“Mad Men” Gives O’Hara a Boost: It’s not unhead of for a TV show to boost sales of a book, but poetry titles don’t often get the spotlight treatment. Not so anymore. Meditations in an Emergency by poet and cult figure Frank O’Hara (1926-1966), published by Grove Press, has received a noticeble bump in sales after an appearance on the much-lauded AMC drama, Mad Men. [Publishers Weekly]
Public vote to find the oddest book title of the past 30 years: Contenders include: 1978: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (University of Tokyo Press) [BookBrowse]
Fact vs. truth: The New Yorker’s Joseph Mitchell didn’t let the former get in the way of the latter: Joseph Mitchell, his shoe leather beaten and his ears bent by stories, the reporter’s reporter, the finest The New Yorker ever produced (then and now, and possibly forever), “the paragon of reporters” (so sayeth Calvin Trillin) whose writing “stood firmly and cleanly in your mind, like Shaker furniture” (Roger Angell), the pale-skinned son of North Carolina, the wandering eye of New York back alleys and crannies, the chronicler of the Bowery and the bearded ladies of Broadway and the rats on the waterfront and the epic fabricators of Greenwich Village, would have turned 100 this summer. [Chicago Tribune]
Call for compensation after shelving of Islam novel: The lawyer who was threatened by terrorists whilst acting for Salman Rushdie has said that Random House US should pay “substantial compensation” to Sherry Jones, whose novel about Muhammad’s child bride Aisha was dropped by the publisher over fears it could provoke terrorist attacks. [Guardian]
Book Attacking Obama Hopes to Repeat ’04 Anti-Kerry Feat: In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of “Unfit for Command,” the book attacking Senator John Kerry’s record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger damaging campaign against Mr. Kerry’s war credentials as he sought the presidency. [NYT]
Yiddish Policemen triumph at Hugo awards: Chabon beat British science fiction authors Charles Stross and Ian McDonald to take the prize, which is voted for by fans. The win marks Chabon’s second science fiction prize this year and sees him join a roster of former winners including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and Ray Bradbury. [Guardian]
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