Category: words

• Poet Karl Shapiro died Sunday at age 86. The longtime editor of “Poetry” magazine won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945 for poems he wrote during World War II while serving with a medical unit in the Pacific. – NPR [Real audio file]  

Christie’s in London is abuzz over the upcoming sale of famous book William Foyle’s entire library. His collection includes 40 painted books of hours, all four of the Shakespeare folios, a 12^th century Bible, an atlas hand-colored for the Medicis – estimated to bring in £10 million or more. – The Times (UK)

The introduction of the book superstore in Canada has been great for publishers, who have seen their orders rise. Chapters says it only represents 21% of the Canadian industry (including all retail venues), but it comprises 50%-60% of sales for many publishers. Some worry on that dependence. “If Chapters goes down, everyone will go with them. It would take down every publisher in Canada.” – Publishers Weekly

Internet magazine Salon.com has bought MP3Lit.com, a company that provides downloads of audio books over the internet. – Publishers Weekly

If Harold Bloom’s new book “How to Read and Why” seems smug and condescending, that’s because it is. The book claims to be a practical guide to show us how to read great literature and provide the reason why. “But Professor Bloom’s own rhetoric is so poisonously alienating to the general reader – with its mandarin locutions and tireless self-congratulation – that he ends up sounding like a parody of the jargon-spouting Neo-post-whatever-ists he keeps complaining about.” – New York Magazine

We haven’t seen the end of the small independent book stores, no matter how big the megastores get, says one Toronto indie. “I saw a niche in what people might like in terms of having a more intimate environment in which you can come and find a selection of books that has been well thought out.” – CBC

Book returns are thought to be a right of bookstores. Whatever books you order and don’t sell can be returned to the publisher and the store doesn’t have to pay for them. But this year the returns are piling up at Canadian publishers, and the cost of this inefficient system is paid by consumers. Something’s got to change. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

Maybe in Canada – but in the North American market, Chapters, the Canadian giant, is a little guy. And book returns are bringing down even the giant. – National Post (Canada)

Amazon.com provides sales statistics and reader reviews of the books it sells. But so much information isn’t necessarily a good thing for authors. “On a bad day, you’ll invariably find that none of Amazon’s customers has bothered to review your book since the last time you looked, and that, furthermore, the masterpiece over which you sweated blood for 18 months is languishing in 3,000,012th place in the Amazon sales charts. On an even worse one, you’ll discover that some tasteless imbecile who wouldn’t know what great art was if it bit him on the nose has given you a real stinker, and that your book has dropped to 3,000,013.” – The Telegraph (UK)

A new Jules Verne book was published Thursday in France, 95 years after the author’s death. The 1901 thriller, “The Beautiful Yellow Danube,” was discovered by an Italian collector in 1977 and has since then only circulated privately. – Times of India