Category: words

“Joyce used an unapologetically forward-thinking brand of Imagism in service of the filthiest writing ever seen in a literary magazine to that point. … Obscenity was the lifeblood of Ulysses, the proof that it truly comprehended all human experience.”

Microsoft Bob did not endure, but Comic Sans became one of the font options offered on Windows 95, and instantly became a favourite. “It sticks out,” says Connare. “Everything else looks like something traditional that you see in books.”

McBride’s A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing defeated the favorite, Donna Tartt’s 771-page The Goldfinch, as well as titles by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri for the £30,000 award formerly known as the Orange Prize.

“The merchandising of reading [today] has a curiously undifferentiated flavor, as if what you read mattered less than that you read. In this climate of embattled bibliophilia, a new subgenre of books about books has emerged, a mix of literary criticism, autobiography, self-help, and immersion journalism: authors undertake reading stunts to prove that reading – anything – still matters.”

“It seems like Amazon has taken note of this discounting that’s happening at every other retailer and they’re doing some discounting and price drops in line with that.”

Let a chemist explain. (It’s a pretty interesting explanation.)

“The ebook will overtake the paperback and hardback as Britons’ preferred format for reading their favourite novels by 2018, according to a report. The UK consumer ebook market – which excludes professional and educational books – is forecast to almost triple from £380m to £1bn over the next four years.”

“His protagonists were sweetly intellectual teen-age boys smitten with complicated, charismatic girls. Although the books were funny, their story lines propelled by spontaneous road trips and outrageous pranks, they displayed a youthfully insatiable appetite for big questions: What is an honorable life? How do we wrest meaning from the unexpected death of someone close to us? What do we do when we realize that we’re not as special as we thought we were?”

“Lazy and inept, publishers let go of their direct path to their customers. The book business once had branded retail outlets — for example, Scribner’s famous and iconic store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. It once had close relationships with networks of small distributors (i.e. your local bookstore). It once had a sophisticated direct selling operations (i.e. book clubs). But, now, it doesn’t. None of that. No real relationship with, or influence over, its customer.”

Book Expo America hoped that its first-ever pop-culture-oriented day for consumers, BookCon, would have Comic Con-level excitement and marketing power. But they forgot to plan for Comic Con-level crowds and behavior.