Category: words

Mexican workers are reportedly paid sweatshop wages to count New Yorker’s literary contest votes – The Nation

— is the largest in the Arab world. But the impressive size doesn’t necessarily mean it reflects the state of Arab-world publishing. – Al-Ahram (Egypt)

— choose best books of 1999. – Salon

Chicago bookstore wins “Niche-Of-The-Year” award by making a go of selling only books and memorabilia related to Abraham Lincoln. – Publishers Weekly

The postmodern fiction of Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace can tie you up in knots and circles. But is their tangle a literary dead end? Or is there a way out? Keith Gessen looks for clues. – Feed

So Seamus Heaney won this year’s Whitbread “Book of the Year” honors. And Harry Potter’s J.K Rowling won “Children’s Book of the Year.” Something for everyone. But the judges let slip Rowling lost “Book of the Year” by only one vote, and now a big brouhaha has erupted. – MSNBC (Newhouse)

An author is horrified to discover her personal letters offered for sale on the internet – and chagrined to think her life’s aspirations are worth only $125. – Salon

— Chapters racked up large losses in 1999. – CBC

No one’s complaining, mind you. After all, when you’ve planned only a 10,000-copy run of a new book, and getting picked by Oprah ups it to half-a-million, you’ve hit the jackpot. But for a smallish literary press used to lower stakes, the logistical hassles of just getting the book out on this scale are enormous. – Salon

A tide of vandalism has swept most of the UK’s libraries clean of musical texts and scores, writes Norman Lebrecht. “Glasgow, Liverpool and most London boroughs have lost their music libraries. The BBC has wantonly trashed thousands of scores. British library managers are burning more books than any group since Hitler’s stormtroopers.” Now comes the Manchester City Council. – The Telegraph (UK)