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Tag: Books

  • Oprah Winfrey Is Writing a New Memoir

    Oprah Winfrey Is Writing a New Memoir

    Oprah Winfrey is writing a new memoir.

    Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan, has announced The Life You Want, and new memoir from Oprah.

    The book is set to be published in January of 2017.

    Oprah says her goal with the book is to “inspire other people to live the highest, fullest expression of themselves” and show that “anyone can put their life on a new trajectory.”

    The memoir is just one part of Oprah’s announcement. The new book is part of a deal which will see Oprah get her own book imprint which, according to the AP, will publish several nonfiction books every year.

    The memoir is “a remarkable combination of Oprah’s life story and the lessons we can all draw from it for our personal growth,” says Flatiron Books president Bob Miller. “We’re also thrilled to give a home to Oprah’s imprint titles. We all know how extraordinary Oprah’s instincts are when it comes to choosing books, instincts borne of her lifelong love of reading and the power of the written word.”

    Apparently, Oprah has just begun writing the memoir and it will feature “never before told stories.”

  • Lucy Maud Montgomery Honored With Google Doodle

    Lucy Maud Montgomery, better known as L.M. Montgomery, is being honored today with a video Google Doodle.

    The author, born on November 30th, 1874, is best known for her novel Anne of Green Gables and the subsequent series. Monday’s Google Doodle is celebrating what would be her 141st birthday.

    The beloved Canadian author first published Anne of Green Gables in 1908, after a few years of trying. The book became an instant hit. The novel tells the tale of 11-year-old Anne Shirley, an orphan who is mistakenly sent to a family farm on Prince Edward Island. Her Green Gables series spanned eight books – the final one being published in 1921. A “lost” book, the ninth in the series, was found long after her death and published in 2009.

    Montgomery also published other novels, and was a prolific short story writer. Her various short story collections contains hundreds of works.

    Check out Google’s Doodle:

    Montgomery died in 1942, reportedly from coronary thrombosis. A note found by her bedside has caused speculation as to a possible suicide.

    “I have lost my mind by spells and I do not dare think what I may do in those spells. May God forgive me and I hope everyone else will forgive me even if they cannot understand. My position is too awful to endure and nobody realizes it. What an end to a life in which I tried always to do my best,” it read in part.

  • Kate Hudson Wants to Give You Lifestyle Advice, Announces New Book

    Kate Hudson is joining the growing list of celebrities who want to dish out lifestyle advice.

    Dey Street Books has announced that it is publishing Hudson’s new book, titled “Pretty Happy: Healthy Ways to Love Your Body”, in February.

    The book will reportedly cover fitness, nutrition, and “a mindful lifestyle” and will be geared toward women.

    Hudson has been bust with rumors (rather dodging rumors) about her love life. Gossip mags have linked her to Nick Jonas, but she’s refused to comment on those.

    Thinking of sleeping in my Choo's ? @jimmychoo ?

    A photo posted by Kate Hudson (@katehudson) on

    Hudson is currently starring alongside Bill Murray in Rock the Kasbah. She has a handful of films slated for 2016, including Kung Fu Panda 3, Mother’s Day, and Deepwater Horizon.

  • Amazon Now Has a Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore

    Amazon, the massive online retailer that has surely been muttered in anger by many a local bookseller, has opened a brick-and-mortar bookstore.

    Next to a Banana Republic in Seattle’s University Village, you’ll now find Amazon Books an actual physical bookstore.

    The store opens its doors at 9:30am PT.

    Amazon’s physical bookstore will still have ties to its online store, as many of the selections will be based on online reviews. If it’s popular online, Amazon will sell it at Amazon Books.

    “Amazon Books is a physical extension of Amazon.com. We’ve applied 20 years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping. The books in our store are selected based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments. These are fantastic books! Most have been rated 4 stars or above, and many are award winners,” says the company.

    “To give you more information as you browse, our books are face-out, and under each one is a review card with the Amazon.com customer rating and a review. You can read the opinions and assessments of Amazon.com’s book-loving customers to help you find great books.”

    Amazon Books’ prices are the same prices as appear online.

    “It’s data with heart,” says Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it … The bookstores I love celebrate reading. What better way to celebrate reading than to have the voices of readers under our books?”

    According to the Seattle Times, the store is staffed by about 15 people – including local librarians, retail clerks and an Amazon receptionist.

    Image via Amazon

  • Kirsten Dunst Appeared On The Cover Of An Old Babysitters Club Book

    Kirsten Dunst is making headlines for eating cheese and bread. That’s basically what her strategy consisted of for gaining weight for her role on the second season of FX’s Fargo, as she revealed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

    She explained, “Well, listen. I was in Calgary, and it was cold, and so I ordered in a lot of pizza…a lot of Thai…I just had different…like grilled cheese…I just had different cheeses and breads together, and now I’m like, ‘Yeah, I gained weight for this role!’ But really I just sat in my bed, watched Friday Night Lights, and like…ate.

    Also on the show, Kimmel pointed out that Dunst started acting when she was six years old, but that even before that, she was a model and appeared on the cover of a Babysitters Club book called Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.

    The image on the book actually looks like a painting, but the baby on the cover is a picture of her.

    Dunst explains, “We did a photo shoot, and then they made it look like a painting.”

    Here’s a closer look at the book:

    Dunst also discussed The Bachelor and The Bachelorette with Kimmel:

    Fargo airs on FX on Monday nights.

  • Stephenie Meyer’s New Twilight Book Changes a Lot – Including the Main Characters’ Genders

    Stephenie Meyer, who transfixed millions of teens, tweens, and a decent amount of adults, with her vampire love story Twilight, has a new project for hungry fans.

    Can you believe it’s been ten years since Twilight? That’s right, the first novel in the series was published in October of 2005.

    And in honor of the anniversary, Meyer is publishing a version of the story that turns everything upside down.

    Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined features a human named Beau and a vampire named Edythe.

    Did you catch that? The main characters from Twilight have received a gender swap.

    Meyer says there are some key differences – mostly in the characters’ personalties, revealed as the story progresses. But most of the plot remains the same.

    “The further you get in, the more it changes because the personalities get a little bit different,” said Meyer. “But it starts out very similar and really, it really is the same story because it’s just a love story and it doesn’t matter who’s the boy and who’s the girl, it still works out.”

    Meyer had only planned to pen a couple of chapters with the new characters, but wound up writing an entire novel.

    “I wonder if it will change how people look at Bella a little bit, to see her as him. I do feel like it’s really very much the same thing so I guess my hope is that maybe the younger readers will be reintroduced because a lot of my readers, you know, they’re all 10 years older now and so there’s a whole new generation.”

    Maybe Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined will help fans cope with the fact that they never got Midnight Sun, the Twilight story told from Edward’s perspective. That project was abandoned in 2008.

  • HGTV Co-Founder Susan Packard Talks Business At Google

    Google recently released an “At Google” talk from Susan Packard, the co-founder of HGTV, who recently wrote the highly rated book New Rules of the Game: 10 Strategies for Women in the Workplace.

    The talk, also titled, “New Rules of the Game,” comes with the following description:

    Business is a team sport. Learn how to win from the founder of HGTV and a respected leader in the media business who lead Scripps Networks Interactive, and played key leadership roles in growing CNBC and HBO in their formative years.

    In the talk, Packard talks about her business life and the book for which she interviewed a dozen CEOs.

    Image via YouTube

  • Tim Cook Tried to Give His Liver to Ailing Steve Jobs

    Tim Cook Tried to Give His Liver to Ailing Steve Jobs

    If you were wondering just how close current Apple CEO Tim Cook felt to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, well, here’s your answer.

    The former attempted to give the latter part of his liver.

    That’s the word from Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader, a new Steve Jobs biography due out on March 24. Fast Company got its hands on a excerpt from the book, written by journalists Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli, and it explains how in 2009 Cook, distraught over Jobs’ worsening condition, took the steps to see if he could help.

    One afternoon, Cook left the house feeling so upset that he had his own blood tested. He found out that he, like Steve, had a rare blood type, and guessed that it might be the same. He started doing research, and learned that it is possible to transfer a portion of a living person’s liver to someone in need of a transplant. About 6,000 living-donor transplants are performed every year in the United States, and the rate of success for both donor and recipient is high. The liver is a regenerative organ. The portion transplanted into the recipient will grow to a functional size, and the portion of the liver that the donor gives up will also grow back.

    Apparently, Jobs shot Cook’s offer down immediately, saying, “I’ll never let you do that.”

    More from the book:

    “Somebody that’s selfish,” Cook continues, “doesn’t reply like that. I mean, here’s a guy, he’s dying, he’s very close to death because of his liver issue, and here’s someone healthy offering a way out. I said, ‘Steve, I’m perfectly healthy, I’ve been checked out. Here’s the medical report. I can do this and I’m not putting myself at risk, I’ll be fine.’ And he doesn’t think about it. It was not, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ It was not, ‘I’ll think about it.’ It was not, ‘Oh, the condition I’m in . . .’ It was, ‘No, I’m not doing that!’ He kind of popped up in bed and said that. And this was during a time when things were just terrible. Steve only yelled at me four or five times during the 13 years I knew him, and this was one of them.

    So this is coming straight from Cook.

    According to Cult of Mac, the new biography features interviews with Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Pixar’s John Lasseter, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. The book may be seen as a bit of a departure from the tone in Walter Isaacson’s best-selling 2011 bio Steve Jobs – which Cook himself maligns in the new book as doing a “tremendous disservice” to Jobs.

  • Mark Zuckerberg: Vaccines Work and Are Important

    Mark Zuckerberg: Vaccines Work and Are Important

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is wading into the vaccination debate, as his newest book club choice tackles “anti-vaxxers” and disproves their various arguments – without actually focusing on the anti-vaccination movement by name.

    Zuckerberg has chosen On Immunity by Eula Biss, one of the New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2014. And in his recommendation, Zuckerberg has made a clear, succinct plea for the power of vaccinations.

    “Vaccination is an important and timely topic. The science is completely clear: vaccinations work and are important for the health of everyone in our community,” says Zuckerberg in a Facebook post. “This book explores the reasons why some people question vaccines, and then logically explains why the doubts are unfounded and vaccines are in fact effective and safe.”

    Post by Mark Zuckerberg.

    Though the science behind vaccinations couldn’t be clearer, a growing group of parents are choosing to forgo their children’s vaccinations. Recent outbreaks of measles have thrust the topic of vaccinations to the head of public health debate.

    Zuckerberg weighing in on this is even more timely, as a recent report from WIRED suggested that Silicon Valley is particularly fond having their kids of forgo vaccinations. Whether the data on daycare vaccination rates shows a legitimate trend in Silicon Valley or just lagging record keeping is still undetermined.

    “This book was recommended to me by scientists and friends who work in public health,” says Zuckerberg of his choice.

    Despite saying this, some on Facebook are already questioning his motivation.

    “Is this your choice to post this or have you been asked to?” asks one commenter.

    “It’s my choice,” says Zuckerberg. “Who could make me do this?”

  • ‘Boyhood’ Star, Photographer Talk At Google

    With Richard Linklater’s Boyhood nominated for six Oscars, the film that has captivated so many since its premiere, will no doubt be one of the hottest topics in film over the coming weeks. If you haven’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?

    As you’re probably aware, the movie was filmed over the course of twelve years, showing the actors age in real time. It’s truly something to behold.

    Star Ellar Coltrane, who plays the boy we get to watch grow up, and film photographer Matt Lankes recently participated in an “At Google” talk, speaking about Lankes’ new book Boyhood: Twelve Years of Film and their experience with the project over the course of that twelve years.

    The talk, which Google made available this week, was recorded on January 28 in Austin.

  • ‘The End of Power’ Enjoys a Big Mark Zuckerberg Bump

    ‘The End of Power’ Enjoys a Big Mark Zuckerberg Bump

    As an writer, there probably wasn’t much that was more thrilling than seeing that “Oprah’s Book Club” sticker printed on your book. Of course, a Pulitzer or a National Book Award would be nice – but that Oprah seal of approval meant one thing for sure: people were going to buy the hell out of your book.

    Could the same thing happen with Mark Zuckerberg?

    You may have heard that the Facebook CEO recently pulled an Oprah and decided to launch his own book club of sorts. Zuckerberg’s New Years resolution this year was to read a new book every couple of weeks – and he has asked the Facebook community to join him on the journey. He set up a dedicated Facebook page called ‘A Year of Books’, and invited the more than a billion Facebook users to join in an anything-but-old-fashioned book discussion.

    For this first selection, Zuckerberg chose The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used To Be by Moises Naim. Within hours, the book was out of stock on Amazon.

    Now it’s back in stock and selling like crazy. Zuck’s endorsement has skyrocketed the book to #8 on Amazon’s bestsellers list – and it’s still climbing.

    The book is also rising on the ebook charts, now residing at #31.

    Call it the Zuck bump. And if he keeps his promise, 25 or so lucky authors will likely see a big spike in sales in 2015.

    Image via Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook

  • Mark Zuckerberg Pulls an Oprah, Launches Facebook Book Club

    Mark Zuckerberg Pulls an Oprah, Launches Facebook Book Club

    Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has decided on his challenge for the new year, and it involves books. A lot of them.

    For the past few years, Zuckerberg has made a point to publicly challenge himself to try something new. One year it was speaking Mandarin (which he did) – another year it was wearing a tie every day. One time, Zuckerberg tried to live a mostly vegetarian life – only eating animals that he had killed himself.

    This year, Zuckerberg enlisted the Facebook community to help him figure out what to do. Now, after many suggestions, he’s made his decision. This year, Zuckerberg is going to read around 26 books – and he’s launched a new Facebook page to track his progress, as well as provide an hub for discussion. Zuck’s gone Oprah and launched his own book club.

    “I’m excited for my reading challenge. I’ve found reading books very intellectually fulfilling. Books allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today. I’m looking forward to shifting more of my media diet towards reading books,” says Zuckerberg.

    Post by Mark Zuckerberg.

    The “book club” page is called A Year of Books, and it already boasts 137,000+ likes. If you’re thinking about participating in the book discussion, make sure you’ve actually read the book in question.

    “If you want to follow along on my challenge and read the same books I do, I’ve created a page, A Year of Books, where I’ll post what I’m reading. Please only participate in the discussions if you’ve actually read the books and have relevant points to add. The group will be moderated to keep it focused,” he says.

    Up first is a 2013 book called The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used To Be by Moises Naim. Let’s see if Zuck can keep his resolution.

  • Google Talk Deals With Zombies And Neuroscience

    On Halloween, Google hosted a talk with neuroscientists Timothy Verstynen and Bradley Voytek about neuroscience and zombies. Now as the holidays draw near, Google has made the talk available for our viewing pleasure (and in Night of the Living Dead black and white).

    The talk is mainly about Verstynen’s book “Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?”

    Google says:

    In this groundbreaking study, the fearless duo dissect the puzzle of what has happened to the zombie brain to make the undead act differently than their human prey. Each chapter draws on zombie popular culture and identifies a characteristic zombie behavior that can be explained using neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and brain-behavior relationships. Through this exploration they shed light on fundamental neuroscientific questions such as: How does the brain function during sleeping and waking? What neural systems control movement? What is the nature of sensory perception?

    The authors are members of the Zombie Research Society and are preparing grant applications to research the coming zombie apocalypse.

    Happy holidays!

    Image via YouTube

  • Amazon Updates Kindle For iOS App

    Amazon Updates Kindle For iOS App

    Amazon just launched an update to its Kindle for iOS app, introducing a bunch of new features, including a book browser for iPad, a new welcome experience, Goodreads integration, “Next in Series” info, book detail pages in the library, and Audible Progressive Play.

    With the browser feature, Kindle Unlimited subscribers can now browse over 700,000 books, and start reading them without leaving the app. Amazon launched Kindle Unlimited back in the summer. It’s basically the company’s Netflix for reading. Users can tap on a book cover to display a detail page that provides the book description and customer reviews. The Browser also gives users the ability to search for any title from Amazon’s catalog of Kindle books.

    The new welcome experience lets new users select their favorite genres, rate books they’ve read, and choose books they want to read. It will provide personalized book sample suggestions (powered by Goodreads) to download and read for free.

    “Goodreads customers can now share reading progress updates, highlights, and more from inside the Kindle book they are reading,” says Amazon. “Once connected (click on the Settings icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Library or Home page, then click on Social Network and select Goodreads to link accounts), customers can share reading progress updates using the new [g] button in the reader controls; share quotes on Goodreads, Facebook or Twitter; or rate and review a book on Goodreads and Amazon from the ‘Before You Go’ screen at the end of a book.”

    Users who finish a book in a series can learn about the next book, and add it to their wish list from the ‘Before You Go’ screen.

    Additionally, book details can now be viewed by long pressing a book cover in the library and selecting “Book Details.” Users will see a synopsis of the book, Amazon reviews, etc.

    With the Audible Progressive Play feature, you can start playing audiobooks as they’re downloading. They can be played once you’ve downloaded past your current reading location.

    The Goodreads blog has more on the Goodreads integration.

    Last week, Amazon announced its best-selling books of the year.

    Image via Goodreads

  • Amazon Names Best-Selling Books Of The Year

    Amazon has become such a giant in online retail that it’s easy to forget sometimes that it used to be all about books. Even its line of hardware started with the Kindle, which was simply a new way to read books.

    While Amazon has a whole lot more going for it these days, book sales are still a major component, and the company just announced its list of the top 20 best-selling titles of the year.

    “This year’s best seller lists include a lot of familiar authors and characters—over half of the books on the lists are part of a series,” said Sara Nelson, Editorial Director of Books and Kindle. “It’s also exciting to see our January Best Books of the Month pick—and Oprah Book Club pick—The Invention of Wings take the top spot overall. We hope all of these lists will help our customers explore great books this holiday season, whether it’s a gift for a loved one or a treat for themselves.”

    Here are the top 20 best-selling books on Amazon in 2014:

    1. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

    2. Gray Mountain by John Grisham

    3. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

    4. Twenty Seconds Ago (Jack Reacher, #19) by Lee Child

    5. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

    6. The Target (Will Robie Series) by David Baldacci

    7. The Fixed Trilogy by Laurelin Paige

    8. The Heroes of Olympus Book Five: The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

    9. Top Secret Twenty-One (Stephanie Plum) by Janet Evanovich

    10. Killing Patton: The Strange Death of World War II’s Most Audacious General by Bill O’Reilly

    11. Unlucky 13 (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

    12. Edge of Eternity: Book Three of The Century Trilogy by Ken Follett

    13. Shadow Spell (Cousins O’Dwyer) by Nora Roberts

    14. Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King

    15. Blood Magick (Cousins O’Dwyer) by Nora Roberts

    16. Field of Prey by John Sandford

    17. Written in My Own Heart’s Blood (Outlander) by Diana Gabaldon

    18. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney

    19. City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare

    20. Flash Boys by Michael Lewis

    Amazon also shared the top 20 best-selling kids and teens books:

    1. The Heroes of Olympus Book Five: The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan

    2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul by Jeff Kinney

    3. City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare

    4. Rush Revere and the First Patriots: Time-Travel Adventures With Exceptional Americans by Rush Limbaugh

    5. The One (The Selection) by Kiera Cass

    6. Four: A Divergent Collection by Veronica Roth

    7. The Book with No Pictures by B.J. Novak

    8. Hollow City (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children) by Ransom Riggs

    9. Rush Revere and the American Revolution: Time-Travel Adventures With Exceptional Americans by Rush Limbaugh

    10. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

    11. Unlucky 13 (Women’s Murder Club) by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

    12. A Day in the Sun (Disney Frozen) by Frank Berrios

    13. The Staff of Serapis by Rick Riordan

    14. The Finisher by David Baldacci

    15. The Revenge of Seven (Lorien Legacies) by Pittacus Lore

    16. Percy Jackson’s Greek Gods by Rick Riordan

    17. Minecraft: Construction Handbook: An Official Mojang Book by Scholastic

    18. Cress (The Lunar Chronicles) by Marissa Meyer

    19. The Julian Chapter: A Wonder Story by R. J. Palacio

    20. Silver Shadows: A Bloodlines Novel by Richelle Mead

    Amazon has a landing page available here, which lets you browse through collections of the “best of” the year. This includes their top 100 editors’ picks.

  • Harry Potter Helps Unlock The Secrets Of The Brain

    Harry Potter did a lot to get kids reading, and children all over the world are still discovering the joy of reading thanks to the adventures of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world. It makes sense then that neuroscientists would use the books to study how our brain analyzes the written word.

    Carnegie Mellon University’s Machine Learning Department recently conducted a study of eight adults who read chapter nine in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone while hooked up to brain imaging hardware. Due to the constraints of the hardware, the participants couldn’t actually read the book, but were rather fed the chapter one word at a time via a display that flashed each word for half a second. In other words, the participants were reading the words as quickly as they normally would in a book.

    So, what did they find? Perhaps the most unsurprising find is that we view the characters in books as real people. For example, the part of the brain that helps us tell what emotions a person is feeling is used when trying to parse what emotions the character in the book is feeling.

    The really interesting find is that the brain scans found that we read books in a way that we might not even realize. While most would assume that we just focus on the present when reading a book, most of our brain power is actually spent relating the current events with events that have already happened. In other words, most of our brain is dedicated to fitting current events into context when reading. It’s something that people probably don’t consciously think they’re doing when reading, but, like breathing, they’re now aware of it.

    So, what do the researchers hope to discover with this study? There are a number of things, but perhaps the most exciting is helping us figure out why we have certain trouble with certain words or languages:

    “If I’m having trouble learning a new language, I may have a hard time figuring out exactly what I don’t get,” department head Tom Mitchell said. “When I can’t understand a sentence, I can’t articulate what it is I don’t understand. But a brain scan might show that the region of my brain responsible for grammar isn’t activating properly, or perhaps instead I’m not understanding the individual words.”

  • Walter Isaacson Talks Innovators At Google

    Walter Isaacson, who wrote the acclaimed biography of Steve Jobs, has a new book called The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution. It was released just over a month ago.

    Among those covered in the book are: Charles babbage, Ada Lovelace, Vannevar Bush, Alan Turing, Grace Hopper, John Mauchly, John von Neumann, J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Robert Noyce, Bill Gates, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, Larry Page, and Jimmy wales.

    Isaacson recently spoke in a Talk at Google, where he discussed the book and its subjects. Enjoy.

    Image via YouTube

  • Kindle Finally Lets You and Your Family Share Ebooks

    Amazon told us that it was coming soon, and today is the day. You can finally share ebooks with your family on your Kindle devices.

    Amazon has announced a slew of new features for its Kindle line, and ‘Household and Family Library’ is one of them. This feature lets two adults (you and your partner) share your ebooks across Amazon accounts, and also gives you the ability to manage up to four kids accounts.

    Family Library lets you share across Kindle devices, and even lets you share across Kindle apps on non-Amazon devices. The only drawback is that this only applies to ebooks – not previously-purchased TV shows or movies.

    Though Family Library is the most significant new feature announced today, Amazon also unveiled a few other interesting things. For instance, there’s Word Wise, which aims to help people better understand what they’re reading by displaying simple definitions above difficult words.

    Amazon has also added deeper Goodreads integration and has improved search.

    You can snag the update here.

    Image via Amazon

  • Amazon And Hachette Reach Agreement

    Amazon And Hachette Reach Agreement

    Amazon and Hachette agreed to settle their highly-publicized dispute over book pricing. The whole thing began earlier this year when Amazon dropped pre-orders for Hachette books and delayed delivery on some of them.

    The online retail giant wanted Hachette to price all e-books at $9.99 while giving Amazon more money. The two parties have issued a joint press release announcing a new agreement. It’s a multi-year agreement for e-book and print sales in the U.S.

    Michael Pietsch, Hachette Book Group CEO said, “This is great news for writers. The new agreement will benefit Hachette authors for years to come. It gives Hachette enormous marketing capability with one of our most important bookselling partners.”

    “We are pleased with this new agreement as it includes specific financial incentives for Hachette to deliver lower prices, which we believe will be a great win for readers and authors alike,” said David Naggar, Vice President, Kindle.

    According to the release, the new terms will go into effect early next year, and leave the responsibility for setting consumer prices for e-books with Hachette.

    Both parties will resume normal trading, and Hachette books will be featured in promotions.

    Image via Amazon

  • Bryan Cranston Tells Kids ‘You Have to F––king Eat’

    Over three years ago, author Adam Mansbach tackled a common problem for parents with his landmark childrens book for adults, Go The Fuck to Sleep. The book itself was great, but it was propelled to viral success by its audiobook – which featured actor and legendary purveyor of the word “f–ck” Samuel L. Jackson.

    Now Mansbach is back with his follow-up, which tackles another problem of child-rearing – getting your kids to eat.

    It’s called You Have to Fucking Eat, and once again, its accompanying audiobook is destined to please. Walter White himself, Bryan Cranston, lends his voice to the cause.

    “Mansbach’s long-awaited sequel is about that other great parental frustration: getting your little angel to eat something that even vaguely resembles a normal meal. Profane, loving, and deeply cathartic, You Have to F–king Eat breaks the code of child-rearing silence, giving moms and dads (new, old, grand-, and expectant) a much-needed chance to laugh about a universal problem.”

    You can listen to the whole thing here. The audiobook is free via Audible until December 12.

    Image via Audible, YouTube screenshot

  • Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ Is Becoming A Netflix Original Series

    Lemony Snicket’s ‘A Series Of Unfortunate Events’ Is Becoming A Netflix Original Series

    Netflix is reportedly adapting Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events for an original series.

    In case you’re unfamiliar with the title, it’s a series of thirteen children’s novels written by Daniel Handler, who uses the pen name Lemony Snicket. It was turned into a movie starring Jim Carrey, Meryl Streep, and Jude Law, which was released in 2004.

    Netflix has acquired the rights to the series, and is getting Paramount (which produced the film) to co-produce it. The Wrap shares a quote from Netflix VP of Original Content Cindy Holland:

    On the search for fantastic material that appeals to both parents and kids, the first stop for generations of readers is A Series of Unfortunate Events. We are proud to start work on a series for a global audience that already loves the books. The world created by Lemony Snicket is unique, darkly funny, and relatable. We can’t wait to bring it to life for Netflix members.

    The Hollywood Reporter shares one from Snicket:

    “I can’t believe it,” Snicket said from an undisclosed location. “After years of providing top-quality entertainment on demand, Netflix is risking its reputation and its success by associating itself with my dismaying and upsetting books.”

    Netflix has always been good about basing content on built-in audiences. It’s basically the strategy the company has used since House of Cards. It’s also why its upcoming Marvel series additions are a no-brainer.

    Image via YouTube