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The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good about the Good News? by Peter J. Gomes, a review from New York Review of Books by Bill McKibben.

Stephen King’s use of horror is not what it used to be. It may still be the impetus for his stories, but it is no longer the foremost reason they’re interesting.

A cookbook author is angered that another writer is using his book’s title, but learns there’s not much he can do about it.

Stories have appearing in the trade papers saying how great the DGA deal is and that the WGA should gratefully accept the same deal. There are also stories about how a secret cabal of top screenwriters has banded together to force the WGA leadership to crawl back to the negotiating table and beg for forgiveness from the kindly and benevolent AMPTP. Oscar winning screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Letters From Iwo Jima) doesn't believe a word of these stories, which are written to force the WGA to take a terrible deal just because the directors did. In fact, he can't seem to find one top screenwriter who doesn't stand behind the WGA's leadership. He's very suspicious...and quite sarcastic.

Yes, there will be many different opinions about the DGA deal and whether we should take it or not. But that is not what is being reported. You would think that Jim Brooks, Steve Gaghan, Eric Roth, John Logan, Robin Swicord, Susannah Grant, Aaron Sorkin, Callie Khouri, Tony Gilroy, Ron Harwood, Diablo Cody and a coterie of other highly-paid, award-clutching scribes are circling the Guild offices in black Priuses, waiting for the right moment to pounce and pressure us into taking the DGA deal verbatim.

Those are top screenwriters, no doubt, but I would find it strangely ironic if they were plotting subversion while picketing, working tirelessly on various Guild boards, and openly expressing their support for the strike.

So here is where my mind started to go: Could this reporting have anything to do with a well organized and very expensive PR campaign to convince WGA members that we should shut up and be grateful for what we got? But then I thought, "Come on, these are The Trades and other very reputable newspapers -- top media sources that we rely upon not just for local news, but for well-researched and independent reporting on international events. Whether it is Burbank or Baghdad, they speak with integrity, they check their sources, they get things right or they don't print it.

Seriously, what would this town be like if we couldn't trust our newspapers, our well-meaning agents and producer friends?

So, you have my apologies for questioning this undisputable fact that is so well reported. This powerful group of influential screenwriters not only exists, we should be very, very afraid of them.

Stand strong, writers! Don't get sucked into the hype from the DGA or the AMPTP. When the actual contract is finally drafted, it will quickly become clear if there is any teeth in the audit provisions of the new contract. And as for the numbers on new media: they don't look any better than the DVD numbers to us.

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Caspian Rain by Gina Nahai, a review from Ms. Magazine by Nasrin Rahimieh.

We’ve been used to the YouTube generation making videos supporting their candidates during the presidential primaries. But this has to be some kind of campaign first. Poet Maya Angelou has written
a prose poem in honor of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy for President of the United States.

You may write me down in history



With your bitter, twisted lies,



You may tread me in the very dirt



But still, like dust, I’ll rise.



This is not the first time you have seen Hillary Clinton seemingly at her wits’ end, but she has always risen, always risen, don’t forget she has always risen, much to the dismay of her adversaries and the delight of her friends.



Hillary Clinton will not give up on you and all she asks of you is that you do not give up on her.



There is a world of difference between being a woman and being an old female. If you’re born a girl, grow up, and live long enough, you can become an old female. But to become a woman is a serious matter. A woman takes responsibility for the time she takes up and the space she occupies. Hillary Clinton is a woman. She has been there and done that and has still risen. She is in this race for the long haul. She intends to make a difference in our country. Hillary Clinton intends to help our country to be what it can become.



She declares she wants to see more smiles in the family, more courtesies between men and women, more honesty in the marketplace. She is the prayer of every woman and man who longs for fair play, healthy families, good schools, and a balanced economy.



She means to rise.



Don’t give up on Hillary. In fact, if you help her to rise, you will rise with her and help her make this country the wonderful, wonderful place where every man and every woman can live freely without sanctimonious piety and without crippling fear.



Rise, Hillary.



Rise.

Will other poets take pen in hand to support the candidacies of Obama, Edwards, McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Thompson, Huckabee and Paul? We think it’s a great idea. Surely some of the Ron Paul supporters could fire out an inspiring sonnet about economic policy.



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At Macworld Expo, Steve Jobs introduced the MacBook Air -- a super thin laptop computer that looks fabulous but doesn't have much power and only one USB port. In an interview Jobs took the opportunity to slam Amazon.com's Kindle reading device, saying that it's "going nowhere."

Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading.

"It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore," he said. "Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore."

Steve Jobs is a genius, but he's wrong about reading. People still love to read books. It's only the technology of how they read that is changing. In Japan, for instance, people are absolutely obsessed with reading novels on their cellphones. And the Kindle sold out at Christmas. Sure, it's not gorgeous like the iPhone, but it does what it was designed to do -- perfectly.

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The Bobby Gold Stories by Anthony Bourdain, a review from Powells.com by Chris Bolton.

Priscilla Painton, most recently the deputy managing editor of Time magazine, has been named editor in chief of Simon & Schuster’s adult trade imprint.

The Mystery Writers of America has announced the nominees for the 2008 Edgar Awards. They are:

Best Novel:

• Christine Falls by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt and Company)
• Priest by Ken Bruen (St. Martin's Minotaur)
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
• Soul Patch by Reed Farrel Coleman (Bleak House Books)
• Down River by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel By An American Author:

• Missing Witness by Gordon Campbell (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• In the Woods by Tana French (Penguin Group - Viking)
• Snitch Jacket by Christopher Goffard (The Rookery Press)
• Head Games by Craig McDonald (Bleak House Books)
• Pyres by Derek Nikitas (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best Paperback Original:

• Queenpin by Megan Abbott (Simon & Schuster)
• Blood of Paradise by David Corbett (Random House - Mortalis)
• Cruel Poetry by Vicki Hendricks (Serpent's Tail)
• Robbie's Wife by Russell Hill (Hard Case Crime)
• Who is Conrad Hirst? by Kevin Wignall (Simon & Schuster)

Best Critical/Biographical:

• The Triumph of the Thriller: How Cops, Crooks and Cannibals Captured Popular Fiction by Patrick Anderson (Random House)
• A Counter-History of Crime Fiction: Supernatural, Gothic, Sensational by Maurizio Ascari (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Deviance in Contemporary Crime Fiction by Christiana Gregoriou (Palgrave Macmillan)
• Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower and Charles Foley (The Penguin Press)
• Chester Gould: A Daughter's Biography of the Creator of Dick Tracy by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland & Company)

Posted in Mystery/Thriller

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“This is the heart of the Appalachian coalfields — not fields at all but rugged, forested hills that still hide billions of tons of coal. No shiny new McDonald’s restaurants or Burger Kings punctuate Route 3’s 56-mile passage from Racine south to Beckley.”

This novel takes the reader inside, or slightly outside, the mind of a former R.A.F. tail gunner.

“It wasn’t that he was awkward, or peculiar, quite the reverse: he was biddable and sensible and ordinary, nothing more: but even an ordinary person could sometimes have enough and get browned off and, for example, want to be offered, every now and then, a choice.”

Environmentalists are trying to keep coal-mining companies from removing entire mountaintops in West Virginia.

Condoleezza Rice was an obedient national security adviser, Elisabeth Bumiller says.

“The story of Condoleezza Rice begins at the close of the nineteenth century on a cotton plantation in southeastern Alabama, near the flourishing little town of Union Springs.”

Chapter 2: Louise Glass was 48 and looked 30.

How did a Holocaust memoir rejected by 15 publishers and largely ignored by readers go on to sell 10 million copies?

For more than 50 years, Geoffrey Hill has written a pinch-mouthed, grave-digger’s poetry. His rich and allusive books are normally greeted by praise from critics and bewilderment from readers.

In this novel, a free black who emigrated to Canada after the American Revolution tells her story.

Max Apple’s quirky, authentic short stories take readers to places they’ve never been.

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