China: Dual insurance regulatory approach planned in Shanghai

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Franzen hated Salinger, Moby-Dick

Jonathan Franzen admits he could never got more than 50 pages into "Moby-Dick". Source: Supplied

US AUTHOR Jonathan Franzen has revealed the books he most loves and loathes, hating on some of the world's most celebrated stories.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the writer behind The Corrections admits to lying about having read Herman Melville’s classic, Moby-Dick. Despite "multiple attempts" at tacking the dense novel, he says he never made it past page 50.

Franzen also takes a swipe at J.D. Salinger, the popular author who penned Catcher in the Rye.

"Salinger’s fiction seems to me a slender reed on which to hang the weight of world-changing genius that’s currently being ascribed to him," Franzen says.

On a more positive note, he says Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial are two books that helped cement him as a writer.

"What the two have in common is main characters who are at once sympathetic and morally dubious," he says.

Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End was the best book Franzen read for school, and he says he has re-read many times The Lord of the Rings, The Great Gatsby and Desperate Characters.

He also reveals a childhood love for “anything talking or thinking animals”, including A.A. Milne, the Narnia novels, Doctor Doolittle, Wind in the Willows and the Peanuts comic strip.

"This seems a little strange now, given that I was afraid of dogs and that my parents didn’t let me have any pets except for hamsters and turtles, which I didn’t love, and which were always dying on me."

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Confessions of a hipster bookworm

Hipsters reveal their deepest, darkest secrets about books, Picture: Thinkstock Source: ThinkStock

THERE'S nothing better than snuggling up with a good book and Australia's hipsters have revealed their darkest book-reading secrets ranging from the quirky to the truly bizarre.

Whether it's book sniffing, arriving at school pick-up early just to have a read or hiding Shakespeare in the fridge to avoid looking pretentious, trendsetting bookworms have some strange habits.

The confessions have been revealed in QBD The Bookshop's Book Hipster Campaign.

Here are some of the best: (and tell us yours in the comments below below)

1. When my boyfriend's gone to sleep I use the light from his Kindle to read my paperback.

2. I take a book to the park, take a photo of myself reading it, and upload it to instagram as #mysundayisbetterthanyours

3. I've played hide and go seek with the kids just to get away to read a book for a while with no interruptions.

4. I will always claim my favorite book is either Crime and Punishment or Atlas Shrugged. The truth is, Harry Potter changed my life.

5. I don't need glasses. I only wear them when I read in public.

6. I volunteer to go early to get the kids from the movies so I can sit in the car with a coffee and my book.

Enjoy a good book from the library and also have perfectly coiffed hair? You may be a hipster.

7. As a kid I ran my own book lending business in order to buy new books from profits. Worked great 'til school shut me down.

8. I've read my kids' collection of Harry Potter books more times than they have!

9. Paranoid about looking pretentious, turned fridge into secret bookcase, filled with Shakespeare volumes. Now tell unit inspectors, "it's full of V.B". V.B or not V.B?...

10. I hide my book bags inside other shopping bags so when I come home my parents don't know I have bought new books.

11. When my friends invite me to the movies or shopping, I spontaneously become 'sick' - little do they know I'm at home indulging in a good read.

12. I'm so obsessed with Fifty Shades of Grey that no matter what I eat or don't eat, I always wonder if Christian would approve.

13. Taking the all stations train, so I have more time to read before work.

14. I frequently use random objects as bookmarks. Now I don't know which book I've left the electricity bill in.

15. I set up for study in the morning and then when my partner leaves the house, I quickly grab a book and try to read it before he gets home.

'I will always claim my favorite book is either Crime and Punishment or Atlas Shrugged. The truth is, Harry Potter changed my life.'

16. I read my book at work when I should be working!

17. I was always late for work because I'd be so engrossed in my book that I'd forget to flag down my bus.

18. I pay a babysitter to mind my children while I run errands*. *sit in a cafe/park/car and read my latest book

19. My new house wasn't a home until I built a bookshelf and alphabetically arranged my collection (and reunited Harry Potter 1 through 7).

20. I once apologised to a book when it fell off the shelf at work.

21. When I buy books as birthday/Christmas presents I read them first, very carefully, to not bend the spine.

22. I print off covers of popular novels and wrap them around the books I'm reading to hide the fact that I'm into classics like Utopia.

'I'm so obsessed with Fifty Shades of Grey that no matter what I eat or don't eat, I always wonder if Christian would approve.'

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Firth laughs off Darcy's demise

Renee Zellweger plays Bridget Jones and Colin Firth plays Mark Darcy in a scene from the film Bridget Jones' Diary: The Edge of Reason. Source: Supplied

BRIDGET Jones creator Helen Fielding says she told Colin Firth to have someone with him before she revealed the news of his character Mark Darcy's demise.

Fans have also been shaken by the revelation, leaked ahead of publication of Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, the third book in Helen Fielding's series about the diary-writing singleton. He may be fictional, but the demise of Bridget's handsome lawyer lover - played on the big screen by a smoldering Colin Firth - was headline news.

"I turned on the news and there was the Syrian crisis, and then 'Mark Darcy is dead,'" Fielding said, amazed.

"It's quite extraordinary for a fictional character to be treated as if they're alive. I sort of think, hats off to Colin, because really he inhabited that character."

The reaction is a testament to the hold of Fielding's characters on the popular imagination. In ditsy, indomitable Bridget, she created an archetype. (In Darcy she borrowed one, from the brooding Mr Darcy of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice).

Bridget, created for a series of 1990s newspaper columns, was a 30-something Londoner looking for love and career fulfillment while enduring the condescension of "smug marrieds" and confessing her many insecurities in her diaries: "Alcohol units 7, cigarettes 22, calories 2145. Minutes spent inspecting face for wrinkles 230."

In Mad About the Boy she is still counting calories and booze, though cigarettes have been replaced by nicotine gum. Bridget is now a 51-year-old widow with two young children, convinced she will never find romance again.

Fielding said she had no choice but to kill Darcy so Bridget's story could move on.

"The book I wanted to write was not about domesticity, married life. It was about Bridget struggling with what life throws at you," Fielding said over lunch at the London gastropub where she likes to write in the daytime.

"It was Bridget being single with two children in the age of technology. And rediscovering her sexuality. She was a mother and she lost it amid the nappies and the busy-ness. I think lots of women go through that."

Breaking the news of Darcy's demise to Firth, who starred opposite Renee Zellweger in the film adaptations of Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, was surprisingly tough.

"I was really nervous, and I had to make sure that he had someone with him and they were sitting down. And then I said, 'Colin, I've got something really bad to tell you.'

"And then I suppose I just said 'You're dead,' which is an odd thing to say to anyone. And we were both upset, but at the same time we were laughing."

Bridget Jones's Diary, published in 1996, turned Fielding from a freelance journalist into one of Britain's most successful writers. The novel and its 1999 sequel have sold 15 million copies.

For years, Fielding resisted writing another installment. She was drawn back into Bridget's world by a desire to write about the lives of middle-aged women, who often face stereotyping, just as the single Bridget did in the earlier books.

"There was the idea of 'tragic, barren spinster' because she was unmarried in her 30s," Fielding said. "It was real then. You were Miss bloody Havisham if you didn't have a boyfriend at 35. And I think the same is true of the middle-aged woman now.

"When I was in my 20s, I couldn't imagine that life would continue beyond 40, really," she added. "I couldn't imagine there would still be dating and going out and getting drunk with your friends and worrying about calls or texts that hadn't come, and what to wear."

In Mad About the Boy, Bridget's romantic misadventures are overshadowed by loss and the fear of aging - but a strong comic vein remains.

"I think most of the things I write are a mixture of dark and light," Fielding said.

Life is "not all sailing along marvelously, nor is it 'Oh, we're in a well of despair.' People hit tough times, and then their friends get round them and cheer them up and then they keep buggering on."

As in the previous books, Bridget can lean on old friends Jude, Tom and Talitha, as well as disreputable former paramour Daniel Cleaver.

She navigates the treacherous world of online dating sites and Twitter, and acquires a 29-year-old boyfriend named Roxster.

The book also introduces Mr Wallaker, a teacher at Bridget's son's school with whom she instantly clashes. But wait - is that a spark between them? (Hint: Fielding says her dream casting for a movie adaptation is Daniel Craig).

Bridget has always contained elements of Fielding, who is 55 and, like her character, lives in one of the nicer areas of North London with two young children. She is separated from their father, American comedy writer Kevin Curran.

There are glimpses of Bridget in the writer's quick wit and sense of the absurd - though Fielding exudes a considerably greater sense of control than her hapless heroine.

Mad About the Boy suffered its own Bridget Jones-style mishap when 40 pages from another book, a memoir by actor David Jason, were inserted into the British edition by mistake.

And some of the reviews have been less than glowing: not everyone hails mishap-prone, insecure Bridget as a 21st-century heroine. Guardian newspaper columnist Suzanne Moore wrote a piece headlined "Why I Hate Bridget Jones," condemning the character as "vapid, consumerist and self-obsessed" and the book as anti-feminist.

Fielding has heard that argument before.

She said that if women can't make fun of themselves, "we haven't got very far at being equal, have we?"

"And also, I think that is the way women communicate with each other, often, privately. They talk about their frailties, their mess-ups, their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities, and they are funny about it and they support each other.

"I was surprised with the first book, with the women who told me they identified with it - powerful, successful women, saying 'Oh yes, I have that problem with tights being all tangled up.' And it's not just women, either. (Prime Minister) David Cameron was in the papers not so long ago ... and he said that he'd get in a situation when he's got the kids in the back of the car and he gets a head of state on the phone: 'Will you shut up, I've got the Israeli prime minister on the phone!'

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Gentlemen, we can revive him

The iconic opening sequence from '70s TV series . Source: Supplied

The cover of Dynamite Entertainment's Six Million Dollar Man: Season Six #1, with artwork by Alex Ross. Source: Supplied

INFLATION might have taken its toll, but 36 years on, the Six Million Dollar Man is slo-mo-ing back into the public consciousness.

But rather than our TV screens, bionic man Steve Austin (played back then by Lee Majors) will be gracing the comic book page in a series that picks up where the show left off.

Six Million Dollar Man: Season Six (yes, the original run was five seasons) is an official continuation of the hit '70s series, to be published early next year by Dynamite Entertainment to coincide with the show's 40th anniversary.

And though it's in comic form, you can expect all the gimmicks that made the show so popular.

Comic writer James Kuhoric told The Hollywood Reporter : "We went out of our way to use the 'kung fu slow motion', the sound effects, and all the oddities of the era so the comic book would feel like the original TV series."

A ’70s comic book advertisement for Six Million Dollar Man and Maskatron action figures. Source: Supplied

Adding to the uniqueness of the concept, the Season Six comic book will feature Steve Austin's arch enemy who never actually appeared on TV: Maskatron - the evil robot with interchangeable faces who could impersonate Austin or his boss Oscar Goldman (Richard Anderson) - was an action figure in Kenner's Six Million Dollar Man toy line of the '70s, and appeared to be based on robot doubles created by Dr Chester Dolenz in a couple of episodes.

Speaking of toys, Dynamite will also be taking its first step into toymaking, with Six Million Dollar Man action figures and statues alongside merchandise from its other properties. BifBangPow! and Zica Toys already make retro-style toys, lunchboxes etc.

Dynamite has already been publishing a Bionic Man reimagining by cult hero Kevin Smith, with cover art by the legendary Alex Ross. Ross is doing the covert art for Season Six as well.

Bionic fandom has undergone something of an online revival in recent years. There are numerous blogs and Twitter accounts dedicated to the franchise, and original stars Majors and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman) recently appeared at Atlanta's Dragon Con. Both The Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman have had complete-series DVD releases in recent years, and there was also a short-lived attempt to reimagine The Bionic Woman in a TV series in 2007. But The Six Million Dollar Man is only the latest in a series of comic book continuations of defunct TV series.

The X-Files: Season 10: Agents Mully and Sculder are back continuing to investigate government conspiracies and the paranormal. Creator Chris Carter returns to the franchise to oversee its continuation in comic form, ensuring this is as authorised as it gets.

Smallville: Season 11: Despite a 10-season run, it seemed Smallville was only getting started when Clark Kent finally donned the red, yellow and blue at the end of the final episode. If you always wondered what Tom Welling got up to in the Superman suit, Smallville: Season 11 has the answer.

Whedonverse: Joss Whedon's cult TV creations also have been continued in comic form, with three more "seasons" for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and continuing adventures for Angel. And his short-lived sci-fi series Firefly has also gotten the comic treatment, the latest series written by Whedon's brother Zack.

Movie sequels and prequels: Numerous big-screen blockbusters have had accompanying comic-book prequels and sequels in the past several years, especially superhero flicks such as this year's Man of Steel and Thor: The Dark World.

Also, IDW Publishing's Star Trek ongoing series reimagines episodes from the original series for the new "Abramsverse" timeline.

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Mary Poppins author 'ruined son's life'

The first depiction of the icon Walt Disney in a film follows the family studio head, played by Tom Hanks, in his struggles to get a big-screen adaptation of Mary Poppins off the ground.

Mary Poppins author Pamela Lyndon Travers. Source: Getty Images

Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers in the movie Saving Mr Banks. Picture: Supplied Source: Supplied

EMMA Thompson plays the Australian-born creator of Mary Poppins in a new movie. But omitted from the film are details from Travers? personal life that reveal a far darker side to the famously difficult writer.

Saving Mr Banks also stars Tom Hanks as Walt Disney, with the film depicting Disney’s 20-year battle to secure the movie rights for Pamela Lyndon Travers’ story.

But omitted from the film are details from Travers’ personal life that reveal a far darker side to the famously difficult writer.

Particularly disturbing was Travers’ adoption of her son, a twin who was separated from his brother because Travers decided she only wanted one of the boys. This decision was to have terrible repercussions for both their lives.

Actors Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in a scene from the 1964 film 'Mary Poppins'. Source: Supplied

Travers was born in Queensland to British parents but it wasn’t till she moved to London in her 20s that her career took off.

After failed attempts at acting she devoted herself to writing, publishing Mary Poppins to great acclaim in 1934.

In spite of her literary success true love eluded her and craving a child, but without a partner, she decided to adopt from the Hones, an Irish family of artists and writers.

According to a report in the Mail Online, the Hone patriarch pleaded with Travers to take the family’s twin sons but the writer insisted she could only look after one, selecting the baby based on advice from her astrologer.

Author PL (Pamela Lyndon) Travers (real name Helen Lyndon Goff) who wrote childrens story Mary Poppins (1899-1996). Pic Handout 1966 P/ Source: Supplied

Split from his twin, Camillus was raised in luxury and told by his mother he was the son of a wealthy sugar baron.

However, when he was 17 his twin Anthony appeared at Travers’ home in Chelsea. Although Travers threw the boy out out she was unable to hide the truth from Camillus for long.

According to the boys’ oldest brother, Joseph Hone, Travers’ decision to separate the brothers ruined both their lives.

Unable to cope with the deception both brothers descended in to alcoholism and Travers, who became a millionaire after she sold the rights to Mary Poppins to Disney in 1961, was so concerned that Camillus would fritter away the family fortune she put all her money in trust for him and her grandchildren after she died.

“Pamela Travers saw herself as Mary Poppins and thought she could play Poppins with poor little Camillus,” Joseph Hone told the Mail.

Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins Source: Supplied

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