All the Latest...

New book deals:
Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has found help for his financial woes, since the Senate seat deal didn't pan out for him. Blagojevich has signed a six-figure book deal with Phoenix for his story "exposing the dark side of politics." Due out in October. Great. Can't wait.

Little, Brown will publish David Foster Wallace's unfinished novel, The Pale King, early next year. Wallace had been working on the novel for many years, but died on September 12, 2008.

Annie Barrows, who co-authored The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with her late aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer, signed her next novel, set in the 1930s and inspired by her own family history, a love story set against the backdrop of a country under the siege of the Depression, but also a story about an oddball family and the effect they have on an exotic city girl from the east, sent by her father to take a job in the WPA, who rooms with a quirky family down south.

Philip Roth has his 30th and 31st novels lined up. In the Fall of 2009, look for Humbling, a novel about an elderly actor with a counter plot of erotic desire. In 2010, look for Nemesis, a novel about a wartime polio epidemic during the summer of 1944 in a Newark community.

A UK publisher has bought 11 more books from Robert Bolano, which will be published over the next 2 years. Bolano's The Savage Detectives and 2666 have gotten a lot of attention from critics.

Condolezza Rice has signed a 3-book deal for $2.5 million. The first book will cover her time in the Bush administration. The second book will be a family memoir and the third book will be a young adult version of her family memoir.

James Patterson has gotten on the Scandinavian bandwagon and is teaming up with Scandinavian writer Liza Markland for a new thriller set primarily in Stockholm. The novel is scheduled to be published in Sweden in 2010.

Sara Gruen's new novel The Ape House, which was originally scheduled to be released later this spring, has been delayed until later this year or early next year.

Books to Movies:
If you watched the very end of the Oscar awards this year, they showed a montage (I love a good montage) of films scheduled for release throughout the rest of this year. Several are based on books: The Soloist, based on the memoir by Steve Lopez; Angels and Demons, based on the novel by Dan Brown (I'm glad to see that Tom Hanks has a better haircut in this movie), The Taking of Pelham 123, based on the novel by John Godey; Public Enemies, based on the account of the birth of the FBI by Bryan Burrough; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (I shouldn't even have to tell you the author of this one); Julie and Julia, based on the memoir by Julie Powell, Sherlock Holmes, based on the stories from Arthur Conan Doyle; and Gomorrah, based on the account of organized crime in Italy by Roberto Saviano.

Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Never Let Me Go will be adapted for film with Keira Knightley starring in the lead role.

John Grisham's latest novel The Associate will also be adapted for film.

Set your Tivo: HBO will air the 2-hour pilot episode of The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency on March 29th at 8pm. The show is based on Alexander McCall Smith's enormously popular mystery series.

The Chinese Premier Wen Jiaboa recently donated 200,000 electronic books to the Cambridge University Library. The collection consists of Chinese books published since 1992 in all areas of the humanities. This probably means nothing to most of you, but I just found it interesting to see his name in the news because I just read The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, and the Premier has a role in this novel.

In bad news: The Borders bookstore on Michigan Avenue in Chicago is scheduled to close in 2010.

Things that annoy me: Apple products (Macs, iPods, iPhones, etc). I never jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I use a PC; I have always used other (read: better) brands of MP3 players and now I have a Blackberry Storm (which is better than the iPhone!). But I'm getting tired of being ignored when it comes to accessories and applications. Just because I don't use an iPhone doesn't mean I don't want a cool skin or armband holder. Yes, I know they make these for other brands, but the choices are very limited compared to the iPod/iPhone choices. And I'd like all those cool apps for my Storm too, but the iPhone has the market cornered there too. Now my beloved Amazon is ignoring us non-iPhone users by providing a free application for the iPhone that allows users to download and read their Kindle books on the iPhone. So iPhone users can avoid the $350 cost of a Kindle and just use the device they already have while the rest of us have to shell out a sizable chunk of change if we want the Kindle books. So now I'm adding Amazon to my list.