Latestbooks

The famous entertainment media company, Platinum Studios that reins the world’s largest independent library of comic book characters, is all set to present the return of the Comic Book Challenge. If you aren’t aware, this is a contest for the upcoming, talented, comic book writers and artists all over the world.

New comic book creators will once again be submitting their fantastic ideas online. The top 50 semi-finalists will then be invited to give a live demonstration of their concepts to a panel of industry famous faces. The list includes big names like Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, chairman of Platinum Studios and founder of Malibu Comics, founder and chief executive officer of Top Cow Comics. WOW! And the winner’s concept will obviously turned for print, online, film and TV.

DJ Coffman was the 2006 winner of the contest for his concept ‘Hero by Night’. “Hero by Night Diaries,” the prequel is available online too. Not only this, people who doesn’t have such talent but want to go for it, can simply vote for the one of the top three finalists by going online, either at comic book challenge or at drunk duck. The contest dates will be announced shortly.

Source:Firefox

Elizabeth Alexander, author of four books of verse received the first annual Jackson Poetry Prize. This $50,000 award has been graded for poets with exceptional talents and genius and who haven’t yet got the deserved commendation. The award is named after philanthropist and poet Susan Jackson and her husband, John Jackson.

The winner was announced on Friday by the sponsor of the prize; Poets & Writers, Inc. She was selected by a jury of three poets: Lucille Clifton, Stephen Dunn and Jane Hirshfield. She is working as a professor of the African-American studies at Yale University. She was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2005 for her collection ‘American Sublime’. ‘The Venus Hottentot,’ ‘Body of Life’ and ‘Antebellum Dream Book’, are her books.

Source:MSNBC

Image Credit:Barnesandnoble

The last and the final of the series, ‘Harry Potter and the deathly hallows’ will see a record breaking, first printing of 12 million copies as announced by Scholastic, Inc., on Wednesday.

The book is scheduled to be out on 21st July. Scholastic also plans a huge multimillion-dollar marketing campaign called “There Will Soon Be 7′ to make people aware of the release. It will feature a Knight Bus National Tour, which will have a stopover at around 40 libraries in 10 metropolitan areas. Lisa Holton, the president of Scholastic Trade and Book Fairs said that it wasn’t just about the publication of the book, but it was much more than that. She told the Associated Press on Wednesday that it was a celebration of the Harry Potter books and of the immense joy of reading.

Source:USAtoday

The conservative pundit Ann Coulter is all set to release her next book, ‘If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans’, in October. It is being published by the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc. She got in news and was also dropped by around eight newspapers when she used an anti-gay label for the Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards.

However, she still scores well as far as her publishers are concerned. The Crown publisher and also the senior vice president, Steve Ross told The Associated Press in an e-mail, “We have a book with her on our fall list and have no plans on altering our current publication plans, every book we have published with Ann has been a major best seller and we expect the same with the upcoming title.”

Coulter’s list of books includes Treason, Slander and Godless. Telling The New York Times, Coulter has declined to apologize, she said, “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”

Source: USAtoday

Image credit: cbsnews

Australian actor Jason Donovan has reported to have signed a contract to write his autobiography with Harper-Collins. Donovan, had sold in excess of 3 million records, where his debut album “Ten Good Reasons” was the highest selling album of 1989 with sales of over 1.5 million copies. He has also had four UK no.1 singles, including his 1988 duet with Kylie Minogue. In recent years he has mainly worked as a leading man in stage musicals in the UK. The actor of the 1980’s soap opera Neighbours signed the contract for a sum of one million pounds.

The actor will talk about his relationship with his co-actor (in Neighbor) and singer Kylie Minogue. Kylie Ann Minogue is a Grammy and ARAI Award winning Australian dance-pop singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Minogue rose to prominence in the mid 1980s through her role in the Australian television soap opera Neighbours, before she commenced her career as a pop artist. According to Warner Music Australia, Minogue has sold an estimated 65 million records worldwide.

Fans all over the world are eagerly waiting for Donovan to spill the love secrets of the couple. According to the book Minogue, who’s album ‘Can’t get you out of my head’ sold over 60 million records world wide, was to get married to Donovan before she left him to marry Michael Hutchence, late frontman of rock band INXS.

The book is set to be released later this year.

Image Credit

Via: The Age

Jenna Bush, 25, the daughter of President George.W.Bush will be releasing a book soon: A Journey of Hope. The project is based on her experiences with UNICEF in Central America. It relates a story of a 17-year-old, single mother who has HIV.

Bush has graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. She holds a degree in English and has worked as an elementary school teacher in Washington for a year and a half. She then took an internship with UNICEF in Panama. In her college days she earned the title of a party girl as a party girl, when she and her sister Barbara faced charge for underage drinking. Since, then she tries to keep out of the spotlight.

HarperCollins has bought the world publication rights of the book. Bush said her work and experience with the adolescents in Central and South America has been the inspiration for the book. She added, “These young people have faced extreme hardships and exclusion but are strong in spirit and have an incredible will to succeed‘. She is currently teaching at a shelter in Panama. Some portion of the author and publishers collection will go to the US Fund for UNICEF.

Source:Bruneitimes

Image Credit:43things

The controversial writer, Dinesh D’Souza, is out with his latest book and it is called ‘The Enemy at Home’. Dinesh D’Souza is the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His new book is filled with intentionally provocative and unbelievable allegations that the cultural dearth in the country is only responsible for causing 9/11 attacks and that the left is ’secretly allied’ with the Osama bin Laden movement to weaken the Bush government and the foreign policy of America.

He, in his out righteous style writes that the American prisons at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, ‘are comparable to the accommodations in midlevel Middle Eastern hotels’ in respect of cleanliness, food and amenities. He also argues over the point that the abuse at Abu Ghraib is nothing but ‘the sexual immodesty of liberal America’ and so, is not at all what we may regard as a disregard for human rights. His central ideas and arguments may sound absurd but are definitely interesting as they are built around two counter points. By ‘cultural left,’ Mr. D’Souza points out, he doesn’t mean the entire Democratic Party, but he includes in his list, not just the usual lefty suspects, like Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, but also the main hotshots politicians like Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jimmy Carter and also journalists like Garry Wills and several New York Times columnists.

The theories took up by Mr. D’Souza are however, being doubted to be based on false information and half truths. Regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mr. D’Souza states that ‘the important point is that 50 million Afghans and Iraqis are free, and for the first time in their history, they have a chance to control their own destiny,’ and adds that ‘liberals tend to emphasize the negative and take genuine relish in the failures of American foreign policy.’ He also states an absurd point of view, that the Muslims are angry regarding the undermining of their religious, traditional family values due to liberalization ideas especially in the case of women. He also praises the bush admin for trying to put the ideas of democracy in Iraq.

In the course of this book, Mr. D’Souza contends that freedom in America ‘has come to be defined by its grossest abuses’ and grumble that in movies and television shows too, ‘the white businessman in the suit is usually the villain,’ ‘prostitutes are always portrayed more favorably and decently than anyone who criticizes them’ and ‘homosexuals are typically presented as good-looking and charming, and unappealing features of the gay lifestyle are either ignored or presented in an amusing light.’ The book is certainly a mind boggler and needs to be examined between two themes. The price tag reads somewhere around $26.95.

Source: NY Times

Image credit: Google

The queen of proper manners authority Marjabelle Young Stewart who also authored more than 20 books has died. She was 82. Stewart is survived by her husband, two children, three grandchildren and also a great-grandchild. She died on the Saturday night of pneumonia at a nursing home in Kewanee, said her daughter, Jacqueline Ramont, of Danville.

Stewart was also famous for the yearly list of best-mannered cities. She began issuing it in 1977. Stewart had lived in Kewanee since 1962, after she moved in there from Washington, D.C. Stewart’s career also took her to the White House to instruct manners to the daughters of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon.

Ramont said, ‘She was a self-made woman, she always said a good handshake and good table manners would get you anywhere.” Stewart was one of the four daughters born to Marie and Clarence Cullen Bryant, a great-grandson of poet William Cullen Bryant, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The couple, however, separated while the girls were young. They were kept in an orphanage called Children’s Square, where she suffered the loss of one of her sister.

She reunited with her mother and graduated from high school in Council Bluffs. In 1941, at the small age of 17, she married scientist Jack Davison Young and moved with him to wartime Washington, where she worked in a naval yard. She was given a modeling offer and she soon became one of Washington’s top models. She was then introduced to Washington society and was also a friend to John F. Kennedy. The late humor columnist Art Buchwald, one of her acquaintances, persuaded her to team up with his wife, Ann, on a light-toned etiquette book. “White Gloves and Party Manners,” was the result and it became a best-seller too. Before writing solo, she collaborated on two other books with Ann Buchwald.

Stewart and Young got divorced, and in 1962 she married attorney William E. Stewart. Overwhelmed with the sensation about his wife’s books, William Stewart and his friends founded a business based on the etiquette training. The outcome was etiquette classes for children, “White Gloves” for girls and “Blue Blazers” for boys.

Source: USA Today

Image Credit: Google

Cartoonist Steve Breen is all set to enter the amazing world of children literature. His first book for children was published yesterday by Dial. The book is named ‘Stick’. And the protagonist is a frog. Breen has been a recipient of Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1998. He works with San Diego Union-Tribune and Copley News Service. He also does the ‘Grand Avenue’ comic strip for United Media.

It is a 40-page hardcover book with a frog who likes to do things in his own way. He doesn’t like to be helped by his mother. “Stick” is the latest book to be added in your growing children’s library. The other latest books have been written and/or illustrated by include Mike Lester, Patrick McDonnell, Wiley Miller, Henry Payne, and Howie Schneider etc.

Source: Editorandpublisher

Image credit: Google

The arena of book publishing has now taken a step forward and that too into cyberspace as Random House and Harper Collins have made their decision to let readers and customers browse books online. And I personally feel that is great news for all of us.

Random House, said on Tuesday that through their new service called Insight, consumers will be able to search and browse through more than 5000 of its titles on the Internet. It includes writers like Danielle Steel and Norman Mailer. They will also be providing a tool which will allow the users to add material and information from titles to their personal pages on social networks like MySpace or to a dealer’s Web site.

The HarperCollins Publishers, whose authors include people like Michael Crichton, stated on Monday, that they are going to introduce a browse function that will enable their consumers entrench pages of books onto networking sites such as MySpace. These two companies are the only major publishers offering such services so far.

However, both companies are in a sense late to introduce online book searches. Retailer Amazon.com Inc. has way back allowed readers to look at book pages and Web search company Google Inc has been allowing this since 2005. It is already understandable, that as a large proportion of people are turning to internet trend, the publishers are trying their level best to update their businesses.

Via: CNN