Jay Parini, whose biography of Robert Frost won him the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, has compiled a by-no-means-definitive list of influential books in his newly published Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America.
Thought not all necessarily “great” books these are books that have had lasting effects on American culture, and Parini’s accompanying essays explain how and why they count.

Writes Elizabeth Taylor of the Chicago tribune: “In the popular parlance, they might be called game-changers.”

Among the most influential titles are The Federalist Papers, written under a pseudonym by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and john Jay; Walden by Henry David Thoreau; Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe; and How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

For the complete list, CLICK HERE.

To read LA Times review, CLICK HERE.

Well, she showed them! J.K. Rowling won her suit to stop publication of the Harry Potter Lexicon, which was being touted as an extensive encyclopedic tome about all things Harry Potter.The author, Steve Vander Ark, apparently is a big fan of Potter and author Rowling, maintained a similar Web site. From what I remember she was OK with that, but when he set out to publish a book, she objected.

A judge today, seemingly reluctlantly agreed to block publication of the book.

I bet bootleg copies of it will turn up somewhere and fetch a pretty penny.

Want to know more? CLICK HERE.

Harry Potter author J.K Rowling has won her lawsuit against RDR Books and author  Steve Vander Ark, who was attempting to publish the Harry Potter Lexicon.
Judge Robert Patterson ruled in favor of Rowling, agreeing that publishing the lexicon would cause irreparable harm to Rowling

For more information, CLICK HERE or HERE.

By Anne Brennan
I enjoyed doing the review for Angela Johnson’s “Wind Flyers.” What a beautiful book. It’s fascinating to know that a MacArthur fellow lives in Kent, Ohio. Who knew? I don’t know if it’s a requirement, but author Angela Johnson seems as reclusive as Cormac McCarthy, another recipient of the “genius grant.” (For a look at the ultimate uninterested interviewee, check out Oprah’s painful session with McCarthy at www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_RpXe2Taug&feature=related

I like Johnson’s honesty about her writing process in a vistingauthors.com article:

“When I had trouble deciding what I was really doing with my days, the daylilies would bloom, a great movie would show up at the Plaza Cinemas, or children would suddenly appear and stay awhile, letting those thoughts fade away.
Through all of these distractions, who was to make me stay in my office, finish ten pages of that novel, or round out that picture book that had been staring at me each time I walked by it for a month?
The answer was no one. But miraculously, a few times a year I would indeed let some kind and patient person in another state know that I had somehow done it again. Magic. A book.
So, it came to me the other day that all of my days are what I do. All of my days have everything to do with how and why I write. You see, every time I have ever tried to sit in my office overlooking the flower garden and try to force myself to write for a couple of hours a day, I’d just end up watching an old movie or going for a walk.
I need the walks, the gardening, and the day-trips as much as my word processor to enable me to write. Now I know this.
So, I am indeed a writer, and other things too, thankfully. Thus, I happily try to make all the distinct parts work for me. They have everything to do with me being a writer.”

Contrast that with bestselling phenom Nora Roberts’ nose-to-the-grindstone style. Why it’s just like my writing habits…sorry, gotta go. “Oprah” is on.