The finalists for the 2011 are live! —Check them out HERE— We’d love to hear your comments on the nominees and if you have a few trailers you think deserve the dubious honor of inclusion. The winners will be announced at an award ceremony Thursday,…
Things continue to go badly in Borders bankruptcy case. Late last week the in-store coffee-shop franchisee in 225 just-closed Borders stores, Seattle’s Best Coffee, a division of Starbucks (right, the coffee shops in Barnes & Noble), filed court papers asking the bankruptcy judge “to protect…
At The Rumpus Steve Almond writes about the lasting influence, political power, and musical genius of Gil Scott-Heron who died on Friday: This isn’t his obituary. An obituary would require me to cite his accomplishments and transgressions, to refer to him as Mr. Scott-Heron, to…
Printed books are not dead. Not yet, not by a long shot. Even if 2015 comes and predictions hold that half of all books sold are eBooks, the other half will still have a printing press to thank for their existence. (Whether the Barnes and…
A British study has found that “Becoming engrossed in a good book or a crossword really can block the ability to hear,” says a report in the Daily Mail. According to the report, “Scientists demonstrated that when someone focuses their full attention on something, they…
Prison library offers a place to escape 200 million Americans want to publish a book Santiago Roncagliolo Wins The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize eBook sales rankings Michael Wood on Auden Dale Peck criticizes the publishing industry The rebirth of SNOB – Russian literary magazine Lambda…
At TomDispatch, the great Rebecca Solnit (Infinite City) dares to detail the creepy obviousness of the head-slap that is the Dominique Strauss-Kahn story, asking “Who would ever write a fable as obvious, as heavy-handed as the story we’ve just been given?” How can I tell…
Recently we mentioned that the New York Public Library was hosting a scavenger hunt at the main branch of the NYPL on 42nd street, calling the event “Find the Future.” Well, it seems that the city’s young bibliophiles were hungry for just such an event,…
Boyd Tonkin at The Independent profiles “a legend, a model; a kind of icon,” who is also “the uncrushable Eeyore of radical publishing” — publisher Pete Ayrton, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the press he founded, Serpent’s Tail. The press, observes Tonkin,…
“According to recent studies, arguing on the internet is now the second most popular leisure activity in the world, just below shopping and just above sex.” So claims The Dabbler in its series on the rules and methods of internet debating, drawn from the eBook handbook ”The…
American best-selling Ebusiness buzz at BEA (NYT) Amazon lists it’s most well read cities in the US 10 best modern literary love stories Queens libraries no longer buying books Wanna buy a paper mill? A lot of ebook pirates, a lot of lost money John…
Have you been asking yourself, “Is it better to celebrate Alexander Pushkin‘s birthday today, May 26th — or to wait until the Monday after next, June 6th ?” We’ve encountered a variant of this question before—with Shakespeare and Cervantes— and we can help (see the…
Interviewed at The Guardian about his new book Dead Funny: Humor in Hitler’s Germany, author Rudolph Herzog talks about how he wrote the book partly as a way of confronting his own family’s involvement in Hitler’s Third Reich: “Except for my grandfather on my mother’s…
Most people raise their voice one or two octaves when interacting with law enforcement personnel. Many can lose an otherwise relentless chip on their shoulder and unconsciously deliver a series of, “Yes, mam(s)” and “No, sir(s).” Some of us even indulge in the formality of…
Praised for her ”gentleness and spirituality,” Banana Yoshimoto was just named a recipient of the 2011 Capri Awards, presented to “authors serving as models for the younger generation.” According to this article in the Manichi Daily News, the Italians are recognizing Yoshimoto’s work because it ”always carry a…
Earlier this month, news of a mysterious new website for books (and book lovers) began to circulate. It wasn’t long before the hype followed. Backed by the likes of Hachette Book Group, Penguin Group (USA), and Simon & Schuster, Bookish is slated to be the…
Graydon Carter writing kids book for the iPad More Ayn Rand Lost E.E. Cummings poem found Introducing the GoodReads book club Robots run the library of the future What would Joyce think of twitter? Kardashians can’t name their own novel? Are publishers to decline for…
The past Monday night, as many of you know, Melville House and Shelf Awareness hosted the first annual Independent Booksellers’ Choice Awards. The event took place at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe and was hosted by the enthralling, delightfully charismatic, and not to mention hilarious, David…
Book Expo America, going on now in New York City, is notable for its events featuring mega-bestselling writers and somebody-wrote-it-for-me celebrities whose further promotion goes beyond unnecessary into the realm of actual progress down the road to doom, and panel discussions featuring majordomos from Amazon,…
Last week Moby Lives reported on the ongoing budget crisis New York libraries are facing under Mayor Michael Bloomberg‘s budget proposal. Yesterday, Reuven Blau of the New York Daily News outlined in a bit more detail the problems NYC libraries are facing, and it ain’t…
(Via Biblioklept) A copy of the passport application, submitted at the age of 37 by the round-chinned, straight-nosed, oval-face Herman Melville, long after his seafaring days were over and his literary reputation had declined. It appears he considered embellishing his height, and then thought better…
The Washington Post brings us this report on a women’s book group that met every fourth Sunday to discuss books and to socialize. That is, until the fateful day when they decided, after reading many books together, that they could write a better book than…
Boys ‘can’t read past 100th page’ Wodehouse prize goes to Shteyngart Open Road Media get $8million Would more bad book reviews make better books? 1 in 3 downloaded books is pirated Kindle books hitting the library Ondaatje prize goes to Edmund de Waal The eBook…
Let’s call it the bombshell everyone should have seen coming: the announcement that Amazon, after months of starting up genre publishing imprints, was going after mainstream publishing in a big way, by launching a major, general-interest trade publishing house. Beyond the question of why this…
Troubled UK book chain Waterstone’s has finally been sold for a huge £53 million (around $85 million). The sale finally went through at the end of last week after several months of speculation, with Russian businessman Alexander Mamut financing the deal. In a surprising move,…
In case you missed it, last week was the 69th anniversary of the publication of The Stranger by Albert Camus. In his Daybook column for the Barnes and Noble Review, Steve King points out the similarities between The Stranger and the old Humphrey Bogart film…
Thanks to everyone who participated in the “Blog Hop” book giveaway for Banana Yoshimoto. For a chance to win book bloggers had to answer three questions on their book blogs. And the winners are… 1. Release Notes who cited Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier as…
“While Amazon announced last week that it now sells more e-books than printed ones, plenty of readers still prefer the old-fashioned printed page to an electronic screen, and for good reason,” says Andrew Irvine in a column for the Edmonton Journal called “Why books will…
The below video from The Rachel Maddow Show outs ex-Vice President Dick Cheney as copying the image a certain Democratic president for his book cover photo of Cheney’s soon-to-be-launched book, In My Time. As my second-grade teacher taught us, imitation is the sincerest form of…
With Borders bankrupt and Barnes and Noble on the defensive against the eBook onslaught, independent bookstores find themselves looking shockingly healthy. The Associated Press writes that in 2011, membership in the American Booksellers Association “increased by 102, from 1,410 to 1,502, the biggest jump in…
