Archive for the 'News & Gossip' Category



Woolf’s ‘To the Lighthouse’ Beach Sold at Auction

Published on July 13, 2009

Virginia Woolf’s novel To The Lighthouse was inspired by a real-world beach — which sold for £80,000 at an auction today. According to the Daily Mail, “The 76-acre Upton Towans beach in Gwithian, Cornwall, overlooks the lighthouse situated on the headland at nearby Godrevy Island. Virginia Woolf spent many holidays there with her family as [...]


Boris Yeltsin Library Opens in Russia

Published on May 29, 2009

Boris Yeltsin was an impassioned reader, and the new Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library opened in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. “The idea of a library unifying the country’s information and archival resources was first suggested in 2007. The then-president Vladimir Putin signed a decree to found such a library. He also proposed naming it after the [...]


50 Cent, Author and Non-Arsonist

Published on May 4, 2009

So it’s happy news all around for 50 Cent. According to Chartattack, the rap star formerly known as Curtis Jackson will have two books out this year. After much delay, Before I Self Destruct is set to arrive at music retail outlets in June. And a full two years after its planned publication date, The 50th Law is set [...]


Blam! Pow! It’s Free Comic-Book Day, Batman!

Published on May 1, 2009

  Saturday, May 2, is Free Comic Book Day. This means that comic-book stores all over the nation will literally give books away. The annual promotion, which began in 2001, was launched by comic-book publishers and distributors to bring more people into the stores. Among the freebies at participating stores are titles from the major companies [...]


That’s Life

Published on April 28, 2009

  Sooner or later, most books leave the hands of their original purchasers and enter the secondhand (or thirdhand, or zillionthhand) realm. Nonetheless, even though it’s inevitable, most authors find it a bit painful to imagine their books for sale at thrift shops and yard sales. Minnesota author Leif Enger told the Austin Daily Herald how it [...]


RIP, Tooticky

Published on March 21, 2009

  The woman who was the inspiration for a beloved character in Finland’s famous Moomin books — because her partner was the Moomins’ creator Tove Jansson — has died at age 92, according to Finnish news site Uutiset: “Tuulikki Pietilä, a major figure in Finnish graphic art, was most widely known for projects in collaboration [...]


Half Price Goes Green

Published on March 11, 2009

Half Price Books is going green. The nation’s largest family-owned discount-new and used bookstore chain announced on Monday that it is purchasing pollution-free wind energy for thirty stores and other facilities in its home state of Texas over the next three years. Planning to purchase about 11.3 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind power a year, Half Price [...]


Turning Japanese

Published on March 10, 2009

Had a lovely chat Saturday night with an author at yet another author’s book-launch party. To celebrate her fun but also incredibly informative new book Crazy fror Kanji: A Student’s Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters, Eve Kushner hosted a Kanji Festival at a Japanese restaurant in Albany, California, complete with music, games, a [...]


Now It’s Four Guys

Published on March 9, 2009

The Three Guys One Book blog has added … another guy. Novelist Jonathan Evison joins industry vets Dennis Haritou, Jason Chambers and Jason Rice. In their welcome-to-Jonathan post, they tell us: “It’s exceptional to encounter a personality so strong, so open to new ideas that you become friends, even though that friend lives 3,000 miles away and you have [...]


Unscrupulous Book Vendors on the Loose

Published on March 8, 2009

I can’t resist that headline: “Unscrupulous book vendors on the loose.” Unfortunately it’s a real headline, appearing in today’s Business Daily Africa. Academic performance and test scores have plummeted lately in Kenya, and one cause for this has been identified. “Textbook pirates” print up cheap and incomplete or outright fake versions of school textbooks — [...]