“Online fiction is a remote world, peopled by elves, dragons and whey-faced vampires. At least that is the view shared by millions of devoted readers of the printed novel. But now serious British literary talent is aiming to colonise territory occupied until now by fantasy authors and amateur fan-fiction writers.”
via The Observer
“Are you tired of searching for yourself in Google Scholar, Scopus, or Academic Search Complete and finding other people who share your family name? This is a serious problem for researchers, whose reputations rest on their publication history. Many researchers are working on ways to separate the agronomist Dr. Jones from the medical Dr. Jones from the archeologist Dr. Jones. ORCID, a registry that will assign a unique ID to each author, is now live. But assigning a unique ID isn’t going to help unless EVERYONE uses that ID. Up until now, different companies and products have assigned ID numbers to their authors, but nobody else uses those numbers. That’s how authors have ended up with a Scopus ID, a ResearcherID, and a different institutional ID.”
“Larry McMurtry, the famed author of “Lonesome Dove” and dozens of other books, was walking slowly along State Highway 79 on Friday morning toward this town’s only intersection. Down the block, more than 150 collectors and dealers were queuing up to bid on 300,000 used books — about two-thirds of the stock of Booked Up, the four-building literary mecca that Mr. McMurtry started here in 1988.”
via NYTimes
“The 62-year-old said Interventions, a collection of four volumes, is a “tribute to the printed book” and would not be made available online. The author, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2002 with Empire Falls, said he wanted to encourage people to buy from local bookstores. “Readers can’t survive on e-books alone,” he told the Associated Press. “The rapid rise of e-books and online sales of printed books pose threats to bookstores, the book publishing industry and the rise of new authors,” he continued.”
via BBC News
Associated Press – “Maurice Sendak, the children’s book author and illustrator who saw the sometimes-dark side of childhood in books like Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, has died. He was 83. Longtime friend and caretaker Lynn Caponera says she was with him when he died early Tuesday at a hospital in Danbury, Conn. She says he had a stroke on Friday.”
AP – “Maurice Sendak’s eyes harden and his off-center smile curls as he considers the idea of writing a memoir. “I didn’t sleep with famous people or movie stars or anything like that. It’s a common story: Brooklyn boy grows up and succeeds in his profession, period,” he explains in his friendly growl. “I hate memoirs. I hate them. What you have is your private life. Why make it public? And how different is it from anybody else’s life? People want to read things like, ‘Did you have an affair with Oprah Winfrey, really and truly?’” The world cares about the 83-year-old Sendak, whether he likes it or not. He’s a dark soul who has been canonized, a hero who never asked for the job. With a sigh, and a wink, he confides that bookstores still contact him for appearances and children still call out and ask if he’s the guy who wrote “Where the Wild Things Are.” He even has an “in” at the White House; President Barack Obama read “Where the Wild Things Are” for the 2009 Easter Egg Roll.
NYT Opinionator – “Some readers like to see portraits of authors they admire, study their personal histories or hear them read aloud. I like to know whether an author can spell. Nabokov spelled beautifully. Fitzgerald was crummy at spelling, bedeviled by entry-level traps like “definate.” Bad spellers, of course, can be sublime writers and good spellers punctilious duds. But it’s still intriguing that Fitzgerald, for all his gifts, didn’t perceive the word “finite” in definite, the way good spellers automatically do. Did this oversight color his impression of infinity? Infinaty?”
Giga Om – “Every week, it seems there is more evidence that the balance of power in the book industry continues to tilt towards the author and away from the all-powerful publisher. One of the latest examples is John Green, who writes fiction for young adults from his home in Indianapolis, and whose latest novel has hit number one before it has even been published. Green gives credit for this phenomenon to his Twitter and YouTube followers, but the real credit should go to him for being willing to not just use social media as a promotional tool the way some do, but to actually reach out and engage with his readers and fans.”
AP – “Spy novelist John le Carre said Thursday he is giving an archive of his books, personal papers and photographs to Oxford University’s renowned Bodleian Library. The archive includes drafts and manuscripts of le Carre’s best known novels, including “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Tailor of Panama” and “The Constant Gardener.”
I’m learning about breaking news on Twitter every day. Julian Clark sends over the info of David Halberstam’s death from a car crash. How very sad.
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