Sometimes a book is so seminal that any talk of a sequel is shot down in a series of fan-based derogatory comments about the author wanting to suck on someone’s nipples or wanking at the altar of capitalist pigs.

As Enid Blyton could testify to if she were here today. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they are the worst thing since bread came brown.

Well Stephen King, him what wrote all those famous horror books, has unveiled a chapter of his upcoming sequel to The Shining. As we all know, The Shining is the one with the little boy who has powers, not the one with the girl who loses her loaf when she gets her first period. Or the one with the killer car.

It was turned into a multi-million pound grossing film directed by none other than legendary filmer Stanley Kubrick and went on to become one of King’s most famous works. Some might say that The Shining is one of the best things that King has ever written. But those people should shut their mouths. Everyone knows that the best thing Stephen King has ever written is The Stand. Saying otherwise will make Sissy Spacek star in Carrie 3: Pre-Menstrual Train-sion, which is basically just Carrie but on a train.

Now the boy from the film, the one with the powers, has all growed up and is now working in a care home. Probably due to Cameron’s Broken Britain. Why would you use powers like that to help some old dears who can’t help pissing themselves? Your first job would be to get your Mother a decent haircut. And a better taste in men maybe. She’s like a supernatural Kerry Katona.

Just without the ketamine.

Apparently Danny Torrance is looking after some old biddies until (wait for it) a group of psychic vampires called The Tribe turn up. Sounds epic right? Not really. Seems like something you might see on the Horror Channel between the fifth repeat of Supercroc vs Orangu-Man and The Tommyknockers (another Stephen King book of course). There should be some peppy cheerleaders or maybe a self-righteous business woman who wants to know what’s going so she can back to the office because she has important business.

HECKLERSPRAY FACT: King has always intended on returning to the best selling book, and has even littered books written later in his career with news of the Torrances and the Overlook. The Overlook Hotel is mentioned by Annie Wilkes, the leg snappiest batshit crazy star of ‘Misery.’ Apparently her ex-boyfriend went to sketch the ruins of the Overlook. Which is interesting. Presumably he had full use of his legs, but would’ve still had to have had sex with Kathy Bates.

Poor man.

Dr. Sleep, which is what King is calling the sequel hasn’t been finished yet, so don’t hold out any hope that it’ll be out before the middle of next year, although he can knock a book out in six weeks, so you could have it for Easter. Would you like that? I bet you would.

Filthy.

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Jarvis Cocker is something of a national treasure. There’s no John Peel to represent the nerdy music enthusiasts, so the Pulp frontman has somehow found himself filling in for Peel, a man who also wasn’t particularly happy with being the focal point for other, likeminded losers.

However, there’s bad news of sorts.

Jarvis Cocker is ostensibly quitting music because he’s gone and got himself a 9-to-5 job. No, honestly. This isn’t a joke. What job? Well, the kind of job that will make everyone coo ‘Oh Jarvis, you are brilliant aren’t you?’

Jarvis has put down his microphone and decided to trade it all in for a office job with Faber Books, according to the mighty Quietus.

Faber, who happen to be publishing a book of Cocker’s lyrics, have announced that he’ll be an editor-at-large with an open brief to commission new work as Faber expands its music titles, with forthcoming books including Julian Cope’s Copendium and Quietus writer David Stubbs’ book on Krautrock.

Faber’s Lee Brackstone said:

“Jarvis felt like a natural fit with the Faber sensibility, both as author and editor, and I’m sure the small list of books he will develop will represent his eccentric and yet popular touch. We now have an excellent portfolio of authors from the pop world and our intention is to develop these relationships and continue to build a reputation as the home for exciting and original writing on music.”

Jarvis Cocker himself says:

“I am proud, and more than a little excited, to be asked to work with Faber in an editorial capacity. It is my dearest hope that we will produce some fantastic books together.”

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We might have confused some of you hip modern readers with the above headline. What the gubbins is this book thing we’re talking about? You may have heard about one of these strange objects but aren’t these strange creations just items that appear in museums and old fashioned buildings known as libraries?

These days, traditional print media is being replaced by glass and electronics courtesy of iPads and Kindles. All this basically means, is that, if posh people get in to fights, they can glass someone with an educational device.

However, in the olden days, Enid Blyton wrote things that ended up on ‘paper’. And she was rather successful. She was one of the most famous children’s storytellers who ever lived and she’s estimated to have sold around 500 million books around the world. A new work entitled Mr Tumpy’s Caravan might provide a moment of nostalgia for those who read her works when growing up.

Blyton basically wrote short stories or children’s novels. Or, mystery detectives or tales of fantasy bollocks. Looking back at her work, especially the books from the Famous Five series, they’d probably be banned today under hyper sensitive political correctness.

Every holiday, a gang of happy go lucky children would visit their Aunt Fannies house and foil smugglers, kidnappers and Michael Jackson types.

However one character in particular called Georgina went in to constant strops because she wanted to boy. Not just dressing as a male, but to be known as someone called George. These days we assume that authors encouraging children to indulge in cross dressing or contemplating a sex change wouldn’t go down well.

So what’s Mr Trumpy’s Crappyvan all about?

“Mr Tumpy’s Caravan follows the adventures of a caravan with feet and a mind of its own. Together with Mr Tumpy, his friends and a dog called Bun-Dorg, it crosses an ocean before facing a dog-headed dragon in an attempt to save a princess’s land. It was initially believed to have been a version of a picture book called Mr Tumpy and His Caravan, compiled using comic strips published in the London Evening Standard in the 1940s.”

However, there is still that problem of encouraging children to read. If the slightly weird sounding book was to be published, it wouldn’t make much sense to a modern audience.

These days, the most reading children do is how to fire the mega attack death kill stun electric ray gun in the instruction guide in their latest PS3 game where they have to destroy zombie lackeys on their way to the office of the undead.

A mash-up for TV then?

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The big news this week is that Jessica Simpson can read. You heard. She’s been taking classes in how to become a functioning human after she realised that her fame would be fleeting if she relied solely of her looks.

Oh, and let us not forget her singing voice. Pahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Sorry. Now that Jessica Simpson is a proper bookworm, she’s  gravitating to real wordy affairs like the backs of oestrogen pill packets and the front of Pepsi cans. Better yet, she’s sharing her love of words with her fiancé Eric Johnson.

The singer has said that her and her American football playing boyfriend are real lovers of words. Not only to they speak them and read them slowly, with a ruler, in children’s books, but they also like to express themselves by writing them down.

She told New York Magazine:

“I just let it flow. My fiancé taught me that. He’ll get up in the morning and just write, so nothing blocks his emotional life. It doesn’t even have to be in sentence form he just gets everything out, and that way he can function without getting in the way of himself, without being aggressive or judgmental. We do that together.”

Get that? It doesn’t even have to be in sentence form to unblock your emotions. Something that hecklerspray is an expert in.

A source we’ve made up, leaked one of these piece of beautiful sportsman prose. It reads:

“Throw kik throwinkikinaballaround WITH HELMET ON ME HEAD i am a bit sad & i dont no why is it the helmet or the runnin arond and fallin on th floor wiv the men tryin to get th ball? I HAV A GIRL IN TH HOUSE & SHE MAKES ME DO A SEX UP HER thats o.k. becuss i like th sex altho not wen i am a tired boy from the helmet & runnin game i do in th stadiums fille d up wit th shoutin peepl. thy make me sad sumtiems.”

Simpson adds that she sometimes takes a long time reading the front of Doritos packets:

“Sometimes he takes that hour just reading, we’ll get out of bed and just read aloud to each other.”

Come on. Say it along with us Eric!

Doh… ree… toes…. doh-ree-toes… DORITOS! Attaboy! What does this say Eric? Slowly. Remember? Curly ‘cuh’. That’s right! Co… co… Coca… Co… nearly Eric! Not coca cocaine! Silly sausage! Remember the drink the the red can? No! Not McEwan’s Export! Coca Cola! Are you sleepy from all this thinking?

Let’s get you to bed.

Next week! Jessica Simpson begins work on her first of three novels which she’s already been paid a million dollar advance for.

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Have you seen Gossip Girl? Do you hate it? Then it really doesn’t make sense for you to read this article does it? You really are toweringly dim aren’t you? Anyway, those of you left who LURVE Gossip Girl, or indeed, just like trying to win free things, your luck is in!

The picture to the right of this article, coupled with the words you read in the headline, should tell you that you can win some Gossip Girl goodies. Goodies, in this instance, means a bunch of Gossip Girl books and a signed DVD for the first two seasons. If you’re British, ‘seasons’ means series.

If you’re American, you can’t enter anyway… and the DVD probably wouldn’t work on your DVD player. Anyway! Want to win stuff? Then, as ever, click over the jump for the details and such.

So. There’ll be three lots to give away (which means three winners)  which consist of a Gossip Girl box set signed by Ed Westwick or Jessica Szohr and 8 Gossip Girl novels.

ITV2 are sorting you out with this prizes, which means, the least you could do in return is watch Gossip Girl tonight at 8PM on ITV2.

So what do you need to do to win things that you haven’t paid for? A SAE envelope full of your own hair?

Nope.

A stupid promotional code sent into a computer which will use your details to send you annoying junk?

Nope.

This is dead easy.

First, you need to read this tricky question.

Chuck Bass is a character in Gossip Girl. What is his name in Gossip Girl?

a) Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl
b) Bootsy Collins Who Plays The Bass Really Well
c) Fender Precision Jazz Bass Which Is A Musical Instrument And Not In Fact A Human

Right. Got the answer? Good. Now, don’t tell us the answer because we’ll ignore you. In case you’re skim reading this, we’ll tell you the next bit in capitals so you don’t miss it.

IMPORTANT: SEND YOUR ANSWER TO ITV2′s TWITTER ACCOUNT! HOW VERY MODERN!

Click here to visit ITV2′s twitter account.

You’ll have to follow them to be in with a shout of winning (they’ll know if you’re not because they’ve got a team of spies or something). Oh, and the answer is a).

Winners will be picked at random and follow up tweets sent to acquire postal details. Anyone not responding with their address within three days will miss out and another name will be drawn – so check your account regularly! Entrants must be 15 years old or older to enter. Entries close at 12pm on Sunday 26th September 2010. Competition limited to entrants in the UK.

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Sex and The City was a sitcom or something.

We never watched it, but it appears the main plot was bestiality based, as every episode contained 60 solid minutes of different men totally doing a big-nosed horse named Carrie.

Like we said, we never watched it.

Its target audience was perverted middle-aged women. It was so popular it spawned a movie that we think was about Spider-Man riding Carrie in several derbies, claiming swift victories everywhere they went. We never saw that one either.

Well if you loved the TV show, and you loved the movie – then you are totally gonna dig the two pre-teen Carrie-based books that are getting smeared all over Barnes & Noble really soon. That’s right – there are some novels about to come out about Carrie’s sexy adventures in high school.

Chapter one is about a horny janitor. Sorry to ruin plot.

It’s a little known fact that Sex and the City was originally supposed to be entitled ‘Sex with the City,’ but by the time the camera panned back far enough to film the obviously necessary scenes, Carrie looked like a gnat squirming this way and that with no real purpose or direction.

Also we heard she kept getting chaffed by New York’s subway system. These wounds, in turn, got really, really infected and filming got halted like 10 times.

And so was born Sex and the City, the most important piece of television since it was revealed Joe died in a bike crash or something in the Facts of Life made-for-TV reunion movie.

SATC is so popular it’s spawned comic books, look alike pageants, Lego collector sets, video games, breakfast cereals. a well-written movie and most importantly – the social acceptance of women who used to be considered pretty deformed.

It didn’t spawn any of those things. We wish it would though. Seriously – all that crap would be great. It is pushing out a couple of books though. They’ll be all about Carrie Bradshaw kicking it live in high school. These novellas will no doubt be perfect material to read your child as they drift off to sleep.

E! Online reports on the book deal:

“Candace Bushnell is doing her best to milk the cash cow that is Sex and the City completely dry, announcing plans to publish The Carrie Diaries, two young adult novels that will take readers back to the lady Bradshaw’s more formative high school years…”I’ve always been interested in exploring Carrie’s teenage years,” Bushnell [the author & basis for SATC] said. “Carrie in high school did not follow the crowd—she led it. It was there that she began observing and commenting on the social scene.”"

Doesn’t that sound good? Well it will be – we know because we’ve seen a leaked excerpt. We’ll show it to you if you promise not to tell anybody. It’s from chapter 4 in the first book. It details Carrie’s entrance into puberty:

“As Carrie woke her eyes focused on the pink wallpaper across from her bed. She’s seen it everyday for the past three years – yet somehow it looked different. She sat up and realised her boobs had leaked milk all over the inside of her pajama-top for the first time ever. And just like that, she knew she’d never be the same.

“The lactate got on her mattress too.”

We can tell that’s an accurate book-extract because of its spot-on description of a girl’s changing body. That’s really what gives it the air of truth.

Generally speaking, the cast of The Hills are such a bundle of obnoxiously overprivileged mimsies that they seem incapable of wiping their own bottoms by themselves.

But there’s always an exception to the rule, and in this case it’s Lauren Conrad. True, she might spend her entire life trapped in an oblivious richie rich bubble – a bubble that most sane people would like to take a flaming cricket bat to – but you can’t say that Lauren Conrad doesn’t possess basic English skills.

That’s because Lauren Conrad has just signed up to write three young adult fiction books that she totally would have been asked to write anyway even if she wasn’t on TV all the poxy time. We don’t know about you, but we think that these Lauren Conrad books are going to be the best young adult fiction books written by a woman we’ve never heard of from a TV show that we actively dislike ever. Yay for books!

Appearing on The Hills can be an amazing career platform that allows you to do anything you want. Audrina Patridge, for example, managed to become a nudey model after being on The Hills, while Spencer Pratt was able to realise his dreams of becoming a professional bell-end.

And then there’s Lauren Conrad. Although originally the reason why people watched The Hills, recently Lauren Conrad has been losing ground to Heidi Montag – a woman so astoundingly obnoxious that the reason she’s even allowed to be on TV is so that frustrated male viewers can have a conduit to safely live out their most disturbing domestic violence fantasies without hurting anyone they love.

And that’s why Lauren Conrad is branching out into the world of publishing. According to reports, Lauren Conrad has signed a three-book deal with HarperCollins.

There’s nothing wrong with that at all – Lauren seems like an imaginative enough girl, and we’re sure that whatever she comes up with won’t just be a lazy semi-autobiographical dirge that most people could normally wank out in 45 minutes. The New York Daily News reports:

Conrad’s young adult fiction series, titled “LA Candy,” is loosely based on the 22-year-old’s transition from regular gal to recognizable face. “I’ve always loved books that I could lose myself in, ones that would transport me to another place.”

OK, two things. Firstly Lauren, they’re not books you’re describing, they’re cruise ships. Secondly, these books sound like the worst idea ever. Even worse than Kylie’s semi-autobiographical dirge. Even worse than Geri Halliwell’s semi-autobiographical dirge, perhaps, and that’s not something we say lightly.

Because, really, who’s going to read your books, Lauren Conrad? Intelligent people won’t read them because by definition none of them watch The Hills, and people who watch The Hills won’t because none of them can read.

A book’s hardly going to appeal to them, is it? Come back when you’ve brought out something that can hold their attention better, like a DVD of you dancing around with a bit of shiny paper and going “ooh ooh ooh” or something.

Triple-nippled pop Cabbage Patch Kid Lily Allen has been named as one of the judges of next year's prestigious Orange Broadband Prize For Fiction.

Understandably, this news has shocked the higher echelons of the literary world, who think that the Orange Prize judging panel should be made up of people who have actually written books rather than Lily Allen, a girl whose greatest literary achievement was rhyming the words 'door' and 'crackwhore' in a song once. But that's just the expected knee-jerk reaction – actually Lily Allen is surprisingly well-read and happily lists her favourite books as "Hary Poter 1, Harri Pottur 2, Haryy Puttr 3, Arri Potoor 4 and Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form by Janet Gurkin Altman."

No, our mistake. That last one should read "Hurriy Botturr 5."

As a pop megastar with her own range of clothes and everything, you might not think that Lily Allen gets to read many books, but you'd be wrong. In fact, Lily is a voracious reader and ploughed through several books this year during that period when she was supposed to tour America but couldn't because they banned her.

In fact, Lily Allen loves books so much that she's been asked to help judge next year's Orange Broadband Prize For Fiction, the most illustrious award for books that aren't about stuff that actually happened and were written by women. It's a big deal, too – as well as the publicity that comes with a win, the Orange Prize winner also gets £30,000 and a bronze statue made by David Niven's sister.

But what – aside from the fact she's a woman and therefore possesses a comparatively high tolerance for pastel-coloured books about superficially successful yet deeply neurotic women who fall in love with their handsome yet fiendish roguish bosses before learning some kind of painfully obvious life lesson at the end – gives Lily Allen the right to judge such an important award?

Nothing at all, say the literati. They're outraged that Lily Allen is even allowed near books in the first place, let alone given the authority to say whether they're good or not. Appalled by this – and the other mainly non-author members of the Orange Prize judging panel, Maggie Gee from the Royal Society Of Literature told The Telegraph the following:

"Where is the seriousness here? Lily would be fine as the light relief, her songs are great. But the chair herself is not an author. There is a shortage of serious writers on this panel. It seems to be another consequence of this obsession with celebrity. We seem to have to have them on panels like this whether they know anything about books or not. If Lily reads a lot, whole books and serious books, then she is a fair choice. But that is not something she is known for. If she has just been chosen for her celebrity then that seems to be a ridiculous thing."

This, of course is an absurd and dangerous view. The argument here is that the only people qualified to have an opinion about books are those who have studied literature for 12 years at an Oxbridge university, when in fact that's the sort of statement that'll put people off books altogether. Lily Allen has obviously been picked as an everyman judge, and her position as a role-model might even encourage more young girls to start reading for pleasure, when the bulk of them currently view it as a bit of a chore.

Besides, Lily Allen knows exactly what she wants from a good book. She wants it to be heavy enough to knock out the paparazzi if she throws or swings it at them, plus she wants it to be thick enough that she can use it to stand on when she's trying to spend her pocket money on a quarter of sherbet lemons at the newsagents. She can't see over the counter if she's standing on a thin book, you see.

Read more:

Lily Allen named as judge for the Orange Prize - Telegraph

The good people of Rotherham know all about famous people – after all, the town is responsible for producing not just Jive Bunny and the Chuckle Brothers but the fat bloke from Hi-de-Hi, too.

However, that's all been blown out of the water now that Dolly Parton has bewilderingly decided to use Rotherham as the UK launchpad of her new pre-school literacy drive. From now on, thanks to Dolly Parton's good work, every child born in Rotherham will receive one book a month until they are five. Sounds like a good idea, but it really isn't – what Dolly Parton doesn't know is that Rotherham is also the UK base for the Children's Picture Books For Packets Of Hard Drugs trading foundation, along with being a crucial annex of the worldwide Stack Kid's Book On Top Of Each Other Until We Get High Enough To Kill God campaign. Poor Dolly Parton, she's just a patsy in all of this.

Not much happens in Rotherham. Sure, there's the annual 'Steal Stuff From Washing Lines' day, the occasional twinning ceremony with old discarded prams found around the world and every now and then visitors will provide locals with important nourishment by letting them take turns at trying to chew dead woodland creatures from the grill of their car, but that's about it.

Equally it's not much fun being Dolly Parton. Every morning Dolly wakes up, counts all the mile-high stacks of I Will Always Love You royalty money that have built up overnight, spends a couple of hours playing around in the theme park she owns, takes a break to count the mile-high stacks of I Will Always Love You royalty money that have built up throughout the morning and then spends the rest of day eating endangered animals from bejewelled plates and laughing contentedly about the time she made Jessica Simpson cry.

So basically what we're trying to say is that Rotherham and Dolly Parton are essentially identical. 

And that's why Rotherham was a not-at-all confusing first choice for Dolly Parton to launch her Imagination Library pre-school literacy scheme in the UK, as she did yesterday. Thanks to Dolly Parton's help, every child in Rotherham will receive one book per month until they turn five, which they can use to hammer in nails, de-stone horse-hooves or just sellotape to their feet to act as shoes as they see fit.

Why Rotherham? Well, Dolly Parton puts it down to a visit by Roger Stone, the leader of Rotherham council who visited Tennessee a few years ago on an important business meeting that absolutely had to take place in Tennessee. Dolly told BBC News:

"I didn't know much about Rotherham other than what we heard when we started talking to Roger Stone. He had been over to the States and found out about our programme and asked if we would bring it here to the children. He thought it was a wonderful idea, so two years later we are here, and we are very excited about it."

Yes, we know we're wrong to mock such an important literacy drive, and that Dolly Parton should be credited for choosing somewhere other than a London suburb for once to launch her campaign. Because Dolly Parton is doing a very good thing to the people of Rotherham.

Face it, with her influence, the children of Rotherham now all have a shot at getting a piece of what Dolly Parton has in the future – that is, a role in an unsuccessful Sylvester Stallone movie and a song that was only slightly popular until Whitney Houston decided to rerecord it.

Read more:

Dolly Brings Scheme To Yorkshire – BBC 

Aside from outing wizards and rolling around naked in a in a dump-truck full of money cackling at God, JK Rowling hasn't found a whole lot to do with her time since she put the finishing touches to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.

Actually that's not strictly true – since Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows was completed, JK Rowling has written a set of fairytales. But these are fairytales with a difference, because a) they've been hand-written by JK Rowling, b) they were mentioned in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows and c) instead of being published they're going to be given away and auctioned off for charity. And they'll be the absolute last word on Harry Potter, except for the last two films, the merchandise, the theme park and the forthcoming sculpture of Harry Potter that JK Rowling is having carved into the moon along with the legend "I'm a lot richer than you, you know. Love JK" written in Garamond – the fanciest font.

This must be an emotionally draining time for JK Rowling. It's well-known that finishing Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows left Rowling in tears – and now that she has to move on and work on another project, the pressure must be incredi… oh, who are we kidding? JK Rowling is rich. Rich! She could spend the rest of her life just eating endangered bird eggs and drinking liquidised antimatter all day long and she'd still have enough cash left to buy your entire family, dress them up as wood and then burn them on a fire for fun.

What we're getting at is that JK Rowling probably doesn't need the money. 

But that hasn't stopped JK Rowling from thinking about Harry Potter. Just recently Rowling was in America reading bits of Harry Potter books to children and flashing them a bit of bra when it looked like they were dropping off, but that might have all been a front for the latest JK Rowling's latest big reveal – the new, handwritten, screamingly limited edition set of Harry Potter-based fairytales that she's written for fun and profit.

The Tales Of Beedle The Bard were mentioned in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows when recently-confirmed homosexual Dumbledore left them as a gift for Hermione. And since the Barbara Streisand CDs that Dumbledore left Harry Potter, the half-used tub of lube that he left Ron or the worn-out cock-ring he left Snape were mentioned in the book, it's been left up to JK Rowling to actually create copies of the fairytales herself – by hand and not for publication. One copy will be auctioned off for charity and the others will be simply given away. JK Rowling said:

"Writing it has been the most wonderful way to say goodbye to a world I have lived in for 17 years… Six of these books have been given to those most closely connected to the Harry Potter books during the last 17 years. This seventh copy will be auctioned; the proceeds to help institutionalized children who are in desperate need of a voice. So to whoever now owns this book, thank you — and fair fortune be yours."

She's a canny woman, JK Rowling, we'll give her that. You know, we wouldn't be surprised if she's filled all the Harry Potter books with little mentions of various wizardy trinkets to keep her going if times ever get hard. Should she lose her fortune tomorrow, all JK Rowling needs to do to earn some wedge is pop a housebrick on eBay and say "Forsooth, it is the nefarious housebrick of Q'ayitta Blenp, as mentioned in chapter six of Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets. And this magical, one-of-a-kind item can be yours for just £250,000. No? £100,000? £100? 50p and I promise to get my bra out again. Anyone?" Genius.