(View entire post here)  

The Penguin Blog has moved to Penguin Community! There, you will find a wealth of resources and ways to interract with other book lovers. Sign-up and join us over there!

We have changes the layout and have divided the old blog into two seperate blogs: 

The Author's Desk: features posts from our authors who guest blog over the course of a week as well as other posts contrubuted by our authors (Sign up for our new RSS feed & new Email alerts)

Penguin News (USA): features news, author events and other publishing-related news about our authors, our books and our company (Sign up for our new RSS feed & new Email alerts)

View all of the Pengun Blogs on Penguin Community

We will no longer post on Penguin Blog (USA), but will leave the blog up so that you can still read the posts and news that we have posted over the past 3 years listed below:

(View entire post here)

There are, always, unexpected pleasures in travelling. I have been in Scotland now for two months, and before that I was in the US for close to a month. Yesterday I went into Helensburgh, the nearest town to where I am staying in Cove Park, and browsed at the newsagents. On the covers of the magazines were all these faces that I didn't recognise: "My God", I thought to myself, "Who the Hell are all these people?"

I had a very similar experience ducking into a convenience store in Washington DC, scanning the shelves and being taken aback by these unfamiliar made-up, retouched, plucked, botoxed faces staring out at me. It turns out, of course, they are reality TV stars, sportspeople from codes I've never followed, wannabe Rihanna nymphettes (even Rihanna is a wannabe Rihanna), talk show hosts from programs I have never heard of.  It was a satisfying feeling, knowing that celebrity has finite geographical limits, even in this age of globalised media. These faces sell magazines, for a short time, tweak public interest, for a moment, and then they disappear back into the hyper-media primordial sludge from which they first emerged. I sound crueller than I mean to be. I just think it is a good thing to be reminded that aura and mystique of celebrity is transient.

(View entire post here)

Real cooking, it turns out, relies heavily on another lost art: patience. 

Of course, I knew I'd need some patience with real cooking. There are pots that simmer for days, pickles that cure for weeks, even brews that age for months. But it wasn't till a full year after we finished the manuscript for The Lost Art of Real Cooking that I learned just how much patience—and faith—I would need when fermenting food.

My miso recipe in the book mentions a miso failure. After days spent culturing koji rice, and months fermenting this particular miso, it flopped. It was alcoholic, yeasty, and unpleasant. At least once a month, I threatened to toss it, as it took up valuable fridge space. But every time, my boyfriend begged me to have mercy on the poor miso, as he thought it "wasn't so bad." Every time I moved to a new apartment, I threatened again to pitch it, but each time, William persuaded me to hang on to it. Mostly, I just pretended it didn't exist, letting it sit in the back of the fridge for months, then years. (I would say that I'm only this lenient on things like miso that don't really mold, but I would be lying.)

(View entire post here)

Another American Library Association (ALA) annual conference has come and gone. This year the librarians of America got to live it up in the nation's capital. While the librarians were sipping free champagne, schmoozing, learning how to keep their libraries current, and getting books signed, many Penguin authors were hard at work in the Penguin booth trying to get their books out to the masses and we've got video evidence to prove it!

(View entire post here)

The Book Tour: visiting as many bookstores as your publisher can afford to send you to, or that you have the stamina to visit, and therein, at an appointed time, reading from your book and talking about it. Answering questions, should there be any, from your audience should there be any! This is part of the process here in the US, part of what authors of a new book are expected to do. You knew this, and now I do too, though it was new to me when my first novel was published here in 2008. Not that its unknown in Australia, but its certainly not as widespread. We do the Writers Festival thing (see blog #3) more.

The purpose of a bookstore reading? Twofold, I gather: first, that the audience will fall in love with your book and buy a copy, and then tell all their friends how fabulous it is and lots more people will buy copies and so Word of Mouth will work its magic and your book will become an adored bestseller. Second, that the staff of the bookstore will become more aware of your offering, among the torrent of books pouring weekly on to their shelves, and (pretty much as above) fall in love and hand sell it to lots of their loyal customers.

(View entire post here)

Author Interview (1)

Author Q&A Blood of the Prodigal PL Gaus (Plume)

Excerpt (2)

Excerpt The Quickening Maze Adam Foulds (Penguin)

Excerpt The Rembrandt Affair Daniel Silva (Putnam)

Reading Group Guide (1)

Reading Group Guide Blood of the Prodigal PL Gaus (Plume)

Notes on Text (2)

Author Essay The Cobra Frederick Forsyth (Putnam)

Pronunciation Guide The Outside Boy Jeanine Cummins (NAL)

(View entire post here)

Penguin Group (USA) has three debuts on the New York Times bestseller list for the week of July 18th: Home Team by Sean Payton and Ellis Henican (NAL) debuts at #8 on the hardcover nonfiction list; KnockOut by Catherine Coulter (Jove) debuts at #6 on the mass market fiction list; and The Shadows by Jacqueline West, illustrated by Poly Bernatene (Dial) debuts at #9 on the children's chapter books list.

Here are more New York Times bestseller highlights:

On the hardcover fiction list, The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books/ Putnam) is #5 in its 66th week; Whiplash by Catherine Coulter (Putnam) is #12 in its third week; and Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris (Ace) is #13 in its ninth week.

On the hardcover nonfiction list, The Last Stand by Nathanial Philbrick (Viking) is #10 in its ninth week.

On the trade fiction list, The Magicians by Lev Grossman (Plume) is #15 in its fifth week.

On the mass market paperback list, Black Hills by Nora Roberts (Jove) is #15 in its sixth week; and Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris (Ace) is #18 in thirteenth week.

On the paperback nonfiction list, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin) remains at #1 in its 178th; Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Penguin) is #2 in its 179th week; The Girls From Ames by Jeffrey Zaslow (Gotham) returns to the list at #16 in its twelfth week; and The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan (Penguin) is #19 in its 136th week.

 (View entire post here)

Penguin Group (USA) Has Three Debuts and Eat, Pray, Love Remains At #1 On the New York Times Bestseller Lists For the Week of July 18th

Penguin Group (USA) has three new New York Times bestsellers on the hardcover, mass market, and children's lists for the week of July 18th.

Following an on-sale week packed with national publicity, Home Team: Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life (NAL Hardcover) by Sean Payton and Ellis Henican debuts at #8. Coach Payton's memoir is the only new book on the hardcover nonfiction list this week!

While the expression "Your goose is cooked," suggests danger and vexation, I rather think a cooked goose is an object to be revered: the centerpiece of a grandiose feast waiting to be devoured by famished Cratchits on Christmas, or bejewelled dames and mutton-chopped gentlemen. The image instantly conjured is of course a whole roast goose, carved into wide slabs and drenched in gravy: denser, darker and richer than turkey, and more primaevally beasty. But how to cook a goose without the breast becoming dry and leathery? How to prevent the prodigious amounts of fat from flaring up in the roasting pan? A slow roast on a spit would be ideal. But I had other plans.

Spotting a goose on sale in the supermarket for 8 dollars (and with my initial suspicion over the price smothered by innate hunger and curiosity) I decided to spend a day playing around. If duck is so amenable to disassembly and curing, why not its larger cousin, Anser domesticus? I could cure the legs and breast, make paté from the organs, stock from the bones, render the fat for cooking. Even cracklings from the skin. Not a single iota of this noble bird would go to waste. Should you be so inclined to spend an afternoon such as I enjoyed, here is the procedure and the rewards you will reap.

 (View entire post here)

The last two months I have been undertaking a residency at Cove Park in Scotland. It really is the most idyllic location to work. Every morning I wake up to a view of the tranquil waters of Loch Long, and then across the peninsula I can see the spectacular hills and bens at the beginning of the highlands. It has been a wonderful summer in Scotland and I don't think I have ever walked so much in my life, both here at Cove, and travelling with my partner Wayne across the country. As an Australian I am astounded by the dramatic changes in landscape and vista over what seem such short distances. It being summer has meant that it gets dark very late and the dawn comes very early. One of the most treasured moments of this time is walking home after a dinner with friends, along the Barbour Road, which shoots straight across the ridge of the peninsula. Though close to midnight, everything was visible in a soft blue light: I saw hues and shades that I had never seen before.

It is not only the nature and the landscape here that makes me feel so fortunate. The residencies at Cove Park are not only for writers. I have been learning so much from the residents here, seeing how a filmmaker or a textile craftsperson, for example, approaches their work; it allows me to reflect on my own practice as a writer. Here's a link to Cove Park and if you click on "Residencies" it will give information on the artists here at the moment.