Several mobile Web sites offer hundreds of novels — classics, best sellers and some works written especially for the medium. It takes some getting used to. Only a few lines pop up at a time because the phone screen is about half the size of a business card. But improvements in the quality of liquid-crystal displays and features such as automatic page-flipping, or scrolling, make the endeavor far more enjoyable than you'd imagine.

"It's the absolute nexus of what I love to do," Matalin told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I think we're on the threshold of a whole new way of looking at politics and policy and there's something vital about getting those ideas down in book form."

Matalin said she is already working on acquisitions for the new imprint and expects to announce some titles "within weeks." She will not be editing books "line by line," but will provide "conceptual editing" — suggestions on how to express ideas and broader concepts.

Miramaxers--or what's left of them--are fuming. "We have no idea what's going on," said one staffer in the book department. "We had no idea Jonathan Burnham was leaving or that Harvey and Bob [Weinstein] wanted to start another book company until we read it in The Post. No one at the company is bothering to tell anyone what's going on. And Hyperion hasn't contacted any of us or the authors."

"Wonder Woman is the most iconic female heroine of our time, but in a way, no one has met her yet," Whedon said in a statement. "What I love most about icons is finding out what's behind them, exploring the price of their power. When Joel and I began discussing the character, I realized there is a woman behind the legend who is very fascinating, very uncompromising and in her own way almost vulnerable. She's someone who doesn't belong in this world, and since everyone I know feels that way about themselves, the character clicked for me."

When it comes to exporting culture, not goods, America enjoys a ballooning trade surplus with China. Of the estimated 12,000 translations published here in 2003, nearly half were of American books, a ratio consistent over the past five years. Try naming more than a handful of books by Chinese authors published in America in that time.

Lauren Wein, the associate rights director for Grove Atlantic, says she has been surprised at the range of titles the Chinese have bought from Grove, including The Hungry Gene, about obesity, and a book by the experimental gay writer Dennis Cooper. But for the most part, "China wants the heavy hitters, like Sex and the City and Cold Mountain." After all, she says, "They still have On the Road to publish."

The answer is not in their taste; it's about their shape. The circle is so universal, and the doughnut is very appealing physically and metaphorically. Of course, there are doughnuts that are not shaped in circles, and fritters are really doughnuts, but we don't categorize them like doughnuts. The doughnut is in a class by itself; it transcends mere food appeal.

"I've got to name a currently unnamed cruise ship in Anansi Boys. I have no idea what to call it, and, a couple of days ago, realised that my utter lack of inspiration could do good things for the CBLDF. If you wish, you can bid to have the ship named after you, your loved one, your dog, or even your favourite word."

I think that I’m a little bit like Mr. Bigweld the guy who made up the whole city because I had to make up and invent so much of what was in the movie and in this world. And then, I’m a lot like the little character called the Wonderbot, who is always trying to get in the middle of things and help things out and make things work, and he keeps getting beat up, and smacked around, and bashed in, and smushed, and he keeps coming back.

I’m a little like Rodney Copperbottom, the hero of the movie, because Rodney comes from a small town and goes to a big city because it’s his dream to be a great inventor. And I came from a small town, and I went to the big city, Los Angeles and New York, so that I could write books and make up stories, and do movies.

There's no doubt that Total Body Makeover is a more aggressive approach. I want to push the reader and challenge their capabilities. I want the participant to achieve results more quickly and avoid the loss of motivation that sometimes occurs when one loses weight via exercise and eating in moderation. My programs are often compared to programs that use dieting or restrictive eating as their focus. You really can't make this comparison since, in my opinion, you can't get a "total body makeover" by dieting alone. By dieting alone, not only are you avoiding the health, fitness and aesthetic benefits that exercise provides, you also set yourself up for failure since your metabolism slows in direct proportion to the amount of calories that you cut out.