Oddest titles of the year

I, for one, would vote for Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich. You can choose your own favorites here. (Via)

Norman Mailer and food

From an interesting piece by Dwayne Raymond on HuffingtonPost.com, a portrait of Mailer relatively late in life. So many writers often have something else going on:

DR: I spent an hour or two attempting to master a blend of oil, sorbet, balsamic and God knows what else. It was not a successful venture. In the end, I bought some Newman's Own raspberry vinaigrette, thinned it with water, and mixed it with a heaping tablespoon of sorbet in a blender. A bit later I made a salad for each of us. After a few bites he pronounced the experiment's outcome as being sub-adequate because, although it was not entirely bad, he was aware that one ingredient had come from a plastic bottle. Plastic, he maintained, adversely affected everything it touched. It didn't occur to him that the whole concept was dreadful; that wasn't the way his mind worked. Norman believed that anything awful could be fixed if enough work was put into it. More...

Virginia Woolf recording

According to the Open Culture blog, this is the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice. I don't know about you, but I would have guessed that this is exactly how she would have sounded. Link.

A surprise Italian bestseller

Every now and then you read a story that is simply baffling. Like the fact that good old Auntie Mame is now a bestseller in Italy. Auntie Mame? Well, life is a banquet, after all.

The NY Times: Perhaps no one is more surprised here than the book’s Italian publisher, Adelphi. “We’re completely mystified,” said Matteo Codignola, the Adelphi editor who translated the novel. “We thought it would appeal to a certain kind of public, but we didn’t expect this.” More...

The world's largest book

Check it out: "It takes six people to lift it and has been recorded as the largest book in the world." More... (Via.)

National Book Critics Circle Prize nominees

Reported by the Huffington Post. "The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, is a nonprofit organization with around 600 members, 'book reviewers who are interested in honoring quality writing and communicating with one another about common concerns.' " Link.

James Patterson

The NY Times has a great profile of the prolific author. How does he do it?

NYT: There are many different ways to catalog Patterson’s staggering success. Here are just a few: Since 2006, one out of every 17 novels bought in the United States was written by James Patterson. He is listed in the latest edition of “Guinness World Records,” published last fall, as the author with the most New York Times best sellers, 45, but that number is already out of date: he now has 51 — 35 of which went to No. 1. More...