America's 'Booker Of Bookers' (Or, How Flannery O'Connor Is Like Salman Rushdie) "In an online poll conducted by the National Book Foundation, [Flannery O'Connor's] collection 'The Complete Stories' was named the best work to have won the National Book Award for fiction in the contest's 60-year history." The competition was formidable: collected stories of John Cheever, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty as well as Ellison's Invisible Man and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. New York Times 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@10:14PM

Oxford To Get A Storytelling Museum "The Story Museum has existed online for the past four years, holding events across Oxfordshire and running storytelling pilots in schools, but [a £2.5 million] donation enables it to start constructing a permanent home in Oxford." The Guardian (UK) 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@08:33AM

Philip Roth's The Humbling Shortlisted For Bad-Sex Prize "Roth can comfort himself with the fact that a roll call of literary fiction's great and good, from Booker winner John Banville to acclaimed Israeli novelist Amos Oz, Goncourt winner Jonathan Littell and Whitbread winner Paul Theroux," are also in competition this year for the Literary Review's bad sex in fiction award. The Guardian (UK) 11/18/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@08:22AM

Southern California Libraries Hard Hit By Govt. Cuts "Kim Bui-Burton, president of the California Library Assn., described conditions as 'extraordinarily difficult.' Never lavishly funded, libraries started to falter with last year's credit and mortgage disasters. Now, she said, they are being battered by deep state and local cuts." Los Angeles Times 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@07:34AM

Publishing's Budding Romance With The 'Book Trailer' "In embracing the term, the publishing industry helps itself to some Hollywood glamour. And in avoiding the most obviously appropriate word for these commercials--that is, commercials--sacrosanct literature keeps grubby commerce at an arm's length." Slate 11/18/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@05:46AM

Oh, The Shame: Bookish Women Fall For Twilight "'Twilight' came for the tweens, then for the moms of tweens, then for the co-workers who started wearing those ridiculous Team Jacob shirts, and the resisters said nothing, because they thought 'Twilight' could not come for them. They were too literary. They didn't do vampires. They were feminists. Then something happened: the release of the 'Twilight' movie...." Washington Post 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/19/09@05:05AM

NY Public Library Pres. Paul LeClerc To Step Down In 2011 The 68-year-old LeClerc "has presided over the sprawling library system during a revolutionary period of change, as the world has shifted to the digital era. When he first came to the position in December 1993, the library did not even have a Web site." New York Times 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@10:06PM

National Book Awards To Colum McCann, T.J. Stiles McCann took the fiction prize for Let the Great World Spin; Stiles collected nonfiction honors for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Keith Waldrop's Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy won the poetry award, and Phillip Hoose took honors for Young People's Literature with Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice. AP 11/19/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@09:44PM

Need A Literary Award To Help Promote Your Book? Buy One Here Prizes have now taken the place of reviews as "the means by which many people now decide which books to buy, when they bother to buy books at all." So supply meets demand: we have the National Best Book Awards (resemblance intentional), which has "150 active categories" and for which every book entered (fee $69 per category) becomes a finalist. Salon 11/17/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@09:43PM

All The Bible Really Needs Is A Little Star Power "Jim Caviezel (Jesus), Malcolm McDowell (King Solomon) and Richard Dreyfuss (Moses) were among hundreds of actors who lined up to create 'The Word of Promise Audio Bible,' all 98 hours and 79 CDs of it." Other boldface participants: Max von Sydow as Noah, Gary Sinise as David, Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene and Jason Alexander as Joseph. Los Angeles Times 11/16/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@06:16AM

Isn't It Romantic? Harlequin Starts Self-Publishing Division "The self-published novels won't be sold under the Harlequin brand, but Harlequin, which sells about 1,500 romances every year, is hoping it could become a grooming ground for future authors." That's in keeping with tradition: Over the last decade, Harlequin says, "at least 50 of its authors have come from the ranks of its readers." CBC 11/17/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@06:00AM

Why Smartphones May Be The Future Of Book Reading "People once scoffed at the idea of reading a book on a 3.5-inch mobile screen. For many readers, though, sheer convenience trumps everything else." The New York Times 11/18/09

email this story | Posted 11/18/09@05:03AM

Google Books Decides To Stick To Anglophone World "Google has scaled back its digital book plans after submitting a revised settlement with industry regulators following pressure from European and Asian governments. The amended settlement proposes Google will only digitise books copy-protected in the US or published in the UK, Canada and Australia - a significant reduction on its original plans." (New Zealand is ticked off.) New Media Age (UK) 11/16/09

email this story | Posted 11/17/09@09:58PM

Germans, Having Wanted Out, Want Back In On Google Books Deal "German book publishers - angered at being included in the Google Books Settlement without being consulted - voiced concern Sunday that they had now been excluded." Monsters and Critics (Europe News) 11/15/09

email this story | Posted 11/17/09@09:57PM

There's A Lyricism To Your Search History -- Or, Um, Not "The people behind a controversial movement known as 'flarf' believe phrases found on the Internet and strung together into poetry provide a critical social commentary. Others," needless to say, "think it's worthless drivel." Toronto Star 11/17/09

email this story | Posted 11/17/09@08:21AM

Best-Selling Chinese Novelist Wins Man Asian Prize Su Tong's "The Boat to Redemption," a novel about "a playboy Communist party official who castrates himself after he is banished to live on a river barge," has won the Man Asian literary prize," which "goes to an 'Asian' novel unpublished in English." The Guardian (UK) 11/17/09

email this story | Posted 11/17/09@06:06AM

Co-Author? What Co-Author? Palin Barely Thanks Hers Three paragraphs after Sarah Palin begins her acknowledgments with a nod to herself, "[Lynn] Vincent's name is mentioned with several others. (At least she made it before the thanks to flight attendants, 'Big Dipper Construction' and 'everyone who values good customer service.')" Los Angeles Times 11/17/09

email this story | Posted 11/17/09@05:40AM

To Save Bookstore, French Townspeople Buy The Lease "Poligny residents' effort to preserve an old-fashioned Main Street bookstore may seem eccentric in an age of electronics, instantaneous communication and discount giants. But not in France, a country that is unusually fixated on its centuries-old traditions and is determined to safeguard its cultural heritage." Washington Post 11/16/09

email this story | Posted 11/16/09@08:13PM

Researchers: A Nose For Books "The aroma of an old book is familiar to every user of a traditional library. A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents." The Guardian (UK) 11/13/09

email this story | Posted 11/16/09@08:24AM

The Man Who's Reinventing Publishing "Right now, we have this vision of the publisher as a monolithic service entity that proves everything from typesetting and printing to distribution to sales support, marketing and PR. But there's no reason it has to do all those things in one go. Or even the basic ones - like providing its products to retail outlets." The Globe & Mail (Canada) 11/14/09

email this story | Posted 11/16/09@12:21AM

The Trouble With Typefaces "It's always a pleasure to discover a formally gorgeous, subtly expressive typeface while walking along a street or leafing through a magazine. But that joy is swiftly obliterated by the sight of a typographic howler. It's like having a heightened sense of smell. You spend much more of your time wincing at noxious stinks, than reveling in delightful aromas." The New York Times 11/15/09

email this story | Posted 11/16/09@12:15AM

Book Returned To School Library After 51 Years "A high school librarian in Phoenix says a former student at the school returned two overdue books checked out 51 years ago along with a $1,000 money order to cover the fines." Yahoo! (AP) 11/15/09

email this story | Posted 11/15/09@11:52PM

Google Proposes Modified Books Rights Deal "Google, the internet's search leader, is hoping to keep the deal alive with a series of new provisions. Among other things, the modified agreement provides more flexibility to offer discounts on electronics books and promises to make it easier for others to resell access to a digital index of books covered in the settlement." CBC 11/14/09

email this story | Posted 11/15/09@10:59PM

Inventing Enid Blyton "Blyton, who died aged 71 in 1968 and has sold 600 million books, was a trailblazer. After training as a teacher, she got her first break thanks to Pollock, who worked at the London publishers George Newnes and helped her publish her first stories in 1924. But it was her own ruthless business acumen that helped her become the most popular children's author of the era." The Telegraph (UK) 11/15/09

email this story | Posted 11/15/09@09:25AM

Publisher Cut Gay Storyline From From Here To Eternity Kaylie Jones, daughter of author James Jones: "My father agreed to eliminate a certain number of F-words - in part because there was a question whether the US postal system would even deliver the book to stores because of its 'salacious' nature - but there was another battle he was waging with his publisher. Apparently Scribner's had a 'don't ask don't tell' policy about depicting homosexuality in the Army." The Daily Beast 11/10/09

email this story | Posted 11/15/09@08:58AM

Books That Define The '00's So what are the literary phenomena that have defined this first decade of the 21st Century? The Telegraph (UK) 11/13/09

email this story | Posted 11/13/09@05:27AM

Students, Faculty Protest Syracuse University Plans To Move Library Books Off Campus "People in the humanities contend that they would be impaired in their research abilities. They want more space on the campus rather than going offsite and I'm sympathetic to that. We're going to actively look for ways to create more space on the campus, but of course that's going to cost money." InsideHigherEd 11/13/09

email this story | Posted 11/13/09@04:22AM

Nigeria's Achebe Says He Isn't Father Of Modern African Lit "It's really a serious belief of mine that it's risky for anyone to lay claim to something as huge and important as African literature ... the contribution made down the ages. I don't want to be singled out as the one behind it because there were many of us - many, many of us," said Chinua Achebe, who given the label by Nadine Gordimer. The Guardian (UK) 11/12/09

email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:41AM

Exam Software: Bad Prose, Churchill; You, Too, Hemingway "The wartime leader had a style that was too repetitive, according to the computer being tested for the online marking of school qualifications. It rated Churchill as below average in the equivalent of an A level English exam." The Times (UK) 11/12/09

email this story | Posted 11/12/09@07:31AM

Barbara Kingsolver: No, Really, I'm Not A Political Novelist "There goes Kingsolver, inserting Nicaraguan contras into 'Animal Dreams,' a father-daughter story about Alzheimer's. There she goes again, talking about Native American tribal rights, smack dab in the middle of 'Pigs in Heaven.' ... 'I never quite know what people mean by political,' says Kingsolver, 54." Washington Post 11/12/09

email this story | Posted 11/12/09@05:22AM

Linden MacIntyre Wins Canada's $50K Giller Prize "Mr. MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man chronicles the emerging crisis of conscience in a worldly priest who has been assigned to keep a lid on church-related sex scandals that are destroying the lives of the faithful in rural Cape Breton." The Globe and Mail (Canada) 11/10/09

email this story | Posted 11/11/09@08:06AM

Why Our Portrait Of World War I Is Rendered In Words "Before 1914, of those who described war, painted it and wrote poetry about it, very few had seen battle themselves. Now a generation of the literary middle class had, and found it by turns mundane, draining and horrific." The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09

email this story | Posted 11/11/09@07:38AM

Oxford University Puts Siegfried Sassoon's Papers Online The collection "focuses on his war poetry with manuscripts of poems such as 'The General' and 'Died of Wounds' as well as photographs and letters." The Guardian (UK) 11/11/09

email this story | Posted 11/11/09@07:01AM

Australia Rejects Changes To Book-Import Restrictions "The Federal Government's decision to keep import restrictions on books will 'kill bookshops' as online retailers such as Amazon gain the upper hand, the former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Allan Fels, has warned." Brick-and-mortar booksellers say 3,000 jobs are at risk. Sydney Morning Herald 11/12/09

email this story | Posted 11/11/09@06:50AM

Kindle Unfriendly To Visually Impaired, Universities Say "The National Federation of the Blind planned to announce Wednesday that the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University won't consider big rollouts of the electronic reading device unless Amazon makes it more accessible to visually impaired students." San Francisco Chronicle (AP) 11/10/09

email this story | Posted 11/11/09@06:17AM

Bronx English Teacher Suspended Over Palahniuk Story "A beloved city schoolteacher has been suspended by the Department of Education after giving his 11th-grade students a copy of a graphic short story about masturbation written by 'Fight Club' author Chuck Palahniuk." New York Post 11/09/09

email this story | Posted 11/10/09@07:54AM

Didn't Waterstone's Used To Be One Of The Good Guys? "So the argument goes: in going big, Waterstone's lost its soul. It gains credence if you consider what is happening in the US" -- the discount wars, that is. Nicholas Spice, publisher of the London Review of Books, says: "Waterstone's has really already done to British bookselling just the kind of things that we're seeing in the US." The Guardian (UK) 11/10/09

email this story | Posted 11/10/09@07:11AM

Nabokov's Would-Be Novel Is A Violation Of The Author "The Original of Laura can't escape the musty air of an estate sale: The trinkets that piled up in the attic; the damp books from the basement; the old man's stained cravat.... It would be ridiculous, of course, to blame the deceased for the estate sale." Nabokov is a victim here. Slate 11/10/09

email this story | Posted 11/10/09@05:37AM

Patience And Fortitude, Redesigned For The Digital Age "For the first time in at least a quarter century, the New York Public Library has unveiled a new logo, this one designed to work both online and in print. Consisting of a profile of a lion inside a circle ... it uses bold, simple lines that evoke the style of stained-glass windows, woodcuts, or old printers' marks." The New York Times 11/09/09

email this story | Posted 11/09/09@08:09PM

Amazon Whisks Lit Agents To Seattle For Day Of Wooing "According to one participant, the aim of the meetings, which culminated in a dinner Thursday evening, was for Amazon to 'explain itself' to the agent community," and particularly to persuade the group of prominent New York agents that the company is "not trying to destroy publishing as we know it." Crain's New York Business 11/09/09

email this story | Posted 11/09/09@07:16PM