BookOpinion

“I have so many more stories to tell,” says Judy Blume in a Meet the Writers podcast at Barnes & Noble.

“I’m a much, much better rewriter than I am a first or second draft writer,” Blume says. In the podcast she talks about not only the writing process, but a variety of other topics.

Asked if she could put one book in a time capsule, which would it be, she said “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

“It’s the first book where I let go,” Blume said. “The first two books were learning experiences. I was trying to figure it all out. And with ‘Margaret’ it was I don’t care about these rules I’m just going to write what I know to be true because I so remember my own sixth-grade experience.”

Listen to the Judy Blume podcast here.

Amazon has released the first chapter of “Tree of Smoke” by Denis Johnson, one of the top selling new releases to hit bookstores. Johnson reportedly spent nearly two decades working on the novel. The New York Times calls it “a tremendous book.”

The 5:35 excerpt of “Tree of Smoke” can be listened to here as part as Amazon’s free podcasts.

“Entirely unabridged and narrated by the phenomenal Will Patton,” writes Amazon, “Tree of Smoke is an epic story of men at war in Vietnam, richly textured and driven by characters both hopeful and desperate… according to senior editor Tom Nissley, ‘the book Johnson fans have been waiting for–along with everybody else, whether they knew it or not.’”

BookOpinion also has compiled reviews and an excerpt of “Tree of Smoke” here.

Pocket Books and Gather.com have announced their top 25 semi-finalists in their romance novel writing contest. First chapters were submitted in August, and second chapters are now up. Five finalists will be chosen and a grand prize winner will receive a contract with the Pocket Books imprint of Simon & Schuster.

“Excitement around the First Chapters competition continues to build as people increasingly realize the power that their participation has in selecting the world’s next great literary talents,” says Tom Gerace, Gather.com founder and Chief Executive Officer. “The high quality of the romance submissions has ignited a feverous flow of activity and engagement amongst our members, who have always been captivated by good writing.”

The contest gives first-time novelists a chance to get their work noticed and printed.

“Romance writers are one of the world’s most passionate groups of people,” noted Louise Burke, Executive Vice President and Publisher, Pocket Books. “The First Chapters Romance competition has allowed Pocket Books to leverage the power of social media to identify undiscovered talent and provide our customers with fresh, carefully plotted, and well-crafted romance writing.”

From now through Oct. 8, 2007, readers may check out the first two chapters for each writer and vote for the finalists. The three chapters with the most “10” votes will proceed to Round 3, along with two chapters selected by the Gather Editorial Team.

Interested in checking them out? Click here to Read the First Chapters.

Last year’s First Chapter winner was recently published along with another finalist. USA Today reviewed the books here.

Find out the hottest books selling right now at Buy.com with this quick run down of their current bestselling books:

Order any of these books and more from Buy.com. New Buy.com customers can also save on their next purchase with this coupon:

Offer: $5 off $100 or more in ALL Stores (New Customers Only)
Expiration: Sept. 30, 2007
Coupon: Use This Link.

We’ve pulled together a few special offers for eBooks.com. If you’re not sure what to get, they also have free excerpts available for some popular titles.

Some titles with free eBooks excerpts are:

• “The Kite Runner” by Khaled Hosseini
• “Forgotten Marriage” by Paula Roe
• “ME, INC. How to Master the Business of Being You” by Scott W. Ventrella
• “Cruising Alaska” by Larry Ludmer
• “Instant Brainpower” by Brian Clegg
• “The Collectors” by David Baldacci
• “Adventure Guide to Mexico’s Pacific Coast” by Viven Lougheed
• “Boost Your Self-Esteem” by John Caunt
• “You’ve Been Warned” by Jame Patterson and Howard Roughan
• “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne

Discounts:

Get 20% off of featured titles from Peter Corris and Nelson DeMille. Or, check out the list of recently reduced titles to save more - Use This Link.

Coupon Code:

Offer: Save 20% off eBooks in any of these categories with this coupon:

Use Coupon Code: Categorysalecp

Rand McNally, the mapping expert, has relaunched its web site. From now until Sept. 30, they are offering free shipping on all sales of $50 or more.

If you are looking for a new Street Guide and Thomas Guide book, we hear there will be free shipping on those coming up in October.

Also on the site, you can save 15% or more on 100 different globes.

If guide books, maps and globes seems ancient to you, the tech savvy among us can also buy mapping software for our mobile devices or hook up with GPS from their site.

With a movie spurring a resurgence, “Into the Wild” (originally published in 1996) has climbed atop bestseller lists. The book is currently No. 4 on Amazon’s bestseller list. The story is taken from the journals of Christopher McCandless, who feeling disenfranchised, and inspired by the works of Jack London, Leo Tolstoy and Henry David Thoreau, donates his entire savings of $24,000 to charity, destroys his identification cards, and cuts all ties to family and friends…and walks away into the wilds of Alaska. Four months later, he turned up dead.

Publishers Weekly summarizes more of Into the Wild’s plot: “His diary, letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive, apparently stranded by an injury and slowly starving. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature. Krakauer, a contributing editor to Outside and Men’s Journal, retraces McCandless’s ill-fated antagonism toward his father, Walt, an eminent aerospace engineer. Krakauer also draws parallels to his own reckless youthful exploit in 1977 when he climbed Devils Thumb, a mountain on the Alaska-British Columbia border, partly as a symbolic act of rebellion against his autocratic father. In a moving narrative, Krakauer probes the mystery of McCandless’s death, which he attributes to logistical blunders and to accidental poisoning from eating toxic seed pods.”

The film, whose screenplay was written by Sean Penn, stars stars Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Catherine Keener, Hal Halbrook, and Vince Vaughn and was released this week. The following is a trailer for the film based on Into the Wild:

The actors talk about turning “Into the Wild” into the film:

…It took Penn a decade to realize the film after first reading the book, which made “such an impression on me,” Penn said at a press conference.

“This was a very raw, fresh wound for the family when the book first came out,” he explained.

“They felt very appreciative to Jon Krakauer for tracing steps that they weren’t capable of tracing at that time and answering a lot of questions.

“But they also felt that lightning may only strike once in terms of allowing someone into their tragedy.”

“I think they needed some more time,” he said.

The cast and crew met with the family and went to Alaska on four occasions in preparation for shooting the film, visiting the “magic bus” where McCandless’s body in a sleeping bag was found by hunters about two weeks after his death from starvation.

McCandless had lost his car in a flash flood, went kayaking alone down remote rivers, and eventually made camp at the abandoned bus along Alaska’s overgrown Stampede Trail Denali National Park.

With only a bag of rice, a hunting rifle, minimal equipment and a book of local plant life, he had hoped to live off the land, according to his journal entries covering 113 separate days.

Actor Emile Hirsch, who plays McCandless in the film, said he had first heard of his epic adventure while watching a US television news magazine when he was a child.

“I was flipping through the channels and was struck by the story of a guy with the courage to go into the wild, which for a young child was unthinkable.”

While researching the role, he said he spent a lot of time alone “to see what it was like.”

“I found that a lot of times when I was alone, a lot of the negativity that society can somehow filter down to you … really went away and I found a moral core that I think is within us all that had some of the dirt wiped off it,” Hirsch said…

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