Jhumpa Lahiri being interviewed on Charlie Rose. I get the impression she gets nervous/insecure during interviews, which is totally understandable... Even Charlie Rose can be kind of intimidating!

Quoted: A conversation with author Jhumpa Lahiri about her book Unaccustomed Earth on Charlie Rose.

Haha we all have an inner Homer Simpson. For example, it took every ounce of energy this morning to overcome my impulse to eat the free donut (which would make me feel crappy later) and have healthy cereal. Mmmmm, free donut.

Quoted: The real trick to understanding how to approach Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, the new book by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler, lies in recognizing the limitations of your inner Homer Simpson and opting out of your own stupid choices.

Whoa, big news in book publishing. I feel like this encourages publishers to become Judith Reagan type figures, though, sadly...

Quoted: Peter W. Olson, one of the top figures in American publishing, has been under pressure over lower profits.

This book looks great - it's a satire on a really particular self-help genre that is super popular right now. The sad thing is, the author got the idea for the book because he was told he was too nice to ever advance. So, he experimented with being a major a@#hole, got the idea for this book, and is having the last laugh. Good for him. I also love all the various euphemisms for a@#hole in the article (like "orifice").

Quoted: A satirical new book serves up a 10-step program on how to be, well … an a--hole "I was the nicest guy in the world—and it was killing me," he writes in "A$$hole: How I Got Rich and Happy by Not Giving a Damn About Anyone and How You Can Too," his new mock-help masterpiece.

I see where the writer is going, but it's not an easy call. This doesn't really work for CDs/books that never have the promise of selling big in the first place...

Quoted: What should record labels, software giants, & other media companies do about digital piracy? There are two options: Get tough and defend intellectual-property rights with every legal & technological trick in the book, or tolerate some illegal copying in the hope of generating buzz & making money in some other way.

A review of A Blue Hand: The Beats in India. I had no idea that India had this kind of influence on the Beats (specifically Ginsberg), although it's not surprising. Sounds like an interesting read.

Quoted: Fifteen months in India in the early 1960s had a lasting influence on American poet Allen Ginsberg.

Looking forward to reading Jhumpa Lahiri's third book!

Quoted: The legacy of growing up in the grip of a globally mobile heritage is once again Jhumpa Lahiri's theme in her third book, Unaccustomed Earth. In a collection of stories as limpid yet complex as her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, she returns to familiar terrain—most of her Indians are highly educated, upper-middle-class suburbanites on the Boston-New York corridor—and to her well-honed role.

The Wikipedia entry and some of the blogs are a bit misleading. Here's more on the '21' casting controversy. Apparently the issue is that the team was primarily Asian (as well as other ethnicities) and that the film throws in 2 tolken Asians in the background rather than featuring them prominently. Also, the characters' ethnicities supposedly figure into the story very clearly in the book. Now I almost want to read/watch it just to see how I feel about it this!

Quoted: The head of an Asian-American watchdog group yesterday lashed out at the made-in-Boston flick “21” and MIT card shark Jeff Ma, who he claims supported the “whitewashing” of the Sony Pictures flick. “It’s insulting and pathetic,” said Guy Aoki, head of the Media Action Network for Asian-Americans.