couldn't help but think of that assignment and the accompanying pop-quiz when I opened the front cover of our copy of The Poetical Works of James Beattie and saw the bookplate.
Ulysses S. Grant wasn't yet the 18th President of the United States when the citizens of Boston gave him five thousand dollars' worth of books (1866 dollars) to show their appreciation for work well done in the Union Army. The bookplate bears his military title of Lieutenant General; the presidency was three years in his future.
According to the provenance provided with this copy of Beattie's Poetical Works, the people of Boston gave Lieutenant General Grant the books they "thought the great soldier should have in his library."
We can only speculate what Grant thought of Beattie's work, if he ever read it. Because of the book ...
The "Lamp" series, from British author P.B. Kerr, includes four children's fantasy novels about a family of djinn (a kind of genie) who disguise themselves as humans but can still grant wishes. The books have sold more than 1 million copies worldwide and are viewed as a potential family-film franchise.
"[A] first rate young adult adventure novel....Humorous dialogue and vivid imagery abound in this witty and imaginative read," raves Children's Literature.
Writer, photographer, and naturalist Stephen Trimble has won awards for his nonfiction, his fiction, and his photography, including the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club.
The Waiter waited his first table at age thirty-one. In 2004 the author started his wildly popular blog, www.WaiterRant.net, winning the 2006 "Best Writing in a Weblog" Bloggie Award. He lives in the New York metropolitan area.
Read It Before They Screen It: Yes Man
British humorist Danny Wallace will get to see the big screen adaptation of his book Yes Man this December. 
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The Waiter
