Booklist Online: Book Reviews from the American Library Association

And what a week it was. All right, fine: weeks. A few miscellaneous links I can’t delete without sharing . . . .
The editorial board of the New York Times makes a good point (”Banning Books in Miami“):
The Miami-Dade School Board’s decision is not only unconstitutional, it is counterproductive. If the board wants to oppose [...]

As Larry Rohrter reports in the New York Times, “A Chilean Writer’s Fictions Might Include His Own Colorful Past“:
At the same time, some of Mr. Bolaño’s friends in Mexico, where he lived for nearly a decade before finally settling down near Barcelona, Spain, are questioning another aspect of the life story he constructed for himself.
They [...]

Your Herman Rosenblat update, courtesy of Arts Beat:
An independent publisher said it had completed an agreement to publish a novel tentatively titled “The Apple,” based on a movie screenplay that was, in turn, adapted from Herman Rosenblat’s falsified Holocaust memoir, “Angel at the Fence.”
Got that? Personally, I’m waiting for the video game, which will have [...]

Tom Tomorrow tackles the memory crisis (”This Modern World,” Salon).
A bunch of publishing types speculate on how much money Barack Obama will earn for his memoirs (”How Much Will Obama Get for His Memoirs?” New York). Funny, funny, funny:
Larry Kirshbaum, agent and former CEO, Time Warner Books:
“With Dow 9,000 as a base, if it’s at [...]

Oh, for Christmas’ Sake! More false memory: best-selling author Neale Donald Walsch (Tomorrow’s God: Our Greatest Spiritual Challenge) has admitted that he is not the author of a heartwarming Christmas story he posted on Beliefnet.com (”Christmas Essay Was Not His, Author Admits,” by Motoko Rich, New York Times). The real author is Candy Chand, who first published [...]

More catching up. The feel-bad publishing story of the season (or feel-good, if you are prone to schadenfreude) concerns another case of false memoir. Berkeley Books no longer plans to publish Herman Rosenblat’s memoir, Angel at the Fence. Rosenblat now admits that he did not meet his wife, Roma (nee Radzicky) at Buchenwald, but rather [...]

This just in: men and women lie about they read. (Men, naturally, are twice as likely to do so.) But there’s a perfectly good reason for it: reading the right stuff helps you succeed with the opposite sex. (Which is why men . . . never mind.) A survey conducted by England’s National Year of Reading [...]

Lee Israel, a biographer fallen on hard times, turned to theft and forgery to make ends meet. She was good–two of her phony Noel Coward letters were included in last year’s The Letters of Noel Coward (Knopf). Somewhat contrite, she’s now published a book about her crimes, called Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Simon & [...]

You don’t see this every day: a memoirist questioning his own veracity (”Times Columnist Uncovers His Darkest Story,” by Howard Kurtz, Washington Post). The author is David Carr and the book is The Night of the Gun.
But recounting exactly what happened is another story, which is why he uses the approach of interviewing people from his [...]

Well, it wasn’t the Hell’s Angels that were the problem, apparently, but still, a recent James Frey book event gave some attendees more than they bargained for (”Crowds Collide,” Page Six):
May 17, 2008 — JAMES Frey - who told Page Six, “I’m trying to break the mold of what readings can be” - had a [...]