Poor, Oprah. She just can’t pick a book, can she?

Remember when Oprah got duped by James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces?  She was steadfastly behind this book about a man’s trials with drug addiction, even making it one of her precious “Oprah’s Book Club” choices.  Then it came to light that he had made the vast majority of it up.  She had him come back on the show and chastised him for fooling her and the readers.

Think she will do the same with Herman Rosenblat?

Over the years, Mr. Rosenblat has become famous for his tale of how he met his future wife while he was at Schlieben, a sub-division of the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp.  The story goes that Mr. Rosenblat met a young Jewish girl, Roma Radzicki, who lived near the camp, but her family was posing as Christians, when she approached the fence one day.  Over the next few months she passed food to him through the fence, but they lost contact when he was moved to another camp.

Then in 1957, Mr. Rosenblat was set up on a blind date in Coney Island, NY, and he recognized the girl immediately to be the girl that passed him food years before.  They married not long after that, and have now been together for 50 years.

Ms. Winfrey has referred to as “the single greatest love story … we’ve ever told on the air.”  The problem is that it has now been revealed to be a hoax.

Due to the popularity of the story, it was due to be published as a book entitled Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love that Survived in February by Berkley Books.  The book has now been canceled and a demand has been made for Mr. Rosenblat to return his advance.  However, the $25 million dollar movie that is slated to be made of the story is still going forward as they had planned to fictionalize large portions of it.

According to Times Online, the story was revealed as a hoax by Ben Helfgott, a former Schlieben inmate, in the New Republic magazine.  He says that the story is a complete fabrication, and other experts on Schlieben have said the story was impossible because where Mr. Rosenblat says this all took place would have put him right next to the SS barracks.

Mr. Rosenblat is quoted as saying:

“I wanted to bring happiness to people.  I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world.”

That is all well and good, but perhaps you shouldn’t have told people it was true?  He continued to report this story to be true for years, and through two appearances on the Oprah show.  He had ample oppurtunity to tell people it was made up, and people would have probably still enjoyed it, but instead he continued the lie, and was happy to make money off of it.  That is where he sunk himself.

According to a story by the Associated Press, publishers admit they are not fact checking books because of the volume of releases each year, and it would simply cost them too much to check each one.  To that I say, “tough luck.”  Since when has checking facts become too much of a hassle?  Are publishers now saying that the truth no longer matters?  “Well, it looks sorta true… good enough.”

And what of Oprah?  Has she not learned her lesson?  Should she not be looking to check facts after that whole Frey debacle?  What is that old saying again?  “Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me”?  Well, guess what, Oprah… shame on you.

This whole thing is sickening.  It plays on people’s guilt about the Holocaust, it plays to people who are desperate for stories that show love can survive anything, and it just stinks in general that someone could lie for years and feel that is perfectly okay.

What is with the surge in teenagers loving vampires?

I talked about this sudden love of vampires in Scattercast episode 20, but then when I spent my day in Hastings, I found even more evidence of it.  As I sat in one of the reading chairs to flip through a magazine, I found myself sitting across from the teen novels.  As one girl in a letterman’s jacket with “10″ on the sleeve (oof… I feel old since mine had “89″ on it), I noticed she was picking up one of the Twilight novels.  I just shook my head and went back to my magazine.

After the girl departed, I started scanning the racks and noticed another series of vampire novels for teens, Vampire Kisses by Ellen Schrieber.  I knew nothing of this series, so I looked it up and Amazon pointed me to this summary from Booklist:

Gr. 7-10. Sixteen-year-old Raven is a Goth surrounded by “lesser” folks: her parents have transformed themselves from hippie to corporate, and her only friend at school is an outsider everyone picks on. In Raven’s rich imaginary life, she is bold and special and in love with the idea of meeting a vampire. Schreiber uses a careful balance of humor, irony, pathos, and romance as she develops a plot that introduces the possibility of a real vampire–in the form of an extra-handsome boy, of course– while exploring how a girl like Raven finds ways to cope with a bully who is both class- and gender-conscious of his supposed superiority. Raven’s voice is immediately charming, in spite of her alleged bravado and coldheartedness. Her hometown could be any Small Town, USA, and its possibly haunted mansion just lightens the scene rather than making the story silly. This tale slides down easily and will be welcomed by Goths willing to look on the lighter side of their own culture as well as by readers who have an openminded appreciation for the vagaries of their peers and, perhaps, of themselves.

When I went to Ms. Schrieber’s site, I discovered a sixth book is scheduled for Summer ‘09 and the seventh is on track for Summer ‘10.

What in the world is going on?  What is this sudden teen obsession with vampires?  True, I understand they are romanticizing the concept to a ridiculous degree, but at the end of the day you are romanticizing creatures that are mass-murdering blood suckers!  Oh, yes, they are misunderstood and are outsiders like you… not really, no.  They drink the blood of people.

South Park sent up this whole craze in their 12th season finale, “The Ungroundable“, and as they do with many subjects, they seemed to boil it down to its essentials: It’s a fad for some, a way to empower others, such as Butters used it.  In the end most of it can be blamed on the clothing store chain Hot Topic… a concept I don’t wholly disagree with.  As I said in Scattercast, I can remember my gothy moments from my own teen years, but I certainly never went around putting in fake vampire teeth and drinking clamato juice.

As with all fads, I am sure this too will pass, and I am certainly not saying there is anything that horribly wrong with teens trying to find themselves, but why vampires?  Is it the immortality?  I would hope it isn’t the drinking blood angle, but maybe it is.  And what would these kids do if they ever met a real vampire?  It reminds me of a second season episode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer entitled “Lie To Me” when Buffy’s fifth grade crush comes to town and takes her to a bar filled with kids obsessed with vampires who dress like them, or how they think they would dress.  When the real vampire’s show up, namely Spike’s gang, all of them freak out and want to go home realizing just how truly evil the real things are.  This episode should be required watching for this new generation of Vamp kids.

So, what say you?  Why is this the new fad amongst teens?  What do you make of it?

Yesterday Alex Carnevale over at io9 brought up a story about how some science fiction writers are calling for a boycott of the Borders chain of bookstores overthe fact the store had skipped ordering their book.

As I have dug down deeper into the back story of what was going on, it makes even less sense than it did at first blush.  Going backwards, sci-fi authors such as Tobias Buckell and Pat Cadigan are saying that authors should boycott Borders for their recent trend to skip titles in hardcovers or expensive trades.

The Borders chain has been in financial trouble for a while now and is trying to get itself back on track by tightening their belt.  Add in the recent economic news and you will probably find chain stores in numerous industries trying to find ways to cut back on expenses, and that will mean tighter constraints on orders for new products.

The idea of authors withholding new titles because previous were skipped is just asinine, and also probably impossible.  Is anyone in their right mind going to turn down an order of a few hundred copies of a new book because their previous one was passed over?  Get over yourself and get your ego in check.  Add in do you really think the publisher, who is the ultimate say in things like this is going to say to a bookseller, “Oh no, sorry, we aren’t selling this book to you because you hurt the author’s feelings on their last book, and what they say goes!”

Yeah, that isn’t happening.

Andrew Wheeler, a Marketing Manager for John Wiley & Sons, has an incredibly in-depth blog post about how book ordering works and how “skips” suck, but they are part of the nature of bok selling.  All of this is extremely easy for me to relate to from my comic book selling days, and if comic creators had wanted to boycott me for not ordering their previous works, I would have had nothing to sell.  You only have so much budget to work with, so much shelf space and only so many resources to devote to promoting a given project.  Worst of all, unlike book stores, direct sales comic stores have no return capabalities, so it was always a huge risk for us to order, so every book had to earn its way on to our shelves.

In short, I think I am just awe-struck by the ego and entitlement these authors are showing.  While I realize every author wants to sell copies of their books, they should also remember all those authors who can’t even get their books published.  So you didn’t make it in to Borders, fine, you just work that much harder to help promote the copies ordered by other sellers.  However, to punish a book seller that is already in financial problems is just stupid.  Say they ordered 900 copies of your previous book, skipped the next, you boycott them on the next one, they go out of business in the meantime, just how many copies of the project after that one do you think they will order?  Yeah, that’s right, 0.

Your biggest concern right now should be keeping your industry afloat so you have future work, not your bruised egos.  Pull yourself up by your boot straps, put a smile on, and keep your industry going.  Don’t act like tantrum throwing children.

UPDATE: Okay, okay, I get it, I misread the situation!  The authors did NOT, I repeat, DID NOT call for a boycott.

HBO launched a new vampire series called True Blood a little over a week ago, and, everyone hold on to your hats, I’m enjoying it!

I know, I know, most people are used to me ragging on all forms of media, and that’s not to say it’s without it’s faults, but it is holding my attention.

The basic premise is that a Japanese company came up with a synthetic blood named “True Blood”, and once this was known, vampires decided to “come out of the coffin”.  Over the two years since this happened, they have been integrating into society, and are even on the verge of getting the Vampire Rights Bill passed to give them equal rights with mortals in the United States.

In Bon Temps, LA, small town waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Played by Oscar winning actress Anna Paquin) has been anxious to meet one.  Then, one night Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) walks into her bar, and she is instantly attracted to him.  Part of the reason may be that Sookie has been telepathic her entire life, and she has trouble turning it off, but for some reason all she hears from Bill is silence, and she finds it relaxing.

I won’t give away any more of the plot details, but I have to say I am intrigued by a lot of aspects of the show, and it quickly sets up a lot of mysteries that I am anxious to figure out.  Who killed the town tramp?  What is going on with Sookie’s brother?  Why does a mysterious dog seem to follow Sookie everywhere she goes, and why does Bill keep smiling at it like he knows something?

What I didn’t know going into this was that is based on an 8 novel series called The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris.  The first episode intrigued me enough to go ahead and order the first novel, Dead Until Dark, which I, of course, have not had time to read yet.  I also must admit that I went ahead and picked it up because the show debuted to fairly low ratings, and it makes me worried we won’t get past the first 12 episodes they’ve filmed.  True, I may lost interest a couple episodes in (only two have aired so far), but for now it has me looking forward to each new episode.

If you’ve got the time, go ahead and check it out.  If you like vampire stories, you’ll like it.  If you like Souther style mysteries, you’ll like it.

The only thing I truly hate about the series?  I’ve long had an idea for a vampire story that a synthetic blood played a large aspect in… d’oh!

Remember books?  You know, those things printed on paper… placed between two covers?  Yeah, those things!  Well, oddly enough, I heard about two today that are worth mentioning.

In the seventh book of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,an important part of the plot hinged on a fictional children’s book called Tales of Beedle the Bard.  J.K. Rowling, the author of the series, made a handwritten copy of the book and auctioned it off to charity.  Amazon.com ended up buying it and posting copious amounts of information about it on their site, sharing it with the world.

Now it has been announced that a standard edition is being released, and a deluxe version that will be exclusive to Amazon.  The standard edition will have a suggested retail price of $12.99 ($7.59 at Amazon) and  will have all of the drawings Ms. Rowling did for the original, along with all five of the fairy tales with comments and footnots by “Professor Dumbeldore”.  The deluxe edition will set you back $100 and features metal parts on the cover, 10 additional drawings by Rowling and a few other extras.

It would be easy to call this a cash grab by Rowling, but like she did with the set of text books a few years back, all of the proceeds from these books will be going to charity.  The charity, Children’s High Level Group, was set up by Rowling and Emma Nicholson MEP to help vulnerable children.

I know I gave the last book a harsh review, but it is always hard to argue with anything that is done to benefit children, so kudos to her for using her notoriety to help them out.

The second book is just amazing that it will even exist.  I have talked about Garfield Minus Garfield before, and it amazed me in this day and age of copyright lawsuits that such a creature could exist.  My amazement deepened even more when Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, talked about how he felt it was a wonderful idea.

Today the story takes an even odder turn with the announcement that Garfield Minus Garfield is becoming a book, and it will be published alongside a book celebrating the 30th anniversary of the original series.  The the Garfield Minus Garfield book will publish the original strip along with the version that features only the character of Jon Arbuckle.

This whole concept is just amazing, and congratulations to Dan Walsh, the creator of the site, on the book deal.