At a launch party in New York last night for THE LOST SYMBOL, Dan Brown was lavish in his thanks to all the departments at Knopf Doubleday and throughout Random House that engineered the 5-million-copy laydown of the new book. (“Let’s hope we never see them again,” he quipped.) As he noted at the beginning of his remarks, “I realize technically we’ve only published one book together–so far, so good.” For anyone who thought the publisher might be miffed by the New York Times’ early review of the new book, Brown added to his thank-you list “a woman I’ve never […]
New Releases/Forthcoming
Dan Brown Has A New Book Coming; The NYT Keeps Breaking Embargoes
Last night the NYT broke the embargo on Dan Brown’s THE LOST SYMBOL, posting Janet Maslin’s review (which runs in today’s print edition). She likes this “rip-snorting adventure. As Browniacs have long predicted, the chase involves the secrets of Freemasonry and is set in Washington, where some of those secrets are built into the architecture and are thus hidden in plain sight…. Within this book’s hermetically sealed universe, characters’ motivations don’t really have to make sense; they just have to generate the nonstop momentum that makes ‘The Lost Symbol’ impossible to put down.” (Maslin’s most quoted graph is bafflingly nonsensical: […]
Briefs: Amazon's Amends; Robert Jordan eBooks; Pullman on Christ; Another Traditional Party Cancelled
* Over a month after violating its own terms of use and deleting unauthorized versions of George Orwell books from Kindle owners’ machines, on one of the quietest news days of the year Amazon e-mailed customers offering financial amends. The NYT reported that Amazon offering to give customers replacement copies of 1984 and Animal Farm, along with restoring any deleted personal annotations. Alternately, they are offering a gift certificate or check for $30. Though the article doesn’t address this, presumably the belated offer is designed in part to moot litigation that was filed against the etailer following the deletions.NYT * […]
NYT Breaks Kennedy Embargo
The Times “obtained” a copy of the forthcoming TRUE COMPASS, set for release on September 14, and shares generously and broadly: “The book does not shy from the accident [on Chappaquiddick in 1969], or from some other less savory aspects of the senator’s life, including a notorious 1991 drinking episode in Palm Beach, Fla., or the years of heavy drinking and women-chasing that followed his 1982 divorce from his first wife, Joan. “But it also offers rich detail on his relationships with his father, siblings and children that round out a portrait of a man who lived the most public […]
Amazon Bought Two Locks to Keep LOST SYMBOL Secure
The New York Times won’t be obtaining any copies of Dan Brown’s new book from Amazon, where the e-tailer’s home page carries a note promoting the new release from Jeff Bezos–who insists that “even inside Random House, only a half dozen employees have been allowed to read The Lost Symbol in its entirety.” (Is it supposed to be reassuring that almost no one at the publisher worked with the author on preparing his book for publication?) Amazon has “agreed to keep our stockpile under 24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” […]
Ridge Keeps Trying to Explain What He Wrote; Disavows Flap Copy
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge’s book THE TEST OF OUR TIMES: America Under Siege…And How We Can Be Safe Again (Thomas Dunne Books) has drawn attention primarily for a single passage–and Ridge has been making the press circuit trying to explain that he didn’t mean what people think his words say. Ridge wrote of discussions right before the 2004 presidential election, following the release of a new video from Osama Bin Laden, in which “a vigorous, some might say dramatic discussion ensued. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level, and was supported by Rumsfeld. There was […]