Category: publishing

“As I read books that trade in the particular histories and mythologies of cities – as Chronic City does with New York’s, William Boyd’s Ordinary Thunderstorms or Ian McEwan’s Saturday do with London, or Brad Leithauser’s The Art Student’s War even manage for Detroit – I’m always struck by the scarcity of this kind of literature sprung from Toronto.”

“Revisions emerge as a favorite authorial pursuit, more ecstasy than agony. For this reason, writers like talking revisions, turn expansive, reveal themselves. What they say about revisions provides readers, fans and writing students with startling insights into the confounding and convoluted creative process-what works, what does not.”

“In the future, … all our books will be invisible, like our music … So we lose forever the pleasure known to humanity for 500 years of taking a stroll up and down the aisles of someone else’s brain by perusing their bookshelves.”

“He splits his time between his farm in Pakistan — the setting for the stories in his book — and cities like New York and London. … Mueenuddin has plenty of responsibilities in Pakistan — he manages the large farm — but beyond that, he’s got nothing but time to work.”

“A mixed-use, multimedia complex that is meant to foster social interaction and creative ferment as much as reading and research, the library of the future is also intended as an engine of city-center rejuvenation. Examples have gone up in dozens of places around the world” – Salt Lake City, Seattle, Vancouver, Chongqing, Tenerife, Brisbane, Cardiff …

“He has been voted the greatest journalist of the 20th century. In an unparalleled career, Ryszard Kapuscinski transformed the humble job of reporting into a literary art, chronicling the wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s. But a new book claims that … [he] repeatedly crossed the boundary between reportage and fiction-writing – or, to put it less politely, made stuff up.”

“Going to the loo without a book! It is a profound shock. Instead of reading, I stare at the walls and notice that there are still two empty nails on which I meant – a year ago – to hang pictures. Also, I notice the dust on the floor and the cobwebs on the ceiling.”

“The publisher of a book about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima whose author relied on a fraudulent source has said it will stop printing and shipping copies because of further questions about the writer’s sources.”

“In a paper titled ‘The Texas Billionaire’s Pregnant Bride,’ … [two Canadian researchers] analyze the titles of Harlequin romance novels. … Coming from an evolutionary psychology perspective, they hypothesized these titles would reflect mating preferences that have evolved over the millennia.”

Elsewhere, however, English-language sales were up in 2009. “Despite the worldwide recession, booksellers in Australia, Ireland, and South Africa all saw the number of books sold grow.”