NEW YORK — Eloise, the Plaza hotel’s most famous fictitious resident, has officially returned to the storied landmark following a $400 million renovation — with a portrait of the mischievous 6-year-old prominently displayed near its famous Palm Court dining room.
‘‘Children of all ages have been asking for Eloise and it is our pleasure to have her call The Plaza home once again,’’ said Shane Krige, the hotel’s general manager.
Eloise, known to fans worldwide from the children’s book by Kay Thompson (illustrated by Hilary Knight), is an endearing fixture at the hotel. An ‘‘Eloise’’ bubble bath, accompanied by milk and cookies, is available to all guests, and a children’s menu, which pictures Eloise on a tricycle, is available in all of The Plaza’s restaurants.
The portrait was returned to its original spot on a wall outside the sumptuous restaurant, whose stained-glass ceiling, covered with plaster in the 1940s, was uncovered and restored during the two-year renovation.
The Plaza, a National Historic Landmark, first opened in 1907. It officially reopened to the public last weekend after its new owners, Elad Properties, converted the hotel’s original 805 guest rooms into 282 hotel rooms and 181 condominiums.
Hearing that HarperCollins is planning on doing away with the clunky catalogs they send out throughout the year and switching to an online system instead has me giddy.
‘‘I think we are overdue. We produce thousands and thousands of catalogs, many of which go right into the wastebaskets,’’ HarperCollins President Jane Friedman, who said the switch would likely begin by summer 2009, told The Associated Press.
She's absolutely right — in my case at least. The obvious cost-efficiency and environmental aspects notwithstanding, I get more advance reading copies and finished copies of books sent to me than I'll ever cover in the paper, so I decided early on to not waste time going through the catalogs. If someone wants me to look at their book, they'll have to e-mail me a heads-up or send me a copy directly.
NEW YORK (AP) — Prince the musical auteur is becoming an author.
21 Nights, a ‘‘photographic essay’’ that offers ‘‘a rare glimpse into the life, lyrics, and mystique’’ of the maker of such hits as ‘‘1999’’ and ‘‘Purple Rain,’’ will be published worldwide come fall, according to Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster.
The book, his first, is based on Prince’s 21 sold-out concerts in as many nights at London’s O2 Arena in 2007.
‘‘Juxtaposing his dueling worlds of music and solitude, [the book] will incorporate Prince’s evocative poetry and lyrics to new songs and other selections, and 124 full-color, sumptuous, never-before-published images by celebrated photographer Randee St. Nicholas,’’ Atria announced Monday.
21 Nights will include a CD of after-hours jams, ‘‘Indigo Nights,’’ unavailable from any other outlet.
The folks that brought you Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room are now giving similar treatment to the Eliot Spitzer scandal.
Peter Elkind, a senior writer for Fortune magazine, and filmmaker Alex Gibney are collaborating on the book version, to be published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), plus a documentary about the former New York governor who resigned over allegations about his connection to a $5,500-an-hour call girl ring.
‘‘This is not a quickie book," Portfolio publisher and President Adrian Zackheim told The Associated Press. "[Elkind] is going to do what he does best: Come back with a very, very satisfying, in-depth and complicated story.’’
No release date has been set.
Meanwhile, former Major Leaguer Darryl Strawberry (with help from author John Strausbaugh) is writing a memoir, to be published in 2009 by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins.
According to the publisher, the book, titled Straw, ‘‘details his life growing up in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, his rise to baseball superstardom as a Met, Dodger, and Yankee, the high life and low life, his brushes with the law, his triumphant battle over cancer, his religious awakening, and his marriage to the love of his life.’’
The Poetry Center of Chicago announces the winners of the 14th Annual Poetry Center of Chicago Juried Reading at a ceremony here in town last weekend. Poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller was the judge. Winners include:
First place: Sara Parrell of Madison, Wis.
Second Place: Stacey Lynn Brown, Edwardsville, Ill.
Third Place: Susan Elbe, Madison, Wis.
Other finalists, chosen from a field of more than 250 submissions, were: T. Zachary Cotler, Iowa City, Iowa; Brett Foster, Wheaton, Ill.; Elizabeth Hoover, Bloomington, Ind.; Jennifer Perrine, Des Moines, Iowa, and Amanda Rachelle Warren, Kalamazoo, Mich.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald H. Rumsfeld, the powerful former defense secretary and architect of the Iraq War, is working on a memoir to be published by Penguin Group (USA) in 2010.
Books by such former Bush administration officials as treasury secretary Paul O’Neill and CIA director George Tenet have come out, but Rumsfeld’s take is from the highest level so far.
He will receive no advance for the currently untitled book, only money for expenses. Profits will be donated to a foundation he started, whose projects include grants to ‘‘promising young individuals’’ interested in public service.
LONDON — It turns out that James Bond creator Ian Fleming got a little help from an unexpected source — a real life Miss Moneypenny to whom he turned for advice on plot points and character development.
A series of letters between Fleming and Jean Frampton, a typist-turned-adviser, was sold to an anonymous private collector Friday for more than $28,000, far more than had been expected.
The novelist and the typist never met, but over time she became a trusted aide to Fleming, who was working in London as a newspaper editor in the 1950s when he dreamed up Agent 007.
Congratulations to Chicago author Dwight Okita, who you might remember from a March 19 posting on this blog. Okita was one of 10 finalists in Amazon.com's Breakthough Novel contest, in which the public voted for the winner.
Okita didn't win for his book, The Prospect of My Arrival, but he did get enough votes to make the Top 3, who were all flown to New York for the awards ceremony. The winner was Bill Loehfelm, for his book, Fresh Kills, about an estranged son struggling to find his father's killer and make peace with the past.
Here's a note Okita sent out to his supporters last night:
Hi all,
As some of you know, I got the exciting phone call from Amazon telling me that I had made it to the Top 3 in the novel contest! They flew us to New York last weekend for the awards ceremony. Though I didn't win the publishing deal, I made many great connections in the business and hope to find a happy ending to my novel yet. Thanks to everyone for their support of my novel. More to come later.
Dwight
And here is what Publisher's Weekly had to say about Okita's book:
In Chicago of 2025, the experimental Pre-Born Project at the Infinity Medical Center has inserted the consciousness of a fetus into the unoccupied body of a 30-year-old man, who will visit seven Referrals before deciding whether he chooses to be born. In lesser hands, this odd premise might have veered into political diatribe or slapstick. Instead, the protagonist, called Prospect, takes the reader on an engrossing and moving journey into the meaning of life, filled with fresh observations and memorable characters. Addressing the reader with a voice that skillfully blends innocence and wisdom, this latter-day Candide discovers unexpected connections among his Referrals and lands in jeopardy that keeps the pages turning until its satisfying and touching conclusion. The reader will find many insights and turns of phrase (curtains that "move like jellyfish in the summer breeze") to savor along the way.
NEW YORK (AP) — The youngest son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is writing a book about his father. Gilad Sharon’s memoir, Sharon: A Leader and a Father, is tentatively scheduled to come out in 2010.
‘‘Drawing from his father’s extensive archives, a remarkable cache of private papers and correspondence to which only he has access, Sharon provides a candid look at his father’s political legacy, surveying more than thirty years of leadership on a global stage,’’ publisher HarperCollins said Monday in a statement.
According to HarperCollins, Gilad Sharon will offer ‘‘memorable portraits’’ of President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders.
Ariel Sharon turned 80 in February, more than two years after he was rendered comatose by a stroke while serving in Israel’s top job. Sharon made his name as a daring and often insubordinate army officer, before turning to politics in the 1970s and becoming a hawkish lawmaker in the hardline Likud Party and one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the Israeli settlement movement.
In a dramatic change of direction, he pulled all of Israel’s settlers and soldiers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005 while he was prime minister.
Sharon’s eldest son, Omri, 43, recently received a seven-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to illegal fundraising for his father’s 1999 successful election campaign to win the leadership of Likud. The two brothers oversaw parts of the campaign and fundraising.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, his state’s first black governor and a close ally of presidential candidate Barack Obama, is writing a memoir that will be published by Broadway Books in 2010.
Gov. Deval Patrick
The deal is worth $1.35 million and nine publishers competed for the book, currently untitled, according to agent Todd Shuster of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Patrick will donate some of his royalties to A Better Chance, a nonprofit educational organization that helped Patrick attend the Milton Academy, south of Boston.
‘‘Drawing upon his extraordinary journey from Chicago’s Wabash Avenue to the Massachusetts State House on Boston’s fabled Beacon Hill, Gov. Patrick will offer in his book a series of lessons and insights on life and leadership,’’ according to a statement released Friday by Broadway Books, an imprint of Random House, Inc.
‘‘Among the subjects he will address are self-truth, grace, faith, courage, and compassion, as well as the importance of forgiveness, and embracing optimism and hope to make good outcomes possible.’’
Obama, a black Illinois senator who wrote Dreams From My Father and Audacity of Hope, is similar to Patrick in several ways: Both are Democrats who graduated from Harvard Law School, have Chicago ties and ended up seeking elective office on the strength of their backgrounds.
Patrick, 51, was out of state last week when his casino gambling plan, a cornerstone of his economic program, went down to defeat, leading to speculations about his whereabouts: He was in New York, shopping his book.
Patrick briefly became an issue in the presidential campaign when it was discovered that Obama had been using some of his lines, saying that while words matter, actions mean more, leading Obama’s rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to call him the candidate of ‘‘change you can Xerox.’’
Patrick, one of Obama’s strongest supporters, dismissed the charges as ‘‘sort of a tempest in a teapot.’’
Former tennis champ Monica Seles — who can currently be seen dancing with the stars Monday and Tuesday nights on ABC-Channel 7 — is working on a memoir, to be published in 2009. She hopes ‘‘to share how I found balance, strength and happiness in my life after a rollercoaster ride of exhilarating accomplishment and sometimes overwhelming tragedy,’’ she said in a statement Wednesday.
Seles, 34, was the top-ranked women’s player for three years in the early 1990s. In 1993 she suffered a setback when a man attending a tournament in Hamburg, Germany, climbed out of the stands and stabbed her in the back. She came back two years later to reach the U.S. Open finals and in 1996 won the Australian Open. She officially retired last month.
Monica Seles with her
"Dancing With the Stars"
partner Jonathan Roberts.
(AP photo)
Publisher pulls book about Chicago's Four Seasons Hotel
By HILLEL ITALIE
A gossipy book by two ex-concierges at Chicago’s luxurious Four Seasons Hotel has been pulled by Three Rivers Press because the authors were legally banned from writing about their experiences.
‘‘Despite previous and repeated inquiries made by Three Rivers Press, we recently learned that Abigail Hart and Nancy Callahan did not disclose that they had signed confidentiality agreements with their former employer, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts,’’ publicist Katie Wainwright told The Associated
Press on Thursday.
The book, Great Reservations: Two Concierges Dish About Outrageous Requests, Celebrity Encounters, and Guests Behaving Badly at a Luxury Hotel, had been scheduled for a June release. It featured anecdotes on such celebrities as Madonna (who had a ‘‘phobialike aversion’’ to air conditioning) and Sir Anthony Hopkins (who asked that he simply be called ‘‘Tony’’).
Although advance copies had been sent to the media, the book had not yet been shipped to stores and a print run had not been determined, Wainwright said.
Three Rivers Press is an imprint of Random House, Inc., which is owned by Bertelsmann AG.
AP
Note: Here's what the book would have looked like had it made it to store shelves:
Chicago author Dwight Okita is one of 10 finalists in an "American Idol"-type competition for the literary set — and you can help him win by voting online. Okita's book, Prospect of My Arrival, is a science fiction story set in Chicago in the near future: 2025.
There were nearly 5,000 submissions for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, which is sponsored by Amazon.com, Penguin Group (USA) and HP.
Voters can download, read, rate and/or review excerpts of all the finalists' work by logging on to www.amazon.com/abna. Voting ends March 31 and the winner will be unveiled in New York on April 7. The finalist with the most votes wins a publishing contract worth $25,000.
Check out Okita's Web site for more information about the author and the contest.
NEW YORK (AP) — Jim Dale, the Grammy Award-winning reader of the Harry Potter audiobooks, will be among the performers participating in a celebration of Hemingway, Chekhov and other short story masters.
‘‘Short-Short Stories From Around the World’’ will be held the afternoon of March 28 at Saint Peter’s Church in midtown Manhattan and will feature readings by Dale and actors Brian F. O’Byrne, Tammy Grimes and Frances Sternhagen.
The free event is sponsored by TIPA (Toward International Peace through the Arts), a nonprofit organization.
Editor's note: Dale is the voice behind the American version of the Harry Potter books. Stephen Fry reads the British version of the series.
Harry Potter book reader Jim Dale
will turn his attention to the classics
this month. (Akira Ono~AP)
Hemingway letters show Papa's affection for family
By GENARO C. ARMAS
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — A message on a postcard from Ernest Hemingway to his father foreshadows the life-changing experiences that would become the foundation for one of the author’s most beloved stories, A Farewell to Arms.
The words on the postcard, dated June 9, 1918, are simple, yet ominous. Hemingway would be shot a month later while serving as an ambulance driver during World War I in Italy. ‘‘Everything lovely. We go to the front tomorrow,’’ he wrote. ‘‘We’ve been treated like kings.’’
The handwritten postcard is part of a collection of 100 telegrams, letters and other correspondence from Hemingway acquired by the Penn State University Libraries from the author’s nephew, Ernest Hemingway Mainland. Some of the material is on display at the university’s Paterno Library.
William Joyce (left), special collections library head, and Sandra Spanier,
general editor, Hemingway letters project, look over a rare Hemingway
book In Our Time, a collection of 18 vignettes published in 1924,
at the Paterno Library at Penn State University in State College, Pa.
(Pat Little~AP)
The items represent the last known sizable collection of Hemingway letters still in private hands, said William Joyce, head of the Special Collections Library. Neither the university nor Mainland disclosed terms of the acquisition.
Besides Italy, the dispatches originate from, or prominently mention, other places familiar to Hemingway buffs, such as Pamplona, Spain, which figures in The Sun Also Rises, and Key West, Fla., where Hemingway lived in the 1930s.
One postcard with a picture of the cathedral of Milan, Italy, was addressed to ‘‘Dr. C.E. Hemingway’’ — Hemingway’s father, Clarence Hemingway. A month later, the writer suffered more than 200 wounds to his legs from mortar shrapnel while attending to Italian soldiers in trenches. Hemingway recovered at a hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with a nurse.
‘‘To see the postcard he sent home, just pinning down the day he goes to the front is very exciting,’’ Penn State English professor Sandra Spanier said with a smile. ‘‘This is the material that got transformed into A Farewell to Arms.’’
