Category: publishing

Nine years after picking Franzen’s “The Corrections” for her book club and then canceling his appearance on her show after he expressed ambivalence over her endorsement, Winfrey has chosen his new novel, “Freedom,” according to three booksellers.

“Word is that Oprah Winfrey has buried the hatchet with the celebrated novelist and that Franzen’s newest book, “Freedom,” will be the final selection for Winfrey’s famous book club, due to be announced tomorrow.”

“Opened with little fanfare over the summer, the [Schiphol] library – the first ever at a major international airport – has 1,200 books in more than two dozen languages, all by Dutch authors or on subjects relating to the country’s history and culture.” Fittingly, the library is tucked next door to the airport branch of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

The Pale King “is set in ‘an IRS tax-return-processing center in Illinois in the mid-1980s,’ and tells the story of ‘a crew of entry-level processors and their attempts to do their job in the face of soul-crushing tedium’.” The release date? April 15, of course.

Robert Pinsky: “‘Blake’s poetry has the unpleasantness of great poetry,’ says T.S. Eliot (who has a way of parodying himself even while making wise observations). … In particular, the two poems both titled ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ offer eloquent examples of Blake’s unsettling art.”

“The Vatican Library, which houses one of the world’s most important collections of manuscripts, will reopen next Monday after a three-year, $12 million renovation, much to the relief of academics around the world.”

Andrew Motion: “Booker-watchers have assured us that our longlist has sold better than any for several years. Although we didn’t set out to be ‘popular’, we were pleased to be told this. Isn’t one of the purposes of the prize to get people reading what they otherwise might not?”

Ah Pook Is Here, the never-published graphic novel Burroughs wrote with artist Malcolm McNeil, will be released next year by Seattle publisher Fantagraphics.

Metadata is the information about a given book: subject categories, edition, publication date, author(s) – everything you’d find on a catalog card. The metadata for the scanned volumes in Google Books has a worrisome number of errors – including some doozies like Moby Dick categorized under “Computers,” and Jane Eyre as “Antiques and Collectibles.”

So South Africa, where illiteracy runs high, stands accused of a deeply unliterary culture. Stephen Johnson, managing director of publisher Random House Struik, told the Mail & Guardian: “Books and reading are simply not on the national agenda at all. It’s shameful.”