A thousand-year-old Iraqi book stolen in 1995 has been recovered by police and will be returned. “The £250,000 book turned up in a London auction room last year, but auctioneers were suspicious and called police.”
Category: publishing
Irish “Devil” Magazine Provokes Protests
“The publication of alleged ‘devil worshipping’ articles in the current issue of the arty-and-alternative magazine The Vacuum has caused a stir within Belfast City Council. The magazine features an interview with an exorcist and an article called I peed in church, and has been deemed blasphemous by certain city councillors. The fact that The Vacuum was granted £5,000 of Belfast Coluncil Arts Committee funding has no doubt added more fuel to the controversial ‘hell’ fire.”
Relatives Protest Auction Of Joyce Letter
Descendants of James Joyce are condemning a plan to auction an intimate letter he wrote. “In the letter, missing for nearly a century until it was found tucked inside a book, Joyce writes to his lover, Nora Barnacle, of a sexual encounter similar to the couple’s first on 16 June, 1904, when Nora opened his trousers and ‘made a man of him’.”
Catching The Code – In Search Of The Da Vinci Code
The Da Vinci Code has spurred interest in places and things mentioned in the book. Tourist visits at the Roslyn Chapel in Scotland are up, and visitors to the Louvre are asking questions…
The Rap On Rap In School English Classes
“Since his death eight years ago, there has been a stampede to include Tupac Shakur on American college syllabuses: not just the “we take anyone” community colleges, but institutions such as Harvard and Dartmouth solemnly cogitate on the inner meaning of Tupac’s lyrics and the printed volume of his verse, The Rose that Grew from Concrete. Universities can get away with putting Hit ‘Em Up alongside Othello. Undergraduates are adults; school pupils are not. A huge fuss has been kicked up this year since education authorities put The Rose that Grew from Concrete on summer readingsyllabuses for sixth- and seventh-grade children.”
Moveable Feast – US History Through Lenses Of Self-Interest
History belongs to those who choose to write it, right? “Extracts in ”History Lessons: How Textbooks From Around the World Portray U.S. History” tell us two things: historical narratives are biased and untrustworthy; and America’s impact on the world cannot be underestimated. Interesting history is interested history, so the secondary school texts excerpted here generally relate international events as they reflect local concerns.”
The Tale Of The Failed Lit Prize
Zoo Press decided to stage a fiction prize patterned on its successful annual poetry prize. But a year after the prizes were announced, both contests were canceled — no winners were chosen, and no entry fees were refunded. The storm of protest was predictable…
Did Reviewers Actually Read Clinton Book? (Was It Even Physically Possible?)
Bill Clinton’s 957-page book wasn’t released to reviewers until 24-48 hours before it was published. “The 24- to 48-hour turnaround of these reviews poses the question of whether a barge-size book like My Life can be read in its entirety in such short order—let alone reviewed. How long might it take to read My Life? Slate assigned one-third of My Life to three staffers and they recorded 27 man-hours of reading and note-taking. Surely a full-fledged review of My Life by one person would require somewhere in the neighborhood of 27 hours for reading, plus sleep breaks, and maybe another couple of hours for composition…”
Times (NY) Raids Times (LA) For Culture Writers
“In the past week, the NYT captured three high-profile entertainment/culture writers from the LAT — film critic Manohla Dargis, music business writer Jeff Leeds and architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Already in the dumps over parent company Tribune Co.–ordered layoffs, the LAT newsroom was in a bunker mentality anticipating the dampening effect the NYT’s body snatching would have on its Pulitzer-pumped national prestige. And someone needs to argue with the LAT’s bean counters that the year-old controversial subscription model for its online Calendar coverage may be sending at least some of its superstar scribblers into the arms of the enemy.”
The Magazine Boom (Will It Ever Bust?)
When will there be enough magazines? Not anytime soon, apparently. “Consider Plenty, coming in November, for upscale conservationists who are into hybrid cars.” Or what about Conceive, dedicated to the singular subject of, well, conception (the kind that involves babies)? “Then there’s Justine, a pun on ‘just teen,’ which came out in April, targeting a demographic of hip, wholesome girls who don’t want headlines about sex tips on a magazine cover lest they die of embarrassment in front of their fathers or boyfriends.” It’s all about niche marketing.