Category: publishing

“People were perhaps put off by the way it was taught, searching for meaning and sociological context. Poetry isn’t about that, it goes straight to the heart, the brain, the guts if you like.”

“A sequel to children’s classic Peter Pan has been published – more than 100 years after the original… The book is set 20 years after the original, with Peter Pan’s friend Wendy now having children of her own and the Lost Boys having grown up… Publishers tried to keep details of the book secret but were forced to launch an investigation back in August after an American newspaper printed a summary of the plot. The book is being published in 30 different countries in 34 languages.”

Online readership of newspapers is going up. And the readers are younger. “The average number of unique visitors to online newspaper sites in the first half was more than 55.5 million a month, the study said. That compares with 42.2 million a year earlier.”

Robin Robertson wins the £10,000 Forward Prize for Poetry. “Robertson, 50, from Scone, Perthshire, is the first poet to have won both the best collection prize and the best first collection prize.”

“It seems to be just another esoteric historical tome published to appeal to an academic audience: An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin, by Rohan Kriwaczek, a nonfiction account of a little-known genre of music that was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church and almost wiped out by the Great Funerary Purges of the 1830’s and 40’s… Except for a few niggling details. There is no such thing as a funerary violin. [And] there were no Great Funerary Purges.” A literary joke? Sure looks like it, and the book’s publisher apparently wasn’t among those in on it.

Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty may be better known for his tumultuous personal life than for his music, but it turns out all that prison time was an excellent opportunity for reading poetry. Rimbaud, Verlaine … and don’t even get him started on Emily Dickinson. “Aargh, she’s outrageous man!” he says. “She’s [expletive] hardcore! Can’t ignore her.”

The first lady lists the books that propelled her into literacy advocacy. Her commentary on her favorites is far from devoid of political implications — but she does speak of the “fun” of reading “The Brothers Karamazov.”

This year’s Giller Prize finalists for Canadian writers are less-known than those who usually make the list. “Pascale Quiviger’s A Perfect Circle, which won the Governor General’s Award for fiction in French in 2004, is perhaps the most acclaimed of five books selected for the list, announced in Toronto Tuesday.”

“For an award that tends to favour well-established and high-profile writers, most of the big shots of the 2006 fall season were conspicuously absent from the long list.”

“Jason Johnson, described by critics as ‘the Irish Irving Welsh’, will open up an unusual auction in cyberspace next month: a chance to become a character in his third novel.”