New 'Vooks' Sex Up Books With Video Clips

Morality is based on cancer struggle

(NEWSER) - For fans of Christopher Hitchens , one final book. A memoir entitled Mortality will be released in early 2012; it's based on a series of articles the journalist wrote for Vanity Fair describing his battle with esophageal cancer, reports the Guardian . A spokesman noted that the book had been in the works for some time. Hitchens asserted in his final column for Vanity Fair, "Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago, I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to 'do' death in the active and not the passive sense." More»

Stephen King, Christopher Hitchens make the cut

(NEWSER) - If you need a book recommendation for holiday reading, look no further than the New York Times ' list of the 10 best books of the year. Five are fiction and five non-fiction:

• 11/22/63 by Stephen King: A time portal sends an English teacher back to 1958 to try and stop Lee Harvey Oswald. King reflects "on questions of memory, fate, and free will as he richly evokes midcentury America."
• Swamplandia! By Karen Russell: "Exuberantly inventive language" marks this story of "a heroine who is wise beyond her years" as she tries to preserve her family's way of life. Also, an alligator theme park is involved.

Author's debut was 'collage of others' work'

(NEWSER) - Bookseller Quentin Rowan appears to have forged a writing career entirely by raiding the contents of his shelves. Publisher Little, Brown & Co. recalled every single copy of his debut spy thriller, Assassin of Secrets—written under the pseudonym QR Markham—after discovering that passages had been lifted from more than a dozen other spy novels, both classic and contemporary, reports the Wall Street Journal . In one place, a nine-paragraph passage lifted from a Robert Ludlum thriller flows cleanly into a seven-paragraph passage plucked from one of John Gardner's James Bond novels. More»

The story of one American expatriate's local publishing company

(NEWSER) - In Laos, many children had never seen a book until “Uncle Sasha” came to town. American Sasha Alyson first visited the impoverished country in 2003, and was struck by the lack of books for children. “Many [kids] don't even know what a book is. Sometimes you have to show them how to turn a page,” he tells the Christian Science Monitor. So he created his own publishing company, Big Brother Mouse , in 2006 and, along with two dozen local helpers, he’s been publishing and distributing children’s books in Laos ever since. More»

Jonathan Franzen's 'Freedom' lands coveted book club slot

(NEWSER) - Nine years after Oprah Winfrey chose Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections for her book club, and the "uncomfortable" novelist talked his way out of appearing on her show, he's getting another chance, reports the New York Post . The media magnate's people won't confirm the Oprah's Book Club selection—likely the last, because her show is ending —but multiple booksellers tell the AP the highly touted Freedom will get the nod tomorrow. More»