Barn fire in Bucks County destroys 30,000 books: In 50 years of book collecting, Ben Cavanaugh amassed everything from the rare to the ubiquitous. For every first-edition John Steinbeck there were dozens of Tom Clancy military thrillers stored in bookcase after bookcase in Cavanaugh’s 1740s stone barn. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

Book Of A Lifetime: Everyman, by Philip Roth: Philip Roth’s Everyman draws on the “virtuous journey” of the 15th-century allegory in which God summons Death, his messenger, to go to Everyman and bid him come to heaven to be judged. This is a wise book which will unsettle you. Are you ready for this book? I have read it a few times and am still not sure that I am. [Independent]

Italy: Infernal row flares over Florence council’s plans to pardon Dante: Florence council was to have healed the 700-year rift with the poet by presenting the city’s golden florin to Count Pieralvise Serego Alighieri. The count, however, believes the Florentines are not sorry enough. [Guardian]

Against the Day: David Lebedoff on Orwell and Waugh: If Evelyn Waugh might be described as a social alpinist, clambering up one aristocratic pinnacle after another, George Orwell, his exact contemporary — both were born in 1903 — was a spelunker, burrowing ever deeper into the seamiest depths. [NY Sun]

Rowling’s Rare Book to Hit Shelves in December: Just when it looked to be a dull summer with no Harry Potter hoopla, the boy wizard’s fans have something new to celebrate on this, Harry’s (and J.K. Rowling’s) birthday. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a collection of wizarding fairy tales handwritten and illustrated by Rowling, will be published on December 4 by Children’s High Level Group, the English children’s charity co-founded by Rowling and Emma Nicholson. [Publisher's Weekly]

The rise and rise of the first novel: To look at the rise of the first novel is to look into the eyes of a culture that is always restless, always hunting around for the next big thing, no longer sure what or where the action is. [Guardian]

August 1st, 2008 at 9:13 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

The Big Question: Do electronic books threaten the future of traditional publishing?: Not in the short term, because sales of e-book readers will only cannibalise a tiny proportion of physical book sales for the foreseeable future. In fact, evidence from the US suggests that dedicated book readers who use the electronic readers also continue to buy books. The long-term danger for publishers is if they don’t invest in digital technology for their content. [Independent]

Online, R U Really Reading?: As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading — diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books. But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society should not discount. [NYT]

The 10 most popular misconceptions about Oscar Wilde [Guardian]

More Bang for the Book: In recent years, a growing number of writers, from the best-selling to the less so, have hit the rubber-chicken circuit, speaking at colleges and businesses, chambers of commerce, trade fairs and medical conventions. While a midlist novelist might ask, though not necessarily get, $2,500 per appearance, a superstar presidential historian might command $40,000. [NYT]

July 28th, 2008 at 9:10 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Digital Dickens: How Scott Sigler is changing the way we read: But what makes Sigler groundbreaking is that most of his novels have never appeared in print. They are broadcast via a small cubicle containing an Apple Macintosh and some recording equipment. That is pretty much all Sigler has needed to become the world’s most famous podcast author. [Independent]

Mormon who put new life into vampires: Teenagers across the world are anxiously awaiting the next instalment of author Stephenie Meyer’s vampiric series of novels. [Guardian]

Brutal beginnings: Writers of fiction like to say they ply their trade by telling lies, but Tobias Wolff really was a liar. He would not be where he is today if he hadn’t been. Terrorised by a violent stepfather, dependent for refuge on his floundering mother, he made up stories in order to survive. [Guardian]

LA Times to Fold Standalone Book Review: According to a former staffer, the Los Angeles Times is folding its standalone Sunday book review section, laying off two dedicated book editors. [Publishers Weekly]

Kay Ryan, Outsider With Sly Style, Named Poet Laureate: “I so didn’t want to be a poet,” Ms. Ryan, 62, said in a phone interview from her home in Fairfax, Calif. “I came from sort of a self-contained people who didn’t believe in public exposure, and public investigation of the heart was rather repugnant to me.” [NYT]

Kick over the Scenery: And it has happened to science fiction, where the anointed author is Philip K. Dick. When he died in 1982, Dick was a cult figure, admired unreservedly in the science fiction subculture, and in the American counterculture as a chronicler of psychedelia and fringe religion. [LRB]

‘It was a gift for my kids’: former hotel clerk tops best-seller lists: As a first-time author William P Young had no illusions about his book. A former hotel night clerk and odd-job man who was raised partly among a stone-age tribe in New Guinea, he had written it mostly as an exercise in self-therapy with little thought of publishing. If his children would read it, he’d be happy. [Independent]

July 22nd, 2008 at 8:50 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Bookstores Reborn in Lexington and New Orleans: Three decades ago Lexington, Kent.’s beloved Morris Book Shop closed. This weekend, the store will celebrate its long awaited re-opening in a new 1,700 sq.-ft. location. [Publishers Weekly]

New Bout in Seinfeld Cookbook Battle: The suit charged that the Seinfelds were guilty of copyright infringement and defamation. (It was Mr. Seinfeld who, during an appearance on “Late Show With David Letterman,” before calling Ms. Lapine a “wacko,” mockingly suggested that his wife was accused of “vegetable plagiarism.”) [NYT]

Why The Wind in the Willows still lifts children’s hearts: After 100 years, Kenneth Grahame’s masterwork still feels as current as it ever has. [Telegraph]

Iain Banks on how practising with SF led to The Wasp Factory: At the start of 1980 I thought of myself as a science fiction writer, albeit a profoundly unpublished one. I’d wanted to be a writer since primary school and had started trying to write novels when I was 14, finally producing something loosely fitting the definition two years later: a spy story crammed with sex and violence (I still scorn the idea of only writing what you know about). [Guardian]

‘The Leopard’ Turns 50: Sicily is the key to Italy, as Goethe once wrote, and one novel is the key to Sicily: “The Leopard,” Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s masterpiece. [NYT]

Book Of A Lifetime: By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, by Elizabeth Smart: In choosing a book that has shaped and changed my life, I have dithered between classics, none of them contemporary and all of them novels. For me the significant book will always be a novel, although I do have a soft spot for The SAS Survival Guide, and particularly the section on camp craft. [Independent]

All in the mind: ‘Writers and psychiatrists have been up to very similar things in terms of the exploration of human dysfunction’, says Patrick McGrath. [Guardian]

July 15th, 2008 at 9:40 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

E-book University: Universities may be the most likely footholds for the growth of new digital reading practices, as a just-released survey conducted by the digital content management company Ebrary in Palo Alto, Calif., suggests, and as two recently announced agreements between university presses and digital solutions companies confirm. [Publishers Weekly]

Rushdie Wins the ‘Best of the Booker’ Prize: British author Salman Rushdie won the “Best of the Booker” prize on Thursday to mark the 40th anniversary of one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. [NYT]

Arthur C Clarke’s last words – from beyond the stars: He gave the world 2001: A Space Odyssey and the concept of the intelligent computer in the form of the murderous Hal. He predicted geostationary satellites and space stations. Now, four months after his death, Arthur C Clarke prepares to dazzle the world one final time when his last novel is published. The Last Theorem was bought for a six-figure sum by the publisher HarperCollins earlier this year. [Independent]

Fire Claims Vineyard Literary Landmark: The many authors who call Martha’s Vineyard their year-round or summer home are reeling from the closure of a much-loved bookstore that has been a center of the island’s literary life. The Bunch of Grapes Bookstore suffered water, heat, and smoke damage this holiday weekend after a blaze broke out at an adjacent café Friday morning. [NY Sun]

Thomas Disch, Novelist, Dies at 68: Thomas M. Disch, an author, poet and critic who twisted the inherently twisted genre of science fiction in new, disturbing directions, including writing his last book in the voice of God, died on Friday in his Manhattan apartment. He was 68. [NYT]

Why is David Benioff swapping the big bucks of Hollywood for the genteel world of literary fiction?: The settings for his projects are equally global in their influences. He focused on the New York boroughs in his debut, Greek mythology for the big screen take of Troy, and now the Russian wastelands. City of Thieves is a blackly comic tale of friendship and survival during the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War. [Independent]

July 10th, 2008 at 9:20 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Book Of A Lifetime: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte: To select the book of a lifetime is no easy task. Masterpieces clamour from all sides. My own shortlist would include Moby-Dick and Heart of Darkness, both watery tales, both dominated by men who are huge, flawed colossi. My book of a lifetime, however, is Wuthering Heights, in which another towering figure bestrides a wild place, and incarnates the elemental principle of storm. [Independent]

US teacher is suspended for letting pupils read bestseller: An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months. [Guardian]

JK Rowling says no to age banding on children’s books: JK Rowling has joined the growing revolt against publishers’ plans to brand children’s books with “appropriate” age bands. [Guardian]

Conflicting claims over Andre Norton’s will: Andre Norton, one of science fiction’s most prolific female writers, intrigued her readers by creating hundreds of fantasy worlds during her 70 years of writing. And in a decision that may have been either accidental or calculated, when she died three years ago she left her friends and fans a final puzzle: who should control the rights to her more than 130 books, including the popular “Witch World” series. [San Francisco Chronicle]

July 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Literary Agent Sues Sites for Ruining Her Reputation: Literary agent Barbara Bauer is suing 19 bloggers and websites, including Wikipedia, YouTube and AbsoluteWrite.com, claiming they are ruining her reputation. [Publisher's Weekly]

Harry Potter ‘deluxe’ first editions auctioned for £17,800: Hectic bidding from around the world this afternoon saw a Berkshire auction house sell a complete set of Harry Potter first editions for £17,800. [Guardian]

Reconsiderations: Richard Yates’s ‘Revolutionary Road’: Americans are ready for Yates, in part because suburban conformity no longer ignites our passions. This is crucial, because “Revolutionary Road” is much more than an attack on suburbia. [NY Sun]

Digital Daze: Over the past few years, a certain boilerplate rhetoric has emerged about the need for university presses boldly to face the challenges of the information technology — the better to seize the exciting new opportunities thus created, yadda yadda yadda. But beneath all the digital platitudes, one detects a growing frustration. [Inside Higher Ed]

July 2nd, 2008 at 10:38 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Book Deals: 6-30-08: Supreme Court, Celtics, Iraq and more… [Publishers Weekly]

Joanna Kavenna: How the author turned from unpublishable failure to prizewinning writer: Her novel Inglorious was so raw, so intense in its portrait of the psychic disintegration of the protagonist, Rosa Lane, that we wondered to what extent Rosa’s meltdown reflected the author’s own state of mind. [Independent]

Summer and Smoke, an American Cauldron: It’s not surprising, then, that American literature is a catalogue of summer disturbances, especially the literature of the South, thanks to geography. Its swamplands and deltas bristle with heat-stoked tensions. [NYT]

June 30th, 2008 at 10:19 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

Tribune Co. Redesign Could Kill More Book Coverage: Amid the pending real estate sale and newsroom cutbacks, rumors have surfaced about book sections being cut at Tribune-owned papers. One freelance critic told PW that the Tribune Company is planning to slash overall page counts across the chain. [Publishers Weekly]

Cody’s, landmark Berkeley bookstore, closes: Cody’s Books, the legendary Berkeley bookstore that catered to literati nationwide for more than half a century and was firebombed in the 1980s because of its support of the First Amendment, has closed its doors, the victim of lagging sales. [San Francisco Chronicle]

University Presses Start to Sell Via Kindle: By the beginning of the fall, Princeton plans to have several hundred books available for sale through Kindle. Yale University Press and Oxford University Press already have a similar presence there. The University of California Press recently had about 40 of its volumes placed on Kindle and is ramping up. [Inside Higher Ed]

Nick Harkaway: Le Carré with ninjas: Nick Harkaway describes the challenges of writing a novel in the shadow of a famous father. [Telegraph]

June 28th, 2008 at 10:47 am

This article is filed under Blog, Book News.

The new, improved, disposable father: Britain and Canada are well ahead in the race to make fatherhood completely redundant. [Mercator]

A cut in the wages of sin: But after a long boom, the industry faces a rare slowdown and belts are tightening across Sin City. [Economist]

Scientists find ‘law of war’ that predicts attacks: Scientists believe they may have glimpsed a “law of war” that can be used to predict the likelihood of attacks in modern conflicts, from conventional battles to global terrorism. [Telegraph]

A turning tide?: Many of the past decade’s migrants to Europe and America are beginning to go home again. [Economist]

June 27th, 2008 at 10:31 am

This article is filed under Blog, Society.