NEW YORK (Reuters) – Donald Fagen, one-half the hit-writing duo behind rock perfectionists Steely Dan, says he will release his fourth solo record in 2011 with an album largely recorded on computers away from conventional studios.

Fagen, who with Walter Becker wrote the seminal 1970s hits “Reeling’ in the Years” and “Do It Again” told Reuters he is recording in New York at the home of Steely Dan trumpet player Michael Leonhart, who is co-producing the album.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Already infamous for being the then-socialist who called Margaret Thatcher sexy and as the contrarian who loved George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens now wants to rewrite the Ten Commandments.

Hitchens clearly is not afraid of taking on the big topics and in his new memoir, “Hitch 22,” the British-born journalist tackles everything from Iraq, the Middle East, Zimbabwe, wars and conflicts to his friendships with prominent authors such as Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie and Clive James.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – When author Nicholas Carr began researching his book on whether the Internet is ruining our minds, he restricted his online access and e-mail and turned off his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

His new book “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” argues the latest technology renders us less capable of deep thinking. Carr found himself so distracted that he couldn’t work on the book while staying as connected, as is commonplace.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Giants and upstarts of publishing gathered at the annual BookExpo America here this week agreed e-books will transform the business, although exactly how it will all shake out remains unclear.

From biggest publishers to newcomers there was agreement on one thing — the big change will come when there is a standard format across which all e-books can be published and shared.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Giants and upstarts of publishing gathered at the annual BookExpo America here this week agreed e-books will transform the business, although exactly how it will all shake out remains unclear.

From biggest publishers to newcomers there was agreement on one thing — the big change will come when there is a standard format across which all e-books can be published and shared.

NEW YORK, May 24 (Reuters) – Author John Robbins knows a
thing or two about living a simple life — he’s had millions
and lived without millions, not once, but twice.

At 21, Robbins walked away from his family’s Baskin-Robbins
ice cream business and fortune and spent the subsequent decade
living largely off the land in a tiny cabin on Salt Spring
Island off the coast of British Columbia.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – From Barack Obama’s simple “Yes We Can” presidential campaign slogan to countless Chinese people sending text messages using English letters, “Globish” is fast becoming the dominant language of this century.

So says British author Robert McCrum in his new book “Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language,” which expounds on the mishmash of English and other tongues that connects people from Beijing to New York.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Irish actor and tabloid favorite Colin Farrell says reports he is shedding his bad boy image are premature.

Entertainment Weekly wrote earlier in April that Farrell was turning a new leaf, quoting the actor saying, “I realized I’d lost sight of why I went into acting in the first place … I had to go back and remember.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Award-winning Irish author John Banville has always been highly critical of his own writing, but with the publication of his latest crime novel, he says he loves himself. Well, sort of.

Banville is promoting “Elegy for April,” the fourth book published in as many years under his pen name Benjamin Black. In it, Dublin pathologist Garret Quirke’s daughter, Phoebe, takes a central role.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Award-winning Irish writer Colm Toibin firmly believes the novel will remain fundamentally unchanged by the Internet or other high-tech innovations, a realm in which he admits he is nearly illiterate.

Toibin, the author of such critically acclaimed novels as “Brooklyn,” “The Master” and “The Blackwater Lightship,” is set this week to appear on a panel to discuss “The Author in the Age of the Internet,” part of the London Review of Books’ 30th anniversary celebration events in New York.