....Weetzie, who made her first appearance in Block's breakthrough 1989 young adult novel, "Weetzie Bat," as the anguished teenage girl no one understood, is 40 now. With two girls of her own in college, and her longtime relationship with Max, her "secret agent lover man," seemingly about to crumble, she sets out to find herself among the mystical characters and magical happenings that make up life in Block's Los Angeles.

The author, who is 42 and has a 3-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter, doesn't go so far as to say she's having her own midlife crisis. But Block, who has described Weetzie as her alter-ego, acknowledges the similarities between her current life and the one on which Weetzie embarks in the author's latest novel Necklace of Kisses.

"Things started happening in my own life that reminded me of the world that Weetzie lives in," the trim, dark-haired Block says as she sits at her kitchen table, nervously fumbling with a heart-shaped stone. "And she just decided to come back," she adds with a giggle.

*****

"I think the perfect metaphor for L.A., and for my writing, would be sort of smog sunsets," Block says with a chuckle. "They are pink and insanely beautiful. But they're there because of the smog, which is this combination of extraordinary beauty mixed with dark and even deadly elements."

In more than 200 books, the Berenstain Bears, written and illustrated by Stan and Jan Berenstain, helped children for 40 years cope with trips to the dentist, eating junk food and cleaning their messy rooms.

The first Berenstain Bears book, The Great Honey Hunt, was published in 1962. The couple developed the series with children's author Theodor Geisel — better known as Dr. Seuss, then head of children's publishing at Random House — with the goal of teaching children to read while entertaining them.

Despite changes in society in the last four decades, little has changed in Bears Country.

"Kids still tell fibs and they mess up their rooms and they still throw tantrums in the supermarket," Stan Berenstain told The Associated Press in 2002. "Nobody gets shot. No violence. There are problems, but they're the kind of typical family problems everyone goes through."

Stewart, David Javerbaum and Ben Karlin won the 2005 Thurber Prize for American Humor for their book, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction. The runners-up were Andy Borowitz for The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers and Firoozeh Dumas for Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America.

The award is named for James Thurber, an author, humorist and New Yorker magazine cartoonist who delighted readers for decades with his sharp wit and literary flair before his death in 1961.

LOS ANGELES—Greg Behrendt, the co-author of the bestsellers He's Just Not That Into You and It's Called A Breakup Because It's Broken, has written a book targeted at younger readers, which will be released by Simon & Schuster next week. In Your Parents Aren't That Into You, I train my funky wit and refreshing frankness on a very difficult time of childhood—the moment when kids realize they're just accessories, tax write-offs, or even mistakes," Behrendt said. "After all, the collapse of the child-parent relationship sets the tone for those to come." Your Parents Aren't That Into You, which features illustrations by Gary Panter, will also be available in an abridged stocking-stuffer size in time for Christmas.

It is no secret that authors write some of the very best blogs. Our editors have compiled a list of author blogs that they believe are truly outstanding. Although the styles and subject matter of the author blogs vary widely, they all share two important qualities: they are all frequently updated and interesting to read.

"We are very proud to be the publisher of Kazu Kibuishi's Amulet," said Jean Feiwel, publisher and senior vice president, Scholastic Children's Book Publishing. "Kazu's amazing ability to combine action-packed storytelling, engaging characters and stunning artwork will appeal to children and adults alike. We look forward to building this new Graphix talent and bringing these innovative books to Scholastic's distribution channels."

In Amulet, main characters Em and Navin's mother has recently died, and their father has just moved them to a strange, hilltop house. After their father disappears suddenly, the kids find a door that leads into a stunning labyrinth filled with strange creatures and hints of a vast, new world at the end of it. As they search for their father in the maze, they join forces with a small rabbit, Miskit, who is also searching for a lost loved one.

Rowling's words in the Goblet of Fire book describe Voldemort, also known as the Dark Lord or You Know Who, as "whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes and a nose that was flat as a snake's with slits for nostrils. ... His hands were like large, pale spiders." And, he likes to punctuate his terrifying utterances with "a high, cold mirthless laugh." He is meant to embody the very essence of malevolence.

"It's hard to beat the human imagination: I suppose I had a rather melodramatic view of him in my head," says Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry. "I probably saw him with scales." Fiennes' Voldemort has no scales, but his head is shaved and veiny, his pallor deathly, his teeth yellow and his nose erased, thanks to the magic of computers.

The actor says he imbued his Voldemort with "the quality of unpredictability, someone who's simmering with a deep, incredible rage and fury. I hope it's scary," Fiennes says. "It's what I call red meat. There's nothing in a minor key." His co-stars think the portrayal will fall into moviegoers' indelible category. "It's such an unbelievably hard thing to approach, playing ultimate evil," says Radcliffe. "And I sort of know firsthand, because he scared me when we were doing it."

In a night when honorary winner Norman Mailer likened the literary novel to the horse and buggy, National Book Award judges helped canonize what is sure to become a classic of nonfiction: Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking."

Didion's memoir about the death of her husband, author John Gregory Dunne, brought the 70-year-old writer her first National Book Award in her 40-year career and continued a wave of virtually nonstop praise since the book came out a month ago.

"There's hardly anything I can say about this except thank you," Didion said Wednesday night, praising her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, for supporting her as she wrote her painfully personal best seller.

Didion has long been idolized by writers for her precise, incisive fiction and literary journalism. But "The Year of Magical Thinking" brought her a large readership, too, with booksellers saying that her memoir has been especially in demand from those who lost a loved one or knew someone who had.

In a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut, Mr. McCourt acknowledged that if a friend had not told him about an opening at Stuyvesant, where disciplinary problems were virtually nonexistent and supervisors gave him tremendous latitude, his public school teaching career would have most likely ended years earlier.

He lamented the onslaught of gadgets that today's educators have to contend with, saying, "If I were a teacher now I'd have a sign that says, 'If you have a cellphone, I'm going to step on it,' " and likened politicians' efforts to improve education to "interfering with a couple in the bedroom."

"Teachers are treated like the downstairs maid," he said. "If there's a panel on television on education and the schools, do you ever see a teacher? No. Chancellors, politicians, someone from a think tank." In fact, Mr. McCourt said that while he had been "scribbling" memories since his earliest days as a teacher at McKee Vocational and Technical High School on Staten Island, it was only after he retired from Stuyvesant in 1987 that he was able to write in earnest. "The books, the notes, the paperwork, the names that you have to memorize, the individual problems, and to read all this stuff that you take home, it's overwhelming," he said.

In recent years, Mr. McCourt has found himself once again inundated, and among the culprits are some familiar names. "Now they're all writing, they're all sending me manuscripts, and it's driving me crazy," he said. Then he chuckled, adding, "'If he can do it, why can't I?' is what they're saying to themselves."

A spokeswoman for Ashcroft said Barnett was hired in connection with an undisclosed book project. It is believed that Ashcroft, a former governor of Missouri and former U.S. senator, is considering a book about his four years (2001-2004) as attorney general.

Barnett is clearly identified as a Democrat. Federal Election Commission records show him contributing this year to Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Maria Cantwell of Washington and Bill Nelson of Florida. In 2003 and 2004, he helped Democratic presidential candidates John Kerry, Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt and Joe Lieberman. Records dating back to 1999 show no Barnett contributions to any Republican.

Web search leader Google Inc. has approached a book publisher to gauge interest in a program to allow consumers to rent online copies of new books for a week, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The proposed fee is 10 percent of the book's list price, the Journal reported, citing an unnamed publisher. The discussion with the publisher indicates Google may move toward adding a digital book-renting service.

Google has a separate book program, the Google Print Library Project, that has attracted controversy for its aim to scan millions of books that consumers could search online. A Google spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The films are expected to be exclusively for television and home video. "People do like the film versions of things," Steel told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I thought this was a nice way to get my books back into the marketplace."

"Danielle Steel is one of the world's great literary brands, and New Line Home Entertainment is proud to be in business with such a cultural icon," Kevin Kasha, New Line Home Entertainment's senior vice president of acquisitions and programming, said in a statement. Steel, 58, has published more than 60 books and her latest, Toxic Bachelors, just came out. She has another book due in February and has a line of perfume coming out next fall. "And I'm starting a new book today," she said

Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, has never felt comfortable with the celebrity he achieved. In fact, it puzzles him. "Friends and colleagues, all of a sudden, looked at us, treated us slightly differently than they had months or years before when we were working together," the Apollo 11 astronaut told "60 Minutes" in an interview on Sunday. "I never quite understood that."

****

In an e-mail response to The Cincinnati Enquirer, Armstrong said he reluctantly agreed to the book deal. "Many individuals whose opinions I value have urged me to find a way to put my story in print," Armstrong said. "I concluded a biography would be superior to an autobiography. "I believed the author should have access to my recollections and thoughts although he would not be bound to use or accept them."

Amazon.com plans to offer two programs next year that will allow customers to buy digitized books and portions of them in combination with its traditional, mail-order book service.

With Amazon Pages, customers can search through its index of online texts and purchase the pages or chapters they want to read, according to a company press release. Amazon Upgrade will allow customer who purchase a physical book to have online access to the entire text through the Internet, it said.

For two years, Amazon has offered its Search Inside the Book function, which mines digitized text for selected keywords. The company says now that one in two of the books it sells are in the program, and the service has been expanded to the U.K., Germany, France, Canada and Japan. The company said it is working with publishers and authors to ensure they are compensated fairly.

"The misconception about authors is that they're not people like you and me," says Erin Cox, assistant director of publicity at Scribner. "They're just like everyone else and they want their work ... to be loved. A group of people who elected to read your book and invited you - that's a nice invitation to get."

For a certain type of writer, particularly those who write literary fiction - a genre that tends to be more popular with book groups and critics than its sales would suggest - the invite may be especially well received. And many publishing houses consider book clubs an untapped market.

On a Tuesday toward the end of summer, Heidi Cron and her seven-person club hosted Boston-area author Steve Almond, whose account of the independent candy-manufacturing industry, "Candyfreak,"also chronicles his obsession with the stuff.

"It was easier than I thought," says Ms. Cron. "He happens to be someone who's around my age ... and so it didn't seem so far flung. But I really was surprised by how quickly he responded."

Plans for the convoluted cross-promotion, first reported on Tuesday by Hollywood trade publication Daily Variety, were confirmed by a spokeswomen for Hyperion and production studio Touchstone Television, which like ABC, are owned by the Walt Disney Co. Advertisers have increasingly explored novel product-placement schemes in the face of new technologies that allow TV viewers to skip over conventional commercials when watching their favorite shows. But Variety said the "Lost" book tie-in may be the first to use imaginary TV events and characters as the basis for a real-life marketing campaign.

As part of the plan, Hyperion said it has commissioned a "well-known" mystery writer to anonymously adapt the fictitious manuscript into an actual, printed book it hopes will automatically appeal to the show's large and loyal following. "Fans of the show are obsessive. We think a lot of them will be buying the book just to look for clues" to the series, Hyperion President Bob Miller told Variety. The Lost novel, titled Bad Twin, is described as a private eye mystery about a wealthy heir's search for his evil sibling.

Lost, one of the several surprise hits that helped ABC bounce back from a lengthy ratings slump last season, currently ranks as the fourth most-watched show on U.S. television, averaging more than 20 million viewers a week.

Twenty-five-year old Bobby Henderson's The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, purporting to assert another theory of "intelligent design" which the author feels should be taught alongside evolution (cited by many newspapers since he wrote to the Kansas Board of Education), showing how the Flying Spaghetti Monster actually created the universe, accompanied by scripture, proofs, and rites observed by Pastafarians, to Chris Schluep at Villard, for publication as a trade paperback, by Paula Balzer at Sarah Lazin Books (world).

"It has a very painterly feel, as opposed to high-gloss," says director Matthew O'Callaghan. The Curious George trailer arrives in theaters Friday with Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. In the movie, George's keeper, the Man with the Yellow Hat, gets a bigger role.

"The books usually introduce the Man with the Yellow Hat at the beginning. He says, 'Goodbye, George, I'm going to work.' He leaves, George gets into all his adventures, and the Man is absent until the end," O'Callaghan says. "My approach was to make it more of a buddy comedy."

The Man (voiced by Will Ferrell) is a timid museum employee who is reluctantly dispatched to the jungles of Africa to find artifacts for exhibit by his curator boss (Dick Van Dyke).

There he meets George, who spots his yellow hat from the trees and mistakes it for a banana. What follows is a story about owner and pet, about giving kindness and getting kindness in return, O'Callaghan says.