Category: publishing

David Plotz: “But there’s one literary depiction of mortality for kids so gripping and so terrifying that it has been haunting me – a fully grown man – since I read it. It is arguably the most disturbing book published in America since The Road. I refer, of course, to Mo Willems’ 2010 picture book, We Are in a Book!“

Random House might be one of the only big publishing houses in the U.S. to offer e-books at libraries, but that doesn’t make it a saint. In the face of steep price increases for e-book access, librarians fight back.

“A valued book is no longer one that I admire and cherish on my bookshelf, but one that is discussed and debated by people in my professional and social networks. Books are portals to both ideas and people, and reading has moved from an individual to a networked experience.”

It’s a long, grand tradition…

“Jonathan Franzen’s approach raises larger questions about the male literary establishment’s familiar, deep-seated ambivalence about women and ambition. How many male writers cite or talk about women authors who have influenced them? How many do they include among their jostling, competitive peers? It is, clearly, much easier to sustain the fraternal order, huddling together in a corner snarking about the plain girl in the expensive dress, than acknowledge that maybe she is smart, capable, and worthy of their competition.”

“Jane Austen wrote romantic comedies about middle-class girls looking for a good husband among the landed gentry. … But Austen was also a brilliant moral philosopher who analysed and taught a virtue ethics for middle-class life that is surprisingly contemporary.”

“After examining the reading habits of over 210,000 primary and secondary school children from 1,237 schools across the UK, the What Kids are Reading 2012 report found that the gap between girls’ and boys’ reading abilities appears to be closing. “

“Celebrated in over 100 countries around the world, World Book Day is the UK’s largest festival of reading and aims to encourage a lifelong love of literature in children. Thousands of schools and nurseries are joining in, with more than 14m book vouchers given out to children, and hundreds of events – from Where’s Wally ‘flash mobs’ to author talks and literary fancy dress competitions – taking place up and down the country.”

“Born only a few years ago on YouTube, video trailers are becoming more or less de rigueur for any book’s marketing campaign (if it has one; a relatively rare honour, of course). … These are terrific diversions, but their status next to the book is a little ambiguous. Isn’t using animation to advertise a book a little like using sculpture to promote poetry?”

The passing of Dmitri Nabokov last week inspires Laura Miller to recall the zeal (if that’s the right word) with which he and some of his more notorious counterparts – Stephen Joyce, Ted and Olwyn Hughes (the widower and sister-in-law of Sylvia Plath), Sonia Orwell – defended their territory.