Omni Daily News

The big reveal: Doubleday pulled back the curtain this morning on the Vince Flynn-ish cover of Dan Brown's long-awaited thriller, The Lost Symbol, giving us one clue to the shrouded storyline: it looks as though the rotunda through which Robert Langdon will be sprinting is not in the Vatican this time, but on Capitol Hill. (Don't run over Al Franken!) You can also see the UK cover (same dome, less cardinal-red) below.

The Best of the Booker National Book Award: Following the example of the Best of the Booker Prize (now won twice by Midnight's Children), the National Book Foundation announced today that this year they will be awarding The Best of the National Book Awards Fiction prize. Out of the 77 winners in the 60 years of the award (it's complicated), a panel of 600 writers will choose 6 books for the shortlist, and the public will get to vote on the winner, starting on September 21. (I'll be posting more on this later.)

Authors v. reviewers, part XLVII: Lev Grossman and Helen DeWitt (here and here) weigh in on the Alain de Botton/Caleb Crain "Is it appropriate to publicly wish for the death of your reviewers online?" hoo-ha. First of all, great news that DeWitt, author of one of my favorite recent books, The Last Samurai, is blogging (I'm late to the party--she's been at it since '07), and says she is "trying to finish 5 books in 2009" (!). And Grossman's piece, written as both author and reviewer, is funny, and includes this recommendation for Amazon:

When you click to post a review, a little pop-up box should come up. It should say, PLEASE BE ADVISED, UNLESS HE OR SHE IS DEAD OR A LUDDITE, THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK HAS A GOOGLE ALERT SET UP FOR HIM OR HERSELF AND HIS OR HER BOOK. DO NOT BE IN ANY DOUBT, THE AUTHOR WILL READ YOUR REVIEW, AND IF IT IS A PAN, THEY WILL FEEL BAD. ARE YOU STILL UP FOR THIS (Y/N)?

Moving & shaking: Up into our top 100, Ian Halperin's well-timed Michael Jackson expose, Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson, which was sent to the printer the day before Jackson's death under the title Michael Jackson: Return from Exile and then pulled back for a quick rewrite. For what it's worth, here are the pedigrees of the author and publisher: Halperin is the author of, among other books, Who Killed Kurt Cobain?, while Pierre Turgeon, the Montreal publisher, recently pled guilty to fraud (not that these two facts are necessarily equivalent). (See more Movers & Shakers.)

--Tom