Monday
December 31
A
BIZARRE YEAR: "The creepy revolution that has been transforming
the business most radically since the mid–90s or so — the eradication
of independent publishing houses and booksellers by massive, international
"mass–media" conglomerates — has been the over–riding story of
our recent literary times, with each year bringing sickeningly
deeper realization of the impact of that take–over upon our intellectual
and spiritual lives, not to mention how much you pay for a book,
and who gets to write them. This year, however, that story seemed
to become, suddenly, old news, or at least news too wearying to
acknowledge anymore." MobyLives
12/30/01
POET
IAN HAMILTON, 61: "Highly regarded British poet and biographer
Ian Hamilton, whose unauthorized life of J.D. Salinger was blocked
by the U.S. Supreme Court, has died at the age of 61." Nando
Times (AP) 12/30/01
Friday December 28
DEFEATING
THE ARAB MYTH: Novelist Hanan al-Shaykh is a remarkable writer,
but she sometimes wishes that people would stop assuming she's
a remarkable woman as well, simply because she chose to leave
her home in the Arab world to make a life in the West. In her
newest book, she is determined to cut off at the knees some of
the stereotypes that Westerners are forever laying at the feet
of Arab immigrants. Nando Times (CSM
News Service) 12/27/01
Thursday December
27
SADDAM
HUSSEIN, HUMBLE AUTHOR: Saddam Hussein has published a second
novel. "Al-Qala'ah al-Hasinah ("The Fortified Castle")
appeared this week in bookshops and all public libraries in Baghdad
and was hailed on state-run television and by the newspaper al-Jumhouriya
as a 'great artistic work.' The cover gives no clue to the writer's
identity, saying cryptically that it is a 'novel by its author,'
while a note inside explains that the writer 'did not wish to
put his name on it out of humility and modesty'." CNN.com
12/20/01
Wednesday December
26
THE
STORY WITHIN: "English-language writing about Hong Kong
and much of Asia has long been the province of Western expatriates
or writers passing through, but increasingly this work is being
done by Asian authors." The New
York Times 12/25/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
Friday December 21
BRITISH
ACADEMY SPLITS ITS BOOK PRIZE: "An acclaimed biography
of Hitler and an account of the medieval English "empire"
shared the first British Academy book prize, announced yesterday.
The judges said both Ian Kershaw's second volume on the Nazi leader,
Hitler: 1936-1945, Nemesis, and The First English Empire:
Power and Identities in the British Isles 1093-1343, by Rees
Davies, fully deserved the prize as works of impeccable scholarship
which were accessible to the general public." The
Guardian (UK) 12/20/01
THE
FEARLESS BARRY TROTTER: Writer Michael Gerber has written
a parody of the Harry Potter marketing machine called Barry
Trotter and the Unauthorised Parody. "The book is a dig
at Warner Bros' enormous marketing campaign for the recent blockbusting
film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone,
and what Gerber regards as their excessively zealous control of
the Harry Potter brand. 'I got really annoyed when I heard about
Warner Bros shutting down kids' Potter websites,' he said. 'Their
behaviour seemed mean-spirited and overbearing, not to mention
silly. Potter fans have a very intense, personal relationship
with the books, and I don't think that's something you can disregard,
just because you've purchased the rights'." The
Guardian (UK) 12/19/01
THE
NEW NEW JOURNALISM: The idiosyncratic personal-style journalism
which marked much of the second half of the twentieth century
may now be fading away. "The kind of exquisite description
that brought forth drama from the everyday seemed excessive, even
grotesque, when applied to mass carnage in downtown New York.
Perhaps in part as a result, two different genres - genres deeply
out of fashion in the 1990s - have now reemerged. The first is
the essay - the non-reported, non-narrative, political or historical
analysis. The second is the somber profile of a person in power."
The New Republic 12/20/01
A
YOU-DUNNIT: Edinburgh writer Ian Rankin is auctioning off
characters in his next crime novel. "The creator of Inspector
Rebus is offering two places in his next work to the highest bidders.
One will go to the person who bids the most in the e-mail auction
and the other to the company which offers the most. The auction,
to be held by e-mail, will raise cash for two charities supporting
people with disabilities in the Third World and in Britain. 'Worldwide
fame and immortality. It’s not a bad deal really'." The
Scotsman 12/21/01
Thursday December
20
LIGHT
HOLIDAY READING: "For the professionals there are two
kinds of reading. There's work reading, with an editing eye, as
manuscripts come to the office in whole or part, to be read and
re-read, the writer's art in progress as it goes through its creative
transmutations. And there's zeal that comes with reading for fun
those books that one selects carefully and puts aside for pleasure,
for vacation reading. If such reading is exquisite recreation
for most of us, imagine the luxury for someone who reads for a
paycheck all year." The New York
Times 12/20/01 (one-time registration
required for access)
KID
LIT WAS DIFFERENT A GENERATION AGO: With the emergence of
JK Rowling, and the resurgence of JRR Tolkien, it's easy to assume
that magic and fantasy have always been staples of children's
literature. But 35 years ago, Gore Vidal was complaining that
"the librarians who dominate the juvenile market tend to
be brisk tweedy ladies whose interests are mechanical rather than
imaginative. Never so happy as when changing a fan belt, they
quite naturally want to communicate their joy in practical matters
to the young. The result has been a depressing literature of how-to-do
things while works of invention are sternly rejected."
New York Review of Books 12/03/64
TO JUSTIFY FANTASY:
"To read Shakespeare is respectable, but if you read Tolkien,
well, aren't you supposed to outgrow it? Unfortunately, among
much of the literati, there's a belief that fantasy literature
is something less than what the classics of the Western canon
teach. You know, fantasy is just escapism. But it's also about
the search for truth and for our place in the world, a yearning
that has only heightened since Sept. 11." Christian
Science Monitor 12/19/01
Wednesday December
19
WHAT'S
HAPPENED TO WRITING ABOUT FOOD? What could be more sensual
than food? So why do so many modern cookbooks read so unimaginatively?
"When it comes to cookbooks, it's hard to be critical, because
the poor modern recipe is about as original and engaging as the
dishwasher manual, and every bit as literary." Salon
12/19/01
THE
STRESS OF BEING A READER: The guilt can be almost overwhelming.
Sure, you read - good books, too, and hefty tomes that take weeks
to plow through. "But at some point along the path to discovery,
the reader confronts his or her reading mortality. There's only
so much time. And there are so many great books." So how
do you choose what to read, and what you can afford to let slip
by? National Post (Canada) 12/19/01
Tuesday December
18
1
SONNET, 3 COUPLETS, AND A BUCKET O' VERSE TO GO: What's that?
You say you'd love to spend your days sucking down verse after
verse of cool, refreshing poetry, but simply haven't the time,
what with the conference calls, the board meetings, and all? Well,
now you can have it all, with Poem-Me, the fabulous new British
poetry service which delivers daily helpings of "thought-provoking"
poesy right to your very own cell phone! Don't wait another minute
- order now! BBC
12/18/01
DYING
REQUEST: The words of a terminally ill poet are flying off
shelves at Barnes & Noble, and their author has signed a multi-book
publishing deal to write more. Six months ago, no one had ever
heard of Mattie Stepanek, and never would have, but for the sympathies
of a publisher who agreed to his (apparent) deathbed request to
have his work publshed. Stepanek is still fighting for survival,
and still cranking out the verse. Oh, and he's eleven years old.
Minneapolis Star Tribune (courtesy
Washington Post) 12/18/01
REMEMBERING
SEBALD: When novelist W.G. Sebald was killed last week in
a horrifying auto crash, the literary world lost one of its most
intriguing stars. From one of his editors at Random House: "His
project was the most heroic I know - he looked unflinchingly at
things all of us find easy not to look at, and dragged them into
the light.'' Boston Globe 12/18/01
Monday December
17
DO
BOOKS COST TOO MUCH? "Across the country this holiday
season, recession-minded book buyers are suffering a wave of sticker
shock. Cover prices have crossed thresholds over the last two
years, and the big bookstore chains and online retailers have
pulled back from previously widespread discounts. More shoppers
face prices like $35 for hardcover nonfiction, $26 or more for
a hardcover novel, $15 or more for upscale paperbacks. Customers
show signs of resistance." The
New York Times 12/16/01 (one-time
registration required for access)
WORD
COUNTS: Word counts can tell a reader plenty about a piece
of writing - like the cultural context, the tone, the hidden meaning.
Any writer who overuses "very" for example, is probably
over-enthusiastic. Computer word counting has made this kind of
analysis of any text, easy for anyone. Sydney
Morning Herald 12/17/01
Sunday December 16
PRIZE
MESS: Literary awards are good for encouraging and promoting
new books. But the ill-fated Chapters Prize, launched three years
ago by the Canadian book superstore, forgot one crucial rule -
administration counts. The Prize's three year history (it was
canceled in mid-contest this year) is an example of everything
that can go wrong. The
Globe & Mail (Canada) 12/15/01
Friday December 14
BOOK
SALES REBOUNDING: In the weeks right after September 11, sales
of books collapsed. Booksellers were pessimistic for the usually
lucrative holiday season. "A key reason for that anxiety
was the lack of attention that new books and authors had received
from radio, television and other news media that were focusing
their coverage, almost exclusively, on terrorism But higher-than-expected
sales in the days after Thanksgiving have raised hopes throughout
the book-selling world." Chicago
Tribune 12/14/01
HOW
THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN: Eighteen months ago, e-publisher MightyWords
was the hottest thing in digital online publishing. Stephen King
wrote a novella that the company sold for download over the internet,
and hundreds of thousands of buyers jammed the site. But the market
for e-books never developed and the company is closing. Toronto
Star 12/14/01
ALLOWING
WRITERS TO WRITE: "Northern Rock, the Newcastle-based
bank, is giving three northern writers £20,000 a year for the
next three years to do what they do best - write - a revolutionary
concept in a world where the paltry sums available usually have
lots of strings attached. The money, limited to writers who live
in the north-east, is further proof of the widening gap in the
way writers are treated in the north compared to their neglected
southern cousins, and could spark an exodus north."
The Guardian (UK) 12/13/01
POWER OF THE WORD:
"The King James Bible is, without question, a monument to
the rhythmic power of the English language, but it also circumscribes
the language itself, defining its linguistic and metaphoric possibilities
- and thus the possibilities of how we think about ourselves and
our place in the world." Reason
12/01
Thursday December
13
THAT'S
WHAT BEING A RECLUSE WILL GET YOU: A collection of letters
by famously moody author J.D. Salinger and his daughter Margaret
has failed to sell at an auction in New York. Sotheby's had estimated
that the collection, which spans 35 years of correspondence, would
net upwards of $250,000. The bidding never got above $170,000
and was halted. Nando Times (AP) 12/12/01
Wednesday December
12
THE
DARKER SIDE OF POOH: Winnie the Pooh is 75 years old and never
bigger: "The spiritually minded can read The Tao of Pooh
and The Te of Piglet while logicians have to choose between Winnie-the-Pooh
on Problem Solving and Pooh and the Philosopher. For literary
critics there is The Pooh Perplex and The Postmodern Pooh while
businessmen take lessons from Winnie-the-Pooh on Management. There
is even a book for urban hipsters looking for the grungy side
of the Hundred Acre Woods; Karen Finley's Pooh Unplugged."
And yet, a case can be made for the insidious side of the Way
of the Pooh. National
Post 12/11/01
Tuesday December
11
NAIPAUL
GETS HIS NOBEL, IF NOT IMMORTALITY: The Nobel Prizes, announced
weeks ago, were handed out this week, and author V.S. Naipaul,
one of the year's most controversial recipients, picked up his
literature Nobel. But unlike some of the Nobels, which tend to
make lifelong heroes of their recipients, the Nobel Prize for
Literature has been largely a hit-or-miss thing in the century
that it has been awarded. Philadelphia
Inquirer 12/11/01
Monday December 10
EXTRAVAGANT
CLAIMS: A new biography of JRR Tolkien claims him as one of
the great literary authors of the 20th Century. But "the
tone of many reviews - including the New York Times Book Review,
the London Review of Books and the Guardian - has been one of
condescending scorn. The e-mail from bastions of higher learning
have the same complaint. How can he treat Tolkien and his hobbits,
elves and dwarves as literature?" Philadelphia
Inquirer 12/09/01
TRENDSETTING:
Some trends are easy to trace - it makes sense that a successful
book about embroidery will spawn a cluster of imitators. But what
drives the myriad boomlets of books about arcane things - like
a wave of books with the color red in the title or the word "honeymoon"?
Surely there's some cosmic order to it all... Mobylives
12/09/01
Sunday December 9
PROTECTING
ENDANGERED WRITERS: Salman Rushdie is the most famous, but
there are many writers living under death sentences. To try to
help protect them, The International Parliament of Writers was
set up in 1993, "in the wake of the Rushdie fatwa and the
growing incidence of similar attacks on writers. It aims to protect
not only freedom of speech and publication but also the physical
safety of writers. In its early days, the IPW (or PIE, as it is
known abroad) came up with the idea of providing cities of refuge
for writers forced to live in exile. There is now a flourishing
network, hosting writers from many countries, writing in many
languages." The
Guardian (UK) 12/08/01
Friday December 7
OPRAH
THE GOOD: At first look, the highbrow literary book clubs
of yesterday might seem not to have much in common with today's
Oprah Book Club. But "their respective goals are similar:
to enlighten and to instruct and, importantly, to somehow elevate
their audience in so doing." The
Atlantic 12/01
ROLE
FOR WRITERS: "Even during the Soviet era, when virtually
all of Russia’s finest writers and poets were exiled, killed,
imprisoned, savagely censored, or forbidden to publish, Russian
literature has persisted in addressing the core issues and dilemmas
of human existence, taking humanity’s measure, and explaining
Russia and Russians to themselves and the world."
The Idler 12/07/01
Thursday December
6
CANADA'S
WELL-READ GIRLS: A new international test measuring the reading
ability of kids, shows that Canada ranks high in the world, second
only to Finland. But the terrific showing was due entirely to
Canada's girls, who scored well . Canada's boys scored significantly
lower - an average of 30 points lower - causing some to call for
a plan to raise boys' literacy. National
Post 12/06/01
HOW TO KEEP THE
PAGES TURNING: The publisher of Lord of the Rings only
ran off three thousand copies the first time around, figuring
not many readers would wade through 1077 pages. Yet tens of millions
of them have, and the reason is "there is one big thing that
Tolkien got right: he got rhythm. His instinct for the procedures
of Dark Age saga was as reliable as his indifference to the mores
of the machine age, and he soon established a beat — a basic pulse,
throbbing below the surface of the book and forcing you, day after
day, to turn the page. We can no more leave Frodo stranded on
his mission than his friends can." The
New Yorker 12/10/01
Wednesday December
5
THE
POWER OF AN UNREAD BOOK: Recently, Canada's largest bookseller
announced that it would not carry, or place orders for, Mein
Kampf, Adolf Hitler's infamous manifesto. The announcement
caused much discussion of the dangers of censorship, but, asks
one critic, do you know anyone who has read Mein Kampf?
Assuming not, isn't the real power of the work its very existence,
rather than its availability? The
Globe & Mail (Toronto) 12/05/01
A
SNIT OVER SNICKET: Children's literature tends to focus on
the supernatural and suspenseful, and is therefore an easy target
for adults who mistakenly think that kids' lives should be nothing
but sweetness and light. Since September 11, author Daniel Handler
has been criticized for continuing to churn out his popular series
of darkly comic "Lemony Snicket" books, which feature
evil plots, scary situations, and narrow escapes for its youthful
protagonists. But Handler is turning the criticism around, and
insisting that it is those who would shield children from the
truth of the world around them who are irresponsible. Chicago
Tribune 12/05/01
GETTING
PAST THE WHOLE UGLY SUICIDE THING: "Ted Hughes was perhaps
the greatest British poet of his generation but it was his tragedy
to be chiefly known, particularly in North America, as the dastardly
husband whose infidelities drove the fragile Sylvia Plath — feminist
icon — to gas herself at the age of 30." But a controversial
new biography of the poet claims that such tragedies are no reason
to ignore one of the geniuses of 20th-century writing. Toronto
Star 12/05/01
Monday December
3
AN
AUTHOR WHO WANTS TO DO IT: Burned by her last choice of a
book for her Book Club, Oprah asked Rohinton Mistry, her latest
choice, if he really wanted to be chosen. Mistry's A Fine Balance
is the first Canadian work she has chosen and only the second
by a non-American. He said yes. Toronto
Star 12/02/01
BOOK
SALES RECOVERING: Booksellers are still cautious, but sales
of books in the US since Thanksgiving seem to be up a bit over
last year. Large booksellers are deeply discounting popular books,
but even at independent stores sales are good.
Publishers Weekly 12/03/01
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