Penguin is celebrating 70 years in publishing. “To celebrate the birthday, Penguin is issuing 70 new short titles, or Pocket Penguins, drawn from its back catalogue or new work. Now, unexpectedly, the titles have provoked outrage and surprise because they include work by only two authors who are not white.”
Blog
Brit Library Borrowing Declines (Again)
Library use is in decline for British public libraries. “Book borrowing fell by a further 5% last year, maintaining a disturbing 20-year trend, official figures showed yesterday. But for the first time in their long decline there was hard evidence that libraries are winning back popularity with the public. An extra 4% of people walked through their doors in 2003-04, giving them a total of 337 million visits.”
Tabloids Beat Libraries For Brits
Where do Britons get their information? Not generally from libraries. It’s tabloids. Why? A new study says that “this is because the sources the public trusts most, notably public libraries, are closed when it most needs them. The study follows official figures showing that only a tiny number of libraries and other archives are open as long as shops.”
The Sound Of Music (With Emphasis On The Sound)
“Some may call it sound design, sound sculpture or sound art, but it’s actually music. Bypassing the visual sense, they send their messages and ideas straight to the brain with their aesthetic treatment of sound – and that is surely what music is. What is interesting to observe, though, is that in a world increasingly dominated by the visual, with adverts, text messages and multi-channel TV, sound and music is becoming an alternative and more powerful force, finding a way into our emotional lives and functioning in a way that art does.”
Portrait Of An Art Thief
Forget that romantic image of the art thief as a cunning, live-by-his-wits rogue. Other misconceptions: “There is a massive amount of fraud involving art and antiquities. It is perpetrated not by opportunist thieves but by organised criminals. There is nothing ‘gentlemanly’ or ‘white-collar’ about it – these are dangerous individuals.”
London Symphony Scores Coup By Landing Gergiev
Valery Gergiev will succeed Colin Davis as music director of the London Symphony. “Gergiev will join the LSO for an initial three years from January 1 2007, while at the same time retaining his posts as artistic and general director of the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, principal guest conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in New York and music director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic.”
Alsop – Woman Conductor On The Edge?
“While female conductors are increasingly common among small and midsize symphonies, they have not penetrated the ranks of the world’s top orchestras. Marin Alsop will be just the second woman in history to lead Holland’s Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra when she makes her debut in 2006.”
A Challenge For Black British Theatre
Two pieces of black British theatre are playing in London’s West End. “There are now three generations of Afro-Caribbeans in Britain, a cultural shift that the establishment can no longer afford not to invest in. These new audiences and theatre practitioners have experiences that are meaningful to everyone, not just to specific cultural groups.”
Unpublished Jack Karouac Discovered
“Beat Generation, written in the autumn of 1957, the same year as the publication of Kerouac’s breakthrough work On the Road, was unearthed in a New Jersey warehouse six months ago. An excerpt will appear in the July issue of Best Life magazine. The play recounts a day in the life of the hard-drinking, drug-fuelled life of Jack Duluoz, Kerouac’s alter-ego.”
Sheikh Defrauds Qatar Cousin Through Inflated Art Sales
Sheikh Saud Al-Thani apparently defrauded the Qatar government for millions of dollars by using “vastly inflated invoices issued by Islamic art dealer Oliver Hoare.”