October
02 September
02 August
02 July
02 June
02 May
02 April
02 March
02 February
02 January
02 December
01
November 01
October 01
September 01
August 01
July 01
June 01
May 01
April 01
March 01
February
01 January
01 December
00 November
00 October
00 September
00 August
00 July
00 June
00 May/April
00 Mar
00 Feb
00 Jan
00 Dec
99
Nov 99
Oct 99
Sept 99
|
|
Wednesday
January 31
- AND
I CHARGE $50 AN HOUR: The Australian book publishing world
is talking about a well-known editor who is suing a first-time
author - a former client - for editing fees. Sydney
Morning Herald 01/31/01
Tuesday
January 30
- ANNA
REVISITED: In
Russia, a new rewritten updated verion of Tolstoy's "Anna
Karenina" has critics outraged. The story has been turned
into "an 80-page cartoon strip with lurid illustrations that
owe more to Judge Dredd than Tolstoy. And to make the drama more
immediate, the artists have jettisoned the backdrop of late 19th-century
high society in favour of 1990s Russia. Anna and Vronsky's liaison
no longer develops in salons and ballrooms but sushi bars and
strip clubs, alongside characters who cut lines of coke with their
credit cards and send billet doux in the form of text messages."
Books
Unlimited 01/30/01
- THE SHARIN'
OF THE GREEN. Some fifty books of Irish interest are due for
publication on or about St. Patrick's Day. Much of the credit
goes to Frank McCourt, for "Angela's Ashes" and "Tis".
But there's more than McCourt in the recent success of Irish and
Irish-like writers. "[T]he Irish-American of today reads more
than his immigrant forebears, and... you don't have to be Irish
to like a good Irish story." Publishers
Weekly 01/29/01
- NATIONAL
BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTS:
were
announced Monday. Jacques Barzun ("From Dawn to Decadence"),
Zadie Smith ("White Teeth"), and Amy Bloom ("A
Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You") were among the nominees.
New
York Times (AP)1/30/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
- THE
ONLINE NEW YORKER: The New Yorker magazine has made a deal
with Microsoft and Barnes & Noble to publish e-books. And
while most Conde Nast magazines have had their websites postponed
to later this summer, the New Yorker was granted special dispensation
to hit the web in February. Variety
01/30/01
Monday
January 29
- ANCIENT
WONDER REBORN: It took 11 years and £120 million the project
to rebuild Alexandria Library, "the most famous library of
all time in one of the world's poorest countries. That was the
legendary library founded by Alexander the Great and built by
his Greek general, Ptolemy I, King of Egypt and his son Ptolemy
II, Shelley's Ozymandias." The
Guardian (London) 01/29/01
- WRITER
JAILED FOR HIS WORK: An Egyptian court has sentenced writer
Salah-Eddine Mohsen to three years in jail for "among other
things, writing that the Quran, Islam's holy book, was outdated.
But during the trial he told the court that he was a believer
and that he did not mean to offend Islam or negate its basic tenets
in his writings." Nando Times
(AP) 01/29/01
- NEW
AGE OF SPANISH LIT: "After years of notorious conservatism,
Hispanic literary studies is finally catching up. The whole idea
of a "golden age" of great Spanish writers - Cervantes, Lope de
Vega, Calderon - is now under scrutiny. Finally welcoming feminism,
new historicism, gender theory, and cultural studies, professors
of Spanish are asking new questions about those old eminences:
For whom were the 16th and 17th centuries a golden age?"
Chronicle of Higher Education 01/29/01
Sunday
January 28
- WHO
INVENTED THE PRINTING PRESS? If you answered Gutenberg, you'd
be wrong say researchers. "Two scholars contend that the
metal mold method of printing attributed to Gutenberg was probably
invented by someone else about 20 years after Gutenberg printed
his Bible." New York Times 01/27/01
(one-time registration required for access)
Friday
January 26
- 50
YEARS OF "CATCHER", ON THE SLY: J.D. Salinger's
classic novel of teen angst marks its fiftieth anniversary in
2001. But naturally, you won't be hearing a word out of the famously
hermitlike author. Nor will the publisher of "Catcher in
the Wry" be making a huge marketing push, since Salinger
has a habit of suing people who dare to speak of him in public.
But the nation's bookstores will certainly take notice.
Nando Times (AP), 1/25/01
Wednesday
January 24
- MATTHEW KNEALE WINS WHITBREAD Book of the Year Prize for his novel
"English Passengers," a story of a group of British
colonialists in Tasmania. BBC 1/24/01
- AN INTERVIEW WITH KNEALE : "I think people will always
disagree on whether prizes go to the right books but the very
fact that there is a debate will encourage people to read
good books whether they're on a list or not." The Guardian (London) 1/18/01 [Text and Real audio clips]
- LOST AND FOUND: The original manuscript of Céline’s
masterpiece, "Journey to the End of the Night" - which
has been missing for more than 50 years and hotly pursued by French
researchers - has been discovered by a Parisian bookseller. The
manuscript, written in black ink and crayon, was last seen in
1943 when the ill and destitute Céline sold it for a pittance.
"Its reappearance, after 50 years of mystery, is a literary
bomb, as explosive as the book's original publication in 1932."
The Guardian (London)
1/23/01
- POET MICHAEL LONGLEY WINS T.S. ELIOT
PRIZE
for his collection "The Weather in Japan." The award
is given each year to the best collection of new poetry published
in the UK and Ireland. CBC 1/23/01
Tuesday
January 23
- E-PUBLISHING
LIVES: Is e-publishing dead? "Despite recent reports
that there has been little change in readers' reluctance to accept
e-books, Fictionwise seems to be proving - at least with short
fiction in the horror/sci-fi/mystery genres - that there is indeed
a viable market." Wired 01/2301
- THE
NEW SYNERGY: Electronics retailer Future Shop will buy Canadian
book superstore Chapters. "Future Shop's friendly deal to
buy Chapters is undoubtedly the next wave of synergy. Makes you
wonder why Canadian Tire doesn't buy Tiffany's so you don't have
to schlep to two stores for antifreeze and diamonds."
The Globe & Mail (Canada) 01/23/01
Monday
January 22
- TWAIN
TURNS UP: An unpublished Mark Twain manuscript turns up and
The New Yorker and The Atlantic magazines vie to publish it. "It
would be wrong to say that this is the missing masterpiece of
Mark Twain. But it was written after `Tom Sawyer,' and it anticipates
`Huck Finn,' and it is charming and interesting and very much
in the Twain tradition." The New York
Times 01/22/01 (one-time registration
required for access)
- RESCUE
OR RIPOFF? "For 30 years, 'Books In Canada' provided
reviews, author interviews and commentary on Canadian literature
until it stopped publishing in early 2000 because of financial
difficulty. Amazon.com stepped in this week and announced it would
sponsor publication of 10 issues of the magazine in 2001 and 12
issues in 2002. But instead of receiving congratulations, the
e-tailer's announcement has been greeted with outrage."
Wired 01/19/01
- LITTLE
HOUSE ROYALTIES: A Missouri judge has ruled that a rural state
library has a claim to the lucrative copyrights for two "Little
House on the Prairie" books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
"The ruling is the latest in a dispute about who owns the
rights to one of the best-selling series of children's books in
history. Publishing experts have estimated the value of royalties
from Wilder's estate in the tens of millions of dollars."
Philadelphia Inquirer 01/22/01
Sunday
January 21
- SO
WHAT IF YOU'RE DEAD: Six years after playwright John Osborne
died, his widow has received a demand from her husband's publisher
requesting "repayment of the full figure of the advance -
£20,000 - that Osborne had been paid for the third volume of his
autobiography." The Observer
(London) 01/21/01
Friday
January 19
- NO
PEACE FOR PAZ: The legacy of one of Mexico's most famous and
revered writers, Octavio Paz is being hindered by a feud between
the late Nobel author's widow and the historian hired to head
oup the Paz Foundation. "These days the two barely speak
and their feud has become the talk of Mexico. At stake is the
legacy of one of Mexico's icons, its only Nobel Prize winner (in
1990) in literature." Washington
Postr 01/18/01
Thursday
January 18
- THE
YEAR IN BOOKS: Okay, so it's another book awards list - but
this is one you probably don't want to be on: Barnes & Noble wins
one for its tactic of having its lawyers pressure a group of New
England booksellers to ''cease and desist' from using the word
'discover' in their advertising. B & N said they owned exclusive
rights to the word because they'd used it first. The company backed
down after three weeks of intensive ridicule in the trade press."
The Idler 01/18/01
- LITERARY
FORENSICS: Don Foster first came to prominence when he devined,
upon close reading, that a dull poem he had found in the UCLA
library had been written by Shakespeare. Since then he has been
called on to determine authorship of a ragtag collection of texts
- from the "anonymous" of "Primary Colors"
to notes in the Theodore Kaczynski criminal trial and JonBenet
Ramsey murder investigation. Village
Voice 01/17/01
Wednesday
January 17
- A
CELEBRATION OF WHAT? As part of inauguration week, the new
president's wife Laura holds a lunch to celebrate America's writers.
And who is invited? "These are America's best authors? Or
most representative, or most important, or even most reactionary?
No, on all counts. Instead they're a few decent writers, two hacks
(apolitical for a change, in Washington) and a baker's dozen of
writers for everybody's favorite readership, kids."
San Francisco Chronicle 01/17/01
- HOW
TO UPDATE A CLASSIC: The 144-year-old Atlantic Monthly,
with a venerated history of publishing some of America’s finest
literary talent (including Emerson and Thoreau), is trying hard
to adapt to the harsh realities of putting out a magazine in the
21st century. "If you are Michael Kelly, the editor
in chief, you have a dual mission, which is to light a bonfire
without scaring readers off the hearth." New
York Times 1/17/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Tuesdsay
January 16
- DROWNING
WATER: The winner of
this year's Canadian literary Award for Poetry. Saturday
Night 01/13/01
- BACK
AT CORPORATE:Consolidations
and mergers in the publishing business have been rampant. "The
pace of change is like a runaway train, not only with merger upon
merger but with a not-so-gradual shift from editorial (with complementary
sales-centered) philosophies to financial-growth and marketing-centered
ones. At times in recent decades the struggle between the editorial-minded
and the fiscal-minded has seemed like trench warfare." MediaChannel
12/00
- CHILDREN’S
LIT. AWARDS: The Newbery and Caldecott medals
for children’s literature (often referred to as the "Pulitzer
Prizes of children’s books") were awarded today to Richard
Peck and David Small. New York Times 1/16/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Monday
January 15
- WHAT'S
THE ATTRACTION? "America's best-selling poet is a 13th-century
Persian mystic, who often danced while reciting to his disciples.
Now he is whirling circles around Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost,
and Walt Whitman. Jalal al-Din Rumi composed more than 70,000
lines of verse about love and desire and the human condition before
his death in 1273." Chronicle
of Higher Education 01/15/01
- EVERYONE'S
AN AUTHOR: As publishing electronically becomes more popular,
more "authors" go online. One consequence: book reviewers
are being inundated by those wanting their book reviewed. One
guy wrote ''a thinly-disguised revenge book directed at his former
boss who fired him. He told me in a follow-up telephone call that
he had a terminal illness and wanted to see the book reviewed
before he died. I didn't review it, so he took an ad out in the
paper saying 'Read the book that the Democrat-Gazette refuses
to review'.'' Athens Daily News (Georgia)
01/15/01
Thursday
January 11
- REJECTED WITH
DIGINTY: A new website celebrates the
rejection letters writers get from publishers and editors. "I
want people to be immunized about rejection. Just because someone
says the most demeaning, horrible things to you doesn't mean it's
true." The
New York Times 01/11/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
- BLACK LIKE ME:
"One of the more invigorating happenings in the industry
in recent years has been the emergence of black readers as an
economic force. Or, more precisely, the recognition that blacks
are such a power. There are, for instance, five new or relatively
new imprints in major publishing houses devoted to fiction and
nonfiction by black writers on black subjects." The
New York Times 01/11/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Wednesday
January 10
- THE
POET AS A YOUNG MAN: At
95, recently-appointed American Poet Laureate Stanley Kunitz has
had a long and distinguished career. But in his early years, working
as a reporter and in the obscurer reaches of publishing, Kunitz
lived mostly outside the poetry world, and entirely outside academia.
It would be easy to credit this for the lack of notice the early
poems received, but the truth is that most of them weren’t very
good." Boston Review 01/01
Monday
January 8
- THE
FUTURE NO ONE WANTS? Everyone's talking about e-books and
how they're the future of publishing. Just one problem: "They're
new; they're hot; they're ready to revolutionize reading! Yet
almost nobody will touch them." Washington
Post 01/08/01
Friday
January 5
- CHAIN
GANG: The head of the company trying to make a hostile takeover
of Canada's Chapters book superstore chain has charged the book
retailer with "improper disclosure and insider dealing."
He claims that Canada has an "overcapacity" in the book
retailing business and that his company's takeover of Chapters
would mean that "shareholders, book publishers and consumers
would win through a merger of the two companies."
National Post (Canada) 01/05/01
Thursday
January 4
- TURF
WAR: "While publishers are seeking to sell electronic
books directly to readers, Barnesandnoble.com is trying to cut
out the publisher by acquiring rights directly from authors and
releasing their electronic books. Both sides are investing heavily,
although no one knows whether electronic books, downloaded and
read on computer screens, will ever catch on." New
York Times 01/04/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
- PRINT
THIS: Everyone talks about the changing role of publishers
in an e-book world. But what about printers? "E-books will become
an increasing threat to traditional books as e-book devices improve
and decline in price. Digitization will free book content for
other uses. Successful printers will look for opportunities to
be a part of this process, becoming "publishing partners, not
just printers." Publishers Weekly
01/02/01
- WHITBREAD
WINNERS/FINALISTS ANNOUNCED: Winners for best novel: Matthew
Kneale, for poetry: John Burnside, for first novel: Zadie Smith,
and biography: Lorna Sage. The four are shortlisted for the the
main prize of Book of the Year - and the £22,500 prize money -
to be announced later this month. BBC
01/04/01
Wednesday
January 3
- CHANGING
ECONOMICS? "Everyone concerned with literature wants
to know what is going to happen to the homely old trade of book
publishing in the Era of the Net." For one thing, maybe "brand
name authors no longer need publishers; and more controversially
maybe some publishing houses might have better balance sheets
if they didn't have to pony up the immense sums paid to these
brand names - $64 million, was it, to Mary Higgins Clark?"
The New Republic 12/28/00
Tuesday
January 2
- LEFTOVERS,
REJECTS, REMAINDERS, WHATEVER: "What do you do with the
thousands of surplus copies of a big book that bombs? That question
is on the minds of many publishers this week as they survey the
results of the holiday season amid signs that books may not be
immune to the sluggish sales at other retail stores. And in the
uniquely politicized climate of the book business, rife with tensions
among publishers, bookstore chains and smaller stores, how publishers
try to unload the unwanted volumes can be a touchy subject."
New York Times 01/01/01
(one-time registration required for access)
- PINSKY
TAKES POETRY TO PROS: Former American poet laureate Robert
Pinsky has taken poetry to the people with his Favorite Poem Project.
But until now he's "steered clear of English professors as
he evangelized for poetry among the American people, assembling
his collection of poems from some 25,000 submissions by ordinary
citizens." But last week he took his project to the annual
convention of academic critics and scholars of the Modern Languages
Association, "a shift from the marketplace, towards the academy,
from the public square, to the ivory tower, and might have contained
a hint of intellectual danger in earlier days."
The
Idler 01/01/01
HOME
|