How did Dan Brown, the immensely popular and successful bad writer behind such hits as The Da Vinci Code and Hey, There's a Treasure Map Under This Painting!, get to be such an immensely popular and successful bad writer? He just loves "reading," meaning "listening to stuff."
OK, it's not quite The Da Vinci Code or even The Godfather: Part III, but a scandal rocking the Vatican is aways better than no scandal rocking the Vatican.
Still upset over Dan Brown's suggestion that Jesus was boning Mary, Pope Benedict decided to exact revenge on the liberal heathens of southern California by appointing a new Archbishop of LA — Jose Gomez, an ultra-orthodox Opus Dei bishop. [Telegraph]
Nine short months ago, employees at Random House were silently urinating in their knickers after a new CEO seemed poised to drastically cut budgets. Now, they're poppin bottles. What changed? Dan Brown!
Your sneers mean nothing: Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol has already sold 1 million copies.
• As expected, ratings for Jay Leno's new show are falling fast. [THR]
• Bloomberg LP appears to now be in the lead to buy BusinessWeek. [NYP]
• Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sold 1 million copies its first day. [NYT]
• Don't try to talk to Vogue publisher Tom Florio about what changes are in store for the mag now that…
• So how did Jay Leno's new show do? He hit it out of the park ratings-wise, roping in an estimated 18 million viewers. The reviews were all pretty lousy, though, so don't be surprised if it's all downhill from here. [AdAge, LAT, THR]
• The sale of BusinessWeek: Bruce Wasserstein has dropped out as a potential…
Hooray! Today you can finally buy Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, a new interactive novel about a heroic professor with a mullet who fights Catholics and Masons. It will save publishing, and ruin Washington DC.
• The bad news for Condé Nast now that McKinsey has finished up its summer-long review: Editors and publishers at the company may be asked to trim their budgets by as much as 25 percent. The good news, according to one Condé insider: "This doesn't mean Anna Wintour is going to start taking the bus," nor is the company…
Or so goes Janet Maslin's New York Times review of Dan Brown's new book. Maslin's take, and my own, after the jump.
Meryl Streep celebrates her 60th birthday today. Cyndi Lauper is turning 56. Rob Wiesenthal, Sony's No. 2 exec, is 43. Legendary M&A attorney Marty Lipton is turning 78. Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for NYC, is 63. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California turns 76. Carson Daly is turning 36. Author Dan…
Bad news for Fox Atomic, good news for power-mad Ari Emmanuel. Bad news for people who are wise to Dan Brown's tomfoolery, and good news for those who aren't. Plus, the good/bad on pilot season.
• The 2009 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. [Pulitzer.org]
• It's been six years since the release of The Da Vinci Code, but Knopf says Dan Brown's latest, The Lost Symbol, will hit stores in September. [AP]
• Hollywood agencies Endeavor and William Morris appear to have cemented a merger, although an…
It's a sad state of affairs when the entire book industry, plus major retailers like Barnes & Noble, can see only one ray of hope for the future: the next novel from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Apparently, they don't have anything else going on (no one else writes books, obviously), because they are slavering like…
