Erdrich, Boo win U.S. national book awards

(Reuters) - Author Louise Erdrich won the National Book Award for fiction for "The Round House," a moving novel about a woman raped in a Native American community, at the annual awards ceremony in New York on Wednesday.

Competition for the prize included such well-known authors as Junot Diaz and Dave Eggers, as well as Ben Fountain and debut novelist Kevin Powers.

The gala ceremony at which the awards were announced was designed to bring buzz to an industry that has been shaken up in its efforts to transition to the digital marketplace.

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Katherine Boo won the nonfiction award for her first book, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity," which sheds light on the lives of India's poor as well as government corruption.

Boo, a former Washington Post editor and New Yorker writer who between November 2007 and March 2011 spent time in a Mumbai slum to experience life in contemporary India. She was praised widely for the book, which some critics said read more like a novel.

Boo told Reuters in March that her biggest barrier in the slums had been the "many, many languages spoken," and she gave credit to a group of translators. "I also needed someone to work with me the way I worked - slowly and patiently," she said.

David Ferry's "Bewilderment" won the award for poetry and William Alexander's "Goblin Secrets" won the young people's literature award.

Novelist Elmore Leonard and New York Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. received lifetime achievement honors.

The National Book Foundation, which administers the awards, nominated five writers in each of four categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.

The four winning writers each received a $10,000 prize.

Read More..

"The Last Man" shoots to top spot on U.S. bestseller list

NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The Last Man" soared straight to the top of Publishers Weekly's bestseller list on Wednesday in its debut week.

The list is compiled using data from independent and chain bookstores, book wholesalers and independent distributors nationwide.

Hardcover Fiction Last Week

1. "The Last Man" by Vince Flynn (Atria, $27.99) -

2. "Merry Christmas, Alex Cross" by James Patterson (Little, Brown, $28.99) -

3. "The Racketeer" by John Grisham (Doubleday, $28.95) 1

4. "Poseidon's Arrow" by Clive Cussler (Putnam, $28.95) 2

5. "Flight Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper, $28.99) 3

6. 5. "The Casual Vacancy" by J. K. Rowling (Little, Brown, $35.00) 5

7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn (Crown, $25.00) 7

8. "Sweet Tooth" by Ian McEwan (Doubleday/Talese, $26.95) -

9. "The Panther" by Nelson DeMille (Grand Central, $27.99) 6

10. "The Sins of the Mother" by Danielle Steel (Delacorte, $28.00) 4

Hardcover Nonfiction

1. "Killing Kennedy" by Bill O'Reilly (Henry Holt, $28.00) 2

2. "Barefoot Contessa Foolproof" by Ina Garten (Clarkson Potter, $35.00) 1

3. "Thomas Jefferson" by Jon Meacham (Random House, $35.00) -

4. "Guinness World Records 2013" (Guinness World Records) 5

5. "No Easy Day" by Mark Owen (Dutton, $26.95) 3

6. "How to Create a Mind" by Ray Kurzweil (Viking, $27.95) -

7. "My Year in Meals" in Rachael Ray (Atria, $29.99) -

8. "Help, Thanks, Wow" by Anne Lamott (Riverhead, $17.95) -

9. "I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak" by Joel Osteen (FaithWords, $21.99) 4

10. "The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver ( Penguin, $27.95) 7

Week ended November 18, 2012, powered by Nielsen BookScan (c) 2012 The Nielsen Company.

Read More..

"Breaking Dawn - Part 2" reviews: is this the best "Twilight" ever?

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - "The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2" hits theaters Friday, and reviewers are weighing in about whether the vampire finale is bloody good or a lifeless mess.

Regardless of the critical consensus, Twi-hards are almost certain to show up, but based on the early notices "Part 2" is more likely to be shortlisted for Razzies than Oscars come awards time. The film scored a lackluster 52 percent "rotten" rating on critics aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with many reviewers breaking out the garlic and stakes to condemn the film's sluggish pacing and wooden performances.

"Part 2" focuses on Bella (Kristen Stewart) as she adjusts to life as a mother and a vampire. Robert Pattinson returns as the brooding bloodsucker Edward Cullen and Taylor Lautner is back as the oft-shirtless, part werewolf Jacob.

On TheWrap, critic Alonso Duralde was largely positive, praising director Bill Condon for bringing some bite to the franchise. Where the film falls short, he argued, is in its source material - the series of novels by Stephenie Meyer that started a phenomenon but were derided for their tortured prose.

"Credit Condon with putting these cardboard characters and their loony dilemmas into a rich atmosphere; whether we're running through the woods with those ridiculous wolves or following Bella through a lit-for-Christmas Seattle, the director and cinematographer Guillermo Navarro ('Pan's Labyrinth') give the wintry settings a palpable sense of chilly foreboding," Duralde wrote.

The best thing that Peter Travers could say about "Breaking Dawn" deux was that it signaled the series was finally over. TheRolling Stone critic acknowledged that it was better than other films in the franchise but struggled to find much else to praise.

"You're going to hear a lot about 'Breaking Dawn Part 2' being the best of the Twilight movies. That's like saying a simple head cold is preferable to swine flu," he wrote. "They'll all make you sick."

Also left filled with bile was Dana Stevens. The Slate critic said the film ends on a suitably shocking climax, but getting there takes way too long.

"Splitting the last book in Stephenie Meyer's teen-vampire series into two separate movies may have been a wise business decision - with guaranteed throngs of adoring Twi-hards willing to go back for multiple viewings, why not eke out an extra sequel? - but it leaves the last film in the series with no place to go," Stevens wrote.

The movie is so dull, complained San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle, that audiences might contemplate doing bodily harm to themselves an hour into the latest visit to Forks, Wash.

"One final question: If they've been alive for 800 years, why does every female vampire sound like a Valley Girl? Are they endlessly adaptive, or did they all really stand out in Victorian England?," LaSalle wrote. It wasn't all pans. A few critics, such as the New York Times' Manohla Dargis found herself on Team Breaking Dawn. Though she griped about its languid pace, Dargis said Condon and his supple stars evoke the glamor of classic Hollywood screen couples. In the process she becomes probably the first critic to compare "Twilight" to the films of George Stevens.

"From the first extreme close-up of Bella fluttering open her dark, feathery eyelashes, Mr. Condon makes this 'Twilight' an intensely tactile and intimate experience," Dargis wrote. "Taking his cues from the Golden Age of Hollywood -- the close-ups of Bella and Edward bring to mind those of Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift in "A Place in the Sun." He bathes his stars in a gleaming light that gives their pale faces a luxurious alabaster sheen. This is one movie that should have been shot in 3D if only to allow the fans to caress the air."

Owen Gleiberman was similarly enraptured by Bella, Edward and their toothsome friends. The Entertainment Weekly critic said that the series benefits from a showstopper of a twist ending.

"It made me realize that, as narratively lumpy as they can be, I like the Twilight films because they're really about the eternal movie romance of vampires at play," Gleiberman wrote.

Read More..

Book Talk: The Swinging 60s, as told by a Cher-lookalike

SYDNEY (Reuters) - It is the 1960s and rock journalist Lola Bensky finds herself deep in the heart of the music scene in London and New York, interviewing emerging stars like Mick Jagger and Jimi Hendrix.

But the 19-year-old Melbourne-born Lola of the eponymous "Lola Bensky," by Lily Bent, is no ordinary rock journalist. The Jewish child of two Holocaust survivors, she prefers to ask interviewees how they got on with their mother and wins praise from Cher, who tells her they look alike.

Bent, who like her heroine originally hails from Australia and in fact still bears a strong resemblance to Cher, spoke with Reuters on a recent visit from New York, her home of 23 years, about her semi-autobiographical novel.

Q: For a young reporter, you were very comfortable around these rock stars. Why?

A: "If you've had two parents who have been imprisoned in ghettos and Nazi death camps, idolizing rock stars almost seemed absurd. My life was not centered around being alone with Mick Jagger in his apartment, it was to make sure my reel to reel tape recorder wasn't screwing up."

Q: Born to survivors of the Auschwitz death camp, Lola was fixated with losing weight, and as a teenager your ambition in life was to lose weight? Why is weight such an issue?

A: "This is a very complicated issue (and) there are many aspects of it. However, in the ghettos and the camps anyone who had any excess weight was doing something at someone else's expense, aiding the destruction of other people. My mother admired slimness above all, you could have won the Nobel prize for nuclear physics and if you were fat, she would have said ‘what a fatty'!

"I think my act of rebellion which I thought would upset my Mother was in the end destructive to me. Rebellion is the need to dement your parents and it worked."

Q: There is a strong Jewish theme throughout your book and it's as if you almost make fun of it. Is that risky?"

A: "I think it's very important not to hold any culture or religious belief as sacrosanct, as something that can't be talked about, something that you can't find something funny about. If you ask a Jew how they are they would never say ‘excellent' because who knows what could happen two seconds later. When people ask you, I want to say, ‘well I don't know because there are so many things that have to function in your body simultaneously, how do you know they're all working.' It's such a very complicated question."

Q: At the 1967 Monterey Festival you were surrounded by people taking drugs of some sort, in fact throughout your career, yet you always declined. Why?

A: "I had to explain - my parents are really really upset that I didn't become a lawyer so I can't become a junkie. I was always saying no thank you to drugs at the Monterey Pop Festival. I was so relieved when someone passed carrots along the row (instead of drugs)".

Q: Death surrounds Lola, when the ghosts of the past merge with names like Jim Morrison, Mama Cass, Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Keith Moon, who all die during her time as a reporter. Does Lola Bensky/Lily Brett finally find out what it means to be human?

A: "That's one of life's really really complex questions. I think that maybe it means to care about other people and not just the people around you. To have compassion."

Read More..

"Twilight Saga" ends with movie love letter to fans

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Twilight" fans bid an emotional farewell this week to Bella, Edward and Jacob in "Breaking Dawn-Part 2," the romantic book and movie franchise that ignited a pop culture infatuation with blood-sucking vampires and werewolves.

The tumultuous love triangle between human girl Bella Swan, vampire Edward Cullen and werewolf Jacob Black, that has gripped avid fans known as "Twi-hards" for seven years, comes to a tantalizing end as "Breaking Dawn-Part 2" hits movie theaters around the world.

The "Twilight" film franchise, based on a series of novels by Stephenie Meyer, rocketed the three main stars, Kristen Stewart (Bella), Robert Pattinson (Edward) and Taylor Lautner (Jacob), into the spotlight and the first four films have grossed more than $2.5 billion at the worldwide box office.

For director Bill Condon, who shot both parts of "Breaking Dawn" together and split into two movies post-production, the fifth and final film was all about the fans - who get a surprise twist to the ending.

"The real challenge was to make sure it was a satisfying climax," Condon told reporters. "The film opens with an overture of all the main scenes from all five movies, and at the end, I...brought (it) back to the spirit of the old movies."

The movie pays homage to the angst-ridden teenage romance between Bella and Edward that was underscored by the off-screen real-life romance between Stewart, 22, and Pattinson, 26.

"Breaking Dawn-Part 2" shifts the action from a love story to a family story, as the Cullen clan recruit their extended vampire family to protect Bella and Edward's daughter Renesmee from an ancient vampire coven.

"I think it's very sweet, especially the ending of it, I think it's very close to the book as well. It seems to be that it's really made for the fans," Pattinson told Reuters.

GOING OFF BOOK

While the past four films have stayed true to the books, author Meyer and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg came up with a plot twist that adds a major scene that may surprise movie-goers.

"(The action) is off screen in the novel because we only see what Bella sees, and this was just a way of making visual what some of the other characters might have seen," Meyer told reporters.

"It does feel very surprising. There's something new to see but to me it doesn't seem like it's going hugely off the page," she added.

While the fourth film saw Bella's human life draw to a conclusion when she died giving birth to a human-vampire hybrid baby with new husband Edward, "Breaking Dawn-Part 2," sees Bella as a mother and a newly-transformed vampire.

"The coolest thing about vampire Bella is that I got to play her as a human for so long, and the special parts of each vampire are always informed by the great things that they were as a human and so I got to walk in those shoes," Stewart told Reuters.

"Everything made total sense to me. I waited for so long (to play a vampire), once I finally got it, it was so comfortable, I couldn't wait," the actress added.

"The Twilight Saga," first published in 2005, kicked off a wave of vampire or supernatural-themes books, films and TV shows including HBO's "True Blood," the CW TV network's "The Vampire Diaries" and Richelle Mead's "Vampire Academy" series of young adult novels.

As the sun sets on the franchise Meyer brought to life, the author said that while she didn't rule out the possibility of finding more stories in the vampire-werewolf universe, she had closed the chapter on the Cullens.

"I don't know if I'll ever get back to these (stories). Someday I'll write down what was going to happen next. It's sad knowing I don't have another party with the kids again, I really hope I have a chance to at least see my friends again," she told Reuters.

Read More..