Michael Ondaatje?s 'The English Patient' wins Golden Man Booker Prize in...
Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient (Bloomsbury), the story of an injured, anonymous English WWII pilot and his Italian nurse, has been named the winner of the Golden Man Booker Prize, awarded to...
View ArticleThe changing face of romance novels
The New York Times reports on the changing face of the romance novel genre: ...The landscape is slowly starting to change, as more diverse writers break into the genre, and publishers take chances on...
View ArticleAnne Tyler has something to say...
The New York Times has a rare interview with Anne Tyler to coincide with the publication of her latest novel, Clock Dance. Tyler rarely does interviews because she dislikes the way they make her feel...
View ArticleMovies based on books take 53% more on average at the box office than...
Films based on books might have the intolerable disadvantage of people smugly claiming "the book is so much better", but they also result in a huge boost at the box office. According to new research...
View ArticleAuthor of Stig of the Dump, Clive King, dies aged 94
Clive King, who has died aged 94, was the author of several children's books and is best known for Stig of the Dump, the original and imaginative fantasy story of the friendship between Barney, a boy...
View ArticleMan Booker Prize longlist released
The Guardian posted the Man Booker Prize longlist early, in advance of Wednesday's scheduled announcement, and then promptly took it down. But the list survived in the Google cache and across social...
View ArticleRevisiting Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" on the bicentennial of her birth
Even the light of 200 birthday candles couldn't pierce the gloom of "Wuthering Heights." But the fire that burned within Emily Brontë roars across the centuries. How remarkable that on the bicentennial...
View Article'Lost chapters' of Malcolm X's autobiography sold at auction
"Lost" material from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, reportedly seen as too controversial to publish in the 1960s, has emerged this week at an auction in New York. Along with the original typed...
View Article10 of the best words in the world (that don't translate into English)
One of the many great things about languages worldwide is the sizeable number of words for which there is no real English translation. Often they tell us about concepts and ideas that we are missing...
View ArticleTsundoku: The art of buying books and never reading them
Do you have a habit of picking up books that you never quite get around to reading? If this sounds like you, you might be unwittingly engaging in tsundoku - a Japanese term used to describe a person...
View ArticleIs Dr. Seuss's Lorax Real?
New research suggests that Dr. Seuss's Lorax is based on a particular monkey that the writer encountered in Kenya... Recently, a group of researchers posited that the Lorax is not entirely invented,...
View ArticleWhy is China afraid of bookseller Gui Minhai?
The Washington Post asks why China is so afraid of author and book publisher Gui Minhai (also known as Michael Gui): Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, was riding a train from Shanghai to...
View ArticleAmazon grew 20% in UK in 2017 but halved its taxes
Although Amazon's sales in the U.K. continue to grow--rising 20%, to $11.4 billion, in 2017--for the second straight year the company was able to halve the amount of corporate tax it paid.
View ArticleUK bookstore stormed and vandalized by far-right protestors, one wearing a...
Bookmarks Bookshop, a socialist bookstore in Bloomsbury, in London, has received outpourings of support after 12 far-right protesters stormed in and vandalized the store on Saturday evening, the...
View ArticleNobel Prize-winning novelist Sir VS Naipaul dies aged 85
Novelist Sir VS Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in literature, has died at his home in London aged 85, his family have said. Sir Vidia, who was born in rural Trinidad in 1932, wrote more than 30 books...
View ArticleDeal for $10b Defense Department data contract "rigged" in Amazon's favor
Vanity Fair reports that a $10 billion deal to move all of the Defense Department's data, both classified and unclassified, to the cloud appears to be rigged in Amazon's favor. The Defense Department's...
View ArticleObama's summer reading list
It's the classiest, most passive-aggressive move Barack Obama could make: He posted a list of books he's been reading on Facebook. That's it. "This summer I've been absorbed by new novels," the former...
View ArticleLee Child set to adapt his Jack Reacher novels for TV (with a substantially...
He is one of the world's most successful crime writers, selling more than 100 million copies of his novels and short stories worldwide. Now Lee Child is planning major television adaptations of his...
View ArticleNetflix agrees deal with Harlan Coben for 14+ books
Netflix has entered into a multi-year exclusive overall deal with international bestselling author Harlan Coben. As part of the deal, Netflix will work with Coben to develop 14 existing titles and...
View ArticleFormer Barnes & Noble CEO sues for defamation
In a lawsuit filed August 28 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, former Barnes & Noble CEO Demos Parneros has charged the retailer with breach of contract and...
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