The churning disruption in the global supply chain, which has touched everything from minivans to dishwashers to sweaters, has now reached the world of books, just as the holiday season — a crucial time for publishers, and a period that can make or break the entire year for an independent bookstore — approaches. Publishers are postponing some release dates because books aren’t where they need to be. Older books are also being affected as suppliers struggle to replenish them. Read more
Author: GR
The Owner of The Mysterious Bookshop Built His Dream House
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a good 60,000 books must be in want of a very big house. At some point in the mid-1980s, Otto Penzler, the indefatigable founder and proprietor of The Mysterious Bookshop, the Manhattan store specializing in fictitious tales of crime and espionage and whodunits of a high order, could no longer ignore the evidence: His personal collection of first editions had outgrown his office, and cartons containing the overflow were stashed in a pal’s garage. They needed a room of their own. Read more
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Burntcoat by Sarah Hall
Set during a pandemic, and charting the life of a sculptor who becomes infected by a deadly virus, Sarah Hall’s new novel is finely wrought, intellectually brave and emotionally honest, writes Stuart Kelly. Read more
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When the New York Times Book Review Panned the Classics
Some of today’s best-loved books — think “Catch-22,” “Tender Is the Night” and even “Anne of Green Gables” — had a rocky reception in our pages. Read more
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Sotheby’s to Auction Only Remaining First Printing of the Constitution in Private Hands Estimate $15/20 Million
…the extremely rare document – now the longest continuing charter of government in the world – is one of just 11 known copies of the official printing produced for the delegates to Constitutional Convention and for the Continental Congress. Read more
Gailmarie Pahmeier Named Nevada Poet Laureate
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak this week appointed author and University of Nevada, Reno professor Gailmarie Pahmeier as Nevada Poet Laureate. She will serve a two-year term from September 2021 through August 2023. Read more
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The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales
All but one of the stories in the forthcoming The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales have never been published in English before. The book, which is due out from Princeton University Press on 19 October, collects 20 fairytales published between 1875 and 1914, following Italy’s political unification. It brings together stories from Collodi, Domenico Comparetti (regarded as the Italian Grimm for his work gathering fairytales from around the country), and Grazia Deledda, the only Italian woman to have received the Nobel prize in literature. Read more
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Margaret Atwood and JM Coetzee demand release of jailed Iranian writers
The writers began a collective 15-and-a-half-year sentence at Evin Prison in Tehran in September 2020, on what writers’ association PEN America said were “spurious” national security and propaganda charges. Since then, Abtin and Khandan Mahabadi have both contracted Covid-19. Abtin is a poet, screenwriter and film-maker; Bajan is a novelist and journalist; and Khandan Mahabadi is an author and literary critic. Read more
I love books about books. Here are seven of my current favorites.
Gary Goodman helped establish Stillwater, Minn., as another “book town,” one deliberately modeled on the celebrated Welsh original, Hay-on-Wye. In Goodman’s witty, self-deprecating account of impulsively buying a crummy used bookstore, gradually improving its stock, and eventually meeting notable fellow dealers here and abroad (including McMurtry and Hay’s “King” Richard Booth), his tone periodically grows elegiac. Read more
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Jason Reynolds helps put a spotlight on Banned Books Week
This year’s Banned Books Week, which began Sunday, has the traditional list. But it also has a new feature: an honorary chairman. Jason Reynolds is a fitting pick for the job. He is the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature through next year, and he has two books on this year’s list. Read more
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