Category: publishing

Nat Hentoff says jailed Cuban librarians need the help of American libraries. “How inspiring it would be if the world-renowned New York Public Library and its president, Paul Leclerc, would join the small Vermillion Public Library in South Dakota to further circulate stories and songs of freedom by sending books—and encouragement—to the Cuban independent libraries. Many of the multicultural users of New York’s library system would be proud of its flagship center and its lions guarding the freedom to read.”

Where is the sex in Canadian literature? Even when there is sex, it “is rarely a pleasurable event. Instead, it is often used as a metaphor for politics, identity, globalization, consumerism – almost everything but sex itself.”

There may be as many as 50,000 book clubs in the UK. “What is clear is that the book club is now a near-ubiquitous feature of bourgeois life. If you are not in one, you will know someone who is. There are reading groups devoted to football, horror, and crime books. There groups in prisons, groups for men, groups who dress up in clothing appropriate to the book, groups who cook for each other, lesbian groups and radical groups.”

It’s Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, which “beat Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in a survey of members of the 700-strong Romantic Novelists’ Association. Gone With the Wind, Wuthering Heights and Rebecca were also in the top five.”

Steve Almond writes a book about candy and throws in a few political opinions for good measure. Then he gets trashed by readers. “What really bummed me out about the Amazon haters wasn’t that they disagreed with my politics, but that they immediately summoned such genuine outrage at me for deigning to express a political opinion at all.”

Children’s book author Jacqueline Wilson had the most books borrowed last year from British libraries. Danielle Steel was runner-up, with Josephine Cox in third place, both for the second year in a row. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was the most borrowed book. Wilson’s books were borrowed more than two million times, according to the Public Lending Right (PLR) organisation.”

Along with announcing its first profitable quarter ever, Salon.com, the pioneering internet magazine, says David Talbot, who founded Salon magazine in 1995, will step down as the magazine’s editor in chief, chief executive and “relentless cheerleader.” He will be replaced as editorby Joan Walsh, his longtime deputy.

“Increasingly, writers, readers and publishers are turning to literature as a bridge between cultures, particularly Western and Arab societies estranged since Arab extremists attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. This in turn is driving a boom in translation.”

Thomas Wolfe’s new book is on the bestseller lists to be sure. But crappy reviews have translated into sales of “only” 250,000, far below the announced first printing of 1.5 million. “Despite its continued tenure on most national best-seller lists, “I Am Charlotte Simmons” is being discounted by 50 percent or more at bookstores and online, a move publishers often make to try to recoup some of their investment in a book that has not met expectations.”

In March 2003, Castro’s State Security police arrested independent librarians who provided access to books excluded from Cuba’s censored library system. “These ‘subversive’ independent public librarians were sent to Castro’s foul prisons, along with the other dissenters. During the raids on these independent libraries, the offending books were confiscated, and many of them burned.” A tiny library in South Dakota “adopted” a Cuban library, sending books and drawing attention to the plight of the librarians…