Literary News Stories discussion
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The title of this extraordinarily powerful and moving novel translates literally as “Breath Swing”, but it is cited in English as “Everything I Possess I Carry with me”, which is the first line of the text. Apparently, it is under this title that the book will appear in English. (The UK/US rights have been acquired by Granta/Metropolitan, who have published other titles of Müller’s.) . . .
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While people are busy ranking the hit books of the last 10 years, many a publishing insider is quietly mourning a volume that unnaccountably never made the 'best of' or bestseller lists, but should have. Here publishers, agents and translators speak up for the ones that really shouldn't have got away . . .
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Nothing can compare to a crackling warm fire, hot cocoa in hand and a thrilling, albeit gruesome, mystery settled in your lap.
Whatever your style is, Christmas is the time to step in out of the snow, curl up with a novel and venture into a world of romance, history or wherever else the pages lead . . . .
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It was the decade in which literature thrived live and online but died in many bookshops . . .
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Terence Blacker: We must ride to the rescue of books
December is, traditionally, a moment when those who write and review books express seasonal good cheer by puffing their friends' latest work in the newspapers' Christmas recommendation lists. A few take a more self-promotional approach, preferring to remind the world of their own intellectual sophistication by selecting as their book of the year an obscure, ferociously serious work, preferably written in a foreign language. . . .
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I have a Facebook account. Twitter page. MySpace page. Website. Blog. I even think I have an old Friendster account (come on, you know you used to have one too). All of these were started after my first book deal in the Spring of 2006, in the hopes of reaching readers and building an audience through the magic of online social networking. And I'm not the only one who thought that way... .
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Still scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr Gibbon? Or so the king is said to have enraged the odiferous man who described the rise and fall of the Roman hegemon. Yes, I use this word advisedly since we are at the mercy of those who will misuse language for their own advantage or because laptops have made them sloppy or because they think it chic to befuddle us with psycho-crap. For the latter, I draw your attention to a new publisher – Corvus – whose "publishing director", one Nicolas Cheetham, was stupid enough to send me his "launch catalogue" the other day. . . .
Oh, a real slapper
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Since the beginning of the economic downturn, librarians across the country have speculated that fines for overdue items are keeping people from using the library . . .
Borders to Sell EBooks Under Their Own LabelA little behind the rollout of the nook, the new B&N ereader, Borders announces a partnership with Canadian ebook company, Kobo.
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he most illuminating moment in Michael Slater's revelatory Charles Dickens comes in a marvelous quotation from Fyodor Dostoevsky, who met with Dickens in the offices of the latter's periodical All the Year Round, during an 1862 visit to London. The great English novelist unburdened himself in an almost confessional style: "All the good simple people in his novels, Little Nell, even the holy simpletons like Barnaby Rudge, are what he wanted to have been," his Russian visitor reported later, "and his villains were what he was (or rather, what he found in himself), his cruelty, his attacks of ceaseless enmity toward those who were helpless and looked to him for comfort... There were two people in him, he told me, one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite." Perhaps uniquely, Dostoevsky was up to the task of responding, asking impishly: "Only two people?"
How Ebooks Will Change Reading and WritingGrossman, Moody and Carr all believe that traditional books will still be around for a long time, and that some of the changes that may occur in writing will be more evolutionary than revolutionary. But it's hard to know, says Carr, whether traditional books and the people who read and write them will have much influence on the culture in the future. "The real question is," wonders Carr, "is that segment of the population going to just dwindle and be on the periphery of the culture rather than at the center, which is where printed books have stood for centuries now?"
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Books claim to decode Brown's 'Lost Symbol'
After Dan Brown's mega-selling "The Da Vinci Code" appeared in 2003, tracking the further adventures of Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon (who first came on the scene in 2000's "Angels & Demons"), publishers were quick to unleash a landslide of titles to feed off the novel's success. . . .
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There are many reasons you might have put aside reading the great works of Russian literature. They’re long. They’re weighty, both philosophically and gravitationally. So much history, so many dachas and samovars. Also, lots of snow. . . .
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It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times…
Decades from now, when we look back at the book business in 2009, it seems likely that we’ll see it as a threshold year, one in which all of the signs were there for what followed. . . .
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Irritation at the Daily Mail, which has landed the serialisation rights to Lady Antonia Fraser's forthcoming book Must You Go? about life with her late husband Harold Pinter. . . .
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For the No. 1 illegal download in 2009 was the "Kama Sutra." The Indian manual for so many things sexual managed to beat out another manual of fundamental interest to a pirate's survival on the tossing tempests of this world: "Adobe Photoshop Secrets." . . .
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What will the eBook revolution mean for the environmental footprint of publishers? Last week, eBookNewser caught up Rita Amladi, co-author of "Graphics Gone Green," to get some practical tips for how publishers can set up an environment-friendly policy. . . .
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Missing manuscripts, vampires, and gothic churchyards make for fun reading, no doubt. But this isn't about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, at least not directly. It's about Montague Summers (1880-1948), a renegade reverend who was also an expert on the gothic and supernatural and may have inspired Meyer's work. . . .
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In a long essay in last Sunday’s Book Review, Katie Roiphe defends the Great Male Novelists of yore — the Roths and Updikes, Mailers and Bellows — against their more stringent feminist critics, while contrasting them favorably with their less overtly chauvinist, narcissistic, and sex obsessed male heirs (think Jonathan Franzen or Jonathan Safran Foer or the late David Foster Wallace). . . .
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This is very important, something we must not allow to happen.
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One is an established American biographer who has written about the Kennedy clan, the Clintons and Diana, Princess of Wales. The other is a French writer who, by her own admission, is little known for her work which includes a book on the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall. ...
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France’s notoriously lofty literary world is watching in slack-jawed amazement as the country’s leading female writers lunge at each other with daggers drawn in a ferocious battle about plagiarism . . .
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According to a new biography never to be published, over the course of fifty-two years of reading in bed (since age 6), I've slept with 12,775 books. Fifty-two years = 245.7 books a year = a book every day and a half. I keep my optometrist on retainer.
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Yes, this is an article about the shaping of British minds, but we all read books in English!
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It’s not scientific, but e-book sales could be the next barometer to measure the strength — or weakness — of publishing.
Why? Because e-book sales accounted for $46.5 million at the end of Q3 last year, according to the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), which noted that retail sales could be double that figure due to industry wholesale discounts.
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In time for the beginning of the new college semester, the textbook rental market saw new announcements from three of the industry’s players this week. . . .
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Response has not been phlegmatic to the rebranding of Thomas Nelson’s blogger review program. Nelson announced yesterday a relaunch of its program, which has attracted 7,500 bloggers to review Nelson products, under the name of BookSneeze.com.
The link to BookSneeze was wrong, so I have listed it.
BookSneeze.com
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Desperate Measures, written by Laura Summers after she struggled to find stories that would resonate with her child, among finalists for £5,000 award . . .
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For about a year, the books in our apartment threatened to swallow my husband and me. Adding another bookcase, like adding another lane to an already clogged freeway, didn’t help–it only encouraged us to read more, and the piles kept growing. During the holidays, it got so bad that those stored on top of a shelf in the living room covered most of the framed French Connection poster on the wall above it; they even threatened to push the lamp off the edge. The books on top of the small shelf in the bedroom nearly blocked the light switch; soon we would either have to paw through the dark, or sleep with the lights on. Something had to be done. . . .
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this whole e-book royalty question is NOT as simple an issue as it appears, and I find myself wishing that they would do a little more research before they simply assume that all publishers are out to fleece all authors for every last penny that they can. I’ve read a number of statements from the SOA recently (including in the recent issue of their magazine, The Author) on this issue and they are often filled with misconceptions about the practicalities of running a publishing business when it comes to independent publishers, who publish rather a lot of their members. . . .
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Economic and technological changes have freed the English language from the shackles of empire and expanded its reach still wider
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According to ComScore data released last week, HuffPo had 9.8 million unique visitors last month, compared to 3.8 million in December 2008. This increase could be attributed in part to the site's launch of a number of new verticals, including HuffPost Sports, which debuted in November. (That month drew 7.9 million unique visitors.) . . .
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At least three major publishers are contributing to relief efforts in Haiti following last week's devestating earthquake. Random has donated $100,000; Bertelsmann has donated 100,000 euros; and News Corp., which owns HarperCollins, has donated $250,000. And Simon & Schuster is authorizing digital resellers—including Audible.com, Cateeslanguageworld.com, Pimsleuraudio.com, and Pimsleurmethod.com—to give away its Haitian Creole program free, from now until March 31. . . .
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arrived early — I’m always early — at a house in Chesterfield, Va., a short drive from Richmond, down the Powhite Parkway. It was the 15th city I’d been to promoting my new book, “The Adderall Diaries.” I had given a reading the night before at a home in a nearby town, and when I mentioned Chesterfield people made sour faces. But I go where I’m invited. . . .
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"Stuff Hipsters Hate appealed to me for two reasons. First, it was a Tumblr site, so it had already been formed in a community and so wasn't just being read, but was part of a subculture's conversation about itself. I really think Tumblr is far superior in many ways to other blogging platforms because of this community dynamic." . . .
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From extremely humble beginnings, the Jaipur Literary Festival in India has grown in just five years into a major event that attracts star writers by resolutely refusing to treat them as such. . . .
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Like Marlowe’s narrative in Heart of Darkness, it is a story within a story. We do not know how accurately it reflects Ivan’s own beliefs, or how far it is influenced by its conversational occasion. During the episode, we are allowed no direct access to his consciousness. Instead, we are given a story which has no existence apart from this particular act of telling, which Ivan himself airily dismisses at one point as “just the muddled poem of a muddled student.” Perhaps he is just trying to get a rise out of his brother, who finds the fable more or less incomprehensible. Is he just out to shake Alexei’s faith? The complex, devious form of the episode, in other words, alerts us to the fact that we are in the presence of literature, not philosophy or theology. The Grand Inquisitor indicts Christ, which does not seem characteristic of the religiously inclined Dostoevsky . . .
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IT'S INEVITABLE. At a dinner party or on the sidelines of my son's soccer game, someone well-meaning will ask what I do. "I edit the Virginia Quarterly Review," I tell them. "It's the literary magazine at the University of Virginia." They nod politely, sometimes with the vaguest hint of recognition. . . .
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The earliest versions of the Three Pigs story are buried in time, although we do have nineteenth-century English renderings of it. . . .
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It’s been an unlikely best seller. First published 55 years ago in the United States, where it spawned a hit Broadway show and two movie adaptations, Patrick Dennis’s “Auntie Mame” has recently gained footing in the Italian literary firmament, becoming last year’s surprise hit. . . .
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Several films nominated for best picture this year are based on books, which might be a literary accomplishment if there weren't so many darned pictures in the running. For the first time in decades, the Motion Picture Academy has chosen to nominate 10 films for best picture; four are based on books. . . .
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Sarah Palin has been using her political action committee to buy up thousands of copies of her book, "Going Rogue," in order to mail copies of the memoir to her donors, newly filed campaign records show. . . .
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China often views the ideas of foreigners, from missionaries in the 17th century to 21st-century Internet entrepreneurs, as subversive imports. The tumultuous history behind the clash with Google. . . .
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)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Joanne Ramos (other topics)Sheri S. Tepper (other topics)
Ed Lynskey (other topics)
A body is discovered in woods in rural Indiana, skinned from the neck up. The head is like “the cupped husk of a peeled orange”. The detective investigating soon unearths evidence that this grisly murder is linked to a war between two ancient secret cults, one celebrating laughter, the other despondency. The victim, a circus clown, was an adherent of one cult. His killer, from the opposing cult, removed his face – clown makeup and all – in order to appease a joyless deity and help usher in a dismal apocalypse. . . .