Related Content

• Miami Book Fair International 2009 schedule: Nov. 8-15
• Interactive | Guide to the book fair
• Complete coverage of Miami Book Fair International

Wife: SC gov didn't want fidelity in marriage vows

South Carolina's first lady says her wedding was a "leap of faith" because Gov. Mark Sanford, who famously cheated on her with a woman he described as his soul mate, did not want to include a vow of fidelity in their marriage ceremony.

Jenny Sanford also tells ABC's Barbara Walters in an interview airing Friday on "20/20" that the final blow to the marriage was the publication of racy e-mails between Sanford and his Argentine mistress.

The show released excerpts of Sanford's interview with Walters, which coincides with publication Friday of her memoir, "Staying True."

Big names, sun make the day perfect at the book fair

On a perfect sunny day -- clearly, the weather gods are readers, too -- thousands packed the streets and classrooms of Miami Dade College for the 26th edition of Miami Book Fair International's street fair.

And it was good. Where else could you start your day with Al Gore and end it with Iggy Pop?

Parents and kids packed the many activities at Children's Alley at the fair, which runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday. There was so much to do. Comics fans debated whether Archie should have married Betty instead of Veronica. (Yes! shouts Team Betty.) The PEN International panel discussed the sobering topic of censorship while political insiders Gwen Ifill and Taylor Branch explored how things work in Washington. Fiction fans gloried in the choices while struggling to make them, grinning at Jill McCorkle's delightful story Me and Big Foot or, perhaps, giggling at the personable Wally Lamb cracking himself up while reading his Christmas novella Wishin' and Hopin' .

Douglas dominated author's life for decade

''I read River of Grass for the first time in my 20s, lying on my back in a tent in the Everglades,'' Jack E. Davis says. ``Every time I go back and read it I see something new -- about her, about her insight. A lot of people think that it is a popular history that glosses over the important ecological characteristics of the Everglades and shows this facile understanding of the Everglades, and I think they're wrong. I don't think those people have actually read the book.''

Over the past 10 years, Davis, associate professor of history at the University of Florida and author of An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century (Georgia, $34.95), has spent so much time wading through the life and writings of South Florida's pioneer environmental champion that, although Douglas died in 1998, she has acquired a quaint status within his household as ``the other woman.''

''Well, of course, I worked on the book virtually every day,'' Davis says. 'And when we were preparing

The private John Updike

Originally published January 30, 1994

. . . authors are a dreadful clan / To be avoided if you can,

-- From 'I Missed His Book, but I Read His Name' by John Updike BEVERLY FARMS, Mass.-- A conspiracy of near-zero temperatures, sluggish airports and an inadvertent swerve past Salem's Lydia Pinkham Memorial has made you more than an hour late, but the angular form unfolding from a seat near the rear of K.C.'s Restaurant & Pub is not in the least bit dreadful. Your anemic apology is whisked aside with a handshake and a light quip about how you have "fought your way over the frozen tundra in a malfunctioning dog sled to get here." Then John Updike slides back into the wretched, patched vinyl booth and orders soup and a tuna sandwich. "So you see, I'm a cheap date."

Authors juggle different duties

Follow Lisa Black around on her workday and you might uncover the plot behind her next mystery novel. It might even be in the little notebook she pulls out to jot notes and ideas for characters or sequences.

But don't be fooled. While the ideas may come

from her day job, Black, a forensic specialist with the Cape Coral Police Department, devotes almost all of her off-the-clock time to writing. And then there is the new demand on Black's time -- promoting her books.