Category: publishing

The shortlist for the International Man Booker Prize, not to be confused with the original Man Booker Prize, will be announced this morning in Toronto, and despite some skepticism as to the need for yet another literary prize, John Fraser says that it’s all in a good cause. “There’s never enough to be done for the beleaguered world of books. If anything will get a worthy offering off a seller’s shelves and into the hands of a willing reader, even by curiosity aroused through the latest “damn book prize,” then all well and good, or even better!”

With the English-language release of “A Tranquil Star,” Primo Levi’s short-story collection, Ruth Franklin argues that the stories must be considered on their own terms. “It is a curse of those who write about the Holocaust that they are eternally identified with their horrific, unapproachable subject, even when they try to take their lives in other directions. … Not every piece of writing can be expected to bear the weight of the Holocaust, and to load these stories down with such an impossible freight risks damaging their delicate humor and intelligence.”

Cell-phone calls on speakerphone. Skateboarding down the steps. Drum circles. Possibly, just possibly, these activities don’t belong at the library — even if libraries’ missions have evolved. “Libraries are more vibrant these days, and busier … and I applaud this. But just because libraries serve a broader function than they once did shouldn’t mean that people lose all respect for what they began as: a place where silence is, if not always pristine, actively sought.”

Three years ago the Luton was voted the “crappest town ” in England. So how to get back in the game? Burnish the olde image? Poetry, that’s how. “Prospective poets throughout the country – not just Luton or even Bedfordshire – have been invited to pen an ode in praise of the beleaguered town. The best will be published in a paperback anthology, called Love Luton, at the end of the year.”

Membership libraries in the US were originally modeled after the athenaeums and lyceums of England, which increased access to books at a time when most collections were private. By 1876, more than 3,000 dotted the country. Today, they’re one of the missed sets of cultural treasures. But these private libraries can still be found clustered in the Northeast and throughout the South. The youngest, founded in 1899, is the Athenaeum Music and Arts Library in La Jolla, Calif., which costs $40 per year. The Boston Athenaeum, dating back to 1807, is the country’s largest such institution, with 600,000 books.”

“So how many Potters to order? Bloomsbury is again imposing a cap on returns, reduced from 20 per cent last time to 10 per cent. The publisher argues that it’s simply being eco-friendly: true to a point – returned books mean a waste of its forest-friendly paper. But wholesalers are supporting the indies’ complaints, and the Booksellers Association has presented concerns to the publisher. Indies may well play safe with minimal orders – and then go to Tesco or Asda to replenish with cheap copies if stocks dwindle.”

The very first dictionary of the English language, written in 1604 was known as A Table Alphabeticall. It was compiled in the late 16th century by one Robert Cawdrey, evidently to grapple with the changing language brought about by printing presss. “It has been out of print for almost 400 years, and the Bodleian is now home to the one known copy of it to have survived.”

Arts Council England begins squeezing funding recipients, including the small literary London Magazine. “The council, in case you hadn’t noticed, has embarked on a national debate about arts funding, where its money goes, and the accountability of those who bestow and receive it. Clearly this debate ought to encompass that minuscule fraction of the budget devoted to literature.”

The shortlist is out for Canada’s Griffin Poetry Prize, which offers $100,000 and plenty of publicity to the winners. Three Canadians will vie for the $50,000 domestic prize, while three Americans and a Briton vie for the international award.

Since being published in French in 2004, Irène Némirovsky’s “Suite Française” has sold more than a million copies and been reprinted in more than 30 languages. Némirovsky, a largely forgotten writer who died in the Holocaust, has become one of Europe’s most celebrated authors. “Now another previously undiscovered Némirovsky novel has been unearthed.”