Speaking of Stephen King, Goodreads has the official trailer for Under the Dome, his new novel. Since when do they make trailers for books?
Stephen King’s New E-Book To Cost $35
The hardcover will be released on November 10, but even though it shares the same price, Scribner isn’t releasing the e-book version until the day before Christmas.
However:
Thanks to an online price war among Target.com, Amazon and Walmart.com, the hardcover for “Under the Dome,” “Going Rogue” and other popular November releases can be pre-ordered for $9 or less, a strong source of concern among publishers and independent booksellers, who cannot afford to charge so little.
Nine dollars? That’s nuts.
Hemingway’s papers come to JFK Library
Despite the strained relations between the countries, the curators of the Kennedy library and the Castro regime have over the years found common ground, enough that the library announced this week that Cuba has shared copies of 3,000 letters and documents from the Hemingway archives at the country’s Ministry of Culture. The material fills a hole in the library’s collection, which purports to have the most comprehensive body of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s writings.
The documents include an alternate ending to For Whom the Bell Tolls, as well as correspondence with the likes of Robert Capa, Sinclair Lewis and Ingrid Bergman.
Living on $500,000 a Year
A study of the tax returns of F. Scott Fitzgerald provides a snapshot of his lifestyle in the first half of the 20th century.
Over Fitzgerald’s working life, he reported a total of $449,713 in gross income, and he paid $24,666 in taxes—thus the effective tax rate of 5.5 percent. Most of his earnings came from the short stories and, later, the movies. His best novels, The Great Gatsby (1925) and Tender Is the Night (1934), did not produce much income. Royalties from The Great Gatsby totaled only $8,397 during Fitzgerald’s lifetime. Today Gatsby is read in nearly every high school and college and regularly produces $500,000 a year in Scottie’s trust for her children.
(via kottke)
Manhood for Amateurs
Michael Chabon’s new book is out. It’s a collection of personal essays exploring, among other things, parenting and what it means to be a man.
What is the impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it—nowhere that I was willing to let her go.
There is an excerpt over at The New York Review of Books.