1.  From the movie-to-book category:   Almost 48 years after it was first published, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by Julia Child is finally topping the best-seller list, bringing with it all the butter, salt and goose fat that home chefs had largely abandoned in the age of Lipitor.

The book, given a huge lift from the recently released movie “Julie & Julia,” sold 22,000 copies in the most recent week tracked, according to Nielsen BookScan, which follows book sales. That is more copies than were sold in any full year since the book’s appearance, according to Alfred A. Knopf, which published it.

The book will make its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list of Aug. 30 in the advice and how-to category.

2. From the movie-to-book category, cont.: Audrey Niffenegger is enjoying a resurgence of success with her 2003 novel The Time Traveler’s Wife. Wife is No. 1 on USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list for the second time in three weeks, riding the wave of the movie version, which brought in $18.6 million over the weekend.

3. A melancholy “Happy Trails” to Sanford Dody, a lifetime ghost-writer who passed away this July at the age of 90.  We discussed in a previous post the future of ghost writing, of which Mr. Dody was one of the best.  He died having achieved great success as a ghost writer, but with regrets for being in the background:

Sandford Dody had his greatest professional success as a ghost, much to his dismay. The autobiographies he helped actresses Bette Davis and Helen Hayes to write became best sellers.

But Mr. Dody, who died July 4 at the age of 90, found the work spiritually destructive.

“After all,” he wrote, “how does one become a ghost without dying a little?”

Time after time, he came to a new ghostwriting project with admiration for his subjects, only to be let down by what he saw as stars’ vanity and pettiness. “The most suitable way to view stars is from a long way off,” he wrote in his own memoir, published in 1980.

By the time he got around to writing his memoir, Mr. Dody’s admiration of star power had clearly faded. “Let the next star,” he glowered, “write her own damned autobiography.”

4.  A second melancholy “Happy Trails” to Western novelist Elmer Kelton.  Kelton wrote 62 fiction and non-fiction books, and was named “Best Western Author of All Time” by the Western Writers of America.  Four of his books won the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame.  A West Texas native, Kelton passed away Saturday of natural causes. He was 83.

5. Ending on a lighter note: Now that the dreaded “Back To School” time is here, USA Today has recommended four books to deal with it.  It included “Punctuation Celebration”, and a Middle School Survival Guide:

“Sometimes being ‘in the middle’ gets a bad rap,” it notes, but stresses the possibilities: “Middle school is like the next level up in a video game. You get a clean screen, new powers, and the chance to turn yourself into the person you’ve always wanted to be.”

Well folks, we’re just a tad past one-third of the way in our marathon of 40 posts in 40 days and we break from bringing you reviews today to bring you a MASSIVE post full of news, tidbits, and quotes from the world of books:

1.  These days it seems that Stephen King will rail against anything and everything. Must be his age. Kids, Get off his lawn, already! One of his more recent targets has been been digital books, and those who love them. Then this happens to poor Stephen:

The publisher of Stephen King and Chelsea Handler will be selling books through Scribd, the online document-sharing service that the industry has criticized for enabling the downloading of pirated texts. Scribd announced Thursday that digital versions of books by King, Handler and thousands of others published by Simon & Schuster can be purchased through Scribd’s online store.

Oops.

2.  Plans are in the works to have a TV movie starring vampire hunter Anita Blake, the central character in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Guilty Pleasures book series.  No actress has been named in the lead role, but the author hopes they cast “somebody with a certain height (5-foot-3) … and some curves,” says the 5-foot-3½ Hamilton.

3.  The fifth and final book in the Rick Riordan series Percy Jackson and the Olympians went on sale the second week in May, and quickly debuted in the top position on the Youth list at USA Today, a position which it still holds.  I have read this book, and can assure you it deserves the top spot.  Look for a review as part of our 40 posts in 40 days.

4.  And speaking of Rick Riordan, he stopped in St. Paul, Minn. during his 14-day, 15-city, 17-bookstore/library tour promoting The Last Olympian and had time for a little Q&A with the audience. Among the interesting tidbits that came out:

• Riordan has disclosed that next year he will launch a second series of books set at Camp Halfblood, which will take place several years after The Last Olympian, with a different cast of characters. [ed. note: And I do a little dance of joy.]
• Besides the second Young Olympians series, Riordan is writing a Young Adult novel inspired by Egyptian myths.  “Get ready.  Next spring, the Egyptian gods and goddesses are invading the modern world!”
• He first conceived of Percy Jackson and the Young Olympians after running out of Greek myths to tell his young son, so he started making up the adventures of a modern-day demigod. “What if the gods were still around today? What if you found out your mother or your father was a Greek god?”
• The character of Mrs. Dodds [an evil, nasty teacher who has it in for Percy. Turns out, she really IS a monster.] was not just based on a real teacher at his son’s school, it was based on a teacher actually named Mrs. Dodds. He’d used her real name when he wrote the story for his son that became The Lightning Thief, and had forgotten to change it when he submitted the manuscript for publication. Double oops. “I had to explain and apologize. But she likes it, because all of her students are afraid of her now.”
• The movie version of the Lightning Thief is being filmed in Vancouver and is scheduled for release February, 2010.  It stars Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman, Logan Lerman as Percy, Melina Kanakaredes as Athena,and Sean Bean as Zeus. [ed. note: Now imagine me here doing a HUGE dance of joy.]
• The first official trailer for The Lightning Thief movie will be seen in the U.S. prior to the showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on July 15th, 2009. [ed. note: Sorry, Rowling; you've just been replaced as the main reason I'm looking forward to July 15h. Yes, I'm THAT pumped about Percy Jackson and the Olympians.]

5.  The other big book-based movie that rabid fans are waiting for this year is Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon, which will hit theaters this November.  It is probable that a song by the band Coldplay will end up being part of the soundtrack for New Moon.  According to the band’s official website, “It’s very likely that a Coldplay song will end up on the soundtrack to the Twilight sequel given that Stephenie Meyer has credited Coldplay, amongst others, on the inner sleeve for “being instrumental in staving off the writer’s block”.

6. And speaking of Meyer, on June 4th she posted this on her main blog at Stepheniemeyer.com:

If you’re looking for some beach reading, you might try Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series if you haven’t already. My son finally finished book five yesterday so I could read it today. It was a fantastic end to a fantastic series. I tip my hat to you,  Mr. Riordan!

XO
Steph

[ed. note: Yes, she's THAT pumped about Percy Jackson and the Olympians.]

And on that note, we close today’s massive news and updates posts, also known as the “All Percy Jackson, All The Time”.  We hope you’ve enjoyed this post.  If you don’t like what you read, please comment and tell us why. And if you DO like what you read, invite someone to this blog, THEN comment and tell us why. 

Thanks for reading.

To celebrate the fact that the book-based film Angel’s & Demons dropped 53% in its second weekend in the US Box Office, we here present you with some other interesting facts about Dan Brown:

1. He first published as a woman.  He published his first book, 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, under the pseudonym Danielle Brown.
2. He uses gravity boots and hangs upside down to battle writer’s block.
3. Before getting lucky with his novels, he attempted to become a success as a pianist and songwriter. He named one of his novels after his first recording: Angels & Demons.

And as a bonus, here’s what one of the actors in the movie adaptation of Angels & Demons thinks of his writing:

“I think Dan Brown is a terribly bad writer, but he has cliffhangers after every chapter which makes you continue reading.

It’s like eating peanuts at a bar. You don’t like them, but you keep on eating them anyway.”

I must confess that I have never read Bram Stoker’s Dracula though I have leafed through a copy a time or two.  The first thing that caught my attention is that the story is told through the pages of diaries, rather than through a straight narrative.  How would a reader see the story if all they had access to was just that day’s diary page and nothing more?

Well, now you can find out, since starting May 3, Whitney Sorrow has started posting one diary posting a day on a blog, to try and create that experience. She explains:

Experience Bram Stoker’s Dracula in a new way — in real time. Dracula is an epistolary novel (a novel written as a series of letters or diary entries,) and this blog will publish each diary entry on the day that it was written by the narrator so that the audience may experience the drama as the characters would have. Please subscribe to the RSS feed so that you don’t miss any installments!

You can start from the beginning, reading Jonathan Harker’s Journal.

1. Charlaine Harris, author of the bestselling Sookie Stackhouse vampire series talks to the Wall Street Journal about “True Blood”, the HBO series based on her books, her new novel “Dead and Gone”, and why vampires are popular right now.
2. Rick Riordan talked to the Austin American Statesman about writing the final book in his bestselling Percy Jackson series.  He also talked about the party for the book’s release, with a gladiator pit, a roving minotaur and centaur.  Here’s hoping they were just people DRESSED as a minotaur and centaur.  Look for an upcoming review of the first book in this series.
3. Author and talk-show host Glenn Beck recently signed a contract with Simon and Schuster in which he will accept smaller advances in exchange for a share in the profits.  Could this be the future of publishing contracts? A deal like this minimizes risk for publishing companies, while making authors partners in the book’s success, rather than rewarding them upfront with big advances. The new deal will give Beck profit participation in each new book, a perk the publisher has traditionally reserved solely for its most important writers, such as Stephen King.  Mr King, by the way, is not exactly a fan of Mr. Beck’s:
   

   “I’d rather take a lower advance and have a partnership,” Mr. Beck, 45 years old, said. “I’ll bet on myself and a smart person on the other side of the table every time.” Mr. Beck said he took satisfaction in having a deal similar to that of Mr. King, noting that Mr. King described him in a magazine column as “Satan’s mentally challenged younger brother.”

1. Steven Johnson of the Wall Street Journal writes a lengthy piece on the changes he believes e-readers like the Kindle will bring to books and reading.  Johnson pulls no punches, claiming that
   

   2009 may well prove to be the most significant year in the evolution of the book since Gutenberg hammered out his original Bible.

2. A few hundred miles from Wall Street, The Baltimore Sun blog “Read Street” offers 10 reasons to hate the kindles. Making the list: “I can’t use my collection of random bookmarks”, and my favorite, “The battery never dies on my paperback of The Big Sleep.” Follow the link for the full list.
3. Over at “PC Magazine” (or is it PCMag now? I’m so un-hip), Lance Ulanoff offers a fairly level-headed and balanced list of 10 things you need to know about the Kindle.  Or, at least level-headed until you get to #10:
   

   E-books will kill books, publishing, and reading.

   Did I say level-headed? My mistake.

4. Venture capitalist Tom Alberg of Seattle reads the tea leaves differently.  Instead of thinking that a Kindle will kill reading, he believes that Kindle could save the newspaper industry.
5. So you could be reading the newspaper on a Kindle, but you’d be doing it all alone.
6. Still, there’s comfort in reading even alone, right? Well, maybe not with a Kindle, according to Freida Marie Crump of the Journal News:
   

   New books smell good. A Kindle smells like a telephone.

7. Not that Amazon will care anyways. They’re making a killing off the Kindle, with Seeking Alpha estimating that before they even sell you the first book for your Kindle, Amazon has already raked in a 40% profit from just the sale of the device.
8. Well, there’s always alternatives to the Kindle if you want to read e-books.  For example, there’s Lexcycle, makers of Stanza, a cool desktop and iPhone application that allows you to download and read ebooks in multiple formats. Currently Stanza supports Adobe PDF, EPUB format, the XML-based standard format and support for Adobe’s eBook content protection technology, allowing you to purchase commercially published eBooks. So if you’re interested in e-books but not necessarily in Amazon’s Kindle you have optio–
   Aww, crap.

1. Publisher’s Weekly jumps on our bandwagon, and dedicates its 4/20 cover story to problems in publishing companies, and comes up with 12 things they must change to survive. Among the list are revolutionary ideas like “Tell the truth”, and “Downsize”.
2. Right now, this quarter, how much do you love me? Well, If I’m Stephenie Meyer, and you’re my publishing company, you love me oodles.  For the first three months of the year in the world of book sales, there was Stephenie Meyer, and then there was everybody else, with the “Twilight” author accounting for fully 16% of all the book sales, including the first four spots. Full list from USA Today.
3. While Book Publishers are torn on whether Amazon’s Kindle 2 book reader is good news or bad news, Joanne Kaufman puts on her investigative reporter hat, and asks the tough question no one is asking:  How will the Kindle affect literary snobbism?