Category: publishing

“Every e-book reader seems to come preloaded with a few canonical titles — “Pride and Prejudice” or “Alice in Wonderland,” for instance. But there has never been a better time to be a slightly faded writer just beyond the cusp of copyright, like Edgar Wallace or Hilaire Belloc. Their voluminous works — not easily found in your local library — are now copiously available to the digitally curious.”

Laura Miller: “Whatever policy each panel of judges embraces, over the years, the impression has arisen that already-successful titles are automatically sidelined in favor of books that the judges feel deserve an extra boost of attention.”

A “miscommunication” led to Lauren Myracle’s Shine being listed for the young people’s literature category, instead of Franny Billingsley’s Chime.

The organisers of the new Literature Prize claimed the Booker “now prioritises a notion of ‘readability’ over artistic achievement”.

“[The] fifty-year birthday of a good children’s book marks a real passage, since it means that the book hasn’t been passed just from parent to child but from parent to child and on to child again. A book that has crossed that three-generation barrier has a good chance at permanence.”

“In [his] world, fish fall from the sky near a Tokyo train station, backyard wells lead to personal and political violence, and a giant frog tells a businessman how to save Tokyo from its next major earthquake. The mundane mingles with the absurd, but neither offers solutions in a universe bent toward chaos.”

“The winners in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people’s literature will be announced at a ceremony in Manhattan on Nov. 16, hosted by the actor and author John Lithgow.”

If you didn’t know any of this, it’s because destroying books is a job that, by necessity, is done in secret.

‘Peer reviewers’ tend to be gentler than full-time critics, particularly if they know each other – does this mean we should never write about each other?

“Dickens and Shakespeare, the two biggest beasts in the English literary jungle, are to be celebrated as never before during the next 12 months. For their hundreds of millions of devoted followers, the only concern is that they will wilt under the onslaught.”