Category: publishing

“There are certain books that become a permanent part of your life, like an old tree that stands at the bend of a favorite path. You may not notice them, but if they were taken away, the world would be less mysterious, less friendly, less itself. ‘The Wind in the Willows,’ published 100 years ago this year, is one of those books.”

“The drumbeat of grim news from the publishing industry continued on Monday as Macmillan, the company that operates imprints including Farrar, Straus and Giroux, St. Martin’s Press and Henry Holt, laid off about 4 percent of its staff and restructured its children’s book division.”

“The good news is that we’ve created a discipline: literary studies. The bad news is that we’ve made ourselves rulers of a realm that has separated itself almost completely from the rest of the world. In the process, we’ve lost many of the students — I’d say, many of them men — and even some of the professors.”

A poll of Russians named the author of The Master and Margarita Russia’s second-greatest writer ever (after Pushkin). But he was born in Kiev, which is now, of course, the capital of independent Ukraine. Gogol, who wrote in Russian about his Ukrainian background, has become a similar battleground.

The Guardian gives its picks, from the famous (“Black Man Asks Nation for Change”) to the topical (“Powerful ‘His And Hers’ Towel Lobby Stalls Gay Marriage Legislation”) to the brilliant (“Man With Apple Hovering In Front Of Face Sues René Magritte’s Estate”).

“A survey commissioned by the National Year of Reading has found the top 10 reads to impress a woman. Top of the list is Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom. If you also drop in that you adore Shakespeare, poetry, and cookery books; are never off current affairs websites; and – sorry readers – that you take the Financial Times, then there may be queues.”

John Gapper: “[R]eporting is expensive… Papers have done this basic work for cities and states for so long that we take it for granted. Other aspects of US journalism will not, however, be missed. Some things, such as sports scores and weather forecasts, can be collated in a more timely and user-friendly way online. In addition, there is a swath of national and foreign coverage that is no longer needed.”

In a much-noted New York Times essay last Sunday, Timothy Egan grandly harrumphing about the likes of Sarah Palin and campaign celebrity Samuel Wurzelbacher (“Joe the Plumber”) landing book contracts while so many talented and trained writers languish unpublished. And yet, Michael Pastore points out, if the writing of books was permitted only to trained professionals, consider whose works would never have seen print: Benjamin Franklin, Walt Whitman, the Bronte sisters, Getrude Stein, W.E.B. DuBois…

“In this season of lists and holiday recommendations, I had planned to submit my books of the year to the blogosphere today,” Robert McCrum writes. “But I’ve bumped into one or two inhibitions.” The charge of logrolling, for example. So: “For full transparency, I will … score my relationship with each author on a 10-point scale.”

“Barack Obama sounds like he wants to reach back to the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration to jump start the economy with an economic stimulus proposal featuring infrastructure repair. If so, it may be time for the man who would be FDR to take a look at another successful–but largely forgotten–jobs program from the Depression era: the Federal Writers Project.”