Category: publishing

Some therapists, it turns out, find poetry to be highly effective in helping patients to cope with and overcome mental illness. There are a few basic, accepted methods of poetry therapy.

“Britain’s Literary Review has picked its candidates for the worst erotic writing of the year and centred out such literary luminaries as Alastair Campbell, John Updike and Simon Sebag Montefiore.”

The European Union has “launched the prototype of Europeana, its bold project to digitise millions of books, artworks, manuscripts, maps, objects and films from the most important libraries, museums and archives, and provide them free to download from one website. The EU commission’s head, José Manuel Barroso, called it a Renaissance moment, as Europe plans to outdo commercial search engines in the staggering scope of its collection.”

“Now I’m no Palin supporter, but I think it’s a good thing that Palin and Wurzelbacher are writing books. Because by choosing to write books, as opposed to becoming talk show hosts, or country singers, Palin and Wurzelbacher are tacitly endorsing two of the things that Blue America loves the most, and which Red America has often disdained: freedom of expression and reading.”

“In an inversion of the traditional editorial process, The Onion chooses its headlines and then invents stories to fit them. For a headline to have made the first cut, at least two of the six writers in attendance had to okay it, generally an occasion of little fanfare in which a couple of people threw up their hands and murmured with a defeated sigh, ‘Sure, why the hell not?'”

A look at “the mystery of how the publisher managed to get one million sets priced at several hundred dollars into the homes of Americans who probably were unaware they yearned to read Aristotle and Saint Augustine.”

“Ziff Davis Media announced Wednesday that it was ending print publication of its 27-year-old flagship, PC Magazine, and would take the title online only.” The magazine already earns 80% of its profit from its Web site.

“Annette Gordon-Reed won the National Book Award for nonfiction Wednesday night for The Hemingses of Monticello, her multigenerational portrait of a family once lost to American history… Peter Matthiessen won the fiction award for perhaps the most unusual of the evening’s nominated books, Shadow Country.”

Nino Ricci won the English-language fiction award for The Origin of Species, while two Globe and Mail writers took honors for non-fiction (Christie Blatchford for Fifteen Days, about Canadian Army units in Afghanistan) and children’s literature (John Ibbitson for The Landing). The prizes, seven each for English- and French-language work, are worth C$25,000.

“Miriam Toews’ The Flying Troutmans, touted early on as a possible candidate for several major Canadian book prizes, ended up earning a single nomination. But the popular Winnipeg author’s bestselling novel made good on that one nod, claiming the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in Toronto yesterday.”