Archive for the Books Category
Posted on January 4, 2009 with No Comments
Right-wing commentator Ann Coulter calls future First Lady Michelle Obama an imitator of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in her new book Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and their Assault on America.
Coulter writes “Her obvious imitation of Jackie O’s style – the flipped-under hair, the sleeveless A-line dresses, the short strands of fake pearls – would have been laughable if done by anyone other than a media-designated saint.”
The controversial pundit then praises former Republican candidate John McCain’s wife Cindy saying she “dressed well without freakishly imitating famous First Ladies in history,” even though Project Runway’s Tim Gunn has previously declared McCain “looks like she’s duct-taped.”
Coulter even takes jibes at the President-elect saying the media “literally wanted to have sex with him.”
Guilty lands in bookstores this week.
Posted on December 17, 2008 with 1 Comment
Blindie can remember when we first got hooked on the Twilight saga, dedicating entire days to reading the four books by author Stephenie Meyer. Now it seems there’s another victim to the vampire series: Rosario Dawson!
“I just read the first book, it’s ridiculous, it’s like crack cocaine. I read it for 10 hours straight until I finished it,” Dawson, told People magazine at the Seven Pounds premiere Monday.
“My dad is going to hate me, because I spend zero time with him, reading these books,” the 29-year-old beauty added. “It’s like Judy Blume and Anne Rice had a child and made this book. I’m so attracted.”
PHOTO CREDIT: Associated Press
Posted on November 7, 2008 with No Comments
Helping us return to the giddy girls of our past, Entertainment Weekly put Kristen Stewart (aka human Bella Swan) and Robert Pattinson (aka vampire Edward Cullen) of Twilight on not one, but THREE covers this week!
”We’re not even 5 percent of Potter sales. We’re not even a toenail on that body,” film director Catherine Hardwicke, who helmed the adaptation of the popular vampire book series by Stephenie Meyer, told EW. ”Ours is a character film, a little more sophisticated teenage Romeo and Juliet.”
We can’t wait for November 14th!
Posted on October 17, 2008 with 1 Comment
The original Gossip Girl, author Cecily von Ziegesar, thinks the CW’s interpretation of her teen books are “great,” but has one criticism: the character of Vanessa played by the wonderful Jessica Szohr.
“I think Vanessa is one character they ruined,” von Ziegesar tells MTV.com. “In the book, she’s kick-ass and has a shaved head and wears lots of black … and I think a lot of the readers who don’t usually read teen fiction indentify with Vanessa. Even though I don’t like Vanessa’s character, it’s nothing against [actress] Jessica [Szohr]. I just wish Vanessa was like she is in the books a bit more.”
While von Ziegesar disapproves of Szohr’s casting, she’s in love with the other bevy of beauties: “Leighton Meester is totally perfect for Blair, and Blake [Lively] is perfect for Serena. I was more worried they would insert Barbie-doll-looking people, which they didn’t. I think the actors do a brilliant job.”
But Blindie does agree with the author on one thing: the yummy Ed Westwick. “Chuck is my favorite character,” she says, “and the way he looks and acts is in keeping with how he is in the beginning of the series.”
Posted on September 21, 2008 with 4 Comments
Rapper and entrepreneur 50 Cent teams up with Robert Greene, bestselling author of The 48 Laws of Power, to explain the laws of power of the business world in his new book The 50th Law.
Describing the book as an urban take on Greene’s 48 Laws, 50 Cent says it will “create and capture a visible parallel between street life and coporate America standard and structure.”
In a recent Fortune magazine article Greene compares the rapper to Parisien diplomat Talleyrand and French general Napoleon Bonaparte for his fearlessness and willingness to take risks and says “the book shows how powerfully that works in a business sense.”
50 Cent is definitely no slouch when it comes to business, as he’s already successfully launched his own clothing and sneaker line, and partnered with numerous companies to brand a range of products from condoms, body sprays, and a flavored drink to his own label G-Unit Records with Interscope and a book publishing arm with MTV and Pocket Books.
The 50th Law is set to be released in November.
Posted on September 20, 2008 with No Comments
In 1997 Annette Gordon-Reed created waves with her book Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy which questioned previous accounts of Jefferson’s affair with his slave Hemings.
It wasn’t that Gordon-Reed went about scandalizing the former President by ousting the fact that he had children with the woman he owned–but by presenting a portrait of his concubine.
In her latest effort, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, the author further explores Sally Hemings, the person. Gordon-Reed follows four generations of Hemingses from their roots in Virginia in the 1700s to Jefferson’s death in 1826.
“I wanted to tell the story of this family in a way not done before” so that readers can “see slave people as individuals,” Gordon-Reed told the New York Times.
What Blindie loves about Gordon-Reed is the fact that she paints a portrait of Sally Hemings that is not exploitive or tabloid-worthy, but an intimate look at her as a person–not a slave or a concubine that had a former president’s illegitimate children.
The New York Review of Books calls The Hemingses of Monticello (on sale Monday) “a brilliant book. It marks the author as one of the most astute, insightful, and forthright historians of this generation.”
Posted on August 3, 2008 with No Comments
A small book, independently published by two former pastors, The Shack by William P. Young, has turned into a surprise bestseller–even though the author views God as an African-American woman.
The novel, about a grieving father who meets God in the form of a jolly black woman, made its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times trade paperback fiction bestseller list in June–and has remained there.
Of course, depicting God as black and female has come with its set of friction. The Reverend R. Albert Mohler Jr, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, called The Shack “deeply troubling,” saying it undermined orthodox Christianity.
But it’s the novel’s word-of-mouth power that has propelled it onto the bestsellers list. “Everybody that I know has bought at least 10 copies,” Caleb Nowak, who bought the book in March, said. “There’s definitely something about the book that makes people want to share it.”
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