California Literary Review

‘10,000 Hours’ book a hit with Hollywood: Why is everyone in Hollywood talking about 10,000 hours? That’s the amount of time that author Malcolm Gladwell says it takes for a talented person to master a cognitively complex skill — like becoming a world-class pianist or an Olympic athlete — in his new book, “Outliers: The Story of Success.” [LA Times]

Bargain Hunting for Books, and Feeling Sheepish About It: Don’t blame this carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader’s time or diminished attention spans. What’s undermining the book industry is not the absence of casual readers but the changing habits of devoted readers. In other words, it’s all the fault of people like myself, who increasingly use the Internet both to buy books and later, after their value to us is gone, sell them. [NYT]

False Memoir of Holocaust Is Canceled: A man whose memoir about his experience during the Holocaust was to have been published in February has admitted that his story was embellished, and on Saturday evening his publisher canceled the release of the book. [NYT]

Books of the Year: An all-star line-up of writers give their verdict on 2008’s best [Independent]

Art Books – review: Lucy Davies chooses the best recent art books [Telegraph]

Sports Books of the Year 2008 [Independent]

Return of the storytellers: After a year dominated by non-fiction, 2009 will see an abundance of eagerly awaited big-name novels. [Guardian]

Thomas B. Congdon, Editor of Best Sellers Like ‘Jaws,’ Dies at 77: Thomas B. Congdon Jr., a prominent book editor who shepherded into print Russell Baker’s memoir, Peter Benchley’s biggest best seller and David Halberstam’s mammoth tome about the auto industry, eventually founding his own publishing house, died on Tuesday at home in Nantucket, Mass. He was 77. [NYT]