Category: publishing

“When T. S. Eliot quotes Dante and Heraclitus, it’s because Eliot wants to be seen as binding together thousands of years of Western culture. When a contemporary poet quotes the same authors, however, it’s more likely that he wants to be seen (whether he knows it or not) as T. S. Eliot.”

“Barnes & Noble sustained a setback on Monday when a powerful proxy advisory company endorsed directors proposed by the billionaire investor Ronald W. Burkle over the company’s own slate, which included its chairman, Leonard S. Riggio.”

“Most people might imagine that authors’ libraries matter–that scholars and readers should care what books authors read, what they thought about them, what they scribbled in the margins. But far more libraries get dispersed than saved.”

“The jury, which included CBC host Michael Enright, American writer Claire Messud and British author Ali Smith, trolled through 98 books and selected 13 titles.”

“There is always something a little bit canine about the literary world: there has to be a top dog. And there are different, even competing, kennels.”

“Since the millennium, the relationship between words and money has undergone almost total inversion. On the demand side, publishers recklessly drove up profit margins from a comfortable 3% to a suicidal 15%. As for supply, a privileged minority of “content providers” (AKA authors) reached audiences and made fortunes that started at six or seven figures.”

“San Antonio says it now has the first actual bookless library. Students who stretch out in the library’s ample study spaces — which dominate the floor plan of the new building — and log on to its resource network using their laptops or the library’s 10 public computers will be able to access 425,000 e-books and 18,000 electronic journal articles. Librarians will have offices there and will be available for consultations.”

“Certainly, there are those who can read a book once and retain everything that was in it, but anecdotal evidence suggests that is not the case with most people. Anecdotal evidence suggests that most people cannot recall the title or author or even the existence of a book they read a month ago, much less its contents.”

“Without detracting from Jonathan Franzen, I think we can say it would not have received this trifecta of plaudits, largely because we don’t ascribe literary authority as freely to women as men, and our models of literary greatness remain primarily male (and white).”

The four-story house in Istanbul “is the real-life incarnation of the museum painstakingly assembled and detailed in his book The Museum of Innocence (2008). The institution … will house 83 wooden boxes [filled with items] related to the book’s 83 chapters.”