Mar 25
I am may be one of the only people in the United States who was disappointed with DaVinci Code but Loved Angels and Demons, both books by Dan Brown. I just recently finished reading another book by the same author called “Deception Point”. Like the first two books it follows a a twisty plot where you and never quite sure who are good guys and who are bad guys until the last few chapters. Political fortunes rise and fall. It all centers around an unusual discovery by NASA in the Arctic. I had some trouble putting this book down and read the whole thing in slightly more than 24 hours.
Popularity: 2% [?]
Feb 26
Even before the MacGyver ad during the Super bowl was this project:
“What Would MacGyver Do? is a book-in-progress. When it is finished, it will be a collection of 75 to 100 original stories by and about people who have exercised MacGyver-like ingenuity in solving their everyday problems. The stories will be selected and edited by Brendan Vaughan, an editor at Esquire magazine.”
Popularity: 2% [?]
Feb 05
Dave Barry has a new book out called Dave Barry’s Money Secrets. I am told it is a funny book about high finance, like how much allowance to give your kid. Dave Barry writing a funny book is not exactly news, but I did enjoy the review of the book by Michelle Singletary the personal finance columnist for the Washington Post.
Barry is a humorist whose columns for the Miami Herald were syndicated worldwide. In other words, he’s a funny man. So let me warn you that there is very little practical financial advice in this book. His shtick is to make fun of the proliferation of personal finance books and the people who write them or recommend them. (Hmm, that’s me on both counts.)
Barry’s one-, two- and three-liners start right from the introduction. In explaining why you need his book, he writes: “Because chances are that when it comes to your personal finances, you are, with all due respect, a complete moron. I do not mean that in a derogatory way. I mean it simply in the sense that, when it comes to handling money, you are a stupid idiot.”
Popularity: 2% [?]
Sep 10
Mousetrips has an interesting story about what might have been in Disney-land.
This has been one of those urban legends that has been circulating around the Web for years now. About how some unnamed executive on the publishing side of The Walt Disney Company had had the chance to acquire the rights to J.K. Rowling’s first novel, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” … Only to reject the manuscript because this person thought that the book was too odd or too English.
With the upcoming release of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe”, The Walt Disney Company finally has its arms firmly wrapped around a major piece of classic children’s literature. From all early indications, once this Andrew Adamson film is released to theaters on December 9th, the house that Eisner built will finally have something that Michael has been lusting after for 20+ years now: A successful film franchise that’s based on a piece of popular fiction.
This is something that Disney almost had with “The Lord of the Rings.” Only to get cold feet once Peter Jackson and the Weinsteins made Disney’s CEO aware of how much this two part epic was supposed to cost. (Yes, you heard right. Back when Miramax was trying to get a movie version of Tolkien’s epic fantasy made, the Mouse just couldn’t bring itself to pay for production of a trilogy. Which is why Disney execs insisted that Jackson cram all of the action of “The Fellowship of the Rings, “The Two Towers” and “The Return of the King” into two pictures. It was only after Peter took “LOTR” over New Line Cinema that this ambitious film project was allowed to become a trilogy again, with TONS of extra DVD footage. And the rest of the story … You know … ) And as for “Harry Potter” …
What most people don’t know is that not only did the Walt Disney Company miss out on securing the movie rights to the “Harry Potter” book series, but — thanks to an oversight by a recently departed Disney Publishing senior editorial executive — the Mouse House actually missed out on the chance to publish the “Harry Potter” books in the United States and Canada.
Prior to Scholastic agreeing to publish J.K. Rowling’s first novel in the United States and Canada, the Bloomsbury version of the book allegedly came across Ms. Holton’s [Lisa Holton] desk. Which meant that Disney had the opportunity to lock up the North American publishing rights before Scholastic did, for “Philosopher’s Stone” as well as all of the “Harry Potter” books that followed. But this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity vanished into thin air like a puff of smoke when Lisa rejected the book.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Aug 14
The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell - Historical fiction set at the time of Alfred the Great (before he was great) in England when the vikings invaded and threatened to conquer all of Anglo-Saxon England’s 4 kingdoms. Bernard Cornwall is one of my favorite authors of historical fiction and this book is no exception. My only problem is that as the first book in a new series I have to wait for the author to write the second book.
Popularity: 5% [?]
