BookOpinion

The N.Y. Times threw a wrench in George Tenet's media blitz and promotion campaign for his new book, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, by walking into a book store and buying a copy before its release scheduled for today.

Tenet, who has rarely spoken in public, received a reported $4 million advance on the book. On Sunday, he was interviewed by 60 Minutes and said he believes there are Al Qaeda cells currently in the U.S. 

The book is already at the top of the bestseller lists and like its title, it is at the center of the storm because of what it reveals about the decision making and politics surrounding the Iraq war. Details on the book are described by the N.Y. Times:

 

George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president’s inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

“There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,” Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, “was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

Mr. Tenet admits that he made his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. But he argues that the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on President Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war.

Read Full N.Y. Times Story

The L.A. Times has also highlighted some of Tenet's passages about how the status of the Iraq war was viewed:

Two former CIA officials said the part of the book with the most new information focuses on post-invasion warnings. The book "plowed some new ground as far as agency views and comments on the situation on the ground in Iraq," one official said.

In particular, the readers said, the book describes warnings from the CIA station in Baghdad that were greeted with dismay and mounting suspicion within the White House, including a November 2003 assessment that described the situation as an insurgency.

After that assessment was leaked to the press, Bush summoned Tenet and other CIA officials to the White House and warned that he didn't want anyone in his administration to use the term "insurgency," according to the officials.

"There's a lot of stuff in the book that paints a picture of an administration wrapped in its own beliefs, not being able to handle information that was contrary to those beliefs," said the former official who commented about Tenet's view of Cheney.

Read Full L.A. Times Story

Lose Yourself in Wild Romance

BOOKOPINION REVIEW: Irene Stenson is no stranger to terror. As a teenager in All Night Long by Jayne Ann Krentz, she came home one evening and discovered her parents bodies.

The local, small-town police wrote the incident off as a crime of passion, a murder-suicide committed by Irene’s jealous father. Distraught, the teenager leaves the small Northern California town where she was raised, presumably never to return. Nearly two decades have passed and Irene still isn’t buying the murder-suicide theory.

A mysterious e-mail from a long-estranged friend, Pamela Webb, insinuates that Irene’s parents may have been murdered. Irene returns to her hometown to invesigate only to discover Pamela’s body, the victim (local authorities conclude) of a drug overdose. Once again, Irene, now a reporter, isn’t buying the story. With the help of mysterious ex-Marine Luke Danner, Irene sets out to uncover the truth.

Even without the fun of a romance, the mystery is intriguing. It takes awhile to warm to Irene’s character, she seems to lack the spark and humor of many of Krentz’s past protagonists. Luke Danner is a likable guy with an interesting and complex family situation. The characters and plot are similar to many of Krentz’s other stories, but her lively writing holds the reader’s interest.

All Night Long is not my favorite of Krentz’s novels, but it is definitely worth a read. My Krentz’s faves are Trust Me, Wildest Hearts, Perfect Partners and Hidden Talents. I also recommend all of her historical romance books wholeheartedly, especially Deception and Ravished (my first Amanda Quick read).

– Jane Leisteiner

The 27th Los Angeles Times Book Prizes were named, kicking off this year’s L.A. Times Book Festival. The award ceremony was hosted by PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer.

“The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes honor the year’s great writers and great literary works,” said Publisher David D. Hiller. “Celebrating the diverse literary universe is a longstanding Book Prizes’ tradition and the 2006 honorees well represent a rich tapestry of writing.”

Fiction:
Winner: "A Woman in Jerusalem" by A.B. Yehoshua translated from Hebrew by Hillel Halkin (Harcourt)
Finalists: “Black Swan Green” by David Mitchell (Random House)
“The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo” by Peter Orner (Little, Brown)
“A Million Nightingales” by Susan Straight (Pantheon Books)
“Winter’s Bone” by Daniel Woodrell (Little, Brown)

Biography:
Winner: "Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination" by Neal Gabler (Alfred A. Knopf)
Finalists: “The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher” by Debby Applegate (Doubleday)
“The Librettist of Venice: The Remarkable Life of Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s Poet, Casanova’s Friend, and Italian Opera’s Impresario in America” by Rodney Bolt (Bloomsbury USA)
“Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide” by Jeffrey Goldberg (Knopf)
“The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million” by Daniel Mendelsohn (HarperCollins)

History:
Winner: "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11" by Lawrence Wright (Knopf)
Finalists: “At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68″ by Taylor Branch (Simon & Schuster)
“The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West” by Niall Ferguson (Penguin Press)
“Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War” by ; Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking)
“The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai” by John Tayman (Lisa Drew/Scribner)

Other winners included:

Current Interest:
“Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance” by Ian Buruma (Penguin)

Mystery/Thriller:
“Echo Park” by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction:
“White Ghost Girls” by Alice Greenway (Black Cat/Grove/Atlantic)

Young Adult Fiction:
“Tyrell” by Coe Booth (Push/Scholastic)

Science and Technology:
“In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind” by Eric R. Kandel (W.W. Norton)

Poetry:
“Ooga-Booga” by Frederick Seidel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Krentz's latest Arcane Society novel rings true.

BOOKOPINION REVIEW: White Lies is the second in a series of novels regarding the Arcane Society, which Jayne Ann Krentz describes on her website as, "a group devoted to the study of the paranormal."

People with paranormal talents are ranked as to the level of their ability. Clare Lancaster hails from a long line of parasensitives and possesses the rarest kind of a talent, a level 10 human lie detector. The ability to distinguish even the slightest deception has not made Clare's life an easy one. Still, she has built a solid career and is engaged to be married.

However, a desperate call from the half-sister she has never met, propels Clare into the center of murder and mystery. The sister begs Clare to help her out of a frightening and abusive marriage. Clare saves her half-sister, but when she later finds her half-sister's sinister husband brutally murdered, the gossip and innuendo destroy Clare's career and end her engagement.

Despite the horrid circumstances, a tenuous bond is formed between Clare, her half-sister, and her father, Archer Glazebrook, a prominent Arizona businessman who was unaware of Clare's existance. On a return visit to meet with the Glazebrook family, Clare encounters Jake Salter, a supposed business consultant who is as good at deception as Clare is at telling lies. Salter, also a level 10 parasensative, is on a dire Arcane Society mission.

Clare and Jake team up to solve the murder mystery, uncover a group bent on destroying the very fabric of the Arcane Society, and, as in any good romance, they fall in love. Clare and Jake are thouroughly likable protagonists, strong characters with enough mystery about them to keep you turning the pages until the end. The ending left something to be desired, as it was more a set up for the next Arcane Society adventure then the neatly package ending I have come to expect from Krentz. Both Arcane Society novels (the first was Second Sight, a Victorian-era novel written under Krentz's pseudonym, Amanda Quick) have been solid, fun reads. The Society is intricate and mysterious, and I look forward to uncovering more of its secrets in future novels. There is almost a Harry Potter-esque vibe going on in these novels, albeit in the guise of romance novel. It's light fare, but White Lies is worth the cover price.

– Jane Leisteiner

The Mystery Writers of America just released their 2007 Edgar Awards for excellence in mystery fiction or non-fiction. The nominees and winners (in bold) are listed below: Best Novel Nominees:

• The Pale Blue Eye by Louis Bayard (HarperCollins)
• The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG)
• Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris (HarperCollins - William Morrow)
• The Dead Hour by Denise Mina (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company)
• The Virgin of Small Plains by Nancy Pickard (Random House - Ballantine Books)
• Liberation Movements by Olen Steinhauer (St. Martin's Minotaur)

Best First Novel By An American Author:

• The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson (Random House)
• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn (Crown - Shaye Areheart Books)
• King of Lies by John Hart (St. Martin's Minotaur - Thomas Dunne Books)
• Holmes on the Range by Steve Hockensmith (St. Martin's Minotaur)
• A Field of Darkness by Cornelia Read (Warner Books - Mysterious Press)

Best Paperback Original:

• The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto, translated by Lawrence Venuti (Europa Editions)
• The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson (Coffee House Press)
• Snakeskin Shamisen by Naomi Hirahara (Bantam Dell Publishing - Delta Books)
• The Deep Blue Alibi by Paul Levine (Bantam Dell Publishing - Bantam Books)
• City of Tiny Lights by Patrick Neate (Penguin Group - Riverhead Books)

Best Critical/Biographical:

• Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir by John T. Irwin (Johns Hopkins University Press)
• The Science of Sherlock Holmes: From Baskerville Hall to the Valley of Fear by E.J. Wagner (John Wiley & Sons)

Best Fact Crime:

• Strange Piece of Paradise by Terri Jentz (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• A Death in Belmont by Sebastian Junger (W.W. Norton and Co.)
• Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine by Capt. Joseph K. Loughlin & Kate Clark Flora (University Press of New England)
• Ripperology: A Study of the World's First Serial Killer by Robin Odell (The Kent State University Press)
• The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar Allan Poe and the Invention of Murder by Daniel Stashower (Dutton) 
• Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James L. Swanson (HarperCollins - William Morrow)

Best Short Story:

• "The Home Front" - Death Do Us Part by Charles Ardai (Hachette Book Group - Little, Brown and Company)
• "Rain" - Manhattan Noir by Thomas H. Cook (Akashic Books)
• "Cranked" - Damn Near Dead by Bill Crider (Busted Flush Press)
• "Building" - Manhattan Noir by S.J. Rozan (Akashic Books)

Best Young Adult:

• The Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks (Scholastic - The Chicken House)
• The Christopher Killer by Alane Ferguson (Penguin YR - Sleuth/Viking)
• Crunch Time by Mariah Fredericks (Simon & Schuster - Richard Jackson Books/Atheneum)
• Buried by Robin Merrow MacCready (Penguin YR - Dutton Children's Books)
• The Night My Sister Went Missing by Carol Plum-Ucci (Harcourt Children's Books)

Best Juvenile:

• Gilda Joyce: The Ladies of the Lake by Jennifer Allison (Penguin Young Readers - Sleuth/Dutton)
• The Stolen Sapphire: A Samantha Mystery by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishing)
• Room One: A Mystery or Two by Andrew Clements (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
• The Bloodwater Mysteries: Snatched by Pete Hautman & Mary Logue (Penguin Young Readers - Sleuth/Putnam)
• The Case of the Missing Marquess: An Enola Holmes Mystery by Nancy Springer (Penguin Young Readers - Philomel/Sleuth)

See Past Winners of the Edgar Awards here.

Author Jodi Picoult left for a book tour to promote her new novel, Nineteen Minutes — a story about bullying in high schools and horrific revenge — when news about the tragic mass murder at Virginia Tech took place.

Picoult's 14th novel was already on the New York Times bestsellers list at the time the tragedy struck. Now, an already sensitive topic seems to have found itself cast in a profoundly different emotional light.

She released the following statement on her web site, "As a parent, my deepest sympathy goes out to the victims and families of the Virginia Tech community. Although shootings on college campuses are often motivated by different factors than the ones I researched for high school shootings in 19 Minutes, any time something like this happens it is tragic and raises questions. However, the one we should be asking right now is: How can we help this community heal?”

With the release of Picoult's novel last month, Borders Book Club sat down with the author to discuss the book. Even though this Borders Book Club was filmed prior to the Virginia Tech shootings, it was an emotional discussion, nonetheless — particulary as Picoult recalls the research she did for the novel at Columbine. "A lot of the details that you saw in the book came right out of the mouths of those sheriffs that I spoke to."

The Chicago Tribune writes about the intersection between fiction and reality:

Yet reading "Nineteen Minutes" in the immediate wake of the Blacksburg massacre reveals many aspects in common, too: Peter Houghton, the shooter in the novel, is a sullen, disaffected loner who is bullied or ignored by his classmates, much as Cho seems to have been. The adults in "Nineteen Minutes" ask themselves the same questions that Cho's family members must be asking privately. "There was the finest line between unique and odd," one of Picoult's characters muses, "between what made a child grow up to be as well-adjusted as Thomas versus unstable, like Peter. Did every teenager have the capacity to fall on one side or the other of that tightrope, and could you identify a single moment that tipped the balance?"

Peter's thoughts, too, seem chillingly close to what Cho's might have been: "You are the thing that used to be normal, but that was so long ago, you can't even remember what it was like."

…The timing of Picoult's novel, published within weeks of Cho's vicious rampage, was accidental. But in its depiction of a serene, ordinary world blown apart by the rage of a single individual, her story — all too tragically — is timeless.

Here is the collection of videos with Picoult as she discusses her novel last month with the Borders Book Club cast, who discuss their perspectives as not only readers, but parents. The first video is shown below, the others are linked afterward, followed by book cub questions from Picoult's web site. "I would never have written about this right after Columbine. I actually think that is such a raw piece of American history," Picoult said at the time of this filming:

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 2 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 3 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 4 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 5 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 6 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 7 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 8 )

Jodi Picoult - Nineteen Minutes ( Part 9 )

The following are book club questions provided by Picoult's web site for those who have read the novel Nineteen Minutes:

Book club discussion questions for Nineteen Minutes

1. Alex and Lacy’s friendship comes to an end when they discover Peter and Josie playing with guns in the Houghton house. Why does Alex decide that it’s in Josie’s best interest to keep her daughter away from Peter? What significance is there to the fact that Alex is the first one to prevent Josie from being friends with Peter?

2. Alex often has trouble separating her roles as a judge and a mother. How does this affect her relationship with Josie? Discuss whether or not Alex’s job is more important to her than being a mother.

3. A theme throughout the novel is the idea of masks and personas, and pretending to be someone you’re not. To which characters does this apply, and why?

4. At one point defense attorney Jordan McAfee refers to himself as a “spin doctor,” and he believes that at the end of Peter’s trial he “will be either reviled or canonized” (250). What is your view of Jordan? As you were reading the book, did you find it difficult or not to remain objective about the judicial system’s standing that every defendant (no matter how heinous his or her crime) has the right to a fair trial?

5. Peter was a victim of bullying for twelve years at the hands of certain classmates, many of whom repeatedly tormented him. But he also shot and killed students he had never met or who had never done anything wrong to him. What empathy, if any, did you have for Peter both before and after the shooting?

6. Josie and Peter were friends until the sixth grade. Is it understandable that Josie decided not to hang out with Peter in favor of the popular crowd? Why or why not? How accurate and believable did you find the author’s depiction of high school peer pressure and the quest for popularity? Do you believe, as Picoult suggests, that even the popular kids are afraid that their own friends will turn on them?

7. Josie admits she often witnessed Matt’s cruelty toward other students. Why then does it come as such a surprise to Josie when Matt abuses her verbally and physically? How much did you empathize with Josie?

8. Regarding Lacy, Patrick notes that “in a different way, this woman was a victim of her son’s actions, too” (53). How much responsibility do Lewis and Lacy bear for Peter’s actions? How about Lewis in particular, who taught his son how to handle guns and hunt?

9. At one point during Peter’s bullying, Lacy is encouraged by an elementary school teacher to force Peter to stand up for himself. She threatens to cancel his playdates with Josie if he doesn’t fight back. How did you feel, when you read that scene? Do you blame Lacy for Peter’s future actions because of it? Do you agree or disagree with the idea that it a parent’s job to teach a child the skills necessary to defend himself?

10. Discuss the novel’s structure. In what ways do the alternating narratives between past and present enhance the story? How do the scenes in the past give you further insight into the characters and their actions, particularly Peter and Josie?

11. When Patrick arrives at Sterling High after the shooting, “his entire body began to shake, knowing that for so many students and parents and citizens today, he had once again been too late” (24). Why does Patrick blame himself for not preventing an incident he had no way of knowing was going to happen?

12. Dr. King, an expert witness for the defense, states that Peter was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of chronic victimization. “But a big part of it, too,” he adds, “is the society that created both Peter and those bullies” (409). What reasons does Dr. King give to support his assertion that society is partly to blame for Peter’s actions as well as those of the bullies? Do you agree with this? Why or why not?

13. Why does Josie choose to shoot Matt instead of shooting Peter? Why does Peter remain silent about Josie’s role in the shooting? In the end, has justice been satisfactorily dealt to Peter and to Josie?

14. Discuss the very ending of the novel, which concludes on the one-year anniversary of the Sterling High shooting. Why do you suppose the author chose to leave readers with an image of Patrick and Alex, who is pregnant? In what way does the final image of the book predict the future?

15. Shootings have occurred at a number of high schools across the country over the last several years. Did Nineteen Minutes make you think about these incidents in a more immediate way than reading about them in the newspaper or seeing coverage on television? How so? In what ways did the novel impact your opinion of the parties generally involved in school shootings—perpetrators, victims, fellow students, teachers, parents, attorneys, and law enforcement officials?
What do you think the author is proposing as the root of the problem of school violence? What have you heard, in the media and in political forums, as solutions? Do you think they will work? Why or why not?

With a staggering 12 million print run, the anticipation grows for the release of the J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”. Harry Potter is a multi-billion dollar brand.

It’s still three months away from the release, but J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has remained atop Amazon’s bestsellers list for a few weeks. The total count on their “Muggle Counter”, which approximates sales from Amazon and “U.S. syndicated store sites, such as Borders.com, but excludes all third-party seller arrangements,” is now up to more than 575,000 — growing by 100,000 in the past two weeks.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger breaks down some of the numbers of the Harry Potter mega brand:

…Never before has a book series been so popular or more financially successful. Worldwide, there are 325 million copies of the previous six Harry Potter books. The first four Harry Potter movies (a fifth, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” is scheduled to open July 13) have grossed more than $3.5 billion worldwide, and Rowling is the first-ever billionaire author….

The tale of Rowling

The origins of the Harry Potter series have become the stuff of legend. Harry was hatched in Rowling’s imagination on a train ride from Manchester to London in 1990. She wrote much of the book, longhand, at Nicolson’s cafe, now a Chinese restaurant, in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she moved with her infant daughter shortly after a divorce. Too poor to make a copy of the manuscript, she typed two and sent them out. Several rejections later, Bloomsbury bought the book for the equivalent of $4,000. Arthur Levine, an editor with his own imprint at Scholastic, read the manuscript on a plane trip from New York City to Bologna, Italy, and eventually outbid seven other companies for the U.S. rights.

The initial U.S. printing of “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (the U.S. version of the title) in 1998 was a mere 50,000 copies. By the time the sixth book was released in July 2005, Scholastic printed 10.8 million. Today, only the Bible and “Quotations from Chairman Mao” have more copies in print than the Harry Potter books.

“We’re very, very excited about book seven,” said Kyl Good, a Scholastic representative. “This is going to be the biggest publishing event ever, and we get to bring this to millions of readers.”

He’s everywhere

Virtually no corner of the world has been untouched by “Pottermonium.” The series has been translated into 64 languages, including one dead one (Latin), and the name Harry Potter is familiar to hundreds of millions, whether they are Lithuanian (Haris Poteris), Chinese (Ha li po te) or Arabic (Hari Butar). Even parodies of the Harry Potter series have been translated into Belarusian and Hungarian.

In the hours after the Feb. 1 announcement of book seven’s publication date, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was No. 1 with a bullet on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble Web sites. To date, at least a half-million copies already have been ordered on Amazon.com (where the book is selling at a 46 percent reduced rate of $18.89 instead of the list price of $34.95), including one by the librarian at the military prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The biggest winners in the financial windfall that is Harry Potter, other than Rowling, have been Bloomsbury and Scholastic. When the title of the seventh book was announced at the end of December 2006, shares of Scholastic gained more than 2 percent in a single day. And earlier this year, when Bloomsbury revealed the publication date — on the London Stock Exchange, to boot — its own shares rose 2.2 percent.

But as Harry goes, so goes the publishing industry. At the end of the fiscal calendar for 2005, Scholastic, which did not publish a Harry Potter title that year, experienced a 15 percent drop in sales in its children’s-book division.

Rowling and her publishers, as well as the movie industry and the manufacturers of literally thousands of items of merchandise, are not the only beneficiaries of Harry Potter’s financial prowess.

Companion books

The series also has spawned books about the series, including “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7,” co-authored by 20-year-old Emerson Spartz, who founded one of the most popular Harry Potter Web sites, www.mugglenet.com.

“I just learned that Wal-Mart has ordered 30,000 copies of the book,” Spartz said earlier this month. “And it’s on the New York Times children’s books best-seller list,” added the sophomore business major at the University of Notre Dame.

After an initial printing of just 9,000, there are now 270,000 copies of “What Will Happen in Harry Potter 7″ in print, according to Spartz….

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