This is the VisioBrand's cache of http://www.readersread.com/0706. The page may have been changed since the time we've created the cache.
Click here for the current version of the page.

The book condenses the nearly 600-page federal report released by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States to fewer than 150 pages, and the creators say they hope their book will help attract young readers and others who might be overwhelmed by the original document. With sans-serif captions, artist renderings, charts and sound-describing words such as "Whooom!" and "R-rrumble," the adaptation recounts the attacks with parallel timelines of the four hijacked planes.

But can a topic as massive and sobering as Sept. 11 be dealt with effectively in the pages of a comic book?

When a first draft of the book came across his desk, Hill and Wang publisher Thomas LeBien said, he was "absolutely struck with it potentially being a wonderful idea."

Jacobson and Colon worked hard to "make sure we were both honest and respectful," LeBien said.

"Never before have I seen a non-fiction book as beautifully and compellingly written and illustrated as The 9/11 Report, A Graphic Adaptation. I cannot recommend it too highly. It will surely set the standard for all future works of contemporary history, graphic or otherwise, and should be required reading in every home, school and library."

Forget the nuclear program, wiping Israel off the map or going off to fight alongside Hezbollah. What Iranians really want is "The Da Vinci Code." According to Al-Jazeera, Iranians are desperately scooping up whatever copies they can find of the tale of a married Jewish couple who had a child, after a government ban clamped down on sales.

"I rushed to buy the book when I heard about the ban," said Reza Mortazavi, a 32-year-old teacher, quoted in the Al-Jazeera report. "Now, I am more eager to know what was written in it."

On Wednesday, Iran's Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance announced it was banning further printing and distribution of the book, which has already gone through 8 printings in Farsi, after Christian clerics protested against it. Mansour Jamshir, a bookstore owner, said: "I had several calls for purchase of the book in a bulk amount and in higher prices."

Earlier this month, Iranian Christian bishops condemned the book, saying it insulted their religion, and asked the Islamic government to ban publishers from printing it. Less than 0.2 percent of Iran's nearly 69 million people are Christian.

"They let me look over their shoulder and occasionally kibitz," Gaiman said about his own involvement in the project in an interview at Comic-Con International in San Diego over the weekend.

*****

While some authors find it difficult to see their work adapted to another medium, Gaiman said that he understands the need to shape the work to fit the format. "I always love watching something as it moves from medium to medium. It's always fun," he said. "And some things you can move without changing very much, and some things you really have to sort of chop off the legs in order to get it through the door." Of his first glimpse of Stardust Gaiman remarked: "For me, the biggest surprise was finding myself sitting there at the end of the half hour of footage they put together ... going, 'I wonder what happens next. I wonder what happens next,' ... which I thought had to be the mark of a good director."

The release of a best seller into paperback usually isn't headline-worthy ? unless it's Harry Potter. Two million paperbacks of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the sixth in J.K. Rowling's series ? go on sale Tuesday. There are 13.5 million Half-Blood hardcovers in print. If past is prologue, the new $9.99 book is certain to be a No. 1 best seller.

The USA TODAY Best-Selling Books list, which has tracked sales of all six installments, shows that each of the past five paperbacks reached No. 1. As the first three in the British series were introduced to an American audience, they spent more time at No. 1 in paperback than the hardcover. That pattern shifted when hardcovers were launched with gigantic initial print runs, starting with the fourth in the series, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, when 3.8 million hardcovers went on sale July 8, 2000.

Stores are ready for the Half-Blood Prince avalanche. At Barnes & Noble and Borders, the paperbacks will get prominent display at the front of stores and in the children's sections. At The Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, "we expect excitement; we expect big sales" just because it's Harry Potter, says Beth Wood, children's promotion coordinator. But the biggest anticipation is building for the seventh and final book in the series. "It is going to be crazy," she says. "I don't know if I can think of a better word than that."

Global warming is no fairytale. Junk food ingredients make for grim bedtime reading. And what child wants a picture book about punctuation? We'll soon find out. Three bestselling adult non-fiction books -- Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Lynne Truss' Eats, Shoots and Leaves -- have been turned into children's books.

Melbourne publisher Text is about to launch a children's version of Flannery's 2005 call to arms over global warming, The Weather Makers, aimed at the high school market and called We Are the Weather Makers. Associate editor Penny Hueston says she noticed that while her teenage children's friends were interested in global warming, they found some of the concepts hard to grasp. She asked a 13-year-old neighbour to read the adult version and circle passages she didn't understand. Working with Flannery, Hueston then halved the text, simplified the science and added illustrations. But Hueston says the new version, released on July 26, isn't dumbed down. "It's not written in kiddie language," she says. Penguin Australia has just published Chew on This, the children's version of Schlosser's 2002 burger expose, Fast Food Nation. The new version, co-written with journalist Charles Wilson, relates all the information to children's own experience with Happy Meals and Junior Whoppers. Schlosser's famous sentence, "there is sh** in the meat," was sanitised for the school market -- now it says "poop."

*****

The August publication of Truss' picture book version of Eats, Shoots and Leaves is unlikely to draw the same kind of heat, even from the grocers she mocks relentlessly in her 2004 bestseller. The new book, aimed at primary school children, uses Bonnie Timmon's cheerful cartoons to illustrate the difference between sentences such as "Slow, children crossing" and "Slow children crossing."

This is the U.S. Postal Service's first stamp pane honoring comic book super heroes. Half of the pane of 20 stamps are portraits of: Aquaman, Batman, the Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Plastic Man, Supergirl, Superman and Wonder Woman. The other 10 stamps depict covers of individual comic books devoted to each super hero. DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz and some of the greatest comic book artists of all time will participate in the ceremony, followed by a panel discussion on the historical and cultural legacy of DC Comics Super Heroes. The stamps will be available in San Diego beginning July 20 and nationwide the next day

Barry and Pearson, longtime friends who play in the same garage-rock band, the Rock Bottom Remainders, wrote the first book in 2004 after Pearson's 5-year-old daughter, Paige, came up with a question after reading J.M. Barrie's original "Peter Pan." "Daddy, how did Peter Pan meet Captain Hook?" Pearson recalled his daughter asking. He remembers replying: "Honey, that's another story. Wait, that's another book, and I'm going to write it."

Barry, of Miami, and Pearson, of St. Louis, collaborated on the swashbuckling adventure stories that fill in the gaps of Barrie's "Peter Pan" ? such as why Peter Pan can fly, and where Tinkerbell came from. In "Shadow Thieves," for example, Captain Hook still has a hand when he meets Peter Pan. "We call him Black Mustache," Barry explained. "What were we going to call him, Captain Hand?"

*****

Disney has optioned Shadow Thieves as a potential animated film.

While HaperCollins will focus on marketing the titles and establishing in-store awareness for them (the HC sales team will also be distributing the titles), Fox Atomic will publicize the books online and through theatrical channels. Speaking to the partnership, HC head Jane Friedman said it allows HarperCollins to "expand our brand in the rapidly growing graphic novel market and within the core demographic of 16 ? 34 year old male genre fans."

The first title scheduled from Fox Atomic Comics, in September 2007, is 28 Days Later: The Aftermath (which follows a chain of events that occurs between the 2002 film, 28 Days Later, and its sequel, due out in May 2007, 28 Weeks Later). Following that is The Hills Have Eyes: The Beginning (based on the 2006 remake of the same name and its forthcoming sequel, The Hills Have Eyes 2), and a recurring collection of short tales called The Nightmare Factory (based on an anthology series by Thomas Ligotti). Both HC and Fox are owned by News Corp.

Kate Hudson wants to write a book for new moms, and will address how some women don't feel great about themselves after giving birth. "Part of that is the way your body feels, not necessarily how it looks ? especially after you've gained 70 pounds," Hudson says, reports the London Sun. "I was depressed. I was the happiest, jolliest pregnant woman, then I had the baby and then I was just fat. ... I didn?t lose any weight delivering. You're breastfeeding and you're starving and looking at yourself in the mirror going: 'I don?t feel good about myself.' That is not a good feeling for any woman."

Giving up on a book is so infuriating. Deciding at what point to stop is always a lose-lose situation - you feel like a literary lightweight for quitting, especially when a turgid plot might just take off on the very next page, but then to persevere could mean wasting yet more hours of your life on something utterly dull and unedifying. Quitting is the worst possible review you can give a book.

*****

Fortunately for this blog, my track record with fiction is significantly better. I can only immediately remember giving up a novel once, and I think circumstances played a major role. After loving Never let me go, I took Kazuo Ishiguro's The Unconsoled with me on holiday. It was perhaps a bad choice. Lying on a beach yearning for a cheerful holiday read, I found myself dragged down into the drab, disorientating world of a concert pianist trying to fulfil a mission he does not understand in an unidentified European city suffering years of decline.

It was putting me in a bad mood, but I felt sure the rave reviews on the back cover would ultimately be justified and I was determined to carry on ? until, that is, I happened to stroll past a second-hand bookshop crammed with English-language books. Before I knew it, I was two euros poorer and happily installed in a caf? trying not to giggle out loud over a yellowing copy of Tom Sharpe?s Porterhouse Blue.

The fate of The Unconsoled was sealed: shoved guiltily into a suitcase, earmarked for reading after the holiday, but ultimately left to languish with The EU: A Very Short Introduction.

[The book] drops names. The chapter headed "Harvey Weinstein's White White Teeth" comes with eight backup reaffirmation confirmations. She tells of high-maintenance N.Y.C. ladies who work on their looks 24 hours a day, and Hollywood types who even nip and tuck private areas so those are as taut as the pulled faces, and surgery safaris where packs go together en masse for lifts-redos-chin implants-Botox-lipo-breast augmentation-breast reduction-leg deveining-Restylane-collagen-laser-microdermabrasion jobs.

Chapter one mentions savvy dermatologist Dr. Pat Wexler, whose clients, the book says, include Ren?e Zellweger and Ellen Barkin. It says she siphons fat from the behinds of folks like the equally savvy public relations lady Peggy Siegal and stores it - the fat not the behind - then injects a syringeful each month into whatever crinkles and wrinkles developed in the interim.

A couple of pages later, Kuczynski immortalizes an Upper East Side podiatrist, who specializes in de-bunioning and de-corning, the better to wear $1,000 sandals. Dr. Suzanne Levine quotes divorcees saying: "I need my feet to look good. I can't get in the shower with a new man with these feet." Her walls show photos of folk like Katie Couric and Joan Lunden. (Can it be that morning TV is hard on the metatarsals?)

Kuczynski is an accurate and wicked reporter. I know. I experienced both qualities when she did a New York Times piece on me. We're informed buttock lifts came in vogue with the ascent of Jennifer Lopez. We're tantalized by which top actresses might be Botox'd up the kazoo because, per the author, their foreheads barely move. She gift-wraps them as "motionless and overparalyzed."

*****

She ricochets from Melanie Griffith to Dennis Quaid to Pamela Anderson. Cites doctors who give Robert Redford the sun damage award and Bill Murray the acne award. And reports writer Nora Ephron spends more on her hair than she did on her first car.

The Asti Spumante Code parallels the Da Vinci plot. There is a hero (Jim Crack) and a heroine (Emily) who are trying to figure out a code. Well, kind of a code.

It's more, really, a barcode or a product code, the kind usually found on the back cover of a book.

And instead of searching for the Holy Grail, they're looking for the greatest book that will ever be written.

As Jim explains to Emily, there was once a "more innocent age" before chick lit.

This was an age "when writers wrote books that both men and women read. Some of the earlier writers are a bit obscure, but think Charles Dickens. Think Jane Austen. Think Henry James."

Borders Group Inc., the nation's second-largest book retailer by sales, is close to naming retail veteran George Jones as its chief executive, according to people familiar with the situation.

The bookstore chain's board may approve the selection of the 55-year-old Mr. Jones as early as today, said one person with knowledge of the matter. Mr. Jones in September left his post as chief executive of Saks Inc.'s department-store group -- which included most of the company's stores, but not its luxury Saks Fifth Avenue unit -- resigning after a four-year stint.

While in that post, Mr. Jones earned a reputation for promoting innovation. Under his leadership, some stores installed "nail bars," where clerks sold 15-minute manicures. He also jazzed up certain in-store golf shops with putting greens and comfortable leather chairs in front of big-screen televisions showing golf tournaments.

Mr. Jones, who spent seven years at Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros., where he served as president of world-wide licensing and studio stores, was expected to sign his employment contract late yesterday. Recruiters Korn/Ferry International handled the Borders search. Mr. Jones views his new post as an opportunity to "do something great," said a second person familiar with the situation. A spokeswoman for Borders declined to comment.

Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, published in the UK in fall 1996, unleashed a battalion of Bridgets, launching one of the biggest tidal waves in publishing history. Women cried out for more funny, lighthearted novels about "singletons" like Bridget who were searching for love, job satisfaction and the perfect pair of shoes. Ten years later, chick lit, for better or worse, is here to stay. Some of the books are indelibly etched into popular culture.

*****

But even as Hollywood has come calling, chick lit has received some negative attention lately, thanks to the plagiarism scandal surrounding How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life by Harvard student Kaavya Viswanathan. The novel about an Indian-American girl and her humorous efforts to get into Harvard was removed from shelves in May after it was discovered that Viswanathan had lifted material from other chick lit authors, including Sophie Kinsella and Megan McCafferty.

Like any genre that unleashes a flood of imitators, there is good chick lit and bad, books that sell well and those that disappear without a trace. Even the term chick lit has created a backlash, with some practitioners believing the term is demeaning and limiting.

But love it or hate it, chick lit continues to find an audience. Three titles are on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list: The Devil Wears Prada (No. 3), Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner (No. 35) and The Undomestic Goddess by Kinsella (No. 46). And like the characters whose twentysomething hopes and dreams they deconstruct, chick lit is experiencing growing pains with such spinoffs as bridezilla lit, mommy lit and multicultural lit.

Rosario Dawson told SCI FI Wire that she's the inspiration for Sophia Cruz, the lead character in the comic-book series Occult Crimes Taskforce, coming in July from Image/12 Gauge Comics.

"Sophia was created by a family friend [writer David Atchison], who created the story and the character based on what he knows about me," said Dawson, who is serving as co-creator on the book. "He created the character out of my personality, my image, my background and my attitudes. When he brought the concept to me, it seemed like a good idea. I liked the idea of the character looking like me, and I loved the story idea, so I said, 'Sure.' It just seemed like the natural thing to do."

Occult Crimes Taskforce, with illustrations by Tony Shastee, tells the story of rookie detective Sophia Cruz, who is recruited into the ranks of the NYPD's covert police investigation unit whose primary duty is to monitor and control supernatural activity in the Manhattan underground. Dawson said that the comic is a mixture of The X-Files, Men in Black and The Matrix, but goes a lot deeper.

*****

Dawson, who starred in the comic-based Sin City, is a staunch supporter of comic books in their purest form and detests the trend toward "celebritizing" comics. But in the same breath, she admitted that her own celebrity made Occult Crimes Taskforce a much easier sell. "I know that the way we were able to get interest in this book was that my face was literally and figuratively attached to it," she said. "But this is not about me. The world that we're creating is the really cool part of this book. Believe me, this is a whole lot more than my making myself a sexy superhero just to feed my ego."

Robert Downey Jr., whose own life story at times has been gripping, intends to write his memoirs. The 41-year-old actor has signed a deal with HarperEntertainment, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, the company announced Thursday. The book is set to be released in 2008.

The publisher, which did not disclose the terms of pact, promised a "candid look at the highs and lows of his life and career." "He has an intelligence which shines through all his performances, revealing his intellect as well as his acting abilities," Marjorie Braman, an executive with the publishing company, said Thursday. "His dramatic personal life, often at odds with his career, adds a layer of complexity to who he is." He suffered from recurring drug and alcohol problems in the 1990s, prison time, court-ordered rehab and probation that ended in 2002.

Downey, whose TV and film credits include "Chaplin," "Ally McBeal," "Good Night, and Good Luck" and "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," stars as a drug user in the new movie "A Scanner Darkly," which opens Friday.

HarperCollins, through its Avon and HarperTorch mass market imprints, has quietly entered the premium paperback field and added a new twist in the process. After publishing Serpent in the Crown by Elizabeth Peters in the premium format in March with a 250,000 printing, Avon released Philip Margolin's Lost Lake in May as the first in its premium plus initiative. The plus program, which ties into HC's Author+ initiative, allows buyers of Lake to register online for a free copy of an HC "pick of the month" (currently William Lashner's Fatal). "We thought it was a good way to give extra value to the format," said Liate Stehlik, who took over as Avon publisher in November. About 500 readers signed up for the free book in the first week Lake went on sale.

Avon has three more premium plus titles planned: J.A. Jance's Long Time Gone will come out in August; Hot Kid by Elmore Leonard will be released in September; and Anne River Siddons's Sweetwater Creek will be out in January.

The premium plus effort coincides with the release of Avon's e-book epilogues to two Julia Quinn books (PW Daily, June 6) and is part of Avon's effort to give a spark to mass market sales. The two epilogues sold a combined 1,588 units in the first 24 hours through just the harpercollinsebooks.com site and more than 3,000 units through mid June. Later this year, Avon will release Stephanie Laurens's To Distraction as an e-book on August 15, two weeks before the print edition. The e-book will have some added content and is aimed at building buzz for the print edition. "We're thinking about other ways to use e-books," said Stehlik, who observed that romance readers tend to be Web savvy and very loyal to their favorite authors.

Jennifer Lopez?s first husband has agreed not to publish intimate details or criticism of the actress-singer while they try to settle a lawsuit over his planned tell-all book, court documents showed Friday.

A preliminary injunction between the star and her former spouse, Ojani Noa, was signed by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge Thursday and made public a day later, resulting in the cancellation of a hearing in the case.

Lopez sued Noa in April to stop him from publishing an expose she said would breach a nondisclosure, "non-disparagement" pact between them. She then obtained a temporary restraining order to prevent him from going ahead with the proposed book.

The preliminary injunction signed this week will remain in effect until either the two settle their dispute or a nonjury trial is held to decide whether the latest court order will remain permanent.