Books

Rick Springfield’s debut ‘spiritual’ novel, plus the third installment of Bridget Jones

It’s been a big day in books news

It’s been a big day in book news.

Next May Australian rock star Rick Springfield will publish a work of fiction called Magnificent Vibration.

According to USA Today, “The book portrays a man ‘who has hit a dead end in his life, but who serendipitously receives a 1-800 phone connection to God via an inscription in a mysterious self-help book that may just give him a shot at saving the planet.'”

Springfield’s publishers promise that the Grammy Award-winning author’s debut novel will be “”hilarious, poignant, spiritual, over-the-top, and deeply meaningful.”

In 2010, the singer-songwriter, perhaps best known for the single Jessie’s Girl, wrote a tell-all biography called Late, Late at Night, which was a New York Times bestseller.

In other literary headlines, bestselling U.K. author Helen Fielding is working on the third novel chronicling the zany exploits of everybody’s favourite singleton, Bridget Jones. The title of the book, Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy, was announced today on NBC Today.

This time around the heroine will be “dealing with an entire new range of nightmares: skinny jeans, social media and technology,” including texting. In a short excerpt from the book, which will be released in October, Jones says, “You see, this is the trouble with the modern world. If it was the days of letter-writing, I would never even have started to find his address, a pen, a piece of paper, an envelope, a stamp, and gone outside at 11.30 p.m. to find a postbox. A text is gone at the brush of a fingertip, like a nuclear bomb or Exocet missile.”

Fielding’s first two books about Bridget were made into movies starring Renée Zellweger (who was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the first time), Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. A third film has been in the works since 2011 but has been put on hold. Last Decemeber, Firth told the Chicago Sun Times that “I wouldn’t say that it’s completely dead in the water, but the way it’s going you might be seeing Bridget Jones’ granddaughter’s story being told by the time we get there.”

We leave you with a clip from Bridget Jones’s Diary, when Bridget meets Mark Darcy:

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