Bronx-born writer Richard Price, famous for his gritty urban novels Clockers and Freedomland, as well screenplays like The Color of Money and award-winning episodes of The Wire, has now turned his eye for detail on the turbo-gentrifying Lower East Side. Lush Life, his first novel in five years, was described by Times critic Michiko Kakutani as “a visceral, heart-thumping portrait of New York City... no one writes better dialogue than Richard Price.” The story concerns......

Only 2 weeks after his 89th birthday, Swedish film and theater director Ingmar Bergman passed away at his home on Fårö Island this morning, the Associated Press reports. "Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, confirmed the death, and Swedish journalist Marie Nyreröd said the director died peacefully during his sleep. Bergman never fully recovered after a hip surgery in October last year, Nyreröd told Swedish broadcaster SVT." As the New York Times......

The clock is ticking and the new Harry Potter book will be released at 12:01am, less than twelve hours from now! The scene will surely be crazy and something that this city hasn't seen since...well, Wednesday when people lined up for a canvas grocery sack. JK Rowling bids farewell to the boy who made her billions with this final novel, and she's feeling a bit buggered about the reviews that came out before the book......

What do we make of the fact that the NY Times book critic Michiko Kakutani purchased a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a NYC bookstore yesterday and was able to sift through its 1.8 pounds to write a review in today's paper? There are no true spoilers, just confirmation that there is a fitting ending (but if you are worried about spoilers of any kind, don't read the blockquote):J. K. Rowling’s......

Frank McCourt, beloved storyteller of early Irish upbringing to immigrant dreams in America, has a new book out about his experiences as a teacher at public high school, including Stuyvesant, called Teacher Man. McCourt, who retired from teaching in 1987, cast a spell on his Stuyvesant students and even some of the less-priveleged ones at other school, and there even seems to have been a Frank McCourt Fan/Stalker Club back at the East 15th Street......

- Fernando Ferrer wants monitors at election sites next Tuesday - And Bloomberg promised no taxes through June 2007, if elected; sadly, if elected, all bets are usually off - Michiko Kakutani's nickname is "Michi," Alessandra Stanely can make eggs, and other stuff in NY magazine's feature on Maureen Dowd - The PATH will investigate using Smart Cards - This hasn't happened in NYC (that we know of): A Texas cabbie sprinkled his poo on......

Smelling salts! Icy towels! The heat has gone to Michiko Kakutani’s head! Her review of Benjamin Kunkel’s Indecision is written in Holden Caulfield’s voice. Gothamist can’t remember such a wacky review since she favored us with her thoughts on Candace Bushnell’s Trading Up, said thoughts taking the form of a memo from Elle Woods to Bushnell’s protagonist. (Seriously, read it. It’s crazy.) While it’s hard to say that Michi’s grasp of voice is absolutely secure—however......

Art Spiegelman will be speaking about his new book, In The Shadow of No Towers, at the Strand Bookstore this Sunday. In The Shadow was just published, and Gothamist has been looking forward to reading it, given what we know about Spiegelman ever since reading Maus and how he gracefully handled The New Yorker cover for the September 11 issue, which the new book's cover echoes. Spigelman will be joined by a number of other......

Oh, my God, reading reading Michiko Kakutani's Books > Books of The Times: The Pastiche of a Presidency, Imitating a Life, in 957 Pages" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/20/books/20CLIN.html?hp">review of former President Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life, provided so many laughs in the morning. It's Michiko at her book report bitchiest, calling it "hurriedly written and even more hurriedly edited." Bill was probably feeling the pain while reading it. She's so becoming the secret poster girl of the Republicans......

Michiko Kakutani looks at various celebrity chidren's book authors (some Madonna, some Lynne Cheney, even Keith Hernandez) and finds many of them, with their "very special messages," uninspiring. However, the one she takes to task is Jerry Seinfeld for his book, Halloween: "Jerry Seinfeld's Halloween has an even more offensive message: greed is good and rudeness is funny. His hero, an obnoxious brat, spurns some of the trick-or-treat candy he has received with snarky disdain:......

Author Jonathan Lethem gets the work up: A profile AND Michiko review in the Times today. The reason? His new book, Fortress of Solitude, his first since his National Book Critics Circle-winning, Motherless Brooklyn. Ah, the Doubleday publicists are earning their keep. The profile examines Lethem's Brooklyn roots, in the pre-gentrified days of Smith Street, when blacks and Puerto Ricans were the dominants groups and whites were a small minority - made up of socially-minded......

Gothamist was too tired from the Gothamist-601AM Happy Hour to face scads of screaming children at various Harry Potter parties around town (though we were tempted to go - believe us - it would have been a lesson in seeing who could be bigger babies). We had stopped by City Bakery on 18th Street, and learned it was staying open late because the Book of Wonder across the street had its midnight Harry Potter party.......

Hellfire and damnation, Michiko Kakutani reviews Candace Bushnell's new book, Trading Up. As Elle "Legally Blonde" Woods. No joke. Kakutani, as Elle, writes a memo to the book's main character, Janey Wilcox: "Excuse the interruption, but I just read your story in "Trading Up," and thought I really, really need to write you. I mean, we Blondes have to stick together, right? And we both started out with so much in common � like we......