California Literary Review

Doubleday Publishing Lays Off 10% of Its Employees: Doubleday Publishing Group, a unit of Random House whose imprints include Spiegel & Grau, Broadway Books and Nan A. Talese, laid off 16 people on Monday, a 10 percent cut in staff. [NYT]

Anne Rice goes from vampires to Jesus biographer: Her memoir, “Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession,” is the latest piece of evidence that Rice is reinventing herself in an attempt to build a reputation as a serious Christian writer. [Yahoo]

The perils of being a literary superstar: When thousands of adoring fans turn out for Toni Morrison, is it really her novels that have brought them along? [Guardian]

Local literati rate candidates’ reading lists: If we are what we read, then the books the presidential candidates claim to hold dear present clues to their character. Or do they? [San Francisco Chronicle]

SIS FAMILY FEUD’S ONE FOR BOOKS: A literary catfight has erupted between a socialite author and her out-of-work sister over an upcoming novel called “Hedge Fund Wives.” Writer Tatiana Boncompagni Hoover claims in court papers that her sneaky sibling stole the work-in-progress from her computer, then secretly copyrighted it as “co-author.” [NY Post]

There’s nothing irrational about fiction: It seems to me that the stunning success of the atheist bus campaign has gone to Richard Dawkins’s head, for I can’t imagine what else can have made him think that it was a good decision for him to now set his sights on to taking down another cultural scourge that threatens the well-being of innocent children: fiction. [Guardian]

Hopes for a happy ending: Literary voices on the American Election: One can already feel Obama’s shoulders heaving. For if he gets into office, he will have a host of issues to deal with immediately. “We have never seen a time like this,” Amy Tan writes, “an African-American president, republics crossing partisan borders like refugees, rampant racial hatred, contagious religious hatred, economic panic spreading like the bird flu pandemic that never arrived, not to mention so many possibilities vying for first in destroying the earth.” [Independent]

Who wrote the original Frankenstein?: Mary Shelley created a monster out of her “waking dream” – but was it her husband Percy who “embodied its ideas and sentiments”? [TLS]