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MobyLives will be honoring the great industry holiday known as August. That means we’ll still be working like fiends but on Fridays we’ll make jokes about having to catch the jitney to Long Island. It also means no more MobyLives until early September. Try not…
“People keep asking me, as an owner of an old-fashioned brick-and-mortar independent bookstore, what I think of the Amazon Kindle,” says Pete Mulvihill, co-owner of the Green Apple bookstore in San Francisco. “So I bought one.” Once he had it at the store, his staff,…
A trove of letters written by Gustave Flaubert have been discovered in the attic of an English farmhouse, reports Alison Flood in a story for The Guardian. Biographer David Waller says he was invited to the house to look at two chests of family papers…
Television station KIIITV reports that Corpus Christi police are investigating an attempt to put 3 oz. of cocaine in the spine of a book with the intention of smuggling it into a Texas prison. According to the report, “The discovery was made Tuesday afternoon at…
The (UK) Guardian reports that the British Library bought a 16th-century British manuscript that was sought by a US buyer. After mounting a public appeal to keep the book in the UK, the library “finally bought it with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund,…
Just months before his biography of Roald Dahl was set to be released, biographer Donald Sturrock has discovered a trove of letters that throw a new light on Dahl, prompting a halt to the publication. The letters, according to this brief report from the Telegraph,…
When cute little Dominic Philip got his picture on the front page of the local newspaper for tooting a gazoo in a parade at the library in Nazareth, PA, library officials immediately grew suspicious. Turns out they had good reason — because Dominic Philip was…
Just days after MobyLives picked up a commentary from its blog about the difficult prices of classic books, leading London indie Crockatt and Powell Booksellers has announced yesterday it’s going out of business … today. According to a report by Graham Neil in The Bookseller,…
You can add the Sony Reader to the list of ebook readers being hustled into new models before Christmas. A story in The Bookseller says Sony is hurrying to get a new version into stores in September that will feature WiFi. According to the report,…
The sculptor who created Wall Street’s famous “Charging Bull” statue is suing Random House for putting a photograph of the sculpture on the cover of a book about the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Yesterday, according to a Wall Street Journal report by Chad Bray, artist…
Buying the newest hardcover is not very smart, says a helpful article in the Baltimore Sun. Huh? The same newspaper that just unloaded their Books Editor (in the same industry that constantly wails, help us! Print is dying!) encouraged its online readers yesterday to avoid…
Activists have mobilized on Facebook for a library-themed Ben & Jerry’s flavor. They strongly believe, and I quote: (1) Libraries are awesome; (2) Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream is tasty; therefore: (3) A library-themed Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream would be tasty awesome. Here is…
Bookninja — the site that always gets there first and spells it right — points us to a truly outrageous, not to mention bodacious, piece of writing: a typographic map of Paris by artist Mark Andrew Webber. In an interview with Creative Review, Webber explains…
It’s years late and yet the timing — given the recent train wreck that Amazon has become — couldn’t have been better: Days after Barnes & Noble “fired a shot across the bow of Amazon.com and its Kindle e-book reader” with its announcement of its…
The estate of Jack Kerouac — which includes journals and unpublished manuscripts and thousands of letters, all valued at $20 million — has been thrown into turmoil after a Florida judge ruled that the 1973 will controlling its disposition was a forgery. According to an…
The worry about Amazon deepens and spreads: Now, David Ulin, editor of the book section of the Los Angeles Times, says in an op-ed that ” it’s not the incidents themselves but their ramifications that are disturbing, the idea that Amazon can effectively alter the…
This fall, Stephen King and his publisher, Scribner, plan to offer 1500 autographed first editions of his new novel, Under the Dome, available on their websites for $200 apiece. Presuming they sell them all, that adds up to a cool $300,000, notes this Wall Street…
A Cappella Books in Atlanta, Georgia, has announced that they are having a midnight release party for the new Thomas Pynchon book. Move over Harry Potter and Stephenie Meyer, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that store owner Frank Reiss is promoting a midnight party for…
People have been puzzling for a couple of days now over Sarah Palin‘s farewell address as governor of Alaska. The main questions have been 1. What in God’s name was she trying to say? and 2. Where can we get what ever medication it is…
Jeff Bezos may have “offered an apparently heartfelt and anguished mea culpa” regarding Amazon‘s secret deletion of books from thousands of Kindles, but “An apology was not enough for many people,” reports Brad Stone in a New York Times story. Now, he says, “A growing…
A Reuters report says that “Iraq’s Ministry of Culture has revived regulations forbidding the import of some books, prompting critics to accuse it of restoring Saddam-era censorship.” Publishers are being required to submit lists of titles for approval based on rules outlined in a law…
While America questions its devotedness to Amazon and especially the Kindle, folks in Britain are getting excited about a new device from Apple rumored to be coming out for Christmas. A story in The Bookseller synopsizes a story in The Financial Times (that’s unavailable to…
Justine Larbalestier‘s new YA book, Liar, is about young girl named Micah who is “black with nappy hair which she wears natural and short.” So how come the girl pictured on the cover of her book is, well, a white girl with long straight hair?”…
In Australia, “An author whose bank account was frozen because he co-wrote a book with a former criminal is preparing for a legal battle that could have serious consequences for authors, journalists and media proprietors,” says Corrie Perkin in a report for The Australian. Author…
It’s been a bad time already for the Kindle, but now The New Yorker has brought out the heavy artillery. Yes, I’m talking about Nicholson Baker. Baker, famed for his loving and in-depth — not to mention fascinating — discourses on print media (and let’s…
Recent developments have abruptly brought about a perhaps momentary but nonetheless remarkable contemplative pause in the headlong rush into ebooks. A case in point: At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow takes the opportunity of Jeff Bezos‘ apology to launch a detailed criticism of Amazon‘s policies regarding…
Barely three weeks after losing a court case that resulted in the barring from publication of a “sequel” to J.D. Salinger‘s Catcher in the Rye (see the earlier story), attorneys for the publisher — and author — of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye,…
One of London’s leading indie booksellers, Adam Powell of Crockatt and Powell Booksellers, notes that “Over the last few years the price of backlist titles has steadily increased.” In a post on the company’s blog, he says “Selling a copy of Animal Farm for £8.99…
E. Lynn Harris, “whose novels about successful and glamorous black men with sexual identity conflicts (and the women and men who love them) made him one of the nation’s most popular writers,” died of unknown causes in Los Angeles on Thursday at age 54. As…
For anyone who has ever worked in a bookstore or library, this one — as described in a story from the Norwood, MA Daily News – is for you: Librarian: Good morning. Reference. How may I help you? Caller: Hi. Is this Reference? Librarian: Yes,…