Bookscans Review No.4
The plight of independent bookstores. St. Mark's gets a new lease but a New Hampshire shop struggles to stay open.
Congratulations! Esi Edugyan of Victoria has won the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel, Half-Blood Blues.
Nobel Prize-winning Daniel Kahneman reveals the built-in kinks in human reasoning—and he’s Exhibit A.
Lee Duran: Myths of book selling, pricing exposed. "Times have changed even more than I thought."
The English forest that inspired Tolkien. A look at the locations that informed novelists, from Faulkner to Woolf.
There is plenty of evidence that Shakespeare was somewhat less than a sensitive poet and entirely honest citizen.
Nicholas Evans, author of The Horse Whisperer on the event that nearly killed him - and almost tore apart his family.
As the Queen prepares to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible Peter Mullen scorns its modern rivals.
The End of Borders and the Future of Books. An inside look at the real reasons for the once-beloved chain's demise.
Congrats! G-G winner Patrick deWitt says grant ‘saved’ him.
Bookscans Review No.3
High-school biology teacher Alexis Jenni won France's top literary award, for his first novel, The French Art of War.
The Better Angels of Our Nature. Psychologist Steven Pinker tells us that we are living in the least violent era ever.
Alice In Wonderland’s influence on visual art and more. Why do Lewis Carroll’s books still have such a hold on us?
Home to 12 Nobel laureates and 6 Booker winners, Faber & Faber hires Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker as editor-at-large.
In Ranganathan's The Five Laws of Library Science he formulated the principles for the use of library materials.
Charles Dickens was the Victorian era's most beloved writer, but even he couldn't live up to its unforgiving morals.
New book on "The Puzzle of
Left-handedness." Lefties have lifespans nine
years shorter than average. Why?
Transgressive fiction is a
genre of literature that focuses on characters who
feel confined by the norms of society.
On November 2, CBC celebrates its 75th
anniversary. The celebration includes a look
at 75 years of CanLit.
"History of Science Fiction"
maps the genre from its roots in mythology to the
calcified space opera epics of today.
How does fiction influence your life? Meet the 101 most influential people who
never lived.
A website about constructing metal
book clasps, bosses and other hardware,
showing book clasp repair and restoration.
World’s 10 greatest bookshops.
The best spots to browse, buy, hang out, find
sanctuary among the shelves.
In 1938, Tolkien planned to release The Hobbit in
Germany. The publishers asked if he was Aryan.
This was his response.
Kindle makes for heavy reading.
It has been revealed that the Amazon e-book reader
weighs more when it is fully loaded.
Ask your question and find the right book. Book database built around
"how-to" themes.
Bookscans Review No.2
Fascinating excerpt from Vivian Gornick's forthcoming book: Emma Goldman: Revolution as a Way of Life.
In a networked world, can a book go viral? Behind the Jarvis/Morozov spat is a book tour made for the digital age.
Shakespeare invented over 1700 words. Here's ~100 he coined, hyperlinked to the play and scene from which it comes.
Here's an interesting A.I. librarian: "Madam, I've just finished reading __ by __ . What should I read next?"
What do Shakespeare, Keats and Dickens have in common, apart from being great writers? None of them went to university.
Top banned books of last decade. These are five of the top banned books in American high schools.
Prettier eBooks? Kindle Format 8 supports new formatting capabilities that mean design-centric e-books will pop.
Telegraph Head of Books Gaby Wood on judging the Man Booker Prize 2011: seven months to read 138 novels.
Open Text Book: A registry of textbooks that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute.
Found in Books: People have found teeth, money, and bacon inside their books.
Steve Jobs biography comes to
Kindle early. Kindle users might want to fire
up that e-reader ASAP.
Priscilla Hart: "Farewell, Borders – lights
out." A journalist examines her grief over the
disappearance of Borders.
When The Hobbit was first
published, JRR Tolkien provided a set of
wonderful illustrations. See them here.
Beckett: “I know no more about this play than
anyone who manages to read it attentively. I
do not know who Godot is."
Is reading on the loo bad for
you? Public health study by Ron Shaoul lifts
the lid on toilet reading once and for all.
Archive of book cover designs.
Sort 1351 jacket covers by author, title and more.
eBook indexes continue to
flourish: "446 Places for Free Books Online."
From Stuart McMillen, an illustrated comparison I
used to ponder as a teenager: "Aldous Huxley versus George
Orwell."
"The book business deserves to
die if for no other reason than that its
business model is something out of the 1930s."
Bookscans Review
Here’s something new for the blog that I thought I would try for a few weeks: a synopsis of news about writers and books collected from my recent twitter posts (@bookscans).
Literary SNAFU: "How I Was Un-nominated For The National Book Award." Yet another book prize indignity.
20 Oct
Print vs. ebooks: "Participants liked reading a printed book best [contrary to] the data obtained from the study.”
20 Oct
Click through to see some of the strangest day jobs of beloved authors before they were famous.
20 Oct
Salman Rushdie: 'We live in a society in which people are allowed to tell their story, and that is what I do.'
20 Oct
Winged words. After nearly 3,000 years, does the “Iliad” really need translating again?
20 Oct
This is 2011? Right? Missouri School District Bans 'Slaughterhouse-Five.' See tweet (below) quoting Bukowski.
19 Oct
Charles Bukowski: “Censorship is the tool
of those who have
the need to hide actualities from themselves and
from others.” 19 Oct
A pretty decent list that covers a lot of
bases: "52 Travel Books Worth a
Read"
19 Oct