Writers have always battled distraction, but there seem to be more distractions closer at hand than there used to be. At least, that seems to be one of the things under consideration in a new entry on Reader of Depressing Books in which the site’s…
“In the book world, it is forbidden and uncouth to publish one’s own work,” observes Brian Robert Hischier in a commentary at The Antipodes. “A work without the guidance of an editor is like a child born of its own devices. It is possible, but…
Starting a new job in the editorial department of a London publisher in 1984, the instructions awaiting the new employee were simple: “Open all unsolicited manuscripts. Log them in the slush pile book. Read them and reject them.” Now, as the anonymous editor reports in…
In a bizarre commentary for The Prospect, Julian Evans admits recent Man Booker International winner Ismail Kadare was a part of the brutally repressive government of dictator Enver Hoxha and yet hails Kadare as “a worthy laureate.” Evans argues that Kadare was writing critically of…
A controversy has broken out in China over the winners of one of the country’s most prestigious literary awards, the Mao Dun Awards. As a China Daily story reports, “some critics” have charged that two of the winners this year “fail to meet the standards…
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi “is suing a British author and the Italian publisher of a book exploring corruption and organised crime in Italy” for more than €1million ($1.2 million), according to a report in the Guardian attributed to “agencies in Rome.” The book in…
The impact of Foetry.com continues to reverberate throughout the poetry world with a shocker from the University of Georgia Press: after 25 years it has decided to end its prestigious Contemporary Poets Series prize. The undated announcement, apparently just placed on the UGP website, does…
“The CIA is squelching publication of a new book detailing events leading up to Osama bin Laden‘s escape from his Tora Bora mountain stronghold during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, says a former CIA officer who led much of the fighting,” reports an Associated Press…
Identity Theory’s Robert Birnbaum‘s latest interview is with Sarah Vowell. They talk about the complicated process of writing her newest book, Assassination Vacation, about the craft . . . and what’s next: “RB: Do you entertain any thoughts about writing fiction? SV: [sharply] No. RB:…
Followers of international politics who have noted the current political turmoil in the Philippines may take in interest in a story from the Manila Bulletin, which notes what might be at the root of the country’s recent woes: “Of all the items in the national…
“The New York Times, known for its best-seller list and crossword puzzles in addition to the news it prints, has now lent its name to a bookstore. And the first New York Times bookstore won’t be in New York, Los Angeles or even Chicago. It…
“One of the most intriguing traditions in western art,” that of painting pregnant Madonnas, a tradition that was “almost entirely confined to Tuscany in the 130 years ending around 1467,” is the subject of a 40-page booklet that is already causing a stir within the…
“For the first time in recent memory, Amazon.com has handed investors a surprise — the positive kind, that is,” according to a Business Week report by Robert D. Hof. “After a seemingly interminable string of earnings disappointments, the online retailer on July 26 reported better-than-expected…
Once again, the British Foreign Office is threatening to ban the book of a former diplomat member who has criticized the government of Tony Blair. As a Guardian story by David Leigh reports, the author in question is former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray,…
A homeless man who has lived on the streets of Queens, New York, for a decade “is banking on an unlikely ticket off the street: a book deal. Sounds crazy? Tell that to his agent,” writes Matthew Monks in a story for Newsday. He reports…
Has Barnes & Noble grown as much as it can? An Associated Press wire story notes that B&N shares “declined slightly in Monday trading after Goldman Sachs cut its rating on the nation’s largest book retailer, citing a recent run-up in stock price.” The report…
Terry McMillan is on tour trying to support her new novel, The Interruption of Everything, but she keeps running into the question: “how could she not know through six years of marriage that the inspiration for How Stella Got Her Groove Back, her best-selling novel…
Reflecting on a deceased friend who was a Conservative, Scott McLemee (“a portrait of Lenin . . . looks down on me now, here in my study at home”) considers a notion raised by Wesley McDonald in his book, Russell Kirk and the Age of…
After panning the new Harry Potter book in a San Francisco Chronicle review — “It’s not that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is dull, exactly. In places, it rises to a pitch resembling suspense, or at least a passing curiosity about what might happen…
In a story that no other news source seems to have picked up, the Watley Review is reporting that a disgruntled fan has released a “corrected” version of the newest Harry Potter novel on her website, where it has led to over 800,000 downloads and…
The creator of Sherlock Holmes, author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “was himself a murderer and a thief,” says a group of “literary sleuths” in England who “plan to prove their claim with a macabre exhumation in a Devon churchyard.” It’s all about a theory that…
Edward Bunker, who turned his life around after publishing a novel while in prison, then went on to write more successful books and act in movies such as Reservoir Dogs once he got out, has died in Burbank, California at age 71. According to an…
It seemed, at first, that one of the world’s richest women had won in her fight against an aristocratic author: lawyers for Lily Safra, reportedly worth over a $1 billion, convinced Arcadia Books to withdraw the already published Empress Bianca by Lady Colin Campbell from…
In a commentary for The Albany Times Union, Edwidge Danticat proposes the American invasion of Haiti in 1915 as a cautionary tale: “By the end of the occupation, more than 15,000 Haitians had lost their lives. A Haitian gendarmerie was trained to replace the U.S.…
It started when struggling Portland artist//writer ayo damali complained to her mother that she was “fed up, feeling people only valued her because of her race.” Her mother, quoted an old joke by sixties comedian Godfrey Cambridge: “Well, you can’t be everyone’s Rent-A-Negro.” As Florangela…
“For several years, nonfiction titles containing the words ‘changed the world’ (or a variation thereon) have become a publishing standby,” to the degree that the phrase “has become enough of a publishing convention to have mutated,” observes Mark Feeney in a Boston Globe article. Feeney…
In response to last Thursday’s vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to reauthorize 16 provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, including the clause requiring librarians and booksellers to secretly hand over customer records, the head of the American Library Association has called the Act…
“A scathing parody that likens President Bush to the ‘idiot’ in William Faulkner‘s novel The Sound and the Fury has won this year’s Faulkner write-alike contest,” but Faulkner’s family is accusing the sponsor of the contest, Hemispheres, the in-flight magazine of United Airlines, with censorship…
The likelihood of legal action against one of the UK’s biggest bookselling chains, W.H. Smith, “appeared to increase this week as the retailer began telling publishers it will now accept orders only if they conform to its disputed terms and conditions.” A Publishing News report…
Is it repressive to categorize books as “gay fiction,” or to have specialized gay and lesbian bookstores? In a New York Times Book Review commentary last week, novelist David Leavitt argued that it’s time to “retire the category” of the “gay novel,” because we are…
