In Jerusalem, 38-year-old Ya’acov Oksankrug was arrested for “allegedly stealing thousands of prayer books and paperbacks Bibles and then selling them at rock-bottom prices,” according to a Jerusalem Post report by Etgar Lefkvits. “Oksankrug is suspected of making off with piles of Holy Books dropped…
The current issue of the literary journal Creative Nonfiction is actually a book, called In Fact, being published by W.W. Norton and containing highlights from the journal’s ten-year run. In a description of the volume posted on the journal’s website, “creative nonfiction” is described as…
“Whereas fiction is occasionally sold on the strength of a chapter or two as in the case of Zadie Smith‘s White Teeth, the booming non-fiction market requires something more,” observes Carl Wilkinson in a commentary for The Observer. “You have to produce an extensive proposal…
A string of recent articles are telling tales of the wonders of self-publishing and print-on-demand services. In The Independent, a report by Nicholas Pyke tells the tale of Patricia Ferguson, a well-known author whose It So Happens was rejected by every major publisher in the…
Continuing the months-early publicity blitz, Scholastic, Inc., the American publisher of the Harry Potter books, has announced that the first printing of the newest edition, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, will be 10.8 million copies. As an Associated Press wire story notes, “The previous…
Ian McEwan says his ongoing difficulty with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “is becoming a little Kafkaesque,” and his current visit to promote his just-released novel Saturday may be his last. “”I only got in this time by the skin of my teeth,” he…
During a live call-in segment of the nationwide NPR program The Connection, poet and Harvard prof Jorie Graham was asked why, as a judge for prestigious poetry prizes, she regularly awarded prizes to former students and, in one instance, her husband (and fellow Harvard prof)…
At the Big Sky High School in Missoula, Montana, school officials have embraced Reading Counts, an “independent reading management program” devised by children’s publisher Scholastic that is, according to the company’s website, “aligned with” George Bush‘s No Child Left Behind initiative. As Rob Chaney explains…
The vacancy left by Walter Lippincott, who plans to retire from his post as director of Princeton University Press, will be filled by Peter J. Dougherty, a PUP economics editor, according to an official press release. Doughtery, who is known as the editor of Robert…
April will see the release of The Big Book of Jewish Conspiracies by David Deutch and Joshua Newman, both editors at the New York based Heeb Magazine. The book, according to a review by Izzy Grinspan in the Village Voice, claims that Jews “are behind…
In Britain, “publishers and bookstores have decided the spy thriller is the ideal way to capture elusive teenaged boy readers, with a new generation of secret agents for children,” reports Louise Jury in a story for The Independent. She says booksellers are excited about several…
They’ve become, over the last six months, one of those bothersome things New York’s subway riders have learned to put up with: proselytizers for the Church of Scientology, “stationed at red-clothed tables in Times Square and several other subway hubs,” where, “In addition to using…
Less than a week after announcing that Mary Matalin would head a new, conservative imprint at Simon & Schuster, the imprint has announced a name and an acquisition: the imprint will be called Threshold, and its first title will be the memoir of Mary Cheney,…
One of Australia’s biggest bookselling chains, Collins Booksellers, “is in deep financial trouble” and “has stopped ordering books and publishers are refusing to supply the privately owned company because its unpaid bills are mounting,” reports Michael Bachelard in a report for The Australian. The company…
Is the Ottakar’s bookselling chain, one of England’s biggest and most popular, so troubled that it may be ripe for a takeover? A Guardian story by Mark Tran notes the company has announced a significant drop in sales, which resulted in a significant drop in…
In a new autobiography released this month in Britain, Tom Maschler, former chairman of the prestigious literary house Jonathan Cape, recounts his years as one of Britian’s most successful publishers. The book, Publisher, which features an author photo that shows Maschler wearing a tee&3150;shirt that…
Books and various other “objects of culture” are “becoming ever more distant” on the Internet, says Sarah Boxer, as “reviews of reviews” are taking over cultural blogs. In a New York Times report, Boxer focuses on the way the trend has taken over numerous liteary…
Bookslut founder and editor Jessa Crispin is interviewed briefly in the “Pop Quiz” feature at Mediabistro.com. She talks about reviewing, her new webzine dedicated to food, Saucy, and the differences between a blog and a webzine: “I’m not much of a fan of blogs, unless…
A young poet who won “the nation’s largest undergraduate literary prize last year”—the $56,169 Sophie Kerr Prize—”has been charged with possession of marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms with intent to sell them near a school.” Angela Haley, 22, and her boyfriend were arrested after police entered…
Eli Lilly & Co. admitted yesterday that it had fired an employee for writing a book about his time at Pfizer Inc., his former employer, according to an Associated Press wire story by Theresa Agovino. The book, Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman…
The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday “threw out the death penalty in a rape-and-murder case” because jurors read the Bible during deliberations, giving special attention to “verses such as ‘eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” reports an Associated Press wire story by Steven K. Paulson. Jurors…
Privacy experts are becoming increasingly alarmed that Amazon.com “is getting dangerously close to becoming Big Brother with your credit card number,” reports Allison Linn in an Associated Press wire story that ran in numerous newspapers yesterday. (In The New York Post, for example, it ran…
The case began to unfold when a college president purchased a used copy of Tom Wolfe‘s I Am Charlotte Simmons from Amazon.com and discovered that it had a library stamp with a due date of December 26. Authorities in Oregon have subsequently arrested Charles Wayne…
Book publications in Germany show the country is undergoing “a huge revival of interest in the Nazi era” and social commentators are worried. As Kate Connolly reports in a story for The Daily Telegraph, “New titles about Hitler are flooding the bookshops to satisfy the…
This year’s tenth annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair—which took place Saturday in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park—was the most successful ever, “thanks to shared enemies like the Bush Administration and the Patriot Act,” reports Justin M. Norton in an Associated Press wire story. Reports Norton,…
Are bestseller lists good for the book business or bad? In her newest column, Cleveland Plain Dealer book editor Karen Long observes that “Some folk regard best-seller lists as quirky cultural thermometers. Others write them off as a sign of the Apocalypse.” She considers comments…
The current issue of The Chicago Review, entitled American Heretic, features a 250-page section dedicated to the life and work of the late Black Mountain poet Edward Dorn. The editors of the Chicago Review, who have been at work on the issue since Dorn’s death…
Two years after stepping down as president of Czechoslavkia, and in apparent recovery of respiratory problems brought on by years of chain-smoking, Vaclav Havel is planning to resume his literary career, according to a BBC News wire story. Havel “is preparing to take a two…
Amdist the ongoing uproar over the naming—or not naming—of meeting rooms in the El Segundo Public Library (see yesterday’s MobyLives digest), Return of the Reluctant editor Ed Champion makes an interesting discovery: the library, which was prevented from naming a room after Agathat Christie by…
The ex-husband of romance writer Rebecca Brandewyne is on trial for “building a bomb, then placing it on his porch and calling police to report she left it there,” according to a report in the Wichita Eagle by Hurst Laviana. Police say Gary Brock called…
