Tuesday, April 04, 2017

Book news from WORD

A New Publisher Focuses On Native American Superheroes

Why? Because the superhero world has a huge hole at its center. “Comics creator Jon Proudstar remembers the first time he saw a Native American character in a comic. It was Thunderbird, in the X-Men, and he was quickly killed off. Proudstar was 8 years old and he was not happy. ‘And for years I just lamented about it and said one day I’ll bring him back,’ he says.”

The Weird Public/Private Lives Of Writers

“The line between public and private selves is different for different writers. Some are comfortable sharing many details of their lives. Neil Gaiman tells fans about his book projects, encourages people to get involved in refugee relief and tweets pictures of his wife and baby son. Other writers prefer relative anonymity. Thomas Pynchon famously doesn’t give interviews and is rarely photographed. Most writers probably fall somewhere in between.”

Rare Bookstores Are Becoming Rarer Than Rare Books

“Susan Benne, executive director of the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, says the organization has about 450 members but estimates 60 percent of those do not have an open storefront, and the overall number of dealers continues to drop. Lost, too, is that dusty aura of something vanished, gone like smoke from steam engines in the American landscape. The digital age of Amazon.com, e-readers and online research has its advantages, but for parishioners of the Church of Old Books, it has also relegated a way of reading, and finding the book of your fever dreams, to a dust-mote-enchanted memory.”

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