"Entertainment Weekly" Turns 1,000 Today
by Amazon Newsstand at 11:10 AM PDT, June 20, 2008
 OK, so they've actually been around since 1990. But 1,000 issues of any magazine is something to celebrate, and EW is doing it in style, with their trademark: lists, lists, and more lists. "The New Classics: The 1,000 Best Movies, TV Shows, Albums, Books & More of the Last 25 Years" is great fun, and ranks every form of media you can think of since 1983, with input from both editors and celebs. Where else could you find a magazine cover with Harry Potter, Maggie Simpson, Edward Scissorhands, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer? And lists written by Jodie Foster, Neil Gaiman, and and Liz Phair? Here's a list from none other than Viggo Mortensen, who reveals his top 10 pieces of advice he's heard on movie sets. There's something for everyone here, I think. (True, I'm biased because I adore him. But I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.) 1. ''One job at a time, and each job a success.'' 2. ''Whatever you are feeling at this moment can be useful, no matter how far removed or even distracting it may seem from the scene you are playing. That is as close to 'real' as you will ever get.'' 3. ''There is no way in hell that's going to work. That is the worst idea I have heard today — perhaps ever. Are you trying to single-handedly ruin my movie?'' 4. ''Try it — what's the harm? It's only film and time.'' 5. ''No hay dolor.'' (''There is no pain.'') 6. ''All you really need to play the moment is air and water.'' 7. ''When in doubt, admit it.'' 8. ''Don't tell me; show me.'' 9. ''Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: They confuse reality with illusion.'' 10. ''I love you.'' Happy weekend, everyone! -- Noelle W.
In topics: Science Fiction, Crossover, Literature, Documentaries, Video Downloads, Family Room, Indie, Alternative, Comedy, Editors' Picks, Box Office, On the Cover, Watch this!, Harry Potter, Classical Music, Animation, Cult Films, Read This!, Broadway, News Junkies, Directions in DVD, Time Wasters, Fashion, Fantasy, Pretty People, Reading Group, Best of 2007, Guilty Pleasures, Music Addict, Drama, Action, Supernatural, TV, Film Vault, Book Awards, Nonfiction, Soundtracks, Controversial, Digital Music, Collectibles, Red Carpet
A conversation with Kristin Hannah
by Omnivoracious.com at 1:10 PM PDT, March 25, 2008
Amazon.com: Why did you choose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane? Is there something unique about growing up in the Northwest that helped you to define the kind of women Kate and Tully become? Amazon.com: While you were writing, at any point did you find yourself feeling more sympathetic to Kate or to Tully? How did you keep the weight of the plot balanced between them as their stories evolved? KH: There's no way to avoid the truth that Kate is more than a little like me. Thus, I identified with her from the very beginning--she was the small town girl who had to get up in the pre-dawn hours to feed her horses, and read The Lord of the Rings during every family vacation, and felt lost in the first few months at the sprawling University of Washington. All of that was me, so naturally, the problem was not in feeling sympathetic toward Katie; it was much more about holding her at arm's length, seeing her not as an extension of myself, but as a completely fictional woman. Tully was a different story entirely. While many readers might be surprised by this, I really fell in love with Tully. In the final analysis, she's one of my favorite characters of all time. I know she's bold and selfish and myopic and ambitious to a fault, but she's also terribly broken, wounded by her parents, unable to believe in love, and ultimately very real. I think all of us know a "Tully" in our lives, and they bring a lot of drama...and a lot of fire and sparkle. Amazon.com: You have a beautiful way of showing both the tension and tenderness between mothers and daughters. Was it a challenge to write Tully's painful history with her own mother, and later, the conflict that builds between Kate and her own daughter? KH: Honestly, I believe that the mother-daughter relationship is magical, complex, potentially dangerous, profoundly powerful, and deeply transformative. To put it simply, all of us have this relationship, and in a very real way, "none of us comes out alive." We are all formed first as daughters and then tested as mothers. There's nothing like motherhood to make us reassess how we were as daughters. One of my favorite parts of Firefly Lane was the circle of Kate’s relationship with her mom. First we see her as an angry teen, slamming the door on her mother...and then later her own daughter does the same thing to her. There's a real symmetry in that, a truth that many of us have learned. I have often wished in the past few years that my mom were here to help me as I raised my own teenage son. As a girl, with my own mom, I thought I knew it all; now I know better. Somewhere, I know my mom is smiling. Amazon.com: Throughout the novel, both Kate and Tully question the reliability of love. Is it that question that creates the rift between them and, ultimately, reunites them in friendship? KH: You're right, they each do continually question the reliability of love. For Kate, it's a self-esteem issue. She absolutely believes in love--she's grown up surrounded by it--but she constantly questions Johnny's commitment to her. I always felt that was largely because she felt like a moon to Tully's bright and shining sun. For Tully, she honestly doesn’t believe that true romantic love exists, and for all of her overblown ambition and belief in herself, she has been wounded by her mother's repeated abandonment. The result is that she feels she's unlovable. Amazon.com: Kate and Tully are each big personalities in their own way. Was it hard to create male characters who really understand them? KH:The challenge with regard to male characters was not so much creating men who understood Kate and Tully, it was rather to create love stories that equaled the power and emotional intensity of the friendship. After all, the men in the story were important--Johnny particularly--but it was really a story about the women. Amazon.com: When Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone first came out, many readers were shocked that a man could write such an intimate portrait of a woman. Do you think women are in fact the best writers of women's fiction? Would you ever consider writing a novel where men take center stage? KH: One of the great things about being a writer is that we get the chance to inhabit the minds and souls of a variety of individuals. I really don't think male/female is the central question in terms of the viability of a voice and/or vision. We writers can "become" murderers, animals, psychopaths, vampires, lawyers, doctors, wizards, children. In short, our storytelling skills and character-building abilities are limited only by our own imaginations. Until recently, most of my novels--while female-centric in vision--were equally narrated by male characters, and one--Angel Falls—was primarily narrated by men. I didn't see the writing of that any different than anything else. Amazon.com: Do you see yourself as a writer of romance or women's fiction? What do you see as the differences in these two genres--is one an evolution of the other, or is the label unimportant? KH: I began as a romance author and moved into women's fiction about ten years ago. While many definitions abound, mine is this: romance is a subsection of the broad, all-inclusive women's commercial fiction market. Women's fiction in general is not an evolution of romance; much of women's fiction is completely unrelated to any romantic elements. However, it is true that many current commercial women's fiction authors began in romance. Amazon.com:Many women read fictional romance to escape the stress of everyday life and find inspiration in a happy ending. Is there a primary experience that you hope your readers will have after reading Firefly Lane? KH: I am a sucker for a happy ending myself. In fact, my husband and I often go round and round about movies in which I hate the ending and he loves it. He always says I'm only comfortable with happy ever after, but that's not true. What I want is an emotionally satisfying, organic ending. I want to be totally engaged until the last page, and I want to believe every moment up until I close the book. Sometimes I want to laugh, sometimes I want to cry, and sometimes I want to scream that it can’t really be over. (Harry Potter comes to mind on this one). The point is, I want to be moved deeply. That's what I look for in other books and what I hope to deliver in my own. Just FYI, here are some of my favorite endings: Gone With the Wind, Middlemarch, Prince of Tides, An Inconvenient Wife, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, It, Shadow of the Wind. Some are happy, some are sad, some are bittersweet. All are memorable. Amazon.com: If you could meet any writer, living or dead, who would it be, and what would you ask them? KH: There are, of course, dozens of choices here, and I could certainly go through the classics and come up with many names and questions, but the truth is that I would love to sit down with Stephen King and listen to some rock and roll, and ask him how in the world he has stayed so good for so long. Gettin' Biblical with A.J. Jacobs
by Omnivoracious.com at 5:44 PM PST, November 29, 2007
Anyone familiar with author A.J. Jacobs knows that the guy doesn't do anything half-speed. He documented his quest to read all 44 million words of the Encyclopedia Britannica with The Know-It-All, and recently spent a full year living in strict accordance with Biblical teachings for his latest work, The Year of Living Biblically. I caught up with A.J. for an Amazon Wire Podcast to chat about religion, spirituality, and what he keeps under his sink at home. (Hint: it isn't Drain-O) Read excerpts from our conversation below or click here to listen to the entire interview. Amazon.com: Did this project change your perspective on religion and spirituality? Jacobs: It did. It's interesting because I expected to get a good amount of rebuking, but I think that people saw that I went in there with an open mind, just trying to understand the Bible and religion. I grew up in a very secular home with no religion at all, so I was starting from zero. I found there were things about religion that I really loved; things like the sense of gratefulness that it brings. The Bible talks a lot about thankfulness, and I now try to be thankful for the hundred good things that go right every day instead of focusing on the bad things. Amazon.com: What was the spark that prompted this massive undertaking? Jacobs: I didn't think there was anything bigger than the encyclopedia, but then I realized that there is one thing bigger. (laughs) It happened because of my incredibly secular background. I had assumed that religion would wither away and we'd all be worshiping at the altar of science...but of course, I was spectacularly mistaken. So I wanted to know if I missing something by not having any spirituality in my life. Was I like a guy who went through life without hearing Beethoven or falling in love? Or was half the world massively deluded? That was the motivation of why I decided to dive in. I love to live things, so I wanted to immerse myself and get into the mindset--and sandals--of my forefathers. Amazon.com: Lewis Black once stated that the God described in the Old Testament is far angrier than the New Testament version. He suspects that having a son might have mellowed Him out. What did you see as the biggest difference between the two versions? Jacobs: Since I was relatively new to the Bible, I was surprised by the Old Testament God. He's wrathful, but at other times, He's incredibly compassionate. He's not a one-dimensional figure at all. One of the interesting things to me is that he grows throughout the Old Testament. He evolves, sort of matures, and becomes kinder. It’s a fascinating and complex book. Weekend Reading List
by Omnivoracious.com at 2:16 PM PST, November 16, 2007
Based on your feedback, this weekly post has been expanded with more info on the titles that occupy the Saturdays and Sundays of the Amazon Books Team. Mari: Dave: BTP:
In topics: Advance Copy, Literature, News Junkies, Nonfiction, Read This!, Reading Group, The Reading Life
Weekend Reading List
by Omnivoracious.com at 2:45 PM PST, November 9, 2007
Looking for reading inspiration? Check out a few reads that the Amazon Books Team will be dog-earing this weekend. Ellington Boulevard by Adam Langer - BTP *I'm hoping to start Schultz and Peanuts, but will most likely spend my weekend poring over Dog with my three month old son. He can't get enough of it! A Brief Kids' History of Time
by Omnivoracious.com at 7:36 PM PST, November 8, 2007
George's Secret Key, co-authored by the renowned physicist and his daughter Lucy, is the first in a trilogy that the father-daughter team are writing together to present the cosmology of Hawking's A Brief History of Time for children ages nine to 12. They are calling the books "science fact," interspersing adventure stories with mini science lectures. If you're thinking this sounds too much like a dry science text thinly disguised as a children's book, you should check out this Los Angeles Times review, which compares the adventure to the Captain Underpants series, calling it a "manifesto to the irrepressibility of the scientific mind." The Today website has an excerpt from the book, a Q&A with the Hawkings, and--the coolest part--a form for nine-year-olds to email Stephen Hawking with questions like: "What is the Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect and can it be used to calculate the Hubble Constant?" (This question actually came from NASA's Ask an Astrophysicist, an extensive Q&A source for young physicists-in-training. Or for their parents who haven't taken a science class since the 10th grade and want to brush up on atoms and quarks before their family reads the book.)--Heidi Old Media Monday: Authors (Allegedly) on the Tube
by Omnivoracious.com at 10:12 AM PST, November 5, 2007
It looks as if we have ourselves a writers strike this morning. I'm hoping for a quick resolution, as an intriguing range of authors were scheduled for TV appearances this week. (NOTE: this list is moot until an agreement is reached. Until then, the below programs are re-run city.) Monday, November 5th The Colbert Report Tuesday, November 6th The Daily Show with Jon Stewart The Colbert Report The Ellen Degeneres Show The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson The Colbert Report Thursday, November 8th --Dave Old Media Monday (err...Sunday): Authors on the Tube
by Omnivoracious.com at 7:26 PM PDT, October 28, 2007
This week's author/newsmaker television appearances you might want to check out: Did I miss an appearance? Give me a shout in our Comments section and I'll be glad to investigate. --Dave Old Media Monday: Authors on the Tube
by Amazon.com Bookstore at 9:26 PM PDT, October 22, 2007
Have the writers already gone on strike? I'm not talking about the television scribes preparing to walk out at the end of this month, but rather the authors that make our world go round. I only dug up one single TV appearance, and it's a repeat: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart will air last week's interview with Lynne Cheney, author of Blue Skies, No Fences, again this Thursday.
That's all I got. If you can salvage this sorry post with an appearance I overlooked, please drop it in our Comments section below. --Dave Weekend Reading List
by Amazon.com Bookstore at 12:48 PM PDT, October 19, 2007
Wind and rain on deck for Seattle this weekend--perfect weather for reading! Here's what the Amazon.com Books Team will be curling up with on Saturday and Sunday. The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century by Alex Ross - Tom The Elements of Cooking by Michael Ruhlman - BTP Obedience by Will Lavender - Daphne Bits and pieces of books that came out in 2007 (readers, you’ll know why soon), plus back issues of |
Kristin Hannah: Quite simply, I chose Seattle as the backdrop for Firefly Lane
because it's so much a part of who I am. I've lived in the Northwest
for most of my life, and obviously, in all those years, I've seen this
part of the country evolve from an undiscovered gem into the Emerald
City. So many of the places from my youth are gone, or changed, or
moved, and I guess I wanted to remember the physical reminders of those
bygone days. And while Kate and Tully are absolutely Northwest girls, I
like to think their story will speak to women who grew up in vastly
different, more populated areas. After all, it's ultimately about
friendship, and those seeds can be planted anywhere.
