Category: words

I’m sorry, but your recent rejections of my work have not been up to our standards. “We will not consider previously sent rejections. We want fresh, original work. Be creative. Have fun. Multiple rejections make us mad. Very mad.” We are writers, after all. – Salon

“Authors and readers in censored countries are discovering ways around the Internet filters installed by their governments. They now can obtain information on topics that would never be available in their local bookstores, including religion, government and sexual topics considered taboo. And they can distribute their information to the masses through electronic publishing.” – Intellectual Capital

American writer sues JK Rowling saying that Rowling stole ideas for “Harry Potter” from her 1984 book. – BBC

Stephen King’s latest book was published on the web yesterday, but who could get it? The publisher’s website was churning at 100 percent capacity all day, while all over America, many who tried to download the horror tome found their computers crashing. – Boston Globe

— are announced. The 650-member organization honors “works that are more scholarly, literary and often just more maverick than those recognized by the mainstream Pulitzer Prizes.” – Dallas Morning News 03/14/00

• ALL CACHET/NO CASH: “It’s not about us as book critics. We want to deliver the books that are best to our audience and that’s what we did.” The winners: “Jonathan Lethem for “Motherless Brooklyn,” Henry Wiencek for “The Hairstons: An American Family in Black and White,” Jonathan Weiner for “Time, Love, Memory: A Great Biologist and His Quest for the Origins of Behavior,” Jorge Luis Borges for “Selected Non-Fictions,” and Ruth Stone for “Ordinary Words.” – Washington Post
  
  
• Awards like a North Beach coffee house, circa 1962. – San Francisco Chronicle

With children’s books dominating a recent British poll of most-loved literature, one critic wonders if this means we’re in a Golden Age for young fiction. – The Telegraph (UK)

The venerable Canadian literary magazine “Books in Canada” is in precarious condition. Writers and editors haven’t been paid, and top staff left. The publication’s “slow burn raises intriguing questions about the value of literary institutions in the Internet era. For some, the 28-year-old magazine – a fixture of Canadian letters and sponsor of a once prestigious first novel award – seems to be worth more dead than alive. – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

When Vladimir Nabokov’s “Pale Fire” was published in 1962, reviewers wrote that it could be enjoyed at face value, but that it obviously hid many levels of complexity. Nabokov thought “the unravelling of a riddle is the purest and most basic act of the human mind.” He probably would have enjoyed one of the most remarkable academic books of this season, Nabokov’s Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery (Princeton) by Brian Boyd, an attempt to unravel the riddles Nabokov embedded in “Pale Fire.” – National Post (Canada)

— for electronic books gets underway. – Wired

— goes online. – CBC