The Nimble Books Blog

Artists, architects, academics and designers have joined forces to battle the growing phenomenon of “Leonardo-ization” .

Dozens of experts from a range of different fields have joined the campaign, which opposes the exploitation and commercialization of Leonardo da Vinci’s name and work .

“Leonardo is increasingly famous but his name has become overused in clichés and misunderstood through banal, implausible interpretations,” said the director of the Leonardo da Vinci Museum, Alessandro Vezzosi .

“We decided to produce a thought-provoking manifesto on Leonardo, in the name of ethics, art and creative awareness.” The team believes that the Renaissance genius’s ideas, designs and projects are light years away from the simplistic concepts popularized in novels such as Dan Brown’s runaway blockbuster The Da Vinci Code

As Alias clearly shows, Leonardo’s ideas were on a par with Rambaldi’s.

Tags: Dan Brown, The Solomon Key and Beyond by wfzimmerman
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New York Daily News’s Roger Rubin and New York Newsday’s Dave Lennon’s book on the 50 greatest New York sports debates, such as: Al Leiter: great New Yorker or big phony? Better team: ‘86 Mets or the ‘96 Yankees? And best coach: Tuna or Torre?, at auction, to Jake Klisivitch at Plume, by Greg Dinkin at Venture Literary

If those are the best examples they can come up with, the rest of the book must be an extraordinary snoozefest.

As a lifelong New York Times subscriber residing in Michigan, I have already suffered through more than my share of super-parochial inside-New-York sports coverage. Pass.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading, YA by wfzimmerman
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Time, Inc. editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine’s OFF THE RECORD: The Use and Misuse of Anonymous Sources, reflections in the wake of his decision to turn over White House correspondent Matt Cooper’s records regarding the Valerie Plame story to a grand jury, to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, for publication in 2007, by Lynn Nesbit at Janklow & Nesbit (NA). Pearlstine will donate his royalties to “not-for-profit organizations that support journalists and journalism.”

Writing this book takes a lot of gall. Reading it would take a strong stomach.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading, Writing, YA by wfzimmerman
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All Sorts of Weird Stuff: A Song of Ice and Fire - Index

Strong Belwas image at westeros.org.

Tags: A Feast for Crows by wfzimmerman
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O. Henry Award-winning author Brian Evenson’s surreal THE OPEN CURTAIN, exploring an impressionable boy’s obsession with a hundred-year-old murder that becomes increasingly and unsettlingly more and more relevant to his life, to Chris Fischbach at Coffee House Press, by Matt McGowan at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency (NA; translation, excl. France).

Not exactly an original premise. Half the suspense and mystery novels ever published have to do with vulnerable protagonists investigating long-ago murders. What would be really original would be a novel about a vulnerable protagonist who resolutely refuses to get sucked into an obsession with a long-ago murder and stays focused in the present.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading by wfzimmerman
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Publishers Marketplace: Recent Deals: “University of Washington paleontologist and astrobiologist Peter D. Ward’s THE GLOBAL WARMING EXTINCTIONS: The Once and Potentially Future Greenhouse Gas Catastrophes, arguing that rising levels of carbon dioxide were responsible for most of the world’s great extinctions, and considers what that means for our warming future, to T.J. Kelleher at Smithsonian Books, in a good deal, by Samuel Fleishman at Literary Artists Representation (world).”

What’s interesting about this is that it provides an overdetermined explanation for the most recent (Holocene) mass extinction. Even without greenhouse warming, the spread of homo sapiens over the earth in the last 30,000 years has triggered a mass extinction. So what difference will this book make?

Tags: What's New for Book-Lovers by wfzimmerman
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Lori Hartman Gervasi’s FIGHT LIKE A GIRL: Defense Decisions for Females, showing women of all ages how to take responsibility for their own safety, preparing them both mentally and physically to ward off unwanted situations from the distressing to the potentially deadly, to Regina Scarpa at St. Martin’s, in a nice deal, by Stephany Evans, at the Imprint Agency.

Title is fatally flawed.

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading, Law by wfzimmerman
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From Publishers Marketplace:

Truman Capote’s recently discovered first novel, SUMMER CROSSING, about a young lighthearted NY socialite on her own in her family’s Fifth Avenue penthouse for the summer and her intensifying affair with a Brooklyn-born Jewish war veteran who works as a parking lot attendant, to David Ebershoff at Random House, for publication on October 25, by Alan U. Schwartz for the Truman Capote Literary Trust

I’ve already seen “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”

Tags: Books I Won't Be Reading by wfzimmerman
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Here, let me save you a lot of time:

The eventual vote will go strictly on party lines.

A filibuster will be threatened, but faced with the “nuclear option” of eliminating the filibuster, the Democrats will back off at the last moment.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News: “President Bush has chosen Harriet Miers, White House counsel and a loyal member of the president’s inner circle, to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, a senior administration official said Monday.

If confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, Miers, 60, would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the nation’s highest court.

Miers, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the Texas State Bar and the Dallas Bar Association”

Tags: YA, Zimmerblog General by wfzimmerman
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