What Caught My Fancy

In this post, I would like to share a few things that caught my fancy in the week gone by:

• For World War II buffs, and I am a great one let me admit, here’s something which sounds very interesting. A story of Jews in the Second World War, not as you would imagine in Europe but in Shanghai of all the places. A thriller by Daniel Kalla called “The Far Side Of The Sky” is reviewed here in the Huffington Post by Julie A. Carlson. I was impressed by Kalla’s ability to manage to be a writer despite his demanding schedule as the department head of two teaching hospitals in Vancouver. Second, I learnt how fascinating it can be to choose a little known topic, like the Jews of Shanghai and write a book on this!
• James Patterson needs no introduction. He earned $84 million last year according to Forbes magazine to make him the world highest earning author.I was interested to read how he is busy spending big bucks to develop a readership for the future! This article in Bloomberg News by Patrick Cole makes some new points on how an author who already has a huge readership world-wide is doing his bit to develop the habit of reading: amongst new readers, especially kids.

End of a Chapter

In the old days, a chapter was a kind of milestone  or guidepost, if you will, in the novel. It sort of led you from one major point to another, often depicting sequential events in time or points of view of different characters in the story. They were fairly long and usually of varying length. Recently, I came across a very different treatment of what I imagined chapters would be in James Patterson’s “Cross Country”

Best Selling Authors

Every writer dreams of becoming a best-selling author. We know of course that very few attain this status! Who do you think was on  the top of the pile of best-selling authors last year? How well did your favourite author do and how much of the big bucks did he/she make?