Archive for the 'books' Category
Book clubs for doctors show human side of medicine
March 12th, 2010AP – “Doctors, nurses and other health care workers are tapping into their inner Tolstoys to better connect with patients. With increasing regularity, they’re meeting in monthly book clubs to discuss medical-themed literature. Humanities courses are now required in many medical schools.”
Hilary Duff to Write Young Adult Novel
March 10th, 2010US Magazine – “The former Disney star, 22, has signed on to write a series of young adult novels for Simon & Schuster. The first novel, titled Elixir, will feature the adventures of a globe-trotting photojournalist named Clea Raymond. It’s due to hit bookshelves on Oct. 12.”
Longtime readers know about me and Hilary
Young adult lit comes of age
March 8th, 2010LA Times – “Authors may gear their novels toward the junior and senior high crowd, but adults are snapping up the books, often about misfit teens or fantasy worlds.”
Spring reading
February 27th, 2010FT – “The demise of the venerable codex, or bound book, has been predicted at least since 1899, when HG Wells in The Sleeper Awakes envisaged the entire corpus of human literature reduced to a mini-library of “peculiar double cylinders” that would be viewable on a screen. More informed commentators have been arguing since the [...]
Forget the frat party, there’s book collecting to be done
February 24th, 2010Jacket Copy – “While some college students are perfecting their beer pong, the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Assn. of America, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies, the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress are teaming up to tempt them into the field of rare book collecting.”
Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally
February 22nd, 2010NYT – “Readers can modify content on the Web, so why not in books?”
Author, 17, Says It’s ‘Mixing,’ Not Plagiarism
February 18th, 2010NYT – “It usually takes an author decades to win fawning reviews, march up the best-seller list and become a finalist for a major book prize. Helene Hegemann, just 17, did it with her first book, all in the space of a few weeks, and despite a savaging from critics over plagiarism.”
More here, from Jacket [...]
Faber republish novel smuggled out of Nazi Germany in a cake
February 18th, 2010Guardian – “Jan Petersen’s Our Street, a million seller in its time, to reappear in publisher’s print-on-demand series.”
Dick Francis, Novelist, Dies at 89
February 14th, 2010NYT – “Best-selling crime writer Dick Francis, who drew on his experience as a successful steeplechase jockey for his racing thrillers, has died aged 89, the BBC said on Sunday.”
More here
Authors on Google Maps
February 14th, 2010Google Maps Mania – “Soren, of Microformats.dk, has produced a Google Maps mashup to show the birthplaces of the authors whose books are on the list of the top 250 books borrowed from UK libraries.”
Access the map, plus an article from The Guardian
The iPad Could Drive Readers to Distraction
February 11th, 2010WSJ – “In this age of frantic multitasking and ubiquitous digital distraction, one form of media has remained a refuge: You could always lose yourself in a good book. But if Apple’s planned iPad digital tablet succeeds as well as its iPod ancestors, those days may soon be over.”
The NBA’s Locker-Room Nerds
February 11th, 2010WSJ – “International Players Are Helping to Bring Back an Erstwhile League Pastime—Reading” (Thanks Matt)
Tweeting a book by its cover
February 9th, 2010Cnet – “a new project from non-profit biannual magazine Slice, based in Brooklyn, tries to show us that something is lost on a Kindle commute. Meet CoverSpy, a Twitter feed run by Slice, which peeks at the books that people are reading on the New York City subway (as well as on park benches and [...]
‘Silver Scribblers’ web campaign launched
February 9th, 2010WebUser – “An online campaign has been launched to get older people – or ’silver scribblers’ – to join book clubs and write novels.”
Direct to Bookbite
Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ to be republished in Germany
February 8th, 2010Telegraph – “Under the post-1945 German constitution, the dissemination of Nazi philosophy has been a crime punishable by fines and imprisonment. But the copyright, held by the state of Bavaria where the Nazi movement began life in the 1920s, expires in 2015, 70 years after the death of its author in his Berlin bunker.”
Chick-lit author killed herself, coroner rules
February 4th, 2010Guardian – “Susan Morgan, who wrote as Zoe Barnes and Sue Dyson, died after an overdose of painkillers”
What is the future of printed literary journals?
February 4th, 2010Jacket Copy – “For me, if there’s a piece of writing that I care about, I want to have the physical object,” says Brigid Hughes, editor of the literary journal A Public Space. “There’s a permanence to it, a different kind of permanence than if you find it on a website. You’re bringing together these [...]
Okla. men lose bid to sue Grisham, other writers
February 1st, 2010AP – “A federal appeals court in Denver ruled that three public officials from Oklahoma cannot revive their libel lawsuit against best-selling author John Grisham and two other writers. The case was filed over books they wrote about the wrongful conviction of two men in a 1982 murder.”
Read the decision.
From the Roman Codex to the iPad
January 31st, 2010WSJ – “How’s this for human progress? It took about 4,000 years from the invention of writing to the Roman-era codex of bound pages replacing scrolls, 1,000 years from the codex to movable type creating printed books, 500 years from the printing press to the Internet—and only 25 years to the launch of the iPad.”
Convert Rafter Spaces into Book Shelves
January 31st, 2010Lifehacker – “You can never have enough storage space, especially if you’re a book lover. This clever hack turns the unused space between rafters into book shelves.”
Books a must-have even in sluggish economy: poll
January 30th, 2010Reuters – “During tough economic times when U.S. consumers are trying to cut back the indulgence they can’t seem to live without is books. Three-quarters of adults questioned in an online poll said they would sacrifice holidays, dining out, going to the movies and even shopping sprees but they could not resist buying books.”
Pensioners burn books for warmth
January 5th, 2010Metro – “Hard-up pensioners have resorted to buying books from charity shops and burning them to keep warm.” (via)
Rogue Fiction
December 27th, 2009from Mudflats, where the Sarah Palin book is shelved in one bookstore. *snicker*
Books…
December 24th, 2009…The other channel
When a book becomes a purse
December 9th, 2009Jacket Copy – “Mostly what we like to do with books here at Jacket Copy is read them. Which means we wind up carrying them a lot; personally, I had to buy a purse big enough to fit a book (or two). But some crafty people have taken that one step further and turned the [...]
Literate people ’should boycott books’, says Murdoch biographer
November 26th, 2009Guardian – “Rupert Murdoch’s biographer Michael Wolff has called on “literate people” to boycott books until publishers stop bringing out ghostwritten memoirs by the likes of Sarah Palin.”
Borders’ website suspends book sales
November 24th, 2009BBC – “The website of the Borders bookshop chain in the UK has stopped taking new orders for books while “the business is in discussion with potential buyers. The firm says that existing customer orders are also being delayed but will be fulfilled.”
‘Going Rogue’ on library and bookstore shelves
November 18th, 2009Homer Tribune – “Sarah Palin, once at the center of book-banning controversy while mayor of Wasilla, is causing a bit of a headache for libraries this week as they decide how much shelf space and budget to devote to her new book – as well as the multiple other titles being released about her.”
Maybe put [...]
Reading? Aren’t books good for anything else?
November 18th, 2009Jacket Copy – “Books are pretty useless when it comes to multi-tasking. They’re good for one thing — reading — and not much else. In the past, you might be able to stick them on a shelf and take them down again … but still, nothing to do with them but read.”
The Authors’ Hearts Beat Faster. Publishing Was So Close Now. . .
November 17th, 2009NYT – “Got a romance novel in your desk drawer? Polish it up and get ready to become a Harlequin author. Harlequin Enterprises, the queen of the romance world, has signed a partnership agreement with Author Solutions, a company that helps aspiring scribes self-publish their books. Harlequin has created a new imprint, Harlequin Horizons, that [...]
