Steve Jobs‘ temper tantrum against Wiley & Sons for its forthcoming bio iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business, by Jeffrey Young, “has had two sure-fire results,” says Jim Milliot in a Publishers Weekly story (not available as a free…
The Detroit Free Press has announced disciplinary actions against star columnist—and mega-selling author — Mitch Albom, but it isn’t saying what those actions are, as an Editor & Publisher story reports. In fact, the headline of the explanatory article noted that Albom’s column was returning…
Israeli writer Amos Oz has been awarded the 2005 Goethe Cultural Prize, one of Germany’s top literary prizes. An Agence France Presse wire story reports that the €50,000 prize, which is a lifetime achievement award, went to Oz “for his literary work and impressive moral…
An aggressive, nationwide campaign by New Zealand police to stop the theft of rare books is landing some New Zealand booksellers in court. As a story from New Zealand wire service Stuff reports, 75-year-old John Arnold Palmer, owner of Arnold Books In Christchurch, has been…
“Those who want to browse books at Houston’s public libraries should get enough sleep, eat and bathe before they begin to peruse the shelves,” dictates a “series of library regulations” passed by the Houston City Council. But, as an Associated Press wire story reports, “Two…
“Further proof of how tough it is for independent publishers to survive” came this week with the news that Random House UK bought a 50 % partnership of small Scottish independent Mainstream, says Roger Tagholm in a Publishing News report. As Tagholm observes, “The news…
The story is that in 1935, Bodley Head director Allen Lane was on his way home from visiting Agatha Christie and he wanted something to read on the train “and was so disappointed at what he found that he decided to fill the yawning gap…
Shares of Amazon.com fell precipitously yesterday “after the company reported its net income sagged 30 percent on tax expenses and a new fee-based membership program that expands the online retailer’s foray into free shipping even further,” reports Rachel Konrad in an Associated Press wire story.…
Yvonne Vera, “one of Zimbabwe’s best known writers,” has died at age 40 of meningitis. As a Guardian obituary by Helon Habila notes, Vera was a writer “for whom the world was just beginning to open up. In the last three years, she had won…
The Brooklyn Rail’s Kate Trainor profiles Melville House with an interview of publishers Valerie Merians and Dennis Loy Johnson, asking them “How did MobyLives evolve into Melville House?” “With a book of poetry,” Merians explains. “After 9/11, poets were sending Dennis poems to put up…
“Not to be outdone by Victoria’s Secret, laundry detergent and countless other products, the ‘girlie’ wine has dawned, dressed in gift bags resembling see-through organza negligees and bearing cosmetics-counter names like Seduction or hip-cute ones like Rosé the Riveter or Mad Housewife,” according to a…
For those wondering what books kids in New Zealand are stealing from the public libraries, the answer is: “Books of Nazi insignia, or about heavy metal rockers,” according to an article from the Manawatu Standard by Mervyn Dykes. Also, “Anything featuring rocker-suicide Kurt Cobain is…
It was a quickly formed consensus: Apple “simply appears petty,” says Alyce Lomax — an “Apple product loyalist who says “I’m Apple all the way, baby.” In a Motley Fool commentary, she joins the growing chorus criticizing Apple for yanking all books published by John…
As the 10th annual National Poetry Month draws to a close, a news brief at The Onion observes the simultaneous effort by the American Poetry Prevention Society. “We must stop this scourge before more lives are exposed to poetry,” said APPS head Dr. John Nieman…
In an act of retaliation for the pubication of an unauthorized biography of Steve Jobs, the company he founded, Apple Computer, Inc., is removing from its stores dozens of different titles published by the book’s publisher John Wiley & Sons, one of the country’s leading…
The new free-shipping membership program at Amazon.com was a leading factor in the company’s 30 percent dip in net income for the first quarter, reports Rachel Konrad in an Associated Press wire story. Konrad reports the company earned $78 million for the quarter, as opposed…
Austalia’s third-largest bookstore chain, Collins Booksellers, has gone bankrupt—or, “into voluntary administration”—after accumulating $7.5 million in debt. A report in The Australian by Michael Bachelard and Natasha Robinson says the 23-store chain, which was founded in 1922 by the Slamen family, which still owned it,…
When he was first imprisoned in the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, poet Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost was deprived of writing materials and so “memorized his best lines or scribbled them secretly on paper cups.” He was subsequently given pen and paper and…
Southern Connecticut State University has “barred a student from a poetry class after his professor said a poem he submitted contained veiled threats to sexually assault her and her 3-year-old daughter,” according to an Associated Press wire story. Student Edward Bolles‘ poem, called “Professor White,”…
Perennial Nobel Prize candidate Agusto Roa Bastos, the Paraguayan novelist known for I, the Supreme, has died at age 88, according to a brief Agence France Presse report. Roa Bastos won the Spanish-speaking world’s highest literary honor,” the Cervantes, in 1989. The AFP story notes,…
Rupert Murdoch‘s HarperCollins has announced it will publish “Ronald Reagan‘s handwritten diaries of his eight years in the White House,” according to an Associated Press wire story. Reagan supposedly “wrote in his diaries every day of his presidency, recording his thoughts on events both routine…
A week after Paul Maliszewski was attacked in The New York Times and on numerous book blogs for his Bookforum article about Michael Chabon, the tide seems to be turning as yet another commentator weighs in with an in-depth consideration supporting Maliszewski. In a devastating…
Almost a month ago, Alex Beam wrote about Foetry.com in his Boston Globe column (see the MobyLives news digest for 31 March). Beam noted that the website had “chided” local Harvard poet and professor of rhetoric Jorie Graham for having awarded the 2000 Contemporary Poetry…
What is believe to be the first record of Allen Ginsberg reading Howl has been donated to Naropa Univeristy, according to a breif Associated Press wire report. The late poet was co-founder of Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, and the school’s audio archivist…
Jean-Paul Sartre never wrote a “total biography” of himself—nothing to compare, say, to the massive biography he wrote of Gustave Flaubert, L’Idiot de la famile (The Family Idiot)—but a show now on display at the Bibliotèque de France in honor of the 100th anniversary of…
“E-books have yet to crack the publishing industry, but that hasn’t stopped literature from tackling computer technology as a storytelling device,” observes Rebecca Caldwell. In a story for The Globe & Mail, she notes that “a recent spate of old-fashioned low-tech printed books have all…
The Los Angeles Times may be the only newspaper in America that has now allowed a critic to use the full title Harry Franfurt‘s On Bullshit. “I have received special dispensation,” says Dan Neil in his commentary, but he nonetheless develops a tactic to avoid…
The letter signed by 158 prominent female writers and sent to Oprah Winfrey pleading with her to stop using classic titles in her book club and resume promoting contemporary novels (see last Friday’s MobyLives news digest) has drawn a fiery commentary from Alex Good of…
It’s an annual event, but this year the “readathon” in Madrid of Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes has been bolstered by the general “Quixote Madness” sweeping Spain as the country celebrates the 400th anniversary of the book’s publication. As a Reuters…
Hundreds of people gathered in Guthrie, Kentucky last week to celebrate the unveiling of a new US postage stamp honoring the author of the classic All The King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren. As a brief Associated Press wire story notes, the celebration in Warren’s hometown…
