Category: publishing

“An English teacher sacked after publishing a racy novel about her pupils online defended the book today, saying it was written to encourage a group of teenage boys to read. … The novel contained pupils’ real names and included references to under-age drinking, truancy and drugs, and scenes of a sexual nature, as well as likening students to ‘gorgeous Mr Gay UK finalists’.”

“On the face of it, if you’re a singleton given to lonely walks on blasted heaths with a copy of a suitably impressive paperback poking eye-catchingly out of your jacket pocket, this might sound like just what you need. But to be honest, you’d be better off hanging out in the Sainsbury’s vegetable aisle than on a dating website aimed at book-lovers: a shared appreciation of baby sweetcorn is a far more solid foundation for lasting love than a shared appreciation of Nabokov.”

“Work on the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary began in 1965. The mammoth enterprise has survived fire and funding problems and has had to be constantly updated to incorporate new words,” but it’s finally being published this fall. “It contains almost the entire vocabulary of English, from Old English to the present day, giving a unique insight into the development of the language.”

“Instead of welcoming May’s news that numerous colleges were experimenting with Amazon’s Kindle DX as a way to bring digital textbooks to their students, advocates for the visually impaired are strenuously objecting to it.”

“Along with the Codex Vaticanus, the Codex Sinaiticus is considered the oldest known Bible in the world. Originally more than 1,460 pages long and measuring 16in by 14in, it was written by a number of hands around the time of Constantine the Great.”

Two Chinese writers slaved for 48 hours straight to produce an “instant” biography of late singer Michael Jackson, despite having never met him, a state-run newspaper said on Monday.

“For 50 years the literary festival remained a pretty humble affair, and not many people’s idea of fun. Facilities were spartan and the tea was served in plastic beakers. As for champagne, forget it. Things began to change in 1988 when Peter Florence set up the Hay Festival, attracting a host of big literary names to the little town on the Welsh border, and, perhaps crucially, newspaper sponsorship to ensure free publicity for the event.”

“History’s first case of Twitter-induced book feuding started last weekend with The Boston Globe’s review of Alice Hoffman’s 21st novel, The Story Sisters, and the author’s ludicrously over-the-top response in a series of tweets.”

Robert Roper considers how Walt Whitman’s experiences of volunteering in Civil War hospitals, and of writing letters of condolence to the families of newly-dead soldiers, helped shape “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d,” his elegy for Abraham Lincoln.

“A week after submitting a young adult novel anonymously to editors, James Frey, the notorious author of A Million Little Pieces, and a writing partner, Jobie Hughes, have sold North American rights to I Am Number Four to HarperCollins Children’s Books.” The book is the first in a planned series of four.