Author Jhumpa Lahiri: “What do we call the rest? Native fiction? Puritan fiction? This distinction doesn’t agree with me.”
Category: publishing
Kids *Really* Like Reading … On E-Readers
“Research shows they now read more, and read better. As one teacher in Kade noted: ‘Before, it was difficult to get books. Now we will have as many as we want.'”
London Bookies Favor Haruki Murakami For Nobel Lit Prize
For now, Ladbrokes is offering 3-1 odds on the Japanese author. “Other favoured contenders include US author Joyce Carol Oates (6-1), Hungarian writer Peter Nádas (7-1), South Korean poet Ko Un (10-1), and Alice Munro, the short story writer from Canada (12-1).”
Sudden Surge In Nobel Literature Prospects For Ngugi wa Thiong’o
On Thursday, Ladbrokes temporarily suspended all betting on the Kenyan writer’s winning the prize. The company only does that when there’s a sudden large bet (or several), and there was one – from Sweden.
If We Can See HD Versions Of Rare Books, Why Keep The Originals?
“The rise of tablets, Kindles and online editing has not signalled the death of the printed book, but instead only alerted scholars to the importance of its history as a physical object, and provided us with digitised tools that enable us to work at an unprecedented speed and comparative detail.”
Why Novelists Are Afraid Of Criticizing Other Novelists
“The literary world is tiny. The subgroup represented by novelists is even tinier. If you’re an author who regularly reviews other authors, the chances of running into a person whose novel you have criticized are fairly high.”
Caleb Crain On Building A Gay Literary Canon
“I think everybody ends up assembling their own canon as they read. The whole idea of it is that it’s not – it’s a legacy, and it’s one you kind of pick and choose. You don’t just reproduce your parents’ furniture, you buy your own along the way. … Do we want a separate history and literature? The straight canon is very gay.”
Hatchet Job Of The Year? Bruce Bawer Has At Jack Kerouac
“To read through these seven hundred-odd pages of Kerouac’s staggeringly slapdash effusions set in elegant Galliard, outfitted with the usual meticulous editorial apparatus, and bound – like Twain’s novels and Lincoln’s speeches – in a beautiful Library of America volume is enough to trigger a serious attack of cognitive dissonance.”
A Big Problem For Biographers In The Digital Age
“A lot of us think electronic communications live forever. But if someone won’t give up his emails, or takes his passwords with him to the grave, or if he used software that’s now outdated, his records may be lost. “
The Essential Amazon – What This Week’s Announcements Mean To Readers
Good news mostly?