Tag: 11.27.17

This Year’s Bestsellers List – And The Book Sale Numbers, Yikes – Tell Us A Lot About Ourselves

Aside from Hillary Clinton’s memoir – which sold well for any kind of book, not just a political book – things are kind of grim, maybe because “leveraging a massive publicity platform is one of the few proven methods of selling a lot of books, but the media has become so balkanized that many best-selling authors are ‘celebrities’ invisible to most of the nation: YouTube stars, radio hosts, reality TV contestants.”

If Theatres Are Publicly Funded, They Should Be Open To The Entire Public

Lyn Gardner: “Just as the window displays of Topshop may deliberately scream that their wares are not for me – a middle-aged woman – many venues unwittingly send out the signal that theatre is not for everyone. … If the public has paid for these buildings then they truly must be places available to the public – and artists – all day long, to do what they want, not what they are directed to do. They shouldn’t feel the need to be invited in, but they should be made to feel welcome whatever their purpose for being there.

Curse Of The One-Hit Choreographer

For choreographers, the postpartum pangs that follow a big triumph can summon doubts about their ability to duplicate a career’s artistic zenith. Critics sneer, ballet masters and directors stifle skeptical looks, audiences question, producers pressure and choreographers agonize about the label of “one-hit wonder.” Has he backed himself into a corner? Has she burned out on ideas? How do you bring something original to the stage without copying yourself or experimenting with disaster?

Good Readers Versus Bad Readers

The good reader’s cultural elevation always relied on his oppositional relationship to the curiously undifferentiated mass of bad readers, who struck Nabokov—and have struck many teachers and literary scholars since—as a kind of irritating background noise; always already present and unworthy of any serious or systematic consideration.

Donor Gives Millions To Help Public Radio ‘Disrupt Itself’

“All across the media world, organizations continue to grapple with ‘digital disruption.’ … Which is why the Jerome L. Greene Foundation’s $10 million gift this month to New York Public Radio (NYPR), home to WNYC and WQXR, is so interesting.” Mike Scutari looks at how this donation, along with several others from the Greene Foundation over the past decade, has funded NYPR’s “self-disruption” – that is, its transformation into a “multi-platform journalism service.”

You Know How People Start Reading Books And Don’t Finish? They’re No Better About Audiobooks

“New stats revealed this week by audiobooks.com showed how many (or few) of us get to the end of a range of audiobooks. They make tough reading for Craig Oliver, whose No 10 [Downing St] Brexit memoirs, Unleashing Demons, kept only 20% of readers rapt until the end. The oft-unfinished War and Peace retained about the same proportion through its 60-plus hours of narration (stats were not available for Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time).”

Philly’s Oldest Alternative Art Space Is Selling Its Building

“‘We are going to switch from being building-based to being project-based,’ [Painted Bride] executive director Laurel Raczka said Monday. … The organization is not having any particularly stressful financial problems at this time, Raczka said. Rather, the decision to free itself from the building is driven by a desire to serve the city’s younger artists and audiences in a way that makes sense.”