The bulk of a man's childhood comic book collection that included many of the most prized issues ever published has sold for about US$3.5 million (NZ$4.2m).

Make no mistake, Raymond Bonner's new book, "Anatomy of Injustice: A Murder Case Gone Wrong," is a movie idea begging to be greenlighted. It would make an ideal vehicle for Sandra Bullock (or maybe Julia Roberts), in a dirty blond wig, playing the tough but still idealistic defense attorney with a checkered past, alongside an unknown shoo-in for the supporting actor Oscar as the simple-minded handyman whose life she's determined to save. Like a John Grisham novel, this story has an ass-covering posse of good ol' boys running the rigged law-enforcement and judicial system in a small Southern town and a team of dedicated legal crusaders from outside who check into the local motel and sit cross-legged on the floor surrounded by boxes of files and takeout coffee cups. It's a genuine whodunit, a page-turner and a tale of redemption. And it's all true.Continue Reading...

I wrote this four years ago, worth a revisit: Music lessons Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart) The first rule is so important, it’s rule 0: 0. The new thing is never as good as the old thing, at least right now. Soon, the new thing will be better [...]

The first thing you will want to know about "At Last," the final volume in Edward St. Aubyn's five-novel cycle starring Patrick Melrose, is that, yes, you really do have to read the preceding four if you want to appreciate it fully. The second is that if reading about wealthy, conceited, selfish, dissipated, cruel, monstrously awful people is not for you, then, alas, neither are these novels. The third is that the books are brilliant. They are also highly idiosyncratic: Each installment is both a comedy of manners and a wrenching psychological investigation; each oscillates between satire and tragedy, and all are written with flash and brio, ornamented by inspired simile, and spangled with mordant, Wildean wit.Continue Reading...

A banned booked seized from a Newtown bookseller by government officials has been reclassified unrestricted by the Office of Film and Literature Classification.

Prognostication about the future of the book is everywhere; making predictions about what books will be like tomorrow seems much more profitable (not to mention easier) than creating actual books today. Yet all these prophecies collide with a basic problem: The book, as it currently exists, is hard to improve upon. Cheap, highly portable and free of maddening formatting problems, the printed book has met most readers' needs pretty well. Sure, in recent years, technology has transformed the distribution of texts -- you can order any book online or tote around dozens of e-books in a lightweight reader -- but the vast majority of these books remain essentially the same: linear strings of words, with the occasional image.Continue Reading...

There's a moment in Raymond Carver's imperishable story "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" that might be described as one of unregistered revelation. Two middle-aged couples perch at a kitchen table consuming an anesthetizing amount of gin while trying to converse about the fundamentals of love. Mel McGinnis, a cardiologist and the table's chief discourser, for whom "gin" is literally a middle name, offers a heuristic anecdote: He once administered to an elderly husband and wife, married for eons, who were almost snuffed out in a heinous car wreck. Supine in the same hospital room as his wife, the old man despairs not because of his own injuries but because he can't see his wife through the eye holes in his full-body cast. "Can you imagine?" Mel asks. "I'm telling you, the man's heart was breaking because he couldn't turn his goddamn head and see his goddamn wife."Continue Reading...

This novel, the fourth that Daniel Handler, better known for the novels he wrote under the name Lemony Snicket, which rival those written by a woman named Rowling in copies sold, has written under his own name, is arguably his first explicitly targeted toward older teens. Though the first two Handler novels featured high school and college-age protagonists, their subject matter (homicide and incest) made them more the province of literary adults.The subject of "Why We Broke Up" -- the unlikely romance between a "jocky" boy and a girl he insists, despite her protests, on calling "arty" -- would sit comfortably next to any classic John Hughes movie. But the execution is a master class in the things books do best: It's loaded with sly, beautifully produced illustrations by Maira Kalman and Handler's exquisitely wrought sentences, brimming with charm and surprise, whether describing invented plots to classic films, clothes coming off a dry-cleaning rack, or the gorgeous banality, beauty and terror of high school life.Continue Reading...

Dear Maura and Jack,I'll keep this as short as I can, because the situation is quite simple really. After many years of keeping in touch across long distances (from occasional emails and phone calls to sleeping together if we happened to be in the same city), I finally live in the same city as a man I have been infatuated with, in love with and everything in between. Now that I'm here, he has become evasive, flaky and sometimes a flat-out jerk. I'm accustomed to being pursued and wooed and made a priority. Now I am bending over backward to try to see someone who changes plans, doesn't make an effort to make time for me and doesn't put any effort into our plans when we do get together. I have never been treated worse in my life. I have never been treated like this by a man -- and yet I keep going back for more. I hate the way it makes me feel, but for some reason I can't stop.Hit me with the canon. I need it.Maura writes:Dear Girl Doesn't Get Boy:Continue Reading...

Dear Jack and Maura,I'm a 23-year-old straight male, and I've never been in a relationship. In fact, I've never even been on a second date before (and only a couple of first dates, for that matter). I've only ever kissed two girls, and that's the extent of my sexual experience. I feel like I've missed out on so much over the years, and it's made me wonder if there might be something horribly wrong with me. I'm seriously on the brink of giving up on dating (and everything that goes with it) altogether.Moreover, I don't think I've ever met anyone who is as much of a romantic "blank slate" as I am. Because I've never been in a relationship, I don't have a reference point; I have no idea what kind of partner I'd be for a woman (whether I'd be clingy, whether I'd be open to the possibility of commitment, etc.). So not only do I think I've missed out on a wealth of experiences, but I've also missed out on the self-discovery (or whatever Disney cliché you want to use) that goes along with those experiences.If you have any literature to recommend me, I'd greatly appreciate it.Maura writes:Dear Never Been in Love:Continue Reading...

Not just a few things, but everything about the book and the book business is transformed by the end of paper. Those that would prefer to deny this obvious truth are going to find the business they love disappear over the next five years. The book itself is changed. I’m putting the finishing touches on [...]

Why should you, an adult, bother with a novel intended for an audience aged 14 to 18? If you're among the ever-growing adult readership for YA (young adult) fiction, you're probably not even asking that question anymore. And no doubt John Green, whose most recent YA novel, "The Fault in Our Stars," became a bestseller on Amazon even before he finished writing it (pre-orders were enabled when he settled on a title), doesn't especially need readers with the legal right to vote. But if you were to skip "The Fault in Our Stars" -- or another new novel, by YA luminary Meg Rosoff, "There Is No Dog" -- because you assume that such books are less intelligent, well-written or emotionally complex than their adult counterparts, you would be most miserably mistaken.Continue Reading...

Plates and glasses are cleared away, and a hush descends on the packed private dining room of a fancy Manhattan Indian restaurant; a distinguished writer -- the star of the evening’s event -- is about to give a reading. The iPad in his hands bathes his familiar features in a soft, electric glow that complements the muted lights and blinking candles spaced around the room.As Salman Rushdie intones his own elegant prose in a rich, musical British accent, a soundtrack plays softly but distinctly in the background. If the music seems particularly well-selected -- if its rhythms subtly match the story's turning points -- that’s because it was commissioned expressly for the purpose.Though the story is short, Rushdie stops several times to ask the audience if he should continue. At each juncture, rapt listeners beg him to go on. After the performance is over, guests murmur words like “mesmerizing” and “transporting” as they turn back to their tablemates -- and I’m one of them.The event is a glitzy dinner organized by Booktrack, a company that publishes e-books with "synchronized soundtracks"; the occasion is the launch of the e-publisher's first short story -- Rushdie’s “In the South" -- with accompanying music composed by John Psathas. ("In the South" is available for download now from Booktrack's website.)Continue Reading...

Fact checking is a subject that many people speak of with blithe confidence despite knowing very little about it. In truth, there's nothing like going through a 5,000-word story with an exceptionally thorough fact checker to make you aware of just how often all of us talk confidently about subjects on which we are completely, or mostly, wrong. What's obvious, what everybody knows, what's only common sense: Much of this stuff turns out, under scrutiny, to melt away into fable, propaganda and wishful thinking. And that includes a lot of what people assume about fact checking."The Lifespan of a Fact" by John D'Agata and Jim Fingal documents the epic fact checking of "What Happens There," an essay D'Agata wrote about a teenager who committed suicide by jumping from the observation deck of a Las Vegas hotel. Their exchanges merit publication in part because D'Agata is the leading light of a literary movement (largely confined to MFA programs in creative nonfiction) advancing the "lyric essay," a form that combines elements of poetry with the prose essay. D'Agata has been militant in asserting his liberty as an artist to alter, invent or ignore facts in writing his essays, as well as critical of the eruptions of outrage that greet the increasingly commonplace discovery that some celebrated memoirist has embellished or fabricated parts of his or her work.Continue Reading...

Australian author Christina Brooke knows a thing or two about romance.