Laura Moriarty’s Hiatus Was All Barbara Kingsolver’s Fault

"The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver is funny, devastating, and fastidiously researched, with a galloping plot that kept me reading late, night after night. As a reader, I was delighted. As a writer, I was more intimidated than inspired. In fact, the first time I read The Poisonwood Bible, I stopped writing for a while. There didn’t seem to be a point in working so hard to create something when Kingsolver was out there doing her genius thing. I said this to a friend, who told me, “Think of your favorite musician, or your favorite band. Maybe they really are the best. Fine. But would you want everyone else to stop writing songs?” Her comparison felt liberating. I’m still awestruck by the brilliance of other writers. But I keep on with my own work, knowing that even for a discriminating reader, what I create might be the right song at the right time."

Laura Moriarty's latest novel, While I'm Falling, is out now.

Photo by: Tracy Rasmussen

Scrap Book: "The Situation" Writes a Self-Help Guide, Kindle Outpaces Hardcovers, and More

The Jersey Shore just keeps on giving. Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino has signed a book deal with Gotham Books to write a self-help guide to the guido lifestyle. The book, Here’s The Situation, which hits shelves in November, includes tips on fitness, hygiene and GTL (gym, tan, laundry) scheduling. The super-tan stud told Entertainment Weekly that it will be “a tell-all book. Sorta like how I came about and everything like that,” but it’s worth mentioning that he’s hired a ghostwriter to make the book more, uh, comprehensible. Fist pump! [Entertainment Weekly]—Laura Lajiness

This week, Amazon.com announced that the Kindle e-book sales outnumbered hardcover book sales for the last three months, selling 143 e-books to every 100 hardcovers that don’t even have Kindle editions. This literary revolution is gaining speed as digital sales have risen to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies in the last four weeks. Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company told The New York Times, “This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come,” and predicted that in a few decades there will be less than 25 percent of books in print. [NY Times]—L.L.

William Jacques, a previously convicted thief and Cambridge graduate, was sentenced this week to three and a half years jail time for stealing more than $60,000 worth of rare books. Over the course of three years, Jacques—disguised in glasses, a tweed jacket, and armed with a fake library card—walked out of the Royal Horticultural Society's library in London with 13 volumes of Ambroise Verschaffelt’s 18th Century Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias. In the past, Jacques was found guilty of stealing the work of authors such as Galileo and Kepler. [The Guardian]—Valeriya Safronova

The legal battle over Franz Kafka's unseen manuscripts, drawings, and letters, which have been hidden away for more than 80 years, has reached a new climax. Before his death, the author gave the works to Max Brod, a close friend, who left them with his recently deceased lover. Now, the lover’s daughters, who inherited the stash, are involved in a suit with Israel’s national library over whether the Kafka works should remain locked away in their possession, or, as Israel demands, be published for the world to see. This week Israel had a mini-breakthrough, when experts were finally allowed to see the documents that most likely have not been read since they were written. [The Independent]—V.S.

Photo: Getty Images

Ariane Adrain, PR Intern

What are you reading?
I’m reading the Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I just started it because I recently got a New York City library card, and this was a book that I found on the “Suggested Reading” bookshelf.

What about it appealed to you?
I like to read novels about strong women. The main character is Lily—a 14-year-old girl who lives in the Deep South in the late 1960s. She’s willing to stand up for the people that she loves and I admire that.

What other books do you love that have strong female characters in them?
Memoirs of a Geisha is one of my favorites. Another one would be To Kill a Mockingbird. I love that book, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love that book.

What are you wearing?

I’m wearing an Urban Outfitters dress, Ray Ban wayfarers, and a cross that I bought in Jerusalem.—Valeriya Safronova

Photo: Kelsey Cherry

Scrap Book: Apple Censorship, Writers' Houses Online, and More

Apple’s latest bold move: book censorship! Within the past month, the mega corporation pulled the following titles from the iTunes store for objectionable language and gay themes: Tom Bouden’s graphic novel adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and the Kama Sutra (okay, this one one we kinda understand), among others. After an explosion of Internet objection, Apple brought back the titles, admitting, at least in the case of Rob Berry and Josh Levitas’s Ulysses Seen—a comic adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses—that, yup, they made a mistake. [Huffington Post]

And when one book battle is won, another is lost: book signings occur less and less nowadays because, according to the Wall Street Journal, negotiating which authors sign in which stores can get complicated, especially in Manhattan. The biggest “get” is the Union Square Barnes & Noble, where authors like David Remnick, Sebastian Junger, and Mo Rocca have read and signed. "To be there," said Evan Boorstyn, deputy director of publicity at Grand Central Publishing, "is the equivalent of getting your name up in lights on Broadway." [Wall Street Journal]

On July 13^th, editor and writer A.N. Devers launched Writers’ Houses, a site that marries the love of fiction with the love of home design—with just a dash of voyeurism. Inspired by a curiosity of writer’s work spaces, the website will feature daily posts on the homes of our favorite deceased writers, like Zora Neale Hurston, Dashiell Hammett, and John Steinbeck. [Mediabistro]—Laura Lajiness

Photo: Getty Images

Aimee Bender Doesn’t Mind the L.A.-to-Brooklyn Commute

“I remember reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I was 11 or 12. I have two sisters, and we were all big readers, so we would just pass books along. They would be dropped in the bathtub, they would get covered with food; they were these swollen paperbacks with ripped covers. It’s that involvement where you can’t even put down your apple juice because you have to be in the book so constantly—a credit to the love of the book. And Francie is such a likeable, female narrator that I think as a little girl reading the book, it was very easy to identify with her even though she was living in Brooklyn and I was living in L.A. It was set in a whole different time period, but I still felt connected."—Interviewed by Laura Lajiness

Aimee Bender’s newest novel, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, is out now.

Photo: Max S. Gerber