Category: publishing

The 61 authors attending Sri Lanka’s inaugural Galle Literary Festival include “author and historian William Dalrymple, Man Booker prize winner Kiran Desai, Arthur C Clarke and chef and actress Madhur Jaffrey. That they came at all to a first and untested book festival is commendable. But to an island which appears to be sliding towards civil war in the north and east is all the more remarkable.”

“Two authors who failed to convince Britain’s High Court that New Hampshire’s Dan Brown stole their ideas for his blockbuster novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’ took their case to the Court of Appeal on Tuesday. Lawyers for Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who face a bill of more than $2 million if the earlier verdict stands, said the lower court ruling ‘was based on a misunderstanding of the law and of the claim.’ “

“Gleeful predictions that the celebrity biography bubble would burst and leave an almighty mess over publishing were all the rage in the run-up to Christmas. Shelves in bookshops and supermarkets were groaning under the weight of the offspring of this publishing frenzy: new tomes by more than 50 famous folk. Instead, the book business reaped a bumper harvest in cash terms…

There are plenty of stories about independent bookstores closing. But in New York is recent weeks five new bookstores have opened, and they “embody the kind of pluck that has always characterized New York’s love affair with bookshops. The siren call of the megastore and its feisty cousin, the Internet, is formidable, but in a city of 8 million, surely there’s room for a few mavericks.”

Irish poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney has won the TS Eliot Prize for Poetry, taking home a cheque for £10,000.

“Our distaste for plagiarism is usually framed in terms of our affection for originality. Obviously, originality does have something to do with all the fuss: Most of us expect writers–especially novelists and poets–to have a distinctive voice and literary style. But the rhetoric of creative originality doesn’t fully explain our preoccupation with footnoting and credit–or the recent accusations.”

The NEA has been creating programs to promote reading and writing. More ideas?

“Reviewing the exchange of literary hostilities across the ocean between 1776 and the present, Paul Giles concludes that Britain and America, far from being kissing cousins, are inimical.”

For 50 years, various heavy Hollywood hitters have tried to turn Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” into a movie. “Until now, at least, no one in Hollywood has figured out a formula that promises both to sell popcorn and to do justice to the original text, let alone to the philosophy that it hammers home endlessly, at times in lengthy speeches. (The final one is 60 pages long.)”

Fourteen board members of Jimmy Carter’s human rights group have resigned to protest Carter’s new book. “The resignations at the Carter Center are the latest backlash against the former president’s book “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” The book has also drawn fire from Jewish groups and fellow Democrats, and led to the resignation last month of Kenneth Stein, a center fellow and a longtime Carter adviser.”