Stewart also shares a few interesting tidbits on gender, color, and the association of blue as male and pink as female:

“It’s an interesting question because we tend to feel that that’s a really immutable rule that must have been true forever, but in fact it’s a very relatively recent thing that that has become ironclad — actually in the ’70s.

But, earlier, it was a question simply of what goes with the child’s complexion. So the rule of thumb was often if you have brown eyes a baby looks good in pink no matter what their gender is. Blue eyes — blue.

Sometimes there were other rules. So for example, in Catholic parts of Germany it was the fashion to dress your little girl in blue, because it was an homage to the Virgin Mary. And then the boys would be in pink, because that was a watered-down version of a sort of traditionally masculine color, red.”

Listen to the NPR interview

In an interview with the BBC’s AudioGo, Stanton talks about his reaction to the acclaimed actress reading his books.

“Well, as you’d expect, she has the voice of an angel dipped in honey dipped in kittens’ tears, and her narration is a thing of beauty – it has authority and warmth and clarity. Listening to her is utterly captivating. But with Mr Gum you have to know how to sell the humour too, and Kate does that brilliantly. There’s lots of places where she gets laughs that I wasn’t expecting; or where she goes for  a different type of laugh than I would have. It’s really interesting, because I’d already recorded the first three books myself, so I’m constantly comparing my versions with Kate’s. She’s certainly better at doing the voices than I am, and she really makes a meal of acting out the more dramatic parts. I love how she’s thrown herself into the recordings, she’s not afraid to get her hands mucky with my horrible characters and peculiar humour. And it’s just inherently funny to have forced Kate Winslet to say my made-up words like ‘nibblehead’, ‘tungler’ and ‘BLEM!’ If nothing else, I’ve brought a little weirdness into her career. And she’s brought a little respectability into mine,” the author explains.

Listen to samples of the Mr Gum audiobooks

By J.K. Rowling

Summary:
Today, rabid fans can finally get their hands on The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling’s eagerly awaited adult novel. The story begins with the unexpected death of good-natured parish council member Barry Fairbrother, which throws the small village of Pagford into upheaval. The surface of Pagford may be story-book perfect, but underneath roils a a toxic combination of anger, lust, racism and pretentiousness. Some of the less ethical members of the council, lead by businessman Howard Mollison, angle to fill Fairbrother’s empty seat with one of their own, in a ploy to foist responsibility of their undesirable council estate (British version of the Projects) onto a neighboring village. With their hands washed of what is perceived as a blight on their community, the residents of Pagford will no longer be obliged to educate the children of the poor and downtrodden in their local schools. Rowling paints a sociological portrait of Pagford, revealing various states of the human condition, warts and all. Though this story is decidedly directed at more mature audiences, there are themes in The Casual Vacancy that run parallel to the Potter series. “I think there is a through-line,” Rowling explains in an interview with The New Yorker. “Mortality, morality, the two things that I obsess about.”

What critics are saying:
This is the author’s first book for adults and her first full-length novel published since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released in 2007. Early reviews have been hot and cold, but with Rowling’s legion of devotees worldwide, The Casual Vacancy may be nearly bulletproof against any negative press. The novel is currently #1 on Amazon.com, and millions are likely to buy the book, out of curiosity alone. Many critics can’t agree on the novel’s merits, yet most of them agree that Rowling’s approach to this novel is very different than any of the Harry Potter series. Some readers may be disappointed.

In a review for The Guardian Theo Tait concludes: “The Casual Vacancy is no masterpiece, but it’s not bad at all: intelligent, workmanlike, and often funny. I could imagine it doing well without any association to the Rowling brand, perhaps creeping into the Richard and Judy Book Club, or being made into a three-part TV serial. The fanbase may find it a bit sour, as it lacks the Harry Potter books’ warmth and charm; all the characters are fairly horrible or suicidally miserable or dead. But the worst you could say about it, really, is that it doesn’t deserve the media frenzy surrounding it. And who nowadays thinks that merit and publicity have anything do with each other?”

Perry also coins the term “task triage” to explain the perfectionist tendencies of many procrastinators. Putting off a task until the last minute, gives a person permission to not do a perfect job because of the compressed time frame.

Ironically, the idea for book was born when the professor wrote an essay entitled Structured Procrastination as a way to avoid grading papers. His granddaughter posted the essay on the web a few years later, and the fan mail started pouring in.

“All this incredibly profound and deep stuff I write in philosophy, at least according to me, really hasn’t made the impact that this little essay did,” says Perry.

Replacing the Kindle Touch is the new Kindle Paperwhite. Starting at $119 for a Wi-Fi only model, a 3G wireless option is available for $179. The contrast of the Paperwhite screen has been increased by 25% and has 62% more pixels. Amazon also added a built in front light to help improve readability in low-light environments. The Verge reports that unlike the Touch, the Paperwhite is a text only eReader without any audio capabilities, so listening to audiobooks or MP3s are no longer an option.

Amazon also made it cheaper for consumers to enter the eReader market by offering its smallest Kindle starting at just $69.

In order to continue his vision for Reading Rainbow, Burton, along with business partner Mark Wolfe, secured the rights to the brand and re-launched it as an iPad app, produced by their company RRKidz. The free Reading Rainbow app features clips from the popular TV show, over 150 books, 16 video field trips, as well as other interactive activities.

Moving to a digital platform was a logical step for Burton. “Television was the medium and the technology of its time in the 80s and 90s, but you know better than I do that this is the digital-native generation,” he told Galleycat writer Donya Blaze. “And they consume most of their screen time on mobile devices. That’s where we wanna be. If you want to be where they are, you’ve gotta be on a mobile device.”

Burton also believes that the role of printed books will continue to diminish in our reading lives. ”We’re looking at a future, whenever it comes, that we’re gonna consume most of the reading that we do on some kind of electronic device or another. We will still have printed books; they’ll never go away. I think our emotional attachment to them is too strong. What it will do, I believe though, is make the books that we own more valuable to us, more precious.”

The premise of the poll, choosing only one book, is a bit unfair, as most book lovers would be hard pressed to chose just a single book to pass on to their children. No doubt a list as subjective as this will have many bibliophiles shaking their heads at the titles that were not included. For my part, I would have included at least one Roald Dahl title, James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory come quickly to mind. I also feel that J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye deserves a spot, as Holden Caulfield, that paragon of adolescent discontent, has left an indelible imprint on contemporary literature.

Even Alison Flood, a writer for The Guardian has trouble deciding on just one book to share. “I honestly can’t, and I’m tying myself up in knots a little here worrying about what I’d go for. That said, I certainly wouldn’t have chosen A Christmas Carol, even as a reader, although not a particularly avid one, of Dickens. If it has to be Mr 200, then David Copperfield or Great Expectations (not placed on the list) would be better bets for me – and they’ve more pages to boot; if Orwell, then I’d send my children 1984-wards, rather than to Animal Farm (seventh on the list),” she writes.

What do you say avid readers? Which books would you choose to share with your kids?

“I am a big fan of RottenTomatoes and I use it all the time to decide on a movie. When it comes to books, I like to read non-fiction and I have always wanted something like RottenTomatoes for books. I couldn’t find one on the internet for the longest time. When I talked about this idea with my friends, they liked it too. So we decided to develop it,” explained Rahul Simha, co-founder of idreambooks.com, in an interview with AppNewser.

On what the process of writing this book taught him: “…I kind of came to the conclusion after I did finally get married that love and relationships are just a series of horrific losses with hopefully one win. The best you can hope for is at the end of the day you get one win, so it’s kind of the opposite of everything else we do in our lives, and I thought that that was kind of interesting.”

And what did Halpern’s dad think of his second book?

“He liked it. He actually liked it a lot. It’s funny because I don’t think he would ever pick this off the shelf to read it, but I don’t think he would pick Sh*t My Dad Says off the shelf to read it either.” Halpern admits, his dad did have some reservations about how the book would affect the writer’s own marriage. “He thought that the idea of the book was a good idea, but he’s like, ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea for your marriage to write this book.’”

However, Halpern’s dad had no reservations about helping his son remember the time he walked in on his parents having sex when he was a kid, so he could include that scene in the book. “[M]y dad was like, ‘Sure, let’s do it.’” Though his mother was mortified by the whole idea. “What’s funny is that she didn’t want to read that story when I was first going through it, and then she got a copy of the book early and she called me on the phone and said, ‘So everyone’s going to know that you walked in on me and your father having sex!?’ I’m like, ‘Oh, God, this is such an uncomfortable conversation to be having.’”

By Stephen King

Summary:
Fans of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series will rejoice with the release of the new book The Wind Through the Keyhole. Those who have been jonesing for more stories about the Gunslinger Roland Deschain and his adventures through Mid-World, will get the rush of plunging into the author’s incredibly detailed Western/Sci-Fi/Fantasy world for the eighth time. This book, considerably shorter than the last few novels of the series, is a detour that falls between the fourth book Wizard and Glass and the fifth book Wolves of the Calla, in the Dark Tower timeline. As Roland and his ka-tet (Eddie, Susannah, Jake, and Oy) take refuge from a destructive storm, he recounts a story from his youth, the hunt for a vicious shape-shifting serial killer. The teenage Gunslinger investigates the murders, and befriends a young boy left bereft in the wake of the shape-shifter’s violence, comforting him with a mythical legend. Thus begins an intricate story within a story, crafted with King’s signature style and imagination.

What critics are saying:
A USA TODAY review gave King high praise for his latest novel. “The Wind Through the Keyhole, combines two of the author’s more masterful skills: creating short stories with similar themes in a single package, and writing chapters set in his Western-tinged fantasy The Dark Tower series…On anybody else’s typewriter, this might have turned into a mess. King, however, shows himself to be an ace storyteller yet again, spinning yarns like a favorite relative about a hero and his adventures in a world like our own but just slightly skewed.”

Listen to Stephen King read an excerpt from The Wind Through the Keyhole in an exclusive Entertainment Weekly audio clip.