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http://io9.com/5399851/are-our-novels-being-haunted-by-the-housing-bustAre Our Novels Being Haunted By The Housing Bust?
"The gold rush in American houses crashed and burned a couple years ago, and now amazing homes are going cheap. The catch: there might be ghosts, melting walls, and hallways that go nowhere, according to a spate of new novels."
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A new book says: Fiction is dead, long live the age of autobiography
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Cancer patient to be honored for book drive
Jim Davis was lying in bed last January after being diagnosed with brain, lung and hip cancer and saw a special on Kentucky Educational Television about poverty in Appalachia.
The retired cross-country tractor-trailer driver, who was given about a year to live, was so inspired that he decided to start collecting books from friends, churches, private companies and other organizations to donate to Eastern Kentucky libraries.
"I thought it would be something I could do with the time I've got left on this Earth," said Davis, 64, of Shepherdsville. . . .
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As soon as we meet him, on the first page of Jane Austen's last novel, Persuasion, we know he's there to be disliked. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sir Walter is vile. He has no affection for other humans and little knowledge about them, though he always knows their rank.
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Theater of War: The Philoctetes Project is the brainchild of Brian Doerries, a young theater director who uses Ajax and Philoctetes to create what he calls “town meetings” aimed at veterans, current service personnel, their families, and support groups. . . .
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Major publishing company HarperCollins recently released a new edition of Emily Brontë’s classic 1847 novel “Wuthering Heights.” . . .
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Again, I find that Publisher’s Weekly does not have a clue about how the publishing industry is changing. Is it because they are too focused on New York City lifestyles? Or is it because they still get all of their news from the publishing world’s dinosaurs that are slowly dying out? . . .
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There’s no such thing as too much Charles Darwin-celebrating. So after rejoicing in February for his 200th birthday, we celebrate today the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. . . .
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I just finished reading H.W. Brands' exhaustive and fascinating biography of Franklin Roosevelt, "Traitor to His Class." And all it did was remind me of our apparent willingness to repeat history. . . .
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For all of the uncertainty surrounding the future of the publishing industry—from the poor economy to the painful layoffs and restructurings in the wake of the digital transformation—to understand what's really hurting us, all you have to do is visit your neighborhood bookstore. . . .
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Our winter books quarterly presents book suggestions for everyone you know. Here, books for the big thinker: . . .
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Indigo Books & Music is stepping up it green initiatives. Canada's biggest book retailer is asking publishers to report whether or not their books are published on recycled paper or paper that has been certified to come from sustainably managed forests. This information . . .
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Indigo Books & Music Inc. is committed to forest conservation. In fact it's an underlying focus of our company's sustainability strategy. As the leading Canadian retailer of books, the paper in the books we sell and the paper we use internally . . .
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This is a great idea by Random House. There are also bookstore owners who are taking up the challenge as well.
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Ian Halperin has made a living off penning controversial undercover biographies. In previous books, the Canadian investigative journalist has dug up dirt on Kurt Cobain, Celine Dion and Michael Jackson, and now he has his sights on Hollywood royalty: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. . . .
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The moderator (Stephen, as in me) just found this, and is rather disturbed by the implications, and content of the article, not to mention the book.
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Lucky Catullus (in Alma-Tadema's version, centre, above). He has had more publicity in the last 24 hours than in the last 24 years. Whole cohorts of journalists who have never read a word of the first century BC poet have been puzzling (with the help of wiki usually) about what the words 'pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo" really mean? . . .
NOTA BENE read the article for a chuckle
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This year is the bicentennial of his birth, and while he never earned a secure living, was often sucked into alcoholic maelstroms, was unable to hold a job without incinerating his prospects and regularly lashed out at his literary contemporaries . . .
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They might have served a useful function once, but these annual lists have been made irrelevant by the blogosphere . . . .
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Knut Hamsun may lack name recognition in the English-speaking world, but the admiration of his contemporaries suggests the stature he once enjoyed. “The whole modern school of fiction in the 20th century stems from Hamsun, just as Russian literature in the 19th century ‘came out of Gogol’s greatcoat,’ ” declared Isaac Bashevis Singer. To Henry Miller, Hamsun was “the Dickens of my generation.” Hamsun received the world’s greatest literary honor in 1920. Summing up the modernist literary consensus, Thomas Mann issued a characteristically lapidary pronouncement: “Never has the Nobel Prize been awarded to one worthier of it.” . . .
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A federal judge has rejected Amazon.com (AMZN)'s request to prevent "preliminary approval" of the Google Books settlement. . . .
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Dismisses Jordan Scott's claim of copyright infringement
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NBC Universal disappears into the cable goliath's maw. Let's hope the Internet isn't so easy to tame
By Andrew Leonard
Does this ring a bell with you about publishing, as well?
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A letter by Keats's old friend makes clear how much "sensative-bitterness" the poet felt after attacks on him by critics . . . .
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Twilight is more than a teen dream. It's a massive cultural force. Yet the very girliness that has made it such a success has resulted in its being marginalized and mocked. . . .
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With newspapers folding and cutting corners all around the country, it’s easy to give up entirely on the fourth estate. But now look who’s riding in on their white horse: those writers you newspaper types wouldn’t give jobs to before because they tried to make their articles all “literary.” Take that, 5 W’s. . . .
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They’re calling it “the black tulip of US literature.” It’s a tattered, 1827 copy of “Tamerlane and Other Poems,” the first published work of Edgar Allan Poe (although on the book Poe identified himself only as “a Bostonian”). It will be auctioned off this afternoon at Christie’s in NY and is expected to sell for somewhere between $500,000 and $700,000. . . .
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There is mounting speculation that the former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is going to announce a possible presidential bid with a stop in Iowa during her national book-signing tour. . . .
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The recent announcement that a specialist in hand papermaking had been awarded a MacArthur Fellowship resulted in many a raised eyebrow. A paper specialist? At the University of Iowa? Why? And why study books and paper in the age of the computer? The whole thing seems odd, unnecessary even, especially when we all know cutbacks have come down hard on state agencies all across Iowa. . . .
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Boil it all down and I’m a guy from Fresno who finds himself sitting at a café in England talking with someone who knows a helluva lot more about William Faulkner and the advent of stream-of-consciousness literature than I do.
Let me introduce you to Waleed Al-Bazoon. Waleed, who is 37, is originally from Basra, Iraq. He worked as an interpreter first with a Scottish regiment and then with an English regiment. . . .
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At a time of price wars and pressure from electronic books, a group of independent bookstores has found at least one way to lure customers into paying premium prices for a hardcover title: import an eagerly awaited book from Britain several months before its release in the United States and then jack up the price. . . .
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Today Details magazine unveiled the 25 Greatest Gen X Books of All Time, giving GalleyCat an exclusive peek at the picks. The colorful list . . .
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Silver lining department: Besides all those bimbos cashing large cheques from Tiger Woods, somebody else has done well out of this business. The Telegraph in England reports a boom in sales for Get a Grip on Physics, the 2003 book found in Tiger's vehicle after he smashed it up. . . .
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Sunday's Ovation cover will be making this year a "read-and-green Christmas" through giving the gift of used books. We'll have various local booksellers/bibliophiles weighing in on how the gift of books can carry great personal meaning and significance. We'll also discuss how, at a time of economic difficulty and deep environmental concern, the gift of used books in particular can ease the burden on your wallet and your planet. . . .
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All great protagonists let you crawl into their skin and live as them. Although Winston Smith, the hero of 1984, is a very serious and emblematic individual wrestling with some of the most pressing political issues of the modern age, he looked a bit different when he was transposed into my 12-year-old life . . .
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Khorasani has written a book in which she details the “inside story” of the campaign and its strategies. An English translation of the book has just been published. But because Khorasani cannot herself promote the book, Mahnaz Afkhami, the former Minister of State for Women’s Affairs in Iran, has been authorized to speak in her behalf. She appeared this week on VOA’s Press Conference USA . . . .
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"The Red Book of C.G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology," a new exhibition at the Rubin Museum of Art, offers a public look at a private chronicle the psychologist Carl G. Jung kept for 16 years in the early 20th century. . . .
A slide show of 8 slides
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The devilish, dutiful daughter, Louisa May Alcott
The greatest American literary sensation of the post-Civil War decade had its origins in a conversation between Thomas Niles, an editor at the publishing house of Roberts Brothers, and Bronson Alcott, the father of a thirty-five-year-old writer whom his wife had named for a favorite sister, Louisa May. When . . .
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What Hefner understood, faster and better than anybody else at the time, was the vast ideological gap between the words "Sweetheart" and "Playmate." Hefner wasn't selling steady dates and monogamy; he was selling one-night stands and variety. He wasn't selling duty. He was selling pleasure. And plenty of folks -- imagine that -- wanted to buy. . . .
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Tired of the talk, Powell has taken matters into his own hands. Beginning in January, community college graduates will receive free books for their two years at the Mount. . . .
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She was the longest-reigning monarch in British history, presiding over not only the establishment of an empire but also the greatest flowering of the English-language novel. Yet when it comes to literature, Queen Victoria might well ask, where is the love? . . .
Literary News Stories
Books mentioned in this topic
The Farm (other topics)The Red Tree (other topics)
The Gate to Women's Country (other topics)
The Song of Achilles (other topics)
Parable of the Sower (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Joanne Ramos (other topics)Sheri S. Tepper (other topics)
Ed Lynskey (other topics)
Apocalypse Now? Not Even Close | Peer to Peer Review
"Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” Suzanne Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University reportedly announced last week at the annual Educause conference, adding, in case her audience didn't get it, "Kaput. Finito." To be sure, she was deliberately taking an extreme position for the sake of debate, but it's a commonly voiced sentiment. Nobody reads anymore. The book is dead. Libraries are deserted tombs full of the dust of vanished civilizations.