California Literary Review

10 Literary one-hit wonders [Times]

From Avon lady to dance hostess to prize-winning novelist…?: Korean-born author Nami Mun’s long journey to the shortlist for Orange award for new writing [Independent]

Is This the Future of the Digital Book?: Bradley Inman wants to create great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream — and then roll them all into a multimedia hybrid that is tailored to the rapidly growing number of digital reading devices. [NYT]

Stephen King completes epic novel after 25 years: Under the Dome, in which an invisible force field seals off a Maine town from the world, is due to be published this November, his publishers have said. [Guardian]

Obama’s half-sister signs book deal: Maya Soetoro-Ng to publish illustrated ‘modern-day fable’ for children drawing on family’s roots [Guardian]

Book Of A Lifetime: Our Mutual Friend, By Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend may not be his greatest novel, but in some ways it is his most compelling. [Independent]

Gabriel García Márquez, literary giant, lays down his pen: Now fans of the Colombian author are facing the prospect that, after a career spanning half a century, Garcia Marquez has finally laid down his pen for good. His agent, Carmen Balcells, told the Chilean newspaper La Tercera : “I don’t think that García Márquez will write anything else.” [Guardian]

Robert Crumb set to publish ’scandalous’ Bible satire: Cartoonist Crumb’s vision of the first book of the Bible said to be a ‘complex, even subversive narrative that calls for a re-examination of its role in our culture’ [Guardian]

Is this YouTube for books?: More than 50,000 new documents a day are uploaded to Californian website Scribd.com, which has 50 million users keen to share an eclectic mix of material: recipes, manuals, how-to guides, puzzles and novels. From the contemporary (Ken Follett and Jeffrey Archer), to the classic (Jane Austen and Dostoyevsky), if you want to read it, you’ll probably find it on Scribd.com. [Guardian]

Forgotten authors No.29: Peter Barnes: Peter Barnes is still often misunderstood by critics seeking easy tags. His work was elaborately constructed, intellectually rigorous and controversial, his language exact and demanding. [Independent]

Study claims Agatha Christie had Alzheimer’s: Textual analysis detects signs of sharply declining faculties towards the end of beloved mystery writer’s life [Guardian]