Mantel unveils final volume in award-winning Thomas Cromwell trilogy

LONDON -- British novelist Hilary Mantel unveiled on Wednesday the final instalment of her Tudor trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the blacksmith's son who rose to be King Henry VIII's most powerful adviser only to fall from grace and meet a gruesome end.

Eight years in the writing, "The Mirror & the Light" is one of the most eagerly anticipated literary releases in recent years following the runaway success of the two previous novels in the series.

"Wolf Hall," published in 2009, and its sequel "Bring Up the Bodies," which came out in 2012, together sold more than 5 million copies worldwide and both won the Booker Prize, an unprecedented win for two books in the same trilogy.

Mantel, 67, is the only woman and the only Briton to have won the prestigious award twice.

The final instalment picks up where the previous one left off, just after the beheading of Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn, a drama in which Cromwell played a central part.

"The Mirror & the Light" charts Cromwell's further consolidation of power following Anne's death, his religious reforms that cause turmoil across the land, and his eventual downfall. At the end of the book, his own head is on the executioner's block.

The book is officially published on Thursday, but Mantel was signing copies at a special event at a central London bookstore on Wednesday evening.

While the first eager fans to get their hands on the 900-page tome waited in line to have it signed by Mantel, historical musicians played traditional tunes on 16th-century instruments including the recorder and lute.

The launch event also featured an embroidery workshop where guests made flowers in the style of Tudor roses and a dramatic performance of readings from the first two books.

Mantel's editor, Nicholas Pearson, described the publication as an emotional moment.

"I do think this book is the crowning achievement of her career so far and that is saying something when you’ve got Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies behind you," he said.

"It's a book about the re-jigging of this country 500 years ago which has connotations with what's going now," he added.

The turbulent and bloody politics of the Tudor era, which lasted from 1485 to 1603, is a well-trodden path for writers of historical fiction, but Mantel is widely credited with elevating the genre to new heights.

"With this trilogy, Mantel has redefined what the historical novel is capable of," wrote the Guardian's Stephanie Merritt in her review of the latest book, which she said was also worthy of the Booker.

"She has given it muscle and sinew, enlarged its scope, and created a prose style that is lyrical and colloquial, at once faithful to its time and entirely recognisable to us."

The New York Times also ran a highly flattering review of the work, calling it a "triumphant capstone" to the Cromwell trilogy.

"The world is blotted out as you are enveloped in the sweep of a story rich with conquest, conspiracy and mazy human psychology," wrote the US paper's reviewer Parul Sehgal.

The London Times struck a dissonant note, saying in its own review that the third instalment was "clogged with researched data" and painfully slow in parts.

"Her trilogy is a phenomenal achievement, but in 'The Mirror & the Light,' it's more a phenomenon of amassed information and tireless enthusiasm than triumphant creativity," wrote Peter Kemp.

Asked by Reuters if Mantel would write a sequel, Pearson shook his head.

"We're done," he said, "we're done."

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Author of memoir 'Prozac Nation' dead at 52

NEW YORK -- Elizabeth Wurtzel -- author of the highly acclaimed 1994 memoir "Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America" -- died in New York on Tuesday, US media reported. She was 52.

The cause of death was metastatic breast cancer, The New York Times said, quoting writer David Samuels, a long-time friend of Wurtzel's.

Wurtzel had undergone a double mastectomy, but the breast cancer metastasized to her brain, The Washington Post said, citing her husband, Jim Freed.

Wurtzel announced in 2015 that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, writing in an article for Vice that she carried the BRCA gene mutation.

But she said it was "nothing" compared to her recovery from drug addiction, which she described as "the most difficult thing I have ever put myself through."

Wurtzel's candid memoir, released when she was 27, was lauded for drawing attention to and starting conversations about clinical depression. 

She was praised for her explicit, no holds barred writing in "Prozac Nation," which takes its name from an antidepressant.

Wurtzel's detailing of her mental health struggles and battle with drugs also paved the way for a whole genre of confessional memoirs.

In a September 1994 review, New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani described the book as "wrenching and comical, self-indulgent and self-aware." 

"'Prozac Nation' possesses the raw candor of Joan Didion's essays, the irritating emotional exhibitionism of Sylvia Plath's 'Bell Jar' and the wry, dark humor of a Bob Dylan song," wrote the reviewer.

The book was adapted into a feature film, released in 2001 and starring Christina Ricci. 

Agence France-Presse

Why dogs can’t help falling in love with you

TEMPE, Arizona — Xephos is not the author of “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You,” one of the latest books to plumb the nature of dogs, but she helped inspire it. And as I scratched behind her ears, it was easy to see why.

First, she fixed on me with imploring doggy eyes, asking for my attention. Then, every time I stopped scratching she nudged her nose under my hand and flipped it up. I speak a little dog, but the message would have been clear even if I didn’t: Don’t stop.

We were in the home office of Clive Wynne, a psychologist at Arizona State University who specializes in dog behavior. He belongs to Xephos, a mixed breed that the Wynne family found in a shelter in 2012.

Wynne’s book is an extended argument about what makes dogs special — not how smart they are, but how friendly they are. Xephos’ shameless and undiscriminating affection affected both his heart and his thinking.

As Xephos nose-nudged me again, Wynne was describing genetic changes that occurred at some point in dog evolution that he says explain why dogs are so sociable with members of other species.

“Hey,” Wynne said to her as she tilted her head to get the maximum payoff from my efforts, “how long have you had these genes?”

No one disputes the sociability of dogs. But Wynne doesn’t agree with the scientific point of view that dogs have a unique ability to understand and communicate with humans. He thinks they have a unique capacity for interspecies love, a word that he has decided to use, throwing aside decades of immersion in scientific jargon.

“Dog Is Love” is one of several new books on dogs out this year, and one of a flood of such books over the last decade or so. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist and researcher of dog behavior at Duke University, who founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center, recently wrote that there are 70,000 dog books listed on Amazon.

Since 2000, around the time dog research had a resurgence, a small but significant number of those books are written by scientists for a general audience. Like Hare’s “The Genius of Dogs,” published in 2013, the books address what is going on in a dog’s heart and mind. Most emphasize the mind.

Wynne’s book runs counter to Hare’s when it comes to the importance of dog’s thinking ability, which Hare sees as central to their bond with humans. By using the L word, Wynne may well appeal to the many besotted dog owners. But he may also disappoint. The reason dogs are such “an amazing success story” is because of their ability to bond with other species, he said. Not just humans.

Raise a dog with sheep and it will love sheep. Raise a dog with goats and it will love goats. Raise a dog with people ... you know the rest.

Some now extinct wolves attached themselves to humans 15,000 years ago or longer because we had good leftovers, or so the dominant theory goes, although what actually happened is lost to time. Apparently, humans liked the renegade wolves quite a bit and eventually started controlling their breeding and letting them sleep on down coverlets.

Now, as Wynne said in a talk at the International Canine Science conference in Phoenix in October, dogs are an astonishing evolutionary success. Wolves, not so much. “For every one surviving wolf on this planet, there are at least 3,000 dogs.” On the other hand, nobody puts a silly Halloween costume on a wolf.

In the early 2000s, when Wynne began research on dogs, one of his experiments was a follow-up on the work of Hare who had concluded that dogs were better than wolves or other animals at following human directions. In particular, dogs followed human pointing better than other animals. Wynne and Monique Udell, an animal behaviorist at Oregon State University, expected to confirm Hare’s findings.

The wolves they chose to work with were hand-raised and socialized at Wolf Park, in Lafayette, Indiana. Wynne said he found the wolves were as good at following human pointing as the best pet dogs.

Hare and his colleagues responded by questioning whether the experiments were really comparable, maintaining that dogs have an innate ability to follow human pointing without the special attention the wolves were given. The debate continues.

The second part of Wynne’s argument has to do with how social dogs are. There is no question that they bond with people in a way that other canines do not. Wynne recounted an experiment showing that as long as puppies spend 90 minutes a day, for one week, with a human any time before they are 14 weeks old, they will become socialized and comfortable with humans.

Interestingly, the experiment found no genetic absolutism about the connection between dogs and humans. Without contact with humans when they are young, dogs can become as wary of humans as wild animals. Wolves are not so easily socialized. They require 24-hour-a-day involvement with humans for many weeks when they are puppies to become more tolerant of human beings. They never turn into Xephos.

Admittedly, Xephos is at the tail-wagging, face-licking, cozy-cuddling end of dog friendliness. Anyone who knows dogs can call to mind some that are not friendly at all, or are friendly to only one person. But in general there is no comparison in friendliness between dogs and wolves.

“OK, she’s not every dog, but she’s not radically atypical,” Wynne said of Xephos as she snuggled up to me. “Are you sweetie — you’re not completely untypical of your kind?”

The evidence of dog affection for humans goes beyond the observable actions of Xephos and those like her. Gregory Berns, a neuroeconomist at Emory University, who himself was drawn into animal study by wanting to understand what his own dog, Callie, was thinking, used MRI machines to watch what was going on in their brains.

Among his findings is that the part of dogs’ brains that light up when they hear their owners’ voices is the same part of the human brain that lights up when we are fond of someone or something. His first book was “How Dogs Love Us.”

By looking at the lemon-sized dog brain, he has shown, for instance, that, based on how the reward center lights up, a dog likes praise as much as it likes hot dogs. In testing outside of the MRI, Berns has also found that, given a choice, some dogs prefer their owners to food.

He agreed that the hypersociality of dogs is what makes them special rather than particular cognitive abilities. “It’s hard to demonstrate any cognitive task that dogs are superior in,” he said. But he pointed out that “ultimately the difficulty is in saying what is a cognitive function and an emotional function.”

Alexandra Horowitz, head of the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College in New York, and a prolific writer on dogs, also addressed the question of love briefly in her new book, “Our Dogs, Ourselves.”

Without doubt, dogs have feelings, she wrote, but she cautioned that just as certainly, those feelings were not the same as human feelings. Nor, she argued, should we assume that dogs are in between robot and homo sapiens on an emotional spectrum. She wrote in her book, “For all we know, dogs’ emotional experience is far more elaborate than ours.”

Central to that experience, although unknown in its complexity, is the pleasure a dog experiences in the presence of humans. The intensity of that pleasure and the ease of triggering it, Wynne said, is built into the dog genome.

He found this in his research with Bridgett vonHoldt, a molecular biologist at Princeton University. She and a team of researchers identified genes in dogs that in humans are associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. One of the many symptoms of the syndrome is indiscriminate friendliness. Wynne and Udell worked with vonHoldt on a subsequent study of wolves and dogs that tied behavior and genetics together. They concluded that the genes associated with Williams-Beuren syndrome in humans underlie the friendless of dogs compared to wolves.

Humans, they suggested, may have selected friendly dogs over thousands of years of domestication and the Williams-Beuren genes may be one of the results. Other scientists have been cautious about the results, seeing the work as presenting an intriguing hypothesis that requires more research.

Whether these are the genes involved, humans appear to have molded dogs to be friendly to other species beyond humans. Apparently, puppies introduced to any other species when they are young enough, form a strong bond with that species.

This hasn’t been tested with all species, of course. But consider the sheep and goats. Ray Coppinger of Hampshire College in Massachusetts, who died in 2017, had documented that puppies of certain breeds kept with sheep bond to the sheep. They stay with the flock and guard it. The same thing happens when puppies are kept with goats and other less likely creatures, like penguins.

Dogs have “an abnormal willingness to form strong emotional bonds with almost anything that crosses their path,” Wynne said. “And they maintain this throughout life. Above and beyond that they have a willingness and an interest to interact with strangers.”

How and when this free love, or hypersociality, evolved in dogs is up for debate. Wynne is betting that after some ancient wolves began to associate with humans 15,000 or more years ago and became dogs, and humans began to live in settlements and farming took off about 8,000 years ago, humans began to breed dogs for friendliness, causing the genetic differences that vonHoldt found. With luck, future research on modern and ancient dog DNA will show if he is right.

For now, we humans can at least enjoy the amiability of dogs. Looking at Xephos as we wrapped up our conversation, he said, “It’s not strange that she wants to interact with me. What’s strange is that she wants to be friends with you. Right?”

Well, I don’t know about that. I’m a pretty good ear scratcher. “Right, Xephos?”


2019 The New York Times Company

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Oprah picks slavery novel for Apple TV book venture, says done with talk shows

Oprah Winfrey on Monday announced the first pick of her revamped popular book club with Apple's new television streaming service but made clear she had no plans to return to hosting a regular TV talk show.

Winfrey, one of the most influential women in U.S. television, chose “The Water Dancer” by critically acclaimed author Ta-Nehisi Coates, his debut novel about slavery.

"It is one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life," Winfrey said on CBS "This Morning." The inaugural "Oprah's Book Club" will premiere on Apple TV+ on Nov. 1.

Winfrey said the new book club venture would feature interviews with authors from Apple stores in world cities.

"It's the reason why I wanted to partner with Apple because you can build an entire community around the world, and you can have everyone in the world reading the same book," Winfrey told Ellen DeGeneres in a separate interview on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" on Monday.

Winfrey is one of several big names, including Steven Spielberg and Jennifer Aniston, who have partnered with Apple for its venture into streaming original content.

Winfrey, however, ruled out any return to the kind of daily show that she ended in 2011 after 25 years.

"I'm kinda done with the talk show," she told DeGeneres.

"I can do whatever I want; that what's wonderful with Apple. I'm going to be doing documentaries. I'll do interviews when something comes along that feels like 'OG! I want to sit down and talk with that person.' But I'm kinda done with the every day," she said.

Apple said a new episode of "Oprah's Book Club" will be available every two months.

Coates, who won the 2015 National Book Award for his non-fiction work "Between the World and Me" about race in the United States, said on Monday that being picked was a "tremendous, tremendous honor."

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Author George R.R. Martin glad 'Game of Thrones' is over

George R.R. Martin is glad 'Game of Thrones' is over -- because now he can focus on finishing the book series.

The hit HBO fantasy drama series -- which concluded with its eighth and final season earlier this year -- was based on Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" novels, but eventually, the TV show overtook the material written by Martin, and so the show's writers were forced to deviate from the author's work.

Martin is currently working on the sixth and penultimate book in the series, "The Winds of Winter," and is yet to start work on the seventh, "A Dream of Spring," but says that now the TV show is over, he feels less pressure to get the work finished, which in turn has actually made him more productive.

He said: "There were a couple of years where, if I could have finished the book, I could have stayed ahead of the show for another couple of years, and the stress was enormous. I don't think it was very good for me, because the very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down.

"Every day I sat down to write and even if I had a good day - and a good day for me is three or four pages - I'd feel terrible because I'd be thinking: 'My God, I have to finish the book. I've only written four pages when I should have written 40.' But having the show finish is freeing, because I'm at my own pace now. I have good days and I have bad days and the stress is far less, although it's still there ... I'm sure that when I finish 'A Dream of Spring' you'll have to tether me to the Earth."

The 70-year-old novelist insists the ending of the HBO show -- which has received mixed reviews from fans and critics -- has no bearing on his own plan for his books, and says although the show is based on his novels, the two bodies of work are "not the same thing."

He added: "They're not the same thing, although they are very closely related to each other. It doesn't change anything at all ... As Rick Nelson says in Garden Party, one of my favourite songs, you can't please everybody, so you've got to please yourself."

And although he admits the TV show hindered his writing progress, he's pleased his work could bring out so many "emotional reactions" in people.

Speaking to The Observer newspaper, he said: "I'm glad of the emotional reactions, whether to the books or the television show, because that's what fiction is all about -- emotion. If you want to make an intellectual argument or persuade someone, then write an essay or a piece of journalism, write nonfiction. Fiction ... should feel as if you're living these things when you read or watch them. If you're so distanced by it that a character dies and you don't care, then to an extent the author has failed."

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Judith Krantz, whose tales of sex and shopping sold millions, dies at 91

Judith Krantz, who almost single-handedly turned the sex-and-shopping genre of fiction into the stuff of high commerce, making her one of the world’s best-selling novelists if not one of the most critically acclaimed, died on Saturday at her home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. She was 91.

Her publicist, John Tellem, confirmed the death.

Though she did not publish her first book until she was 50, Krantz reigned for decades afterward as the international queen of poolside reading. Her 10 novels — beginning with “Scruples” in 1978 and ending with “The Jewels of Tessa Kent” in 1998 — have together sold more than 85 million copies in more than 50 languages.

Most became television movies or miniseries, many of which were produced by Krantz’s husband, Steve Krantz.

What drove Krantz’s books to the tops of bestseller lists time and again was a formula that she honed to glittering perfection: fevered horizontal activities combined with fevered vertical ones — the former taking place in sumptuously appointed bedrooms and five-star hotels, the latter anywhere with a cash register and astronomical price tags.

A hallmark of the formula was that it embraced sex and shopping in almost equal measure, with each recounted in modifier-laden detail.

“Recklessly she flung herself out of her clouds of chiffon plumage only to appear in her resplendent flesh, lying totally naked on a pile of horse blankets, laughing softly as she watched Stash Valensky, momentarily bewildered and taken by surprise, struggle out of his dinner jacket,” Krantz writes in her second novel, “Princess Daisy” (1980). “Soon, very soon, he was as naked as she. He savaged her abandoned flesh with an urgency, almost a cannibalism, he hadn’t known in years.”

Elements of Krantz’s formula had existed piecemeal in earlier fiction for women, conspicuously in the work of Jacqueline Susann, the author of “Valley of the Dolls” (1966) and other steamy novels of the 1960s and ’70s. But Krantz was almost certainly the first writer to combine the steam and the shopping in such opulent profusion — and to do so all the way to the bank.

In a sense, Krantz was a fantasy novelist. Her heroines — invariably rich, thin, savvy, ambitious and preternaturally beautiful — are undisputed princesses, their castles the opulent hotels, condominiums, casinos and boutiques of New York, Paris, Beverly Hills and Monte Carlo.

Her narratives are rife with sacred objects: a hurtling catalog of brand names that offers readers a Cook’s tour of high-end material culture.

A passage from “Scruples” reads: “They went to other collections, chez Saint Laurent and Lanvin and Nina Ricci and Balmain and Givenchy and Chanel, the seats less good, sometimes quite bad, for impecunious countesses are not treated with much respect in the great couture houses.”

“I’ve never written about real people,” Krantz told Town & Country magazine in 1998, adding: “In a way, I write Horatio Alger stories for women.”

CAREER WOMEN AS HEROINES

Krantz’s novels embody a sexual politics at once feminist and retrograde. Her heroines are career women striding through glamorous realms of fashion, publishing, art and retailing. They are sexually assertive, as apt to tear off a man’s bespoke silk shirt as they are to have their own bodices ripped.

Yet in book after book, the heroine’s overriding goal is to find true love with a hero who is superlatively handsome, staggeringly virile and stupendously rich.

Not surprising, Krantz’s novels took regular drubbings from reviewers. The English novelist and critic Angela Carter once likened reading them to “being sealed inside a luxury shopping mall whilst being softly pelted with scented sex technique manuals.”

To such criticisms, Krantz brought a generous dose of self-awareness.

“I write the best books that I know how; I can’t write any better than this,” she told The Los Angeles Times in 1990. “People think that because I had a good education, I’m not writing on the level that I should. They think I’m harboring some slim little intellectual volume, that I am really Isaac Bashevis Singer in disguise.”

In the end, Krantz appeared to have the last laugh. Of all the luxury brands that loom large in her books, there is none larger or more luxurious than the Judith Krantz brand itself — a brand, impeccably built, that allowed her to lead the jet-setting, Chanel-clad life of a character in a Judith Krantz novel.

FASHION

Judith Bluma-Gittel Tarcher was born in Manhattan on Jan. 9, 1928; her middle name means “lovely flower” in Yiddish. Her father, Jack, ran his own advertising agency and was later a vice president of the Madison Avenue powerhouse Doyle Dane Bernbach. Her mother, Mary (Brager) Gittel, was a lawyer who became an executive of the Legal Aid Society. Her younger brother, Jeremy, grew up to found the publishing house J.P. Tarcher, which specializes in New Age and self-help books. (She also had a sister, Mimi.)

Young Judy was reared in a Central Park West apartment awash in Renoir, Degas and Soutine and attended the private Birch Wathen School (now the Birch Wathen Lenox School) on the Upper East Side. But her mother, wanting her not to take wealth for granted, dressed her in unfashionable clothes, a condition, Krantz later said, that made her deeply unpopular at school.

“I didn’t have romantic fantasies; I had clothes fantasies,” she told Redbook magazine in 2000. “I thought that if I had absolutely perfect clothes, everyone would like me.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from Wellesley in Massachusetts, Krantz worked as a fashion publicist in Paris before returning to New York. She married Steve Krantz in 1954. He would go on to produce “Fritz the Cat” (1972), the first X-rated full-length animated film, and the romantic comedy “Cooley High” (1975).

MAGAZINE WRITER

Krantz became an accessories editor at Good Housekeeping and later wrote for women’s magazines, including Cosmopolitan.

For one article for Cosmo, she was assigned to compile readers’ sex fantasies. In doing so she added a few of her own, only to be told by the magazine’s editor, Helen Gurley Brown, that her fantasies were far too racy for Cosmo to print. Years later, Krantz cheerfully repurposed them for one of her novels.

At her husband’s urging, Krantz turned her vivid imagination to fiction in the late 1970s. With the aid of a vigorous publicity campaign by a press agent she had hired, “Scruples,” issued by Crown Publishers, reached No. 1 on The New York Times Best Seller List in the summer of 1978.

By the end of 1979, the novel had sold more than 220,000 copies in hardcover and more than 3 million in paperback. That year, in a highly publicized transaction, Bantam Books bought the paperback rights to “Princess Daisy” for $3.2 million, then a record for a softcover sale.

Krantz, who moved to Southern California with her family in the early 1970s, lived for many years in an 8,000-square-foot Bel Air home that was a riot of chintz, the silver snuff boxes and 19th-century opaline glass she collected, Chanel suits — she owned at least 40 — and Hermès . (“In a changing world, for a woman who loves handbags, Hermès is a rock in a raging storm,” Krantz wrote in “Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl,” her cannily titled memoir of 2000.)

Krantz is survived by her sons, Tony and Nicholas. Steve Krantz died in 2007. Her brother, Jeremy Tarcher, died in 2015.

© 2019 New York Times News Service

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'Fire and Fury' author to publish new tell-all on Trump

NEW YORK - Michael Wolff, whose tell-all about Donald Trump's chaotic early days in the White House was one of last year's bestsellers, is to publish a follow up next month called "Siege: Trump Under Fire."

"Fire and Fury," the first of a string of books about the Trump presidency, was published in January 2018 and sold more than four million copies worldwide. 

Citing dozens of anonymous insider sources, the book told the story of how the former real estate magnate and reality star stunned the world by winning the 2016 election, painting an unflattering portrait of a chaotic campaign and an incompetent president.

Wolff's publisher Henry Holt, a subsidiary of Macmillan, said that where "Fire and Fury" dealt with Trump's first year in the White House, the new book "reveals an administration that is perpetually beleaguered by investigations and a president who is increasingly volatile, erratic and exposed."

The book, to be released on June 4, starts out with Trump's presidency going into its second year and ends with the publication of the report by special counsel Robert Mueller about Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

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JK Rowling's gay reveal fails to impress fans

LONDON -- J.K. Rowling's revelation that two "Harry Potter" characters were in a gay relationship has sparked an angry backlash, with some fans accusing her of changing her books to keep up with social trends. 

In 2007, Rowling outed Albus Dumbledore, the head of Hogwarts school in the best-selling books, saying he had fallen in love with Gellert Grindelwald -- a fellow wizard.

More than a decade on, she said there had been a "sexual dimension" to their relationship, leading to accusations on social media that she was trying to "score brownie points" with the LGBT+ community.

"You had your chance to make Dumbledore/Grindelwald gay when you, you know, wrote the books/made the movies," tweeted @ZoeyReport, one of many fans who criticized the move.

Rowling's agent declined to comment on the response.

Retroactive continuity, or "retcon" -- whereby authors or film-makers retrospectively change original storylines, often to bring them into line with modern views -- is becoming more common.

Marvel Comics came under fire for making the lead character of its latest movie "Captain Marvel" a woman -- even though he was male in the comic series the film is based on.

Rowling has previously been accused of retroactively trying to insert diversity into a series dominated by white heterosexual characters, such as when a black actor was cast as Hermione in the play "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child."

However, a number of fans thanked the billionaire author for her latest effort to introduce diversity into the Harry Potter world.

"I choose to focus on progress, and I think your characters help us grow and think," tweeted @dr_michael_b.

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Nobel-winning writer V.S. Naipaul dies aged 85

LONDON -- British author V.S. Naipaul, a famously outspoken Nobel laureate who wrote on the traumas of post-colonial change, has died at the age of 85.

Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad and the son of an Indian civil servant, was best known for works including "A House for Mr Biswas" and his Man Booker Prize-winning "In A Free State."

"He died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavor," his wife Lady Nadira Naipaul said in a statement on Saturday.

She described the outspoken author as a "giant in all that he achieved."

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul settled in England and studied English literature at Oxford University on a scholarship. 

But he spent much of his time travelling and despite becoming a pillar of Britain's cultural establishment, was also a symbol of modern rootlessness.

Naipaul's early works focused on the West Indies, but came to encompass countries around the world. He stirred controversy in the past, describing post-colonial countries as "half-made societies" and arguing that Islam both enslaved and attempted to wipe out other cultures.

When he was awarded the 2001 Nobel prize for literature, the Swedish Academy described him as a "literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice."

It said he was "the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings."

"His authority as a narrator is grounded in his memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished," it said.

Naipaul, who was knighted in 1990, mixed fiction, non-fiction and autobiography without distinction. One of his seminal novels was the "A House for Mr Biswas" (1961), which looked at the almost impossible task for Indian immigrants in the Caribbean of trying to integrate into society while keeping hold of their roots.

Overall he wrote more than 30 books, and was one of the first winners of the Booker Prize, now Britain's leading literary award, in 1971 for "In A Free State."

Violent affair

During his early career Naipaul was dogged by money worries and loneliness. He met his first wife, Pat, at Oxford, who became his constant literary support.

She died in 1996, and he later revealed that he felt he hastened her death by publicly admitting, while she fought cancer, that he had frequented prostitutes.

The admission "consumed her. I think she had all the relapses and everything after that... It could be said that I had killed her," 
Naipaul said in a tell-all biography by British author Patrick French, "The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography Of V.S. Naipaul."

He had a quarter-century, sometimes violent, affair with an Argentinian, and he married Pakistani journalist Nadira Alvi the same year Pat died.

He was famously outspoken and had a reputation for cutting people out of his life, and once retorted: "My life is short. I can't listen to banalities."

The objects of Naipaul's ire ranged from corruption in Indian politics to the West's cynical treatment of its former colonies to the cult of personality in "The Return of Eva Peron."

He likened former British prime minister Tony Blair to a pirate at the head of a socialist revolution, and was also disparaging about "sentimental" female novelists.

"Women writers are different, they are quite different. I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think (it is) unequal to me," he told the London Evening Standard newspaper in 2011.

He said this was due to women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world."

Naipaul also fell out with US travel writer Paul Theroux, who later wrote a bitter, no-holds-barred memoir of their long association. They later resolved their differences.

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Millennial Fil-am writer Elaine Castillo releases debut novel

MANILA, Philippines – Writer Elaine Castillo headlined literary festivities in the metro over the weekend -- namely the Philippine International Literary Festival and World Book Day celebrations -- to promote her newly released debut novel, “America is Not the Heart” published by Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

“America is Not the Heart” is a powerful novel that centers on Hero de Vera, a woman who comes to the Bay Area for a fresh start, shunned by her parents and haunted by her political past in the Philippines. The novel spans three generations of women in one family, struggling to establish identity in between two cultures, stretched from the dirt roads of Northern Luzon and the bright lights of the American dream.


Castillo, 33, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and received an MA in Creative Life and Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she was shortlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Award. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a Gatewood Prize semi-finalist, three-time winner of the Roselyn Schneider Eisner Prize for prose, and one of the 29 writers in "Freeman’s Issue Four: The Future of New Writing." “America Is Not The Heart” is her first novel, and is set to be released in the UK under Atlantic Books this May.

Asked where she drew inspiration for her novel, Castillo notes that it’s mostly family history and the community she grew up in.

“I grew up in the ‘90s Bay Area scene so I’m familiar with the grain of it, the texture of it. Martial Law is a big part of my family history, so some of it was taken from stories that I’ve heard. My parents weren’t hugely talkative about Martial Law, in the kind of way immigrants live in the post-traumatic silence. So a mixture of what I could eke out from what people would say and not say, and a bit of research also,” Castillo says.

The title is a riff on Carlos Bulosan’s 1946 memoir “America is In the Heart,” which presents the experiences of the immigrant working class and their search for a better life in the US.

“Being Filipina, I like a pun. Essentially, growing up, ‘America Is In The Heart’ by Carlos Bulosan was the kind of foundational text for a Filipino-American. It’s read in ethnic studies, it’s required reading in American history. It was meaningful for me -- it was the first book I saw anyone from Pangasinan depicted. But whenever I saw the title, ‘America Is In The Heart,’ I would always have that little joke to myself that ‘America is NOT the heart,’ so eventually I went there, I knew I would write something with that title,” explains Castillo.

What is striking about “America Is Not the Heart” is how it’s unapologetically Filipino, peppered with expressions in Ilocano, Pangasinan, and Tagalog and nuances like wearing tsinelas, calling everyone Ate, faith healing -- with no italics, no footnotes, no glossary of terms, something Castillo is adamant about.

“I’m not writing ethnography. There’s plenty of books on middle class white life in Brooklyn – I don’t know what that’s like – and they don’t provide glossaries for me. I don’t really see why I should provide glossaries, and in doing so otherize my stake in American reality, which should be taken as such,” Castillo emphasizes.

Food is unintentionally central to this novel, with a host of Filipino dishes like dinuguan, pinakbet, daing na bangus, and the ubiquitous celebration staples: pancit and lumpia, Pinoy barbecue, and lechon.

“I had no idea I wrote about food this much, until afterwards. People come up to me, and say, ‘There’s food on every page, I was starving reading this book!’ I was like, ‘Oh, is it not normal to talk about food that much?’ I think this must be so saturated in my pores, like subconscious Filipino-ness, I had no idea that was not normal for everyone else,” Castillo laughs.

Tagged by Publishers Weekly as an “a brilliant and intensely moving immigrant tale,” Vogue as “a deeply personal, lavishly painted portrait of lives in revision,” and Kirkus Reviews as “beautifully written, emotionally complex, and deeply moving,” the reception to “America is in the Heart” is what Castillo describes as completely surreal.

“When I can manage to think about it, it’s just shattering. The kindness has been out of this world. I’ve had the luck of having really generous, incisive readers, and not every writer gets that, not every book that deserves it gets that, and I’m really grateful that there’s people who are willing to enter the world of the book and be receptive to the kind of space that it’s taking up,” she intones.

In Manila, Castillo has been busy in dialogue with other players in the literary scene, as well as meeting her readers.

“In a sense, I’m in the Philippines for the first time as an adult, and seeing Manila in my own terms is I think in a way life-altering. It gave me something that I really didn’t have before, and I got to meet amazing writers, thinkers, artists. Just the depth and the breadth of critical discourse here, the creative practice here is so diverse that it puts the literary discourses I’ve stemmed from to shame. I’m really just very, very grateful to be here. “

Castillo’s advice to Filipino writers is to celebrate identity. “If you’re a Filipino writer, or a writer of color within the larger mainstream American context, there’s that feeling of, ‘Oh do I have to deform myself to appeal to the mainstream public,’ and I would say reject that entirely. That is a poisonous idea, and it will poison your work. And ultimately that kind of idea says that the daily texture, the granular realities of your life and the lives you are drawing from are somehow not worthy of art, and I don’t think true. Don’t use italics, write in the vernacular. Stake the claim to your own particularness – writers have the right to that. There’s this idea that literature only sounds a certain way, and this is utter bullsh*t that needs to be pushed back against.”

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Fil-Am book fest features life of Elizabeth Ramsey

One of the books featured during the recent Filipino-American International Book Festival in San Francisco is a book that chronicles the life journey of Elizabeth Ramsey and her six-decade long career as the Philippines' queen of rock and roll.

Prior to her death two years ago, Ramsey told her story through one of her children, Sansu, about what it took to make it as the first black Filipina accepted in the Philippine entertainment business.

"She wanted all her fans, and family and friends to know more in-depth about who Elizabeth Ramsey was," said Sansu.

Conflict between Ramsey's children is also included in the book - particularly between Sansu and Jaya, a soul singer in the Philippines.

"I wish that one day she can visit her mother's burial - if she knows where it is, if she really wants to, if she is interested to see where her mother is buried. To let you know, Jaya, she was buried in San Carlos where she was born and raised - you may have to take a trip!" Sansu said.

Read more on Balitang America.

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2 new Harry Potter books to be released in October

The Hogwarts universe is set to expand by an additional two new Harry Potter books, published in conjunction with a British Library event, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the magical series.

The library exhibition titled, "A History of Magic," featuring the two books will be open from October 2017 to February 2018, British publishing house Bloomsbury announced on Tuesday.

Readers of "Harry Potter: A History of Magic – The Book of the Exhibition" will be able to explore the curriculum at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Potter's wizardry school, which includes Herbology, Astronomy and Care of Magical Creatures.

Mystical subjects including unicorns, alchemy and ancient witchcraft will be explored in "Harry Potter – A Journey Through A History of Magic."

The books, both by the British Library, include unseen sketches and manuscript pages from author J.K. Rowling, magical illustrations from Jim Kay and artifacts from the archives at the library.

June 26 marked 20 years since the release of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," the first of seven Potter books in a series that sold 450 million copies in 29 languages and sparked a $7 billion movie franchise.

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Bill Clinton co-writes White House thriller

NEW YORK - Bill Clinton might have hoped to spend this year back in the White House as America's "first gentleman," should his wife Hillary have won the 2016 election.

Instead, the two-term Democratic president is moving into fiction, writing his first thriller about drama behind the scenes in the White House, his publishers announced Monday.

Clinton is collaborating with bestselling US author James Patterson on "The President is Missing" to be published in June 2018 by Alfred A. Knopf and Little, Brown and Company.

The book "will offer readers a unique amalgam of intrigue, suspense and behind-the-scenes global drama from the highest corridors of power. It will be informed by insider details that only a president can know," the publishers announced.

It is certainly a world familiar to the 70-year-old, one of America's most popular former presidents but whose eight-year administration was clouded by his 1998 impeachment over an affair with a White House intern.

"Working on a book about a sitting president -- drawing on what I know about the job, life in the White House, and the way Washington works -- has been a lot of fun," said Clinton.

"And working with Jim has been terrific."

The best-selling author of "Kiss the Girls" and "Along Came a Spider" has sold more than 350 million books and holds the Guinness World Record for the most number one New York Times bestsellers, his website says.

He called his Clinton collaboration "the highlight" of his career.

"Having access to his first-hand experience has uniquely informed the writing of this novel," said Patterson. "I'm a story-teller, and president Clinton's insight has allowed us to tell a really interesting one."

Forbes values Patterson at $95 million, calling him publishing's richest and busiest penman who produces more than a dozen books a year with co-authors.

Clinton is written a string of books, including his post-office 2004 best-selling memoir "My Life."

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Amazon eyes more physical bookstores?

While many businesses shift from retail stores to selling goods online, an e-commerce giant could be diving further into brick-and-mortar retailing.

Amazon is reportedly opening as many as 300 to 400 more physical stores in the US.

That is according to an executive of a major US mall operator, General Growth Properties, though it is unclear where it got its figure of potential stores.

An Amazon spokesperson said it does not comment on what it calls "rumors and speculation."

Amazon started out two decades ago by selling books online. It has since branched out into other products as well as other ventures, such as producing original content for its streaming service.

Last November, Amazon opened its first physical bookstore in Seattle.

-ANC's News Now, February 3, 2016

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The top comic books of 2015

With superhero films still all the rage, the comic book medium has raised its level of awareness even more. The year 2015 was an incredible year for the four-colored medium as companies relaunched entire lines and put out a whole lot of books.

As veteran comics scribe Kurt Busiek (Astro City, the Avengers, Marvels) tweeted on Tuesday, “Today, there are so many good comics coming out that you can make a 100 Best list and still not cover all the good stuff."

With that in mind, we will make a list and eliminate some of the usual good stuff like Saga that has been around for a few years now and make a new list. Here are the best comics, mini-series, and graphic novels for the year that I wholeheartedly recommend (they are listed in democratic alphabetical order).

Monthly comics

Archie by Mark Waid and Fiona Staples/Annie Wu (Archie): The reinvention of a classic! Updated for a modern audience, these timeless characters have become all too real folks. Furthermore, there’s actual continuity.

Descender by Rick Remender and Dustin Nguyen (Image): A space odyssey wrapped in that old humans-versus-robots storyline that tugs at your heartstrings. A wonderful story that was immediately snapped up for film adaptation.

Doctor Strange by Jason Aaron and Chris Bachalo (Marvel): Aaron, one of comics’ most prolific writers, turns Strange’s world into a Harry Potter-esque one while imbuing the mage with Tony Stark-like charisma. Another delightful monthly read.

The Fade Out by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image): Crime noir set in post-WWII Hollywood with a veteran who takes a job as a screenwriter caught up in a web of intrigue and mystery surrounding the death of a starlet.

Harrow County by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook (Dark Horse): A Southern gothic story about a young girl who lives next to the woods that are filled with ghosts, goblins, creatures, and zombies. She eventually learns that she is connected to them and that is when all hell breaks loose.

Low by Rick Remender and Greg Tocchini (Image): A post-apocalyptic aquatic fantasy where mankind has retreated to the ocean’s depths for survival. Unfortunately, it is no less brutal as one family is torn apart by the dangers beneath the waves.

Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona/Takeshi Miyazawa (Marvel): Arguably one of the more important comics if not the best on the stands today. Kamala Khan struggles with adolescence, school, love, family, and devotion to Islam while learning to be a superhero. The one true joy to read every month.

The Mighty Thor by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman (Marvel): The stirring run by Jason Aaron has him casting the Asgardian god into a woman and a most unlikely one too. Picked up from where Aaron’s God of Thunder series ended except this time it deals less with the mythological and delves into the present.

Omega Men by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda/Jose Marzan Jr. (DC): A sci-fi series with some real world overtones. Not exactly a Guardians of the Galaxy wannabe but this series finds the Omega Men on the run with the entire galaxy breathing down their necks. Is there more to them than meets the eye?

Sacred Heart by Liz Suburbia (Fantagraphics): If you love the work of Craig Thompson (Blankets and Habibi) and the Hernandez Brothers (Love and Rockets), you’ll want to read this. The story addresses themes about growing up, love and sex, and faith and religion.

Silver Surfer by Dan Slott and Michael Allred (Marvel): Love, humor, adventure! The heir to Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus is a fun and entertaining read.

Southern Bastards by Jason Aaron and Jason Latour (Image): Violence, football, beer, rednecks. Walking Tall for the new millennium.

Star Wars by Jason Aaron and John Cassaday (Marvel) and Darth Vader by Kieron Gillen and Salvador Larroca (Marvel): Two of the more enjoyable comics. You feel like you’re watching a continuation of Star Wars Episodes IV-VI. It fills in the gaps between films and introduces us to some cool and memorable new characters. You have to read them to find out who they are.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Marvel): A surprise hit. With her wit, charm, and squirrel powers, Squirrel Girl battles the likes of Galactus and Thanos and wins. Check out her nutty adventures. At first, I thought it would be some corny nutball comic but it sure if funny as heck.

Mini-series
DKIII: The Master Race by Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello, and Andy Kubert/Klaus Janson: Two issues in. Better than The Dark Knight Strikes Again but still not as thunderous as the original series. Still worth reading and to see where Miller takes his left wing views with Batman and the storyline that changed the character forever.

Giant Days by John Allison and Lissa Treiman (Boom Studios) and We Stand On Guard by Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce (Image): Reminds me of Terry Moore’s excellent Strangers in Paradise. Three dorm-mates become fast friends and learn a lot about the world in the face of hand-wringing boys, experimentation, nu-chauvinism, and the unwanted intrusion of academia. If they are lucky, they will make it to the spring break alive.

Secret Wars by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic (Marvel): Finally a Marvel mega-event that is done right. Sets the stage for the new Marvel Universe.

Graphic Novels

Long Walk to Valhalla by Adam Smith and Matthew Fox (Archaia): A sad story. When Rory’s car breaks down just outside town, a young girl named Sylvia appears by his side. She says she is a Valkyrie sent by the Norse god Odin to deliver him to Valhalla because today he is going to die. The two take a trip down memory lane where Rory comes to terms with his life before it’s time to say goodbye.

Nanjing: The Burning City by Ethan Young (Dark Horse): The horror of war told through the eyes of two Chinese soldiers trying to escape the invading Imperial Japanese Army during the early years of World War II. Powerful and deeply moving.

Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (Harper Collins): Has the feel of "Adventure Time” with its villains, dragons, science, and symbolism. A subversive and sharply irreverent comic.

Step Aside, Pops by Kate Beaton (Drawn & Quarterly): A hilarious re-telling of historical, literary, and cultural figures who are placed in ridiculous situations. Simple art yet elegant. Beaton’s prose is a winner.

Two Brothers by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon (Dark Horse): Another sad tale about a fallout between twins that has profound and adverse effects on a migrant family in mid-20th century Brazil. By the award-winning duo who produced “Daytripper."

Comics that you should follow for 2016

The Sheriff of Babylon (Vertigo)
Paper Girls (Image)
The Visions (Marvel)

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

5 tips for scoring good titles at book fair

MANILA -- One of the biggest book fairs in Manila is back for another run, and we've got a few tips for book lovers looking to snag good deals at the fair.

The annual Manila International Book Fair, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, opened Wednesday at the SMX Convention Center at the Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City, where it will run until Sunday.

With all five days of the fair packed with different activities and a flock of fellow book lovers hovering for popular books, here are five quick tips to get the most out of the event:

1. Work out a battle plan

Whether you're after children's books, Filipiniana or the latest bestsellers, it's always to good have a list of must-buys and booths to go to. Plan the budget you are willing to spend before heading on to the fair to make sure you'll be getting the best out of every peso.

2. Be prepared

With over 100 booths to visit, it is better to wear comfortable clothes and a good pair of shoes. Don't forget to bring extra bags in case you'll be buying more than what you planned for. You'll never know if you find a gem in the piles of books in the fair.

3. Weigh your options and look out for deals

It's important to think long and hard before purchasing something. But not too long, as stocks might run out fast.

Ask exhibitors for the different deals they have. Compare a particular book's price from one seller to another to make sure that you're buying at the best price available. You might even snag freebies along the way!

4. See what others are buying

You might be missing on some special releases or upcoming bestsellers, so it's good to ask exhibitors and other shoppers what books they can recommend to you.

5. Check the activity list

Another good thing about the 35th MIBF is that there are a lot of other activities lined up for the whole five days of the fair. Watch out for book launches, author sightings, storytelling sessions, program specials, or even quick meet-ups with other fellow book enthusiasts.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Why Mitch Albom wrote 'Tuesdays with Morrie'

MANILA – Bestselling author Mitch Albom rose to fame in 1997 for his book “Tuesdays with Morrie,” which recounted the time he spent with his 78-year-old sociology professor.

Not surprisingly, “Tuesdays with Morrie” is also the book that is closest to his heart.

Recalling why he came up with the book, Albom said he only wanted to raise even a small amount for his sick professor, Morrie Schwartz, and that no one, including himself, thought that it would be such as success.

“I just wrote that to pay his (Morrie’s) medical bills. It wasn’t supposed to be a big book, nobody in America expected it to be a big book, the publisher didn’t expect it to be a big book. I was just trying to help pay his bills,” Albom said in an interview on the ANC program “Headstart” aired Thursday.

“Most people told me it’s a bad idea. The publishers refused to take it, [they said] it’s boring, it’s depressing [and] you’re a sports writer [so] you can’t write a book like that,” he added.

But Albom, who used to be a sports columnist, was not afraid to take the risk for the sake of his teacher.

“I just kept pushing and saying I want to do this, I want to help pay his bills. So we found one publisher three weeks before he died and they agreed to publish it. They only published 20,000 copies, which in America is a very small book, and they thought that would be it. And I thought that would be it.

“So when ‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ started to grow and become this huge thing and it went on for years, nobody could’ve expected it.”

Since then, Albom has never looked back. As he wrote new books – his latest being “The First Phone Call from Heaven” – the bestselling author said he did not worry about how these would be received by the public.

“From that point forward, I didn’t know what to expect if I wrote a book. It was silly spending a lot of time worrying about it because you can put all this effort into trying to make it a hit, as you call it, and it would go the opposite direction,” he said.

What Morrie taught him

Albom said it was Schwartz who helped him “find a part of myself that could have been lost.”

“Morrie had this way of breaking people down because he was so honest and he wasn’t worried about being embarrassed by what he said. He asked questions like, ‘are you happy?’ Or ‘why do you think this is important?’ He really cut right through a lot of that hardened stuff, he allowed me to find a part of myself and that was a wonderful thing,” he said.

Albom said that through Schwartz, he was able to learn the importance of giving and making an impact on another person’s life.

“Morrie never read a page of ‘Tuesdays with Morrie.’ He never saw the cover, never held it in his hand, but he’s being studied even as we’re speaking, including here in the Philippines. You never know [that you will make a huge impact] by being kind to someone… Because that’s what happened, he was being kind to me. He invited me in while he was dying, to come see him every week. He was just being kind to an old student of his. I tried to do something, to be kind to him, to help pay his medical bills, so I did this book. One person read it and gave it to somebody, and gave it to somebody, and now here in the Philippines, we’re talking about it even if he’s not here.

“So I try to encourage people that this is what happens when you do something for other people. You might not ever know, you might die not knowing that it will have an effect on somebody,” he said.

Albom went on to share how a quote from his late professor has greatly touched his life.

“When Morrie said to me, ‘giving is living.’ I still remember him saying that because I asked him, ‘why are you so nice to everybody who comes in? Why do you always ask how they’re doing and what their problems are? You’re dying and you only have a certain amount of time left, why don’t you just let them talk to you about it?’ And he said, ‘because that’s taking and it’s reminding me that I’m dying. Giving makes me feel that I’m still living.’ And he said, ‘giving is living.’ I thought, wow… it really is true, especially when you get older.”

Applying the things he learned from Schwartz and from the other people he has met, Albom recently visited the country to help build libraries in typhoon-hit Tacloban.

He was also able to get the support of his fellow bestselling authors as they have committed to give books to these libraries.

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