Category Archives: Articles

'300' tops box office

Posted on March 14, 2007 by Keren

Yahoo News reports:

The tale of the Spartan battle of Thermopylae as seen through the unique eyes of graphic novelist Frank Miller captured the top spot at the box office over the weekend, commanding a take of nearly $71 million to become the year’s first blockbuster.

The movie, an adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 (a superhero-style take on the battle of Thermopylae) was shot entirely indoors, with the movie’s impressive skies and landscaped added in later digitally. In an interview with Wired News, director Zack Snyder said, “I wanted to get at the book as much as I could. Shooting outside, we couldn’t control the skies and lighting to the extent I wanted to. And the landscapes are different than in real life. They don’t exist in the real world, only in Frank Miller’s imagination.”

For a taste of the finished product (and some eye candy), see this gallery of photos on the Wired site.

Posted in Articles, Film, Graphic novels, Interviews, Movie Adaptations |

Hamas rescinds book ban after public outcry

Posted on March 11, 2007 by Keren

The Hamas-run Education Ministry on Saturday rescinded its decision to pull an anthology of Palestinian folk tales from school libraries and destroy copies, reportedly over mild sexual innuendo, following a widespread public outcry.

Some 1,500 copies of the book [Speak Bird, Speak Again] were destroyed — the most direct attempt by the militant Muslim group to impose its beliefs on Palestinian society.

Link to the Yahoo News article

Posted in Articles, Banned Books, Children's books, Education |

Readers "can't live without" classics

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

Worldbookday.com conducted a survey of books people can’t live without.  Here are the results:

The top ten are as follows:

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen 20%
2) Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkein 17%
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 14%
4) Harry Potter books – J K Rowling 12%
5) To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee 9.5%
6) The Bible 9%
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8.5% 8) 1984 – George Orwell 6%
= His Dark Materials  – Philip Pullman 6%
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens .55%

The full list and a breakdown by region are available here (pdf).
The Guardian says:

Richard and Judy’s television show, legendary for creating bestsellers, appears to have little influence on this list. Virtually none of the chart-topping titles of recent years, except for Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and no high-grossing celebrity biographies reached the top 100.

Instead, the top 100 bristles with provenly enduring quality, from Joseph Heller, George Eliot, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Lewis Carroll and AA Milne to John Steinbeck, Arthur Ransome, Joseph Conrad, Kazuo Ishiguro (for The Remains of the Day) and Conan Doyle. The last three titles to squeeze in are a characteristic mix: Hamlet, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Contests, Reading |

Indie bookstores plan for next Potter release

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

With four months to go until the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, independent bookshops have started the fight back against the massive discounting of the book by the bookselling chains. At the vanguard of the battle for the boy wizard’s fans is Dulwich Books, an independent in south London which is hoping to win customers with a Harry Potter loyalty scheme. Every purchase of children’s books worth £10 or more before June will win earn a point and when the card is full with 10 points, customers will be entitled to a free copy of the new Harry Potter.

Small stores have a choice between selling the book at the full expected £17.99 and risk driving away customers, or discounting it and losing money.  Alternate marketing strategies like this one could help encourage readers to buy indie.
Link to the Guardian article

Posted in Articles, Booksellers, Upcoming releases |

On authors who write writers

Posted on March 1, 2007 by Keren

The Guardian has an interesting article about authors who have writer characters in their books.

Most authors seem to be drawn at some point to create a character who is an author, either as a jokey wave to their readers or a therapeutic exploration of another kind of writer they might have been. And, while such potentially self-indulgent conceits might be considered the kind of trick favoured by the type of writer who wins prizes rather than sells copies, two of the most populist writers in English-language fiction have been among the keenest players of these postmodernist games.

The interest of novelists in inventing novelists has both a practical and a psychological explanation. Realistic fiction demands that the details of a character’s job should be as convincing as possible, and the creation of a creative writer uses research already accrued, without the long Googling and interviewing necessary to portray a convincing undertaker or dentist.

But there is also a deeper mental explanation. Most writers have had a literary equivalent of the actors’ experience of self-division: the sense that their writing comes from someone or something separate.

Read the rest of the article here.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Reading |

Indie bookstore Pandemonium gets reprieve

Posted on February 25, 2007 by Keren

Since Tyler Stewart, owner and president of 17-year-old Pandemonium Books & Games in Cambridge, Mass., posted a call for help earlier this month on his Livejournal blog, more than a thousand people have stepped forward to keep the store open by participating in a T-shirt drive. With the proceeds, Stewart plans to pay off his delinquent payroll taxes, although, he said, the store’s finances will continue to be “touch and go.” He has been able to negotiate with all his other creditors except the IRS.

For Stewart, it is particularly gratifying to have so many current and former customers from all over the country and England participate in the drive. About half the replies, he said, are people who have never shopped at Pandemonium, but care about independents. (T-shirts are still available at www.pandemoniumbooks.com.)

Link to the Publishers Weekly article

Posted in Articles, Booksellers |

Graphic novel market expands

Posted on February 25, 2007 by Keren

In front of a packed hall at the second annual ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference, ICv2 CEO Milton Griepp reported that graphic novel sales in the U.S. and Canada hit $330 million in 2006, a 12% increase over revised sales figures for 2005.

Griepp reported that sales of graphic novels passed comics periodicals as “the most popular format,” in 2006. He reported that 2006 sales of comics periodicals was about $310 million.

Griepp sees more growth for the category in 2007, noting plans by bestselling prose authors such as Stephen King and Laurell K. Hamilton to release comics work in the coming year. While manga continued to lead the category in sales, he noted that American genre comics were also doing well. He also said that acclaimed nonfiction titles like Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, the comics adaptation of the 9/11 report and Marisa Acocella Marchetto’s Cancer Vixen were attracting new readers, female readers in particular, to the category.

Link to the Publishers Weekly article

Posted in Articles, Graphic novels, Publishers |

Economist to chair 2007 Booker jury

Posted on February 25, 2007 by Keren

The director of the London School of Economics, Howard Davies, will chair the judges of the 39th Man Booker prize.

He will be joined on the panel for the 2007 award by the poet Wendy Cope, the journalist and novelist Giles Foden, the biographer Ruth Scurr and the actor Imogen Stubbs.

The competition is already showing the benefits of putting an economist at the helm. The longlist, which has ballooned to around 20 books over recent years, will be cut down this year to just 12 books. An announcement is expected in August.

The shortlist of six titles will be announced in early September. The winner of the 2007 prize will be announced on October 16.

Link to the Guardian article.

Posted in Articles, Awards, Contests |

"Britain's greatest living author" Martin Amis set to turn professor

Posted on February 17, 2007 by Heidi Kathleen

In the article, Amis asserts that there is little glam in the world of writing.

“Well, it is a sort of sedentary, carpet slippers, self-inspecting, nose-picking, arse-scratching kind of job, just you in your study and there is absolutely no way round that. So, anyone who is in it for worldly gains and razzmatazz I don’t think will get very far at all.”

He also addresses Manchester University’s decision to put him in the role of professor of creative writing.

“I may be acerbic in how I write but I’m not how I live. And I would find it very difficult to say cruel things to people in such a vulnerable position. I imagine I’ll be surprisingly sweet and gentle with them. One of the things I’ve learned about fiction – you really do lay yourself open in a way that no other so-called creative artist does. Most other art you’re just exhibiting a particular talent, even poetry up to a point, but by writing fiction you expose not only your talent but your whole being, your social, sexual and psychological being and you’re never more vulnerable than when you do that, and I’m well aware of that fact and will take it into account.”

The full article can be found at The Guardian.

Posted in Articles, Authors, Education |

Chinese piracy worries US publishing, movie, medicine industries

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Keren

Patricia Schroeder, the president of the Association of American Publishers, said US publishers in China last year suffered an estimated 52 million dollars in losses due to piracy on the Internet.

“Visits to China and discussions with our member publishers reveal a staggering amount of book piracy plaguing this most promising of markets,” she said.

Book piracy also includes illegal commercial scale photocopying of academic materials, print piracy and unauthorized translations as well as trademark counterfeiting, Schroeder said.

Bestsellers such as the Harry Potter series, Dan Brown’s novels and political autobiographies are pirated in English and Chinese within days of their home country releases, Schroeder said.

Link to the Yahoo! News article

Posted in Articles, Booksellers, Film, Publishers |