To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee taken off Mississippi school reading list
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee's classic novel about racism and the American south, has been removed from a junior-high reading list in a Mississippi school district because the language in the book...
View ArticleBroomsticks and dragon bones in British Library's Harry Potter magic show
It's all true, and the incontrovertible proof has gone on display in the British Library. Side by side with original manuscripts and illustrations for the Harry Potter books, in an exhibition that...
View ArticleSelf-Published ISBNs Hit 786,935 in 2016
A new report issued by Bowker found that a total of 786,935 ISBNs were issued to self-published authors in 2016, an 8.2% increase over 2015. According to the report, ISBNs for print books rose 11.3% to...
View ArticleDid Salinger write more books? And if so, will they ever be published?
The New York times explores the claim made in a 2013 documentary about J. D. Salinger (and a related book) that the reclusive author not only continued writing, but also left detailed notes to his...
View ArticleHBO, Penguin cancel ?Game Change? over Halperin?s alleged sexual harassment
The 2016 edition of "Game Change," the most lucrative franchise in political journalism, appears doomed as Penguin Press canceled the much-anticipated book and HBO dropped the movie version in response...
View ArticleBook World to close All 45 stores across the Midwest
Wisconsin-based Book World Inc. has announced that it is closing all bookstores in its Book World chain that operates 45 outlets across the Midwest. In a letter to its business partners and vendors as...
View ArticleDoes anybody know what a bestseller is?
Publishers Weekly reports on the proliferation of bestseller lists and asks "when nearly any title can be called a bestseller, does becoming a bestseller still matter?"
View ArticleIs reading in bed a thing of the past?
Howard Jacobson in the Guardian asks how many of us still read a book in bed?
View ArticlePlaywright Tom Stoppard wins lifetime achievement award
The playwright Tom Stoppard has won the David Cohen prize for a lifetime's achievement in literature, hailed as a "giant of 20th-century British drama" with an "outstanding and enduring body of...
View ArticlePirated ebooks threaten the future of book series
With 4 million or 17% of all online ebooks being pirated, novelists including Maggie Stiefvater and Samantha Shannon say theft by fans puts their books at risk.
View ArticleTop hundred nonfiction books of all time
The Observer newspaper continues its 2+ year project to review what it deems to be the top 100 nonfiction books of all time. The series began in February 2016 with their No. 1 pick, Elizabeth Kolbert's...
View ArticleBookstores sales decline for the second month in a row
Bookstore sales declined 6.5% this September, compared to September 2016, according to preliminary figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau Wednesday morning. Sales in September were $1.01 billion,...
View ArticleIndie bookstores make plans for Indies First/Small Business Saturday
Indies First/Small Business Saturday 2017 and the start of the holiday shopping season are just a week and a half away (Nov 25), and more independent bookstores around the United States are finalizing...
View ArticleNational Book Awards announced
The national book awards for 2017 have been announced. The winners are: Fiction: Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing Nonfiction: Masha Gessen, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia...
View Article10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Laura Ingalls Wilder
Little House on the Prairie Fans will likely enjoy Publishers Weekly's article, "10 Things You Probably Didn't Know about Laura Ingalls Wilder."
View Article'Shattering' novel wins $25k South Asian Literature Prize
Anuk Arudpragasam has won the prestigious ?DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 for his novel, "?The Story of a Brief Marriage", published by Granta in the UK, and by Flatiron in the USA...
View ArticleB&N Survey Finds Thanksgiving Eve 'Busiest Reading Day of the Year'
According to Barnes & Noble's survey, 77% of Americans read at least one book, newspaper or magazine during Thanksgiving or other holiday travel, while 60% of travelers usually bring, buy or borrow...
View ArticleHow to Get Your Mind to Read
A New York Times opinion piece by Daniel T. Willingham lays out the argument that American's poor reading skills cannot be blamed on modern technology but on a misunderstanding of how the mind reads -...
View ArticleDictionary.com names 'complicit' its word of the year for 2017
Dictionary.com's choice for its Word of the Year is "complicit." It says online searches for the word spiked three times this year...
View ArticleIndie bookstores celebrate Indies First and Small Business Saturday
On Saturday, hundreds of booksellers across the USA took part in Indies First and Small Business Saturday, organizing all kinds of in-store activities, offering a range of deals, hosting parties and...
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