Governor-General's Literary Award Winners Revealed Nino Ricci won the English-language fiction award for The Origin of Species, while two Globe and Mail writers took honors for non-fiction (Christie Blatchford for Fifteen Days, about Canadian Army units in Afghanistan) and children's literature (John Ibbitson for The Landing). The prizes, seven each for English- and French-language work, are worth C$25,000. CBC 11/18/08

email this story | Posted 11/18/08@09:56PM

Miriam Toews Wins Canada's $25K Writers' Trust Prize "Miriam Toews' The Flying Troutmans, touted early on as a possible candidate for several major Canadian book prizes, ended up earning a single nomination. But the popular Winnipeg author's bestselling novel made good on that one nod, claiming the $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in Toronto yesterday." Toronto Star 11/18/08

email this story | Posted 11/18/08@06:42AM

A President Who Reads? What Does That Mean For Sales? "When President-elect Barack Obama appeared on '60 Minutes' on CBS on Sunday in his first interview since winning the election, he mentioned having read 'a new book out about F .D. R.'s first 100 days' without specifically naming a title or author. ... The publishers and authors of at least three such books that could fit Mr. Obama's description each spent much of Monday wondering whether they had just gotten a plug from the soon-to-be leader of the free world." The New York Times 11/18/08

email this story | Posted 11/18/08@05:23AM

No, No, The Author Insists: My Book Really Isn't That Good Joe Queenan broaches "the least-discussed subject in the world of belles-lettres: book reviews that any author worth his salt knows are unjustifiably enthusiastic." Are such reviews unethical? No. Immoral? No. But they are common. They're also "unfair to the reader, who may be hornswoggled...." The New York Times 11/16/08

email this story | Posted 11/17/08@03:14PM

So Who Needs Editors Anyway? (We're Finding Out) Editors are the invisible heroes of the publishing industry, and as publishing companies cut corners, they cut editors. On the most basic level, that means more typos, grammatical errors and factual contradictions. Wall Street Journal 11/17/08

email this story | Posted 11/16/08@08:04PM

Buy A Book, Or Else... "When you're the proud parents of a bookstore at risk of imminent death, you'll try pretty much anything to give your baby a chance -- including asking your customers to watch a documentary about other bookstores at risk of imminent death." That's the strategy at Washington, D.C.'s Vertigo Books, where the owners are worried that they could be the next indie to close. Washington Post 11/15/08

email this story | Posted 11/16/08@10:04AM

Exiled Afghan Writer Takes Prix Goncourt Writing in French for the first time, former refugee Atiq Rahimi won France's top literary prize for Syngue Sabour (Persian for "Stone of Patience"), about a woman caring for her husband, who has been paralyzed by a war wound, and telling him stories about her life that he had never heard. International Herald Tribune (AP) 11/10/08

email this story | Posted 11/13/08@08:16PM

Why Are Female Authors So Seldom In Awards Limelight? Brian Schofield, who found himself shortlisted last week for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, doesn't blame publishers or jurors for the total absence of women from the list. "But does the literary industry as a whole - agents, editors, booksellers and critics - currently offer disproportionate encouragement to aspiring male writers to produce the kind of serious-minded, bookish work that gets on shortlists, compared to young female writers? Now, I suspect, we're on to something." The Guardian (UK) 11/13/08

email this story | Posted 11/13/08@06:35AM

If You Build A Book Fair, Writers (And Readers) Will Come The Miami International Book Fair, the nation's oldest, was started 25 years ago -- in part to counter Miami's lack of reputation as a literary town. NPR 11/13/08

email this story | Posted 11/13/08@05:17AM

How To Market A Dead Author "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an unlikely best-seller -- it's the first book in a trilogy of thrillers written by Stieg Larsson, a previously unknown Swedish journalist who died of a heart attack in 2004. Knopf Editor-in-Chief 'Sonny' Mehta, who snapped up the rights to the thrillers, says he was attracted to the 'absolute ambition' of the trilogy. ... Still, the fact that the trilogy's author is dead complicated things." NPR 11/13/08

email this story | Posted 11/13/08@05:05AM

What Qualifies As A New Book? "Among the nominees for this year's National Book Award in fiction, which will be presented next Wednesday, is a book that some have complained is not exactly new: Peter Matthiessen's 'Shadow Country,' published by Modern Library, which is a one-volume compilation of three novels that Mr. Matthiessen published from 1990 to 1999." But Matthiessen does appear to have substantially rewritten the text, so some wonder what all the fuss is about. The New York Times 11/12/08

email this story | Posted 11/12/08@06:07AM

Joseph Boyden Takes 2008 Giller Prize Boyden's Through Black Spruce, a novel narrated by a Cree bush pilot in a coma and his niece, who has left the subarctic wilderness to find her missing sister in Manhattan, has won this year's Scotiabank Giller Prize, which carries a C$50,000 cash award. The jurors were novelist Margaret Atwood, former Ontario premier Bob Rae, and Irish author Colm Toíbín, the first foreign judge in the prize's 15-year history. The Globe and Mail (Canada) 11/12/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@09:26PM

Down With The Poor, Suffering Poet! "This skinny eighteenth century Emo kid with a penchant for self-harm and a dodgy taste in cornflower blue pantaloons still epitomises most people's notion of what a poet should be. The stereotype may be romantically appealing, but it's also alienating and disempowering. In a time when we have such a diverse and modern poetry scene, why does it still have such an abiding hold?" Molly Flatt has a couple of ideas about the reason - and a remedy. The Guardian (UK) 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@09:15PM

Researchers: Novelists Best Academics In Explaining World "Fiction - including poetry - should be taken just as seriously as facts-based research, according to the team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Novels should be required reading because fiction 'does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does,' said Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University's Brooks World Poverty Institute." The Telegraph (UK) 11/06/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@06:12AM

As Holidays Near, Publishing Industry Grows Anxious "Like many businesses across the retail sector, the publishing industry has been hit by a raft of doom and gloom in the past few weeks": layoffs, decreased earnings, predictions of a bad holiday season. And even if books turn out to be a popular holiday gift this year, what happens in January? The New York Times 11/11/08

email this story | Posted 11/11/08@05:00AM

Australian Writer Wins Dylan Thomas Prize "Nam Le, who was raised in Melbourne, is the second winner of the award, which is designed to encourage creative talent in writers under the age of 30 whose work has been published in the English language. Le is working in New York, where he is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review, and next year he will do a residency at the East Anglia University in the UK where he plans to work on his next book." The Australian 11/11/08

email this story | Posted 11/10/08@08:24PM

A Breakthrough In Digital Publishing Late last month, American authors and publishers reached an agreement with Google to settle lawsuits over Google's Book Search program, which scans millions of books and makes their contents available on the Internet. The deal lets Google sell electronic versions of copyrighted works that have gone out of print. The New York Times 11/09/08

email this story | Posted 11/10/08@08:16PM

"Unfilmable" Rushdie Novel To Be Filmed "Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's panoramic 1981 allegory of the birth of modern India, is heading for the big screen. Deepa Mehta is to direct and co-write the adaptation with the author, and the film is expected to start production in 2010... Rushdie's novel, which has been selected twice as the best-ever Booker prize winner, is widely regarded as one of the premier literary works of the latter half of the 20th century and is required reading on most university syllabuses." The Guardian (UK) 11/07/08

email this story | Posted 11/09/08@09:28AM

Facing The Virtual Music The effect of the Internet on local bookstores has been well-documented, but less talked about has been the dwindling number of brick-and-mortar sheet music vendors. "Sheet music might be a nearly $600-million-a-year business in the U.S., enjoying a largely steady 2% to 3% growth rate over the past decade, but sales at [many local stores] have fallen off the charts." Los Angeles Times 11/09/08

email this story | Posted 11/09/08@08:43AM

An Autumnal Blowout Of Book Prizes Canada's Writers' Trust literary award is switching its annual announcement date from spring to fall, to better place it among the country's more prestigious lit prizes. "Despite the risk of competing for the same precious literary oxygen already shared by the Giller and the GGs, as the Governor General's Awards are known in the book industry... [the switch] amplifies the existing perception of the fall as the make-or-break season in the publishing year." Toronto Star 11/08/08

email this story | Posted 11/09/08@08:18AM

At The End Of The Day, A List Of Annoying Expressions "Not all University of Oxford researchers are uptight and humorless, 'irregardless' of what you might think. In fact, a bunch of them compiled a list of the Top 10 Most Irritating Expressions in the English language -- just because we needed one." Wired 11/07/08

email this story | Posted 11/07/08@07:00AM

Considering Crichton - And Where He Went Wrong "The boy-novelist who engineered a tyrannosaurus in Jurassic Park and mysterious pathogens from outer space in The Andromeda Strain ha[d] become a political pamphleteer, a right-wing noodge. […] Crichton's early novels were escapist fantasies that happened to be instructive. His political books are hectoring screeds that incidentally turn out to be thrillers." Slate 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/06/08@09:59PM

Legendary Burroughs-Kerouac Collaboration Published At Last "Fans of the Beat generation have known for years about The Novel That Kicked It All Off, but they've had to wait until the death of a journalist at United Press International for it to be published. The appearance in print of And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks by William S Burroughs and Jack Kerouac is a literary event…" The Independent (UK) 11/03/08

email this story | Posted 11/05/08@09:34PM

Eyewitness Account Of Charge Of The Light Brigade For Auction "A first-hand account of the Charge of the Light Brigade, by a trooper who lost an eye and part of his skull in the famous engagement, is to be sold, 120 years after the soldier wrote it to escape from begging on the streets." The Guardian (UK) 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/05/08@09:15PM

Six Words To Sum Up A Life The problem with memoirs tends to be that they're so darned long! (Does anyone really want to read 30 pages on your time in elementary school?) So a new collection of six-word memoirs by "writers famous and obscure" would seem to be just what the reading public ordered... Philadelphia Inquirer 11/05/08

email this story | Posted 11/05/08@06:13AM

11 Top Authors Defend Kundera "Four Nobel Prize-winners for literature have joined seven other distinguished writers in issuing a statement of support for the Czech-born author Milan Kundera, who has been accused of informing for the Communist secret police when he was a student." The signatories are J. M. Coetzee, Gabriel García Marquez, Nadine Gordimer, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Jean Daniel, Jorge Semprun, Juan Goytisolo and Pierre Mertens. The Independent (UK) 11/04/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@09:54PM

The Economic Death Knell Tolls Through Dickens "The economic crisis has people nervous. But imagine living during the time of Charles Dickens when the Bank of England was on the verge of collapse and financial ruin was sudden." NPR 11/04/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@05:00AM

Election Results Won't Put Dissident Writers Out Of A Job Lawrence Ferlinghetti on the election: "It has been a long idealist dream that someday society life on earth would evolve in such a way that dissident writers and intellectuals would no longer have to be dissident. There are similarities between Obama and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, but they do not point to any real political or social revolution." Critical Mass 11/03/08

email this story | Posted 11/04/08@04:14AM

Diaries Of A 'French Anne Frank' Hélène Berr, a Jewish student at the Sorbonne who stayed behind in occupied Paris to help rescue Jewish children, was captured and sent to Auschwitz in 1944. The wartime journal she wrote for her fiancé survived; it was published this year and is becoming a bestseller. Daily Telegraph (UK) 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 11/03/08@06:46AM

Well, Mr. Blackwell's Dead, So... Being shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize is stressful enough for any author. Deciding what to wear to the awards ceremony when your nominated book is entitled The Clothes on Their Backs... now, that's pressure. Toronto Star 11/01/08

email this story | Posted 11/02/08@08:34AM

Inside Clézio - Getting To Know The Work Of This Year's Nobel Lit Winner Few Americans had read the work of J.M.G. Le Clézio when it was announced he had won this year's Nobel for literature. "More philosopher than deviser of intricate characters or plots, Mr. Le Clézio is like a post-Darwin Rousseau, decrying the ruination of indigenous cultures around the world, often through the eyes of a child. At the same time, he is fascinated by the callousness of nature. In more than one novel he descends below grass level to record the brutality of insects. Wall Street Journal 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/31/08@06:15AM

Even Comic Books Are Weighing In On Presidential Campaign While DC Comics won't allow Superman and Batman to endorse, Image Comics' Savage Dragon endorses Obama on a cover, two publishers have produced graphic novel-style candidate bios, and Bluewater Comics' "Female Force" series has featured Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/30/08@10:03PM

Canada's National Post Abandons Print In The Prairies In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the weekday print editions are being eliminated, as is all home delivery. "The printed version of the paper will only be available in stores on Saturdays… Subscribers will be able to get the full digital edition of the paper at a special rate." CBC 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/30/08@09:56PM

Conde Nast Slashing Magazine Budgets "All Condé Nast publishers and editors have been told they have to cut their staffs by five percent and their budgets by five percent within weeks... It will affect every title, including the company's most successful: The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, Glamour, and down the line. The plan is not just a five percent overall spending reduction but rather two distinct five-percent cuts for each title, guaranteeing that titles cannot meet the goal without cutting staff." New York Observer 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/30/08@07:10AM

You Are What You Read? Well, Maybe. "If we are what we read, then the books the presidential candidates claim to hold dear present clues to their character. Or do they? ... All of us polish those lists for public view, and you can't get more public than running for president. But these lists do tell us something, even if it's not the truth." San Francisco Chronicle 10/30/08

email this story | Posted 10/30/08@06:54AM

Bookstore: If Caffeine Doesn't Bring 'Em In, Maybe Alcohol Will The Schuler Books & Music stores in Grand Rapids already have cafes and fireplaces to entice customers to spend time there. Now the owners are considering getting a liquor license for their downtown location so they can sell beer and wine as well. (And will McSweeney's be sponsoring its own craft brew?) Western Michigan Business Review 10/28/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@09:37PM

Will "Multiplatform" Books Transform KidLit? One publisher thinks it has found the next Harry Potter. "It's not the book that's especially unusual but the bells and whistles that go with it - what Scholastic calls the 'multiplatform' package. Along with the book comes an Internet game, an elaborate system of card collecting, and cash prizes up to $10,000." Boston Globe 10/28/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@06:46AM

Less Politics, More Literature "The Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC), a national organization that began with a reputation for being 'conservative,' 'old-fashioned,' and even 'right-wing,' seems to be shedding much of that image. But "the ALSC's shift away from a 'culture war' mentality has caused internal dissension." Philadelphia Inquirer 10/29/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@06:33AM

Canadian Satire Mag Folds "Frank magazine, the satirical scandal sheet that for nearly two decades savaged the reputations of some of Canada's most powerful politicians, business leaders, celebrities and media figures... announced yesterday that it is ceasing publication of both its newsstand and online editions." Toronto Star 10/29/08

email this story | Posted 10/29/08@06:07AM

Christian Science Monitor Gives Up On Print "After a century of continuous publication, The Christian Science Monitor will abandon its weekday print edition and appear online only, its publisher announced Tuesday. The cost-cutting measure makes The Monitor the first national newspaper to largely give up on print." New York Times 10/29/08

email this story | Posted 10/28/08@09:34PM