A new year, a new crop of books. The Millions book blog has posted its massive preview of books coming out in 2012. There are essay collections from William Gibson and Jonathan Franzen, selected poetry from W.G. Sebald and new novels from Toni Morrison, Michael Chabon and Richard Ford, among very many others. Read More
January stretches out before us like a desolate wilderness raging with inclement weather. What better way to fill the hours than filming your own adaptation of Ulysses and uploading it to the Internet? Other writers who died 70 years ago with works now in the public domain include Virginia Woolf, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Bergson. Read More
Critics earn paychecks (small ones) because readers value (sort of) their expert opinions. But sometimes critics do self-important things. Sam Anderson, critic at large of The New York Times Magazine, just published his selected marginalia of 2011. Read More
On the CBS show The Good Wife there is a character named Andrew Wylie. Played by the actor Tim Guinee, the character is a private investigator hired by the state attorney’s office to cause some drama by casually revealing past love affairs to all the wrong people and reviving dormant scandals. An inciter of barely suppressed gasps and sobs. But could it really be just a coincidence that he shares a name with a certain literary agent? Read More
Amazon has released its annual list of its bestselling products this year. No big surprises: the bestselling e-book was Kathryn Stockett’s The Help; the most popular print book was Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson; the latest Harry Potter movie was the bestselling DVD and Adele had the bestselling album with 21. Read More
The fees section of a monthly cell phone bill is always a somewhat murky affair, but Verizon Wireless has created on an additional charge: if you pay your phone bill online with a one-time payment instead of enrolling in an automatic payment program, they will charge you $2. That’s right, the phone company is going to start charging you money for you to pay your phone bill. Read More
The demise of Oprah’s Book Club might have left publishing bereft, but there was plenty to celebrate in 2011: Amazon Publishing blithely ignored the sniping of the Big Six and installed itself as a player in New York, a billboard of Jeffrey Eugenides in a vest competed with the toothsome blondes gracing Times Square and Read More
Ever wonder how all those celebrity memoirs get published? Writing at The Daily Beast, former Simon & Schuster editor in chief Michael Korda describes how book publishers get seduced by Hollywood glitter: “Stranded in Beverly Hills, where movie stars and studio heads and successful directors outranked them, where you can’t walk to anywhere, and where people who matter arrive at the porte cochère of the hotel or the restaurant in a glittering car or limousine, sometimes to be greeted by a storm of photoflashes, they were fair game, thirsting for tea or drinks with even the most passé of movie stars and prepared to find them glamorous and fascinating.” Suckers! Read More
HarperCollins has filed a lawsuit against digital publisher Open Road over the e-book version of Jean Craighead George’s Newbery Award-winning children’s classic Julie of the Wolves. Originally published in 1972 by HarperCollins, Open Road arranged to publish an electronic version directly with the book’s author. In a statement, HarperCollins spokesperson Erin Crum told Publishers Weekly that “HarperCollins Publishers believes in protecting its exclusive rights. Our contract with Jean Craighead George, the author of Julie of the Wolves, grants us the exclusive digital rights to the book, and Open Road’s e-book edition violates our rights. We intend to take all appropriate steps to protect our exclusive rights under copyright against infringement, in this case and in any instances that might occur in the future.” The e-book still appears to be for sale online. Read More
Matilda, resident cat at the Algonquin Hotel, has been unleashed from her satin tether, but now hotel staff have limited her hunting grounds with an electric fence around areas that serve food. No more fluffy friend to provide hope and solace alongside your martini. Read More
