Category: publishing

“We could just swim off into one without planning, of course we could – we could just stick our arms into woodchippers, or paint ourselves with molten lead – there’s no end to the ludicrous and self-harming things we, as human beings, could get up to.”

“For the past four years, I’ve been working on a book, Globish: How the English Language Became the World’s Language, which argues that a seismic shift in the foundations of our lingua franca has transformed it from an expression of Anglo-American cultural sovereignty into a supra-national phenomenon, with its own powerful inner dynamic.”

“It doesn’t matter whether we think students should or shouldn’t use Web sources such as Wikipedia; they will. We can and should require students to consult what we might call — for lack of a better term — more conventional sources.”

“In 1971, two years after its birth, it was decided that the Booker would no longer be awarded retrospectively; it would be, as now, a prize for the best novel in the year of publication. At the same time, the date on which the award was made was also switched from April to November. Most novels published in 1970, then, were never considered for the prize. They were “lost”. Was this an injustice?”

A few British authors win big prizes, and suddenly people are talking about a rise in British literature. True? Not at all, suggests Robert McCrum.

“The authorship controversy turns on two things: snobbery and the assumption that, in a literal way, you are what you write. How could an untutored, untravelled glover’s son from hickville, the argument goes, understand kings and courtiers, affairs of state, philosophy, law, music–let alone the noble art of falconry?”

3D technology has proved a success in cinemas, with films such as Avatar and Alice in Wonderland making big profits, and editors are hoping it can do the same for the ailing magazine market.

“Writing from a hospital in Nuremburg, Germany, Salinger offers that nothing is wrong with him except ‘an almost constant state of despondency,’ and that his purpose in writing was ‘to talk to someone sane.'” In the 1946 letter, about to go on view at Boston’s JFK Library, Salinger implores Hemingway “not to sell [his latest novel] to a movie producer.”

“The finding confirms what public libraries have been saying as they compete for public dollars to expand their services and high-speed Internet access: Library use by the general public is widespread and not just among poor people.”

“Britain’s Bookseller trade magazine, which organizes the contest, said that Crocheting Adventures With Hyperbolic Planes received 42 percent of 4,553 votes cast by the public.” Runners-up included What Kind of Bean Is This Chihuahua? and Collectible Spoons of the Third Reich.