Blog

The Earthquake That Rebuilt San Francisco’s Museums

The 1989 Bay Area earthquake the best thing to happen to the area’s museums in a long time. Many museums were damaged in the quake and had to address plans to rebuild. “In the mid-1980s, nothing had happened to any of our museums in 50 years. The scene felt very retarded. Now, all these museums have reinvented themselves with new buildings and new initiatives that make people feel differently.”

The Canadian Artist

“Close to one-half of Canada’s artists live in just three cities — Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal. And while the number of artists across Canada has increased by almost 30 per cent in the last decade, they’re earning on average 26 per cent less than other workers in the labour force, a study released yesterday shows.”

Garcia Marquez Book Hits The Streets

Nobel Prize author Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s first book in a decade went on sale in Latin America Wednesday (released early because pirated copies were being sold on the streets) and the interest has been intense. “Editors said demand for the book has been so strong that they were already in the process of publishing a second edition of 50,000 to add to the initial Mexican release of 100,000 in softcover and 30,000 in hardcover.”

Drowning In The Booker

What is it like to be a judge for a prize like the Booker? “Reading 132 books in 147 days is like taking a course in kick-boxing; you quickly lose any flabby concentration and wishy-washy standards, becoming fitter and leaner and more demanding. In the process, you learn a great deal about why so many novels—even well written, carefully crafted novels as so many of those submitted were—are ultimately pointless.”

Hollinghurst: More Than Gay

Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize win earlier this week was announced in much of the British press as a victory by a “gay” novel. But it’s much more than that. “I only chafe at the ‘gay writer’ tag if it’s thought to be what is most or only interesting about what I’m writing. I want it to be part of the foundation of the books, which are actually about all sorts of other things as well – history, class, culture. There’s all sorts of stuff going on. It’s not just, as you would think if you read the headlines in the newspapers, about gay sex.”

Winning The Booker – Not Always The Ticket To Sales

There is a myth that books that win the Booker Prize end up selling a lot of copies. But a look at previous winners’ sales shows that isn’t always the case. “Due to the scale of the Booker award any book that wins, whatever your reason for buying it, will be the sort of title that will become a library staple in many people’s homes and will continue to sell across the decades. The surprise this list throws up is how some books you may not have expected are stronger sellers than some of the bigger names further down the list.”

A Month Of Listening – Taking The Music Industry’s Temperature

Just where is music going at the moment? One journalist decides to take the industry’s temperature by listening to every CD released in the month of October. “I’m struck not just by the sheer quantity – 25,793 CDs were released last year, over double the figure produced in 1994 – but also by the variety. The cost of entry into the market is lower than it ever was before. It costs less to manufacture CDs, and it costs less to record an album. At the same time, the gap between those albums that sell in huge quantities and those that don’t is probably greater than ever.”

Community To Barnes: We Won’t Play Ball

One of the sites the Barnes Foundation is considering moving to in Phiadelphia is currently accupied by community baseball fields. Community groups who use the fields have reacted with dismay to the Barnespotential move. “The ball fields – two baseball diamonds and a small children’s playground along the northern part of the Parkway – are home to countless children’s baseball, softball and soccer games and serve hundreds of children from several city neighborhoods.”