Breaking news on authors, publishers, and book-related topics

Shortlist for Oddest Book Title of the Year announced

Mar 02 2008: The Bookseller magazine has announced the shortlist for the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year:

• I Was Tortured By the Pygmy Love Queen
• How to Write a How to Write Book
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues
• Cheese Problems Solved
• If You ...

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Conservative writer William Buckley dead at 82

Feb 28 2008: Reuters reports on the death of writer and commentator William F. Buckley who is credited with founding the modern conservative movement in US politics. According to Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955, Buckley had suffered ...

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Free download of 'Beautiful Children' by Charles Bock

Feb 27 2008: Random House is offering the entire text of Beautiful Children, Charles Bock's debut novel, for free online until midnight on Friday 29 February. Readers can share, e-mail or print the text, which is available as a PDF download at beautifulchildren.net/read.

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Publishers Weekly up for sale and Quills Awards 'suspended'

Feb 26 2008: Reed Elsevier, parent company of Reed Business Information which includes Library Journal, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Variety, and other top trade journals, recently announced that the magazines were up for sale. In the wake of this it has also been ...

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Movies based on books win 11 Oscars

Feb 25 2008: The single-biggest winner at last night's Oscars was No Country for Old Men, based on Cormac McCarthy's book, which won best picture, best director, best supporting actor and best adapted screenplay. 

The Bourne Ultimatum, based on Robert Ludlum's book, won...

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Zadie Smith attacks most literary prizes as 'only nominally' about literature

Feb 23 2008: Novelist Zadie Smith, who has received a number of awards including the Whitbread First Novel award for White Teeth and the Orange Prize for Fiction for On Beauty, has caused a stir in the blogosphere and the mainstream media with a blistering attack on literary prizes....

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Robin Moore, author of 'The French Connection', dies at 82

Feb 22 2008: Bestselling author Robin Moore, with more than 80 books to his credit, best known for writing The French Connection and The Green Berets, died Feb. 21 at the age of 82 in Kentucky.

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Supermarkets are selling us out

Feb 19 2008: The Times of London takes aim at the monolithic chain stores and questions if they even offer good "value", whether it be for food, clothes or books:

"These days, how you decide to shop defines you as much as how you choose to dress. We treat supermarket shopping as ...

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