California Literary Review

The ten best film adaptations: [Independent]

The giant of modern literature? It has to be The Gruffalo: The Gruffalo, currently the subject of many 10th birthday celebrations and a forthcoming movie, is based on a Chinese folk tale but its word-of-mouth success speaks to the great tradition of British storytelling for children, a tradition that flourishes today as vigorously as ever. [Guardian]

Steal This Book (for $9.99): Now, in the evolving Kindle world, $9.99 is becoming the familiar price. But is that justified just because paper has been removed from the equation? [NYT]

Another Side of Kerouac: The Dharma Bum as Sports Nut: Almost all his life Jack Kerouac had a hobby that even close friends and fellow Beats like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs never knew about. He obsessively played a fantasy baseball game of his own invention, charting the exploits of made-up players like Wino Love, Warby Pepper, Heinie Twiett, Phegus Cody and Zagg Parker, who toiled on imaginary teams named either for cars (the Pittsburgh Plymouths and New York Chevvies, for example) or for colors (the Boston Grays and Cincinnati Blacks). [NYT]

50 Top Women in Book Publishing: From multimillion-dollar acquisitions to multimillion-dollar best-sellers, powerful women stand at every pivotal, decision-making point in the book publishing process. [Book Business]

Book Of A Lifetime: No Other Life, By Brian Moore: Sentiment in Kingsley Amis is hardening, but there’s no obvious rallying around Brian Moore, the Irish-born novelist who died ten years ago. At one time, he was the “greatest living author”, according to Graham Greene, no doubt because Greene shared his preoccupation with Catholicism and the spiritual travails of his heroes. [Independent]

A Book Author Wonders How to Fight Piracy: The specter of piracy of my books materialized for me several weeks ago when I typed the four words “wayner data compression textbook” into Google. Five of the top 10 links pointed to sites distributing pirated copies. (And now, it’s six.) [NYT]

Catcher in the Rye sequel published, but not by Salinger: The last we saw of Holden Caulfield, he was in a mental hospital in California, reminiscing about the days he spent roaming New York City, watching his sister Phoebe ride a carousel. Now JD Salinger’s much-loved teenage misanthrope is back, thanks to an unauthorised sequel to The Catcher in the Rye, which sees a 76-year-old “Mr C” flee a nursing home to journey again through the streets of New York. [Guardian]

Palin Signs Deal to Write a Memoir: Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who felt maligned by much of the news coverage of her unsuccessful vice-presidential bid last year, is writing a memoir. [NYT]

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web: Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. [NYT]