Oprah Winfrey on Wednesday picked Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” as her next book club selection, a nod bound to launch a sales boom for the American writer’s dark tale of a post-apocalyptic father-son journey.

Winfrey called the book “haunting and inspiring” with a lasting affect on the reader. “It is a quick read and a journey well worth taking,” she added.

In the past, Oprah’s book club picks have pulled obscure books onto the best-seller lists, bringing publicity to previously unknown authors. In this case, though, McCarthy is already a fairly widely-read and award-winning author (other works include All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian).

Oprah’s previous selections have ranged from Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” to Elie Wiesel’s “Night.” Her most recent selection before Wednesday’s was actor Sidney Poitier’s “The Measure of a Man.”

Not all of her picks have been on target. Her selection of James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces” got caught in a controversy after the author admitted making up key parts of his best-selling drug and alcohol memoir.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Previously:
Oprah chooses Sidney Poitier memoir
Oprah to announce new book club title

Interesting article on the failure of the e-book market:

Right now, many of the largest publishers charge a cover price for ebooks that is 80% to 100% of the hardcover price. Virtually nobody except Baen (and now a couple of other publishers who’ve dipped a toe in the Webscription market, and some self-publishers) is even thinking about trying to establish what an ebook is really worth in the market.

We know roughly what it costs to produce a book, and we can point to the areas where ebooks are cheaper than paper editions (no dead trees and ink, for one thing; no warehousing or distribution for another) and more expensive (downloads, website maintenance). But we don’t really know what an ebook is worth to the readers, because the market that could give us meaningful feedback on pricing has been strangled in the crib.

My take on ebooks is that they are — and should be seen as — the cheapest form of disposable literature. They’re not cultural artefacts (pace Cory Doctorow); you don’t buy them in signed, slipcased, limited editions. They’re like stripped mass market paperbacks without even the value-added of doubling as wood pulp wall insulation once you’ve read them.

Now, there exists within writing and publishing circles a neurotic fear that sooner or later (probably In Five Years’ Time — that seems to be the normal window) a cheap digital paper based ebook reader will come along, that makes the experience of reading text on a screen no different from the experience of reading a lump of dead tree stitched inside a piece of pigskin. And, as the horror story has it, we will be In Big Trouble, because the pre-existing availability of pirate ebooks will lead to enormous proliferation and a total crash in the value of books. Some pretty smart people believe this story, and the result has been to give it more credibility than it actually deserves. And it leads them to draw what I believe to be faulty conclusions. […]

It’s the received, prevalent wisdom — and it’s a load of rubbish.

Link to full article (via BoingBoing)

The nominees for 2007’s Hugo Award (also known as the Science Fiction Achievement Award), one of the top science fiction and fantasy awards of the year, has been announced.  The winners will be elected and announced at this year’s Worldcon in Yokohama, Japan this September.
Here are the nominees in some of the main categories:

Novel
Michael F. Flynn, Eifelheim (Tor)
Naomi Novik, His Majesty’s Dragon (Del Rey; also, Voyager, 1/06, as Temeraire)
Charles Stross, Glasshouse (Ace)
Vernor Vinge, Rainbows End (Tor)
Peter Watts, Blindsight (Tor)

Novella
“The Walls of the Universe” by Paul Melko (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“A Billion Eyes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, October/November 2006)
“Inclination” by William Shunn (Asimov’s, April/May 2006)
“Lord Weary’s Empire” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s, December 2006)
Julian: A Christmas Story by Robert Charles Wilson (PS Publishing)

Novelette
“Yellow Card Man” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Asimov’s, December 2006)
“Dawn, and Sunset, and the Colours of the Earth” by Michael F. Flynn (Asimov’s, December 2006)
“The Djinn’s Wife” by Ian McDonald (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“All the Things You Are” by Mike Resnick (Jim Baen’s Universe, October 2006)
“Pol Pot’s Beautiful Daughter” by Geoff Ryman (F&SF, October/November 2006)

Short Story
“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” by Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things, William Morrow)
“Kin” by Bruce McAllister (Asimov’s, February 2006)
“Impossible Dreams” by Timothy Pratt (Asimov’s, July 2006)
“Eight Episodes” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s, June 2006)
“The House Beyond Your Sky” by Benjamin Rosenbaum (Strange Horizons, September 2006)

Link (via BoingBoing)

Poet and translator Sasha Dugdale presides over this month’s poetry workshop at the Guardian. This time, readers are challenged to submit a dramatic poem.

I would like to encourage readers to try writing and submitting a dramatic poem.

Dramatic poetry is poetry in which a character or characters discuss a situation. It can be monologue or dialogue. The important thing is that the poet assumes the speech patterns, interests and personality of his characters when writing the poem.

Email your entries, with ‘Poetry workshop’ in the title field, to books.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk by midnight on Wednesday March 21. The shortlisted poems, and Sasha’s responses, will appear on the site soon afterwards.

Read the rest of the instructions here.

Update: Read the poems that made the workshop’s shortlist, along with Dugdale’s comments and reviews. Some interesting works here.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows US, UK, and UK adult cover art, from left to right:

Links to larger versions:

• Large US cover
  
• Large UK cover (including back)
• Large UK adult art (including back)

The jacket text on the UK covers reads:

Harry has been burdened with a dark, dangerous and seemingly impossible task: that of locating and destroying Voldemort’s remaining Horctuxes. Never has Harry felt so alone, or faced a future so full of shadows. But Harry must somehow find within himself the strength to complete the task he has been given. He must leave the warmth, safety and companionship of The Burrow and follow without fear or hesitation the inexorable path laid out for him…

In this final, seventh instalment of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling unveils in spectacular fashion the answers to many questions that have been so eagerly awaited. The spellbinding, richly woven nerrative, which plunges, twists and turns at a breathtaking pace, confirms the author as a mistress of storytelling, whose books will be read, reread and read again.

Is the best part of your book usually the beginning? Do hooks just pop into your brain on a regular basis? Can you write one heck of a summary? If so, The Strongest Start Novel Competition might be right for you.

Booksie.com and TheNextBigWriter.com are looking for strong opening chapters that grab a reader’s interest, glue them to the pages, and don’t let go until we find out what happens next. You don’t even need to write the whole book - you need just the first three chapters for the contest! (You won’t be required to finish the book.)

If you win, you’ll receive a combination of cash and a membership to TheNextBigWriter Online Writing Workshop. The first place winner will receive a lengthy critique from the three judges.

The deadline for the first three chapters is May 3rd. Visit their website for more information and to get started.

Title: The Strongest Start Novel Competition
Award: Combinations of cash, website membership, and a critique of your work
Deadline: May 3rd, 2007
More Details: http://www.booksie.com/competition/novel_competition.html

I remember reading about their hunt for a new name in Publisher’s Weekly a while back. Well, they’ve announced it: Grand Central Publishing. From The New York Times:

”We are ‘grand’ because we are big, impressive, even magnificent at times. And the word ‘central’ reflects the fact that we recognize the huge audience of readers between New York City and the West Coast who are looking for books across a wide range of tastes,” Grand Central’s senior vice president and publisher, Jamie Raab, said Monday in a statement.

Full story is available on NYTimes.com.

Times Online has a story on what happens as the adventures of popular characters come to an end. It concludes:

So when, eventually, Rebus collects his P60, and Harry Potter confronts his final fate, we should not be surprised if there is widespread mourning across the land, and a clamour for them to return. Enormous pressure will be put on both authors for just one more sequel, one final opportunity to share the grime of St Leonard’s police station, or the mystery of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft. They must resist it. A character who returns is never quite the same as the one who left. A clean break is better for all concerned.

You’ll notice the article’s author dropped “and Wizardry” from Hogwarts for some reason. Hmm.

The full story, at a little over a thousand words, is available on TimesOnline.co.uk and is worth a read.