The power of a brand..

Jhumpa Lahiri is no doubt a fantastic writer. What is even more
powerful than her writing today is the "brand" that has encompassed
her work. Lahiri is now one of the most powerful brands in the
literary world. Her book is now on the New York Times bestseller list.

"Lahiri, an author in the literary genre, has become so popular that
Knopf has reportedly printed 300,000 copies of her latest book,
similar to the amount of copies printed for books by popular fiction
authors like John Grisham," this is from a piece that I wrote for Idol
Chatter.

All the reviews of her latest book Unaccustomed Earth have been
fantastic, taking a powerful writer to even more heights, than she
could have ever imagined. Perhaps the only review that is critical of
her work with surprising logic is the one at www.Desicritics.org says
"Reading the collection of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri in
Unaccustomed Earth is like unwrapping layer upon layer of a much
anticipated gift only to find a mundane trinket in the end. Lahiri
seems to take perverse pleasure in playing bad Santa who stuffs the
stockings of her readers with coal, when in fact she could have easily
gratified us with eight beautiful presents. I am not entirely sure why
she would want to do what she does with unerring success story after
story. Is this by design or an unintended consequence?"

Read the full review at --
http://desicritics.org/2008/04/20/114322.php

Read the Idol Chatter piece about Lahiri becoming a pop-culture icon at--
http://blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter/2008/04/jhumpa-lahiri-a-new-pop-cultur.html

Some glowing reviews and interviews with Lahiri can be read at the links below--
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200802u/jhumpa-lahiri
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/books/04Book.html?ref=review
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=b458594b-ac96-4572-8b8b-bedcd27bbf5e
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236881

Mills and Boon arrives in India...

All those Mills and Boons we used to devour when we where teenagers in
India. Whether we really liked them or not, peer pressure was in full
force, we had to read all the latest ones so we could talk about them
in college. We used to go to lending libraries and line up outside so
we could borrow the latest M&B's. Now they are moving to India. An
article in the Telegraph says - "Andrew Go, head of Indian operations
of Harlequin Mills & Boon, owned by Canadian giant Tristar, believes
that India could become its largest market. "

An excerpt from this aticle --
"A generation of urban, educated women have devoured Mills & Boon's
romantic fiction since the days of the Raj, but only through Indian
lending libraries and the limited number of titles exported here.

Now the publisher, which sells four books across the world every
second, has tied up with an Indian company to publish its novels here
and distribute them at supermarkets and newspaper kiosks for just 99
rupees (£1.30).

It also plans to launch an Indian series later this year — stories set
in India, about Indians, by Indians. The aim is to conquer the hearts
of 300 million English speakers with its romantic fiction."

Read the full article at --
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/09/wboon109.xml

Food and Memories from India...

Todays New York Times magazine has a really nice article by Kiran
Desai, about nostalgic memories from India.

An excerpt from this piece--
"In the afternoons, as the rest of the family slept the sodden sleep
of a hot climate, I would tiptoe into the kitchen. Saratbhai would be
napping on the even hotter rooftop, among the rows of earthenware pots
he placed there to cool the concrete.

My mother was amused by this interest of mine. She preferred to spend
her time among her books, a collection that traveled all the way from
floor to ceiling. For an Indian woman, her lack of meddling in the
kitchen was remarkable and weird. Saratbhai boasted about it to the
others in the community of harassed, bullied cooks. It gave him
status. He was our kitchen deity.

But now his artistry was being snubbed by a child, by tastes from
abroad that he could not gauge or understand, gleaned from a book he
could not read. An uncertain world where Western was better than
Indian, where the young ridiculed the old — a world for which he
didn't have skills to cope might pour into his kitchen and undo our
home and his dignity within it."

Read the full article at --
http://select.nytimes.com/mem/tnt.html?pagewanted=2&tntget=2008/02/10/magazine/10food-t.html&tntemail0=y&emc=tnt

Muse and the Marketplace on NPR

Read the transcript on WBUR's Morning Edition

http://www.wbur.org/news/2007/67091_20070511.asp

Excellent Quote!

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.
- Ring Lardner

This makes it even easier in the world of e-mail right, to hit the reply button with a form letter that says thanks but not thanks!!!

Finding My Muse

This weekend I was at a writers conference in Cambridge, I am always amazed at how many writers there are out there, in spite of the fact that they hardly make any money, unless of course they are a John Grisham, Dan Brown or a Vikram Chandra. Most of them hold full time day jobs ranging fro IT to waiting tables, but they continue to make time to pursue their passion. I want to dedicate this post to those hardworking writers out there who keep chugging away at what they love to do!