As the Book World Turns…

Busy week, both here in the store and in the book world. Here are the highlights, with pictures!

Three Cups of Man, This is Disappointing – The big news this week surrounded Greg Mortenson, author of the bestselling memoir Three Cups of Tea. Apparently, “memoir” turns out to be a loose term for the book that inspired millions. According to 60 Minutes, who investigated facts from the book as well as the management of Mortenson’s non-profit Central Asia Institute whose mission is to build all those schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many of the stories were fabricated. Bestselling author Jon Krakauer published an expose claiming that Mortenson is “not what he appears to be” and has “misused millions of dollars donated by unsuspecting admirers”….such as Krakauer. Mortenson didn’t have much of a response, speaking only to his local newspaper and to the magazine Outside. The book’s publisher is currently reviewing the situation and a think tank in Pakistan is thinking about sueing Mortenson. The response around here: “Man, really?”

Much Happier News – The Pulitzer Prize Awards were announced this week. Winners include Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad); Ron Chernow (Washington: A Life); Siddhartha Mukherjee (Emperor of All Maladies.)

Egan Mania! Is there Nothing this Woman Can’t Do? – In addition to earning a Pulitzer, Egan’s novel A Visit from the Goon Squad will be adapted by HBO. She also won The Tournament of Books earlier this month and the National Book Critics Circle Award this year. Time included her on their Top 100 list (in the ranks with Justin Bieber and Oprah Winfrey, which how you know she’s really made it.) And she makes macaroons!

Amazon screws up Publishers Weekly (and others) in a totally non-book related way, which makes it funny, until you think about how much of the world Amazon runs, and then it’s not so funny anymore: Did you know that in addition to selling everything that is sell-able in this world, Amazon also rents out space on its massive servers to folks like Publisher’s Weekly, Netflix, and Reddit? According to eBooknewser, Amazon is one of the biggest hosting providers out there. Well this week Amazon’s server crashed, wreaking havoc for many of these websites. PW’s site is still down due to “extreme technical difficulties”, which is disappointing for book folks like us, who enjoy reading their industry news and sharing it with you.

Oprah forgives and forgets – First Franzen, now Frey: James Frey will be a guest of Oprah‘s once more.

Etc. –

A former aide to Sarah Palin has written a “chilling expose” of his time with the former governor.

It was tax week, where the only consolation for dealing with those forms is the fun of finding out what our elected officials earned. The Obamas earned nearly $1.8 million dollars, largely a result of book sales.

The Long Island house after which F. Scott Fitzgerald likely modeled the house in The Great Gatsby has been torn down.

The Shack is being adapted for the stage.

Jonathan Evison wrote a wonderful piece on why brick & mortars matter, and we love him for it. If you haven’t read his novel West of Here, we recommend it.