Category: words

What were the best academic books of the 1990s? The readers of Lingua Franca vote. Camille Paglia is No. 1? Really? – Lingua Franca

The top-10 events and topics that got a lot of ink this year in the book world. – Inside.com

Why is a prize necessary? “Artists generally, and poets especially, are like secret agents behind enemy lines sending signals back to headquarters, and they never know if anything’s getting through. Their mission isn’t completed until they know that it has struck home in a way that moves people. This ratifies it.” – New York Times

With dictionaries, thesauri, almanacs, atlases all available online, is the market for traditional paper copies of these reference works dead? Not at all. “There is still a market for print reference books. Believe it or not, not everyone has a computer, and not everyone has their computer turned on all the time.” – Publishers Weekly

Struggling Canadian book super-seller Chapters reorganizes to fend off a takeover. “Under the restructuring, Chapters Inc. will buy back its online and wholesale operations. Once completed, the company will leave the wholesale business and reduce its online operations in order to focus on its retail business.” – Publishers Weekly

A precarious enterprise to be sure. “From the start, it lost two thousand dollars a week. It took three years and the outpouring of seven hundred thousand unrequited dollars to turn the red ink into black. Today, we are told, it may be bought by almost anybody with ten million dollars to spare.” – The Idler

“For several years, publishers have watched the gradual improvement of technology known as print- on-demand, and it is finally starting to change their business. Xerox, I.B.M. and others now sell machines that in a matter of minutes can churn out single, bound copies of paperback or even hardcover books.” – New York Times

The editor of The Spectator recently announced he would start publishing poetry in the magazine again.”But then he named his terms: the poems should rhyme and scan. No modern poetry is ‘any bloody good’, he said, and wagered that none of the verse rattling around our heads was written in the past 30 years.” – The Telegraph (UK)

Stephen King says he learned a lot about the internet with his failed serialized novel. “First, many Internet users have the attention span of a grasshopper. Second, users believe that everything on the Web should be free or almost free of charge. And third, book-readers don’t regard electronic books as real books. They’re like people saying, ‘I love corn on the cob but creamed corn makes me gag’.” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“Two of the biggest publishers in the United States, HarperCollins and St. Martin’s Press, had their best run in years. Revenues were up, operating costs were down and each saw a growing number of titles hit the bestseller lists.” – Inside.com