So Benedict XVI is publishing his first book since becoming Pope, and in selling off the various international rights, Rizzoli awarded North America to Doubleday. This is pretty much yawn-inducing territory; after all, Doubleday had a decent track record publishing John Paul II, so snagging the next pontiff in line shouldn’t have caused a stir. Except that the Italian newspaper Il Giornale decided to crack wise about the fact that Doubleday is also…well, not quite The House That Dan Brown Built, obviously, but maybe, if we’re willing to strain a metaphor to its breaking point, The House Where Dan Brown Renovated the Basement into a Spiffy Rec Room. (I know, it’s not terribly catchy, is it? Gotta work on that.) And you know how various muckety-mucks in the Roman Catholic Church feel about The Da Vinci Code; they’ve got an even bigger bug about it than the one they’ve got for Harry Potter, and that’s saying something.
OK, long story short: The Vatican likes Doubleday just fine. So that’s that jumped-up controversy nipped in the bud, I suppose.