Category: words

And if no less a luminary than George Orwell — way back in 1936 — credited the decline of the novel (even then!) with “the disgusting tripe that is written by the blurb-reviewers,” one question naturally arises: Why are blurbs still around — and still, at least among publishers, so popular?

“Before Allen Lane began his publishing house in 1935, good books were the purview of the privileged, costing more than many Londoners spent on a week’s rent. But that all changed when Lane, then managing director of the now-defunct Bodley Head, bought the rights to 10 already popular hardcovers … redesigning each with a uniform set of specs so simple that even small, inexperienced print shops could mass-produce them on the cheap.” (infographic)

“For devotees of Critical Theory, he is now seen as one of the founding fathers … having helpfully transcended mere wittering about paintings, books and Mickey Mouse by also sketching a philosophy of history. … And, almost as a hobby, he is the inspirational linkman between the 19th-century flâneur and today’s psychogeographers.”

“Once upon a time, if your local library and bookstores didn’t carry a book, it would have been very difficult to procure it elsewhere. But of course we’re now living in an era of unprecedented access to reading material. If your local library declines to carry what you want to read these days, there has been no time in history where it’s easier for you to read it anyway.”

Gary Shteyngart: “‘I’ll look at a first sentence [of a galley], I’ll look at the cover and it just comes to me,’ he says. ‘Reading randomly from a book is also very helpful. Sometimes I try to read further — but you know, how far can you get? Does anyone even read these books anymore?’ That said, he doesn’t hold back. ‘I’ve compared people to Shakespeare, Tolstoy or whatever.'”

“The question for authors to consider in this brave new world of mimicry, both professional and otherwise, is to what extent they consider their characters to be theirs and theirs alone. For most, it isn’t something that will become an issue during their lifetime: Copyright law stipulates that books only enter the public domain 70 years after the death of the author, even if most fanfic writers aren’t limited in terms of what they can post online.”

“Of all her contemporaries, Austen is the only one to have made it through with her best-seller status intact, and that’s not just because her girls meet her boys without any help from Tinder.”

“The Tumbleweeds sleep in beds that have been placed throughout the bookshop — next to the piano, above the Mirror of Love — and there are generally around four people living in the bookstore at a time. One of George’s rules that still remains is that all Tumbles must read a book a day. (They also help open and close the shop, work for two hours a day, and help out with the weekly readings.)”

“‘One of the bottom shelves was full of black slime,’ she recalled. ‘You couldn’t recognise that they were books and many were lost.'”