Category: publishing

“In July, the parliament adopted a bill stipulating that any decision taken before 2012 to block the sale and distribution of published work would be voided if no court chose to confirm the ruling within six months. The deadline came and went Saturday and no such judicial decisions were recorded.”

“Poetry by Heart, a Department for Education-funded contest, will see school champions fight through to regional heats, which in turn will select the best reciters for a weekend of finals in London this April.”

“It went undetected for five years on Wikipedia, but now a seemingly meticulous entry about a 17th century conflict between colonial Portugal and India’s Maratha empire has been outed as a hoax.”

Pankaj Mishra: “Such are the imbalances of geopolitical power that it is hard even to imagine Mo Yan, or any writer in China for that matter, attacking … Salman Rushdie for failing to be sufficiently critical of Barack Obama’s routine executions using drones … Rushdie’s self-presentation as a stern literary ombudsman to errant politicians is not much more persuasive.”

“Tension between popular and scholarly approaches to history can get rancorous, as the recent dust-up over Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” can attest.”

“Today’s historical monographs resemble those written 100 years ago, speakers said. They’re still narrated in an omniscient, third-person voice that was largely invented in the 19th century. And the profession is built to sustain the present model.”

“There’s no data on precisely how many schools nationwide use graphic novels. But no one disputes that in other markets the popularity of the comic-style books — adapted to classic literature, biographies, science, math and other subjects — is on the rise.”

Because maps. (And loincloths.)

“The rate of decline slowed slightly, principally because of EL James’ Fifty Shades trilogy, which accounted for one in every 20 books bought last year.”

“There was little chance for adults to engage in group reading without some sort of self-improving literary discussion at the end of it, or a nagging sense that one should really be buying the author’s newest work as part of an unspoken commercial transaction.”