Radio Bookmobile, Program #2, April 8, 2015
H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald Doris: This is a beautiful passage from a new book called H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, a British naturalist and falconer. It’s about a period when she the author...
View ArticleBrooke Shields and the Publishing Revolution
This is how actor and model Brooke Shields begins her memoir, There Was a Little Girl (Dutton), about the death of her mother and former manager, Teri, in 2012: “I’d written my own simple and rather...
View ArticleThe Harper Lee Backfire
Don’t you think the whole debacle about Harper Lee’s “new” novel sounds like a Christopher Guest mockumentary? Guest’s satires on American foibles about dog shows (Best in Show), folksingers (A Mighty...
View ArticleOliver Sacks (1933-2015): A brief remembrance
One time I interviewed Oliver Sacks when he had a bout of knee pain and found it difficult “to negotiate your San Francisco hills,” he said. I think he was staying at the Mark Hopkins or Fairmont and...
View ArticleThe “Bad News = Good News” Rule
One of the things that’s always worried me about American journalism is the “Bad News Is Good News” rule. That is to say that a murder, riot, scandal, war or earthquake is “good” because it boosts...
View ArticleWhere Did that ‘Foreigner’ Go
People who make decisions about media — heads of publishing houses, TV producers, Hollywood studio chiefs— believe that most Americans aren’t interested in anything “foreign.” As a result, for many...
View ArticleAmazon: The Spoof and the Store
Here’s a fictional job interview from a recent novel about Amazo — pardon, a retail book giant on the Internet with the made-up name of Scroll. See if you recognize this novel: “Tell me,...
View ArticleDumbness and Pornography at the New York Times
I used to enjoy the Sunday Magazine of the New York Times, in particular a page called The Ethicist. The writers there grappled with tough, snarly questions about ethics and moral clarity in our...
View ArticleAbout that “Publishing Revolution”
I’m very excited to speak next Saturday 3/5 in San Rafael for Sufi Women on “The Publishing Revolution.” For years I’ve used that term to describe what Holt Uncensored is all about. Now for the first...
View ArticleOne More Question Before Saturday
Preparing for my talk on “The Publishing Revolution” this Saturday, the host group, Sufi Women Organization, asked if women played a particular role in publishing history. Vat a question! You wouldn’t...
View ArticleVoting with Our Winkies
I keep hearing this statement from women about the presidential election: “Don’t ask me to vote with my genitals,” they say, meaning, Don’t tell me to vote for Hillary Clinton just because she’s a...
View ArticleWhat “The Art of the Deal” Tells Us 30 Years Later
Since I found it so enlightening to read Hillary Clinton’s first book, It Takes a Village (1996, revised 2006), I decided to look at Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal (1987), with a fresh eye. Jacket...
View ArticleRemaindering “The Art of the Deal” for … $184?
Remember a few weeks ago when Donald Trump announced that he raised $80 million in the month of July alone? And most of it came through “small dollar donations”? I chalked it up as another Trump...
View ArticleWoody Allen’s Latest Excuse for Lechery
I’m late reading the New York Times Book Review from Sunday 1/1/17, so pardon the delayed outrage, but heavens: Just what we don’t need on the front page is Woody Allen drooling over the purported sex...
View ArticleShe’s Our Gladiator
I’ve never read a book by a woman with so much male ego as Settle for More (Harper) by former Fox TV News anchor Megyn Kelly (who’s soon to go to NBC). Confident and inspired even in childhood, little...
View ArticleTen Thoughts for the Nice Guys
May I ask the famous male actors who say they’re “utterly disgusted” by Harvey Weinstein to take the next step? I’m talking to the nice guys of the industry — George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Benedict...
View ArticleA Police Shrink Who Gives Up on Nobody – Part I
Police killings and Black Lives Matter had begun to dominate the news in 2013 when I walked into an independent bookstore and found a paperback mystery called Burying Ben. Ordinarily I wouldn’t make a...
View ArticleA Police Shrink Who Gives Up On Nobody – Part II
One day I hope someone will write a book with a title like Therapized Nation that charts the growth of the United States without mention of psychotherapists until about the 1970s. After that, our...
View ArticleA Police Shrink Who Gives Up on Nobody — Part III
Sue Grafton’s recent death reminded me what a joy it was to watch this gracious, no-nonsense writer break into the male-dominated mystery genre back in 1982. I’ve been thinking of Grafton while writing...
View ArticleRemembering Peter Mayer
Reading about the death of legendary Penguin publisher Peter Mayer at 82 reminded me of an episode in the late 1970s that demonstrated the makings of that dear man as one of the book industry’s most...
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