E-books growing, but print still rules classics

To Kill a Mockingbird​," "Gravity's Rainbow" stay old-form

By Hillel Italie - Denver Post
The Associated Press

Present meets past: A patron uses his Kindle while in the Central Denver Library. (Cyrus McCrimmon, Denver Post file)

There were many kinds of best-sellers in 2011 and they sold in different ways.

Some were meant for success, such as Walter Isaacson​'s "Steve Jobs​" or Tina Fey​'s "Bossypants" or Stephen King​'s "11/22/63." Some were surprises, such as Todd Burpo's "Heaven Is for Real" and Adam Mansbach's "Go the (Bleep) to Sleep."

Some books thrived on the Internet alone. Amanda Hocking's vampire romance novels were self-published, e-book million sellers. So were John Locke​'s crime novels and Darcie Chan's small-town story of a secluded widow, "The Mill River Recluse."

E-books have grown to around 20 percent of the market and the percentage should keep rising in 2012 as millions of ever-cheaper devices are purchased. The e-pull proved strong enough to persuade a famous holdout, J.K. Rowling, and a nearly as famous resister, Ray Bradbury​, to go digital. The e-library of older works expanded greatly in 2011, with additions including Alice Walker​'s "The Color Purple​," Joseph Heller​'s "Catch-22" and Jim Collins' business favorite "Good to Great." Expect digital versions of Tennessee Williams​' plays in the near future.

But the e-revolution remains in its early stages and books can still sell big through paper alone. Mansbach's "Go the (Bleep) to Sleep," the summer's forbidden pleasure, was a sensation before an e-edition was available. Jeff Kinney​'s latest "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" sold 1 million copies in its first week, all on paper.

Meanwhile, some key works remain untouched by digital times, including a few likely to appear on reading lists for the foreseeable future:
Print-only titles:

"The Catcher in the Rye​": J.D. Salinger's death nearly two years ago has yet to unlock any mysteries about his life or his career. No new Salinger works have been authorized and his published works remain available only in paper. Literary agent Phyllis Westberg of Harold Ober Associates, which helps manage Salinger's literary estate, says no e-editions are planned.

"To Kill a Mockingbird": Harper Lee​'s only novel is a favorite of reading groups and civic programs, but don't look for it on your Kindle. Lee's publisher, HarperCollins, said in a statement: "Currently there are no plans to release it as an e-book, though conversations are ongoing about doing so."

"The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian​": Sherman Alexie​ has said a lot of nasty things about e-books, worrying especially about piracy, the power of Amazon.com and the decline of independent stores. Much of his work is unavailable for downloads, including this popular young adult novel, winner of the National Book Award in 2009.

"Gravity's Rainbow": Thomas Pynchon​ is an avatar for the Information Age​, but his books must be read the old-fashioned way. A spokeswoman for his publisher, Penguin Group​ (USA), said she had no information on any e-book plans. Messages left with Pynchon's agent, Melanie Jackson​, were not returned.

"Where the Wild Things Are​": An e-book from Maurice Sendak? Why not ask him to dance in "The Nutcracker"? Or as he told The Associated Press in September: "It's not a book. It's a tchotchke. It's a toy."

Read more: E-books growing, but print still rules classics - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_19604256?source=rss#ixzz1iJ7qTHzi
Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse 

Brontë landscape's battle for survival as new housing threatens tourist trade

• Vanessa Thorpe
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 31 December 2011 13.45 EST

The Brontë parsonage museum seen from the churchyard in Haworth. Residents are opposing plans to build modern housing estates in the town. Photograph: Alamy

The Rector of Haworth's three daughters were with him last week as he prepared his sermons for Christmas and the new year, given in the church at the top of the steep hill of Main Street.
"Yes, I have three daughters, but they are not Charlotte, Emily and Anne, and happily they have all grown up to have families of their own," said the Rev Peter Mayo-Smith, incumbent at St Michael and All Angels parish church, where 190 years ago the Rev Patrick Brontë lived in the adjacent parsonage with his own three girls, the writers now established as among the most famous Englishwomen ever to have lived. "I did discover I was married on the same day as Rev Brontë married his Maria though, which was rather spooky."
But the Anglican clergyman does not really have to search about for reminders of his celebrated predecessor. Any time he steps into his church he finds 30 or 40 visitors clustered around the floor plaque that marks the early graves of Charlotte and Emily Jane. "It is very definitely a place of pilgrimage," he said. "People leave money and flowers, poems and books, every day."
Leaflets in the West Yorkshire church are being translated into Japanese, Chinese and Korean and visitors from Europe, Australia, New Zealand and America are commonplace.
"We have come here because of the books, of course," say an Italian couple, shaking off the cold rain in the porch of the church on Friday. "I studied them at university and I love them very much. Wuthering Heights is my favourite," explains the young woman, who plans to stay for a week. In the old parsonage, which houses the Brontë museum, custodians often have to put up the sign asking tourists to wait outside for 10 minutes because the place is full.
Full story at The Guardian

Year-end books: E-sales surge; where's Oprah?

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

E-surge continues

E-books now account for about 20% of the market — more than double a year ago. An even bigger surge is expected this week and next month, with people unwrapping their new e-readers and tablets. In the next few years, e-books are likely to match print sales and eventually overtake them. For readers, books have never been more accessible or plentiful. But no one is sure what it means for traditional publishers, authors and bookstores.

Who needs publishers?

Can you make a living writing and selling e-books for 99 cents? A handful of authors, rejected by traditional publishers, did just that and more. Fifteen self-published writers cracked the top 150 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, threatening publishers' traditional business model. Among them: Michael Prescott, who says he earned more than $300,000 before taxes this year by selling more than 800,000 digital copies of his self-published thrillers.

Jobs biography well-timed

Even before Apple co-founder Steve Jobs died Oct. 5 at age 56, Walter Isaacson's biography, Steve Jobs, was destined to be a big book. The publisher moved up the bio's publication date, and it arrived in stores 19 days after Jobs died. The outpouring of tributes — unprecedented for a business leader — helped make the book a smash hit.

Hemingway also rises

Fifty years after his suicide (by shotgun), Ernest "Papa" Hemingway was all the rage thanks to a best-selling novel and a hit movie. The Paris Wife, a novel by Paula McLain, revived interest in Hadley Richardson, Hemingway's spurned first wife. Director Woody Allen included a hilarious parody of Hemingway (portrayed by Corey Stoll) in the hit comedy Midnight in Paris.

Oprah who?

For the first time since 1996, no Oprah Book Club selections made best-seller lists. That's because Winfrey, who gave up her syndicated talk show in May after 25 years, didn't make any televised reading recommendations. Last spring, without offering any details, she told USA TODAY, "I'm going to try to develop a show for books and authors" on her fledgling cable network, OWN. But that hasn't happened yet.

Full piece at USA Today 

The Bookman revisits Rodgers Book Barn

Whenever we are in upstate New York I never fail to visit Rodgers Book Barn. On a previous visit at this time of the year, two Christmases ago, it was covered in snow but there is no sign of the white fluffy stuff this year as you can see by the photo above.
I exercised great control on this visit and only bought five titles (!):

Chambers address to impress - 200 words you should use -  Chambers 2008 -$2
Happy Days 1880-1892 - HL Mencken - Knopf 1940 - $3.50
Appetite for Life - The biography of Julia Child - Noel Fitch - Anchor Books 1999 -  $4
Drawn From Life - The journalism of William Makepeace Thackeray - Selected,edited and with an Introduction by Margaret Forester - The Folio Society 1984 - Slipcase - $7.50
Sara Midda's South of France - A Sketchbook - Workman Publishing - 1990 - $3.50
Total - $20.50 - a bargain!
If you are ever in this part of the world do not miss this amazing, fascinating and magical bookstore. Expect to stay at least two hours...........

Rodgers Book Barn
467 Rodman Road, Hillsdale, NY 12 529
www.rodgersbookbarn.com
Hours:
April 1 - October 31 - Thursday to Monday 11-5
November 1 - March 31 - Friday to Monday 11-5

Report on my previous visits.

And here is a piece from the New York Times 20 years ago (!) :

Sunday Outing; For Book Lovers, Paradise in a Rural Setting -By HAROLD FABER - NYT - Published: December 29, 1991

Three miles up a winding country road, out of the usual paths of commerce, the Rodgers Book Barn stands in isolation. Surrounded by trees, it is an oasis of used books. Inside the weathered two-story barn, a pot of apples, spiced with nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, sits bubbling on a cast-iron wood stove. The pleasant aroma is an invitation to stay and browse.

• 
  

"I like to have people enjoy themselves," said Maureen Rodgers, who has operated the Book Barn for the last 19 years. "I like the idea that you can come in here, spend two or three hours browsing, and leave with some books, spending only $10."
Despite the store's rural location, readers go out of their way to find it because of its large and relatively inexpensive selection of out-of-print books. Ms. Rodgers has an eclectic stock of 50,000 used books, most of them priced from 25 cents to about $10, although some rare books range as high as $400. In the 25-cent corner, for example, one can find Hedrick Smith's "The Russians." Nearby are old pages of Harper's Weekly, full of beautiful engravings, for $2. On a table of recent acquisitions, not yet classified, is E. B. White's "Essays" for $2.50 and an "Atlas of Discovery" for $10. Surprises, Surprises.

And from The New Yorker July 20, 2010

A Visit to The Book Barn

Posted by Meredith Blake

As used bookstores go, Rodgers Book Barn might not have the instant name recognition of, say, The Strand, but what it lacks in branded tote bags it more than makes up for in charm. Located three hours north of Manhattan in Hillsdale, New York—a town that's at least as bucolic as its name suggests—the Book Barn does not, it's safe to say, rely on foot traffic to drive sales. Indeed, part of the fun of a visit is in finding the place at all; in this way, it's a bit like those trendy restaurants and cocktail bars in new York that don't list their phone numbers, though that's surely where the similarities end. In order to get there, you have to pass through Hillsdale's town center, turn left at a horse farm—blink and you'll miss the unprepossessing sign that says "Book Barn-4 miles"—and continue down a winding, heavily-wooded road until you're absolutely sure you've made a wrong turn. Then, suddenly, there it is: a ramshackle old building tucked into a leafy clearing.
Inside, the low ceilings and small, winding rooms create an enchanting, warrenlike atmosphere. It's the kind of place you half expect to find a talking rabbit wearing a monocle and vest and reading by candlelight. Though space is at a premium, idling is explicitly encouraged. You can curl up in one of the cozy armchairs nestled between the stacks, or help yourself to some surprisingly good coffee from the single-serve machine upstairs, a detail much appreciated by this caffeine-deprived blogger on my recent visit, since the closest decent cup was otherwise about twenty miles down the road.

Owner Maureen Rodgers estimates that she has some fifty thousand books in her collection, all of which are priced at a few dollars a piece. It is nearly impossible to leave without at least a few books in hand. With a wide array of fiction, criticism, memoir, biography and history, Rodgers jokes that the Book Barn has everything, "but never the book you want." Rodgers used to sell out-of-print books to college libraries out of a loft near Chambers St. "Of course, that was when you could get a loft for a hundred dollars a month," Rodgers says. She first set up shop in the woods in 1972 as a way to make money in the slow summer months, but decided to stay put. "I liked that I didn't have to do as much paperwork," she says.
If ever you find yourself in this neck of the woods—or even if you don't—be sure to stop by.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/07/book-barn.html#ixzz1iEZgtCvN

New authors for 2012: Harriet Lane, Chibundu Onuzo, Faramerz Dabhoiwala

A former journalist, Faber's youngest female signing and an Oxford historian all have major debuts this year

• Killian Fox, Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy, Tim Lewis
• The Observer, Saturday 31 December 2011

Chibundu Onuzo, Faramerz Dabhoiwala and Harriet Lane, photographed at the British Library Photograph: Karen Robinson

Story on each at The Guardian.

As The Age Of The Physical Book Retreats, The Cult Of The Physical Book Advances

The idiot is missing. Or rather, a hundred “Idiots” have failed to arrive. And as Paris awakes on the shortest day of the year, there is grave concern at Shakespeare and Company at 37 rue de la Bûcherie. Dostoyevsky’s novel was supposed to be handed out to congregants at tomorrow’s funeral of the bookstore’s American founder, George Whitman, who passed away on December 14, three days after his 98^th birthday. As an Irish bookseller explains to me, between patient calls to the distributor, “George felt as if it was written about him.”Though Whitman may well have been as naïve as Dostoyevsky’s protagonist, Prince Myshkin – and, from the testimony of Anaïs Nin, as saintly – his fate was not that of the insane asylum, though bookselling might be thought of as a particular form of madness. Instead, the storefront pays homage to a man who used an odd educational provision in the G.I. Bill to stock his store and lending library (whose lease he purchased in 1951 with an inheritance of $500) and lived to see it become, inarguably, the most famous bookstore in the world.

There are photos – in the most dashing, he is dressed in a paisley jacket and tie, looking, for all the world like a psychedelic Leon Trotsky or a malnourished and goateed Sean Penn – and there are lengthy obituaries from the New York Times and the French newspaper, Liberation, pasted to the windows.
A young woman, in a tight fitting red hat that looks like an upturned crocus, stops with her blue suitcase and patiently reads through them in the rain. She becomes a flood as the morning wanes and tourism waxes. There are votive candles and flowers and a poem, now sodden, paying tribute to George’s “lamplighter spirit;” there are many more tributes on a large poster board inside. There will be champagne tomorrow night at the store for anyone who wants to drop by.
Shakespeare and Co. would have enjoyed a solid footnote in literary history for the writers who gathered for literary conversation not just before they were famous, but after: Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, an ungracious Allen Ginsberg. And it evolved into literature’s Santiago de Compostela not only for the quality of its literary pilgrims, but for the quantity that took alms and shelter under its eaves. Some 50,000 “tumbleweeds” – drifters, grifters, aspirant writers and common readers – slept above the store during Whitman’s reign in exchange for a little time working in the shop and a lot more time spent reading (slacking in the latter task would wear your welcome thin).
And then, of course, there is the name, a ménage à trois of literary bloodlines. Whitman’s store was first called le Mistral before Sylvia Beach declared, at a reading in 1958, that she was passing the name and the spirit of, her former and famed bookstore, Shakespeare and Co., to him.
Full story at Forbes, Dec.28, 2011

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all visitors to my blog. I hope that 2012 proves to be a happy and peaceful year for you, full of happiness and great adventures, and of course filled with lots of wonderful books.

kia hari te tau hou
bonne année
felice anno nuovo
ath bhliain faoi mhaise
feliz año nuevo
a gut yohr
gelukkig nieuwjaar
prost Neujahr

Apple's Jonathan Ive gets knighthood in UK honours list

 

Mr Ive has been behind many of the iconic gadgets of the last 15 years - BBC

Jonathan Ive, Apple's head of design, has been awarded a knighthood in the New Year Honours list.

Mr Ive, who can now style himself Sir Jonathan, has been made a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).
Raised in Chingford, Mr Ive began working for Apple in 1992 and since then has been the brains behind many of its products.
He described the honour as "absolutely thrilling" and said he was "both humbled and sincerely grateful".
Mr Ive added: "I am keenly aware that I benefit from a wonderful tradition in the UK of designing and making.
"I discovered at an early age that all I've ever wanted to do is design."
Mr Ive has been lauded for the tight fit between form and function seen in Apple gadgets such as the iPod and iPhone.
Born in February 1967, Mr Ive inherited a love of making things from his father, a silversmith, and reportedly spent much of his youth taking things apart to see how they worked.

recent biography of the Apple co-founder written by Walter Isaacson. However, it also said that Mr Ive was "hurt" by Mr Jobs taking credit for innovations that came from the design team.

Mr Ive's eye for design combined effectively with Mr Jobs' legendary attention to detail and the products that have emerged from the company since the late 1990s have turned Apple into the biggest and most influential technology company on the planet.
Full story at BBC.

Introducing Cartoons About Ebooks and Digital Reading

December 30th, 2011 | By Piotr Kowalczyk

As I’m collecting at Ebook Friendly cartoons about ebooks and reading, I’ve noticed that there is a shortage of new stories on the web. Most of the great ones were created months – or years – before.

Ebooks are now on their way to become mainstream. Users need tips to address their questions, but they also need something to address their concerns. I think cartoons are a great way to help ebooks become part of people’s lives. Embracing by having fun always works:-)
The first cartoon is live. It’s called Books for Christmas (you may already expect what it is about).
As you’ll see, this story is not told from a perspective of an ebook enthusiast. It’s just not a good perspective. Please let me know what you think of it (and what you think of an idea of ebook-focused cartoons in general).
It’s not the first cartoon series I’ve created, but it’s the first one done completely on the iPad, which, by the way, works really well as a drawing tablet. Tablet pen and one good app do it all. It’s SketchBook Pro (AppStore link).
The cartoons are available with Creative Commons license, so feel free to share them on your blog. To make it even easier, an embed code can be grabbed from under every cartoon.
If you want to get new cartoons, simply subscribe to Tips & More feed by RSS or email.

The Sir Julius Vogel Awards - nominations sought

The Sir Julius Vogel sub-committee of SFFANZ is currently accepting nominations for science fiction and fantasy works first published or released in the 2012 calendar year.

Nominations open on 1 January 2012 and close on 31 March 2012 at 8pm.

To make a nomination please email  sjv_awards@sffanz.sf.org.nz.  Anyone can make a nomination, and it is free of charge.
Please send one nomination per email and include as many contact details as possible for the nominee as well as yourself.
You can find full details about the nomination procedures and rules, including eligibility criteria at http://sffanz.sf.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwardsRules_2012.shtml. .

The voting will occur at UnCONventional, http://unconventional2012.wordpress.com/ - the national science fiction convention being held in Auckland, New Zealand over the weekend of the1st – 3rd June 2012.

Pico Iyer’s Kinship With Graham Greene

By LIESL SCHILLINGER - New York Times -  December 30, 2011

THE MAN WITHIN MY HEAD - By Pico Iyer - 

242 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.

Left - Kurt Hutton/Getty Images - Graham Greene

“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.” Those who love Graham Greene — and their numbers are legion — will recognize this sentence, the first line of his quietly devastating novel “The Heart of the Matter,” published in 1948.

Why didn’t Wilson deserve an honorific? What terseness, scorn or unceremoniousness did the omission of “Mr.” imply? Why was a grown man wearing shorts, and why were his knees pink? Where was the Bedford Hotel and where, to be precise, was Wilson? Was he in England, the country of Greene’s birth? Hardly. Like the author, Wilson was spending a stretch of World War II in West Africa. And who was Wilson? That would take longer to answer. This same aura of enigma-disguised-as-directness hovers over the meditation Pico Iyer has written about his lifelong obsession with Graham Greene, numinously titled “The Man Within My Head” — a nod to Greene’s first novel, “The Man Within.”

Iyer, a journalist and world traveler, the author of seven books of nonfiction and two novels, begins his own memoir this way: “I was standing by the window in the Plaza Hotel, looking out.” Where is this Plaza Hotel? In New York? Hardly. It’s in La Paz, Bolivia, a country where Iyer and a friend nearly died in a car crash on a mountain road one New Year’s Day. And who is Iyer? The answer to that question unfolds in the ensuing pages, emerging from behind a scrim of other characters — not only Greene, but the author’s philosopher father, Raghavan Iyer, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as Iyer’s old traveling companions and school friends and the women he has encountered along the way.
Iyer is far from the first Greenite to write about this prolific figure, whose long and illustrious career encompassed scores of novels, essays, short stories and plays. Greene’s official biographer, Norman Sherry, devoted more than 2,000 pages, gathered in three volumes, to an exploration of the author’s boyhood and manhood, his conflicted Roman Catholicism, his love affairs and friendships, his devious psychology.
Full review at the New York Times.      

Short stories: Angela Carter and Roddy Doyle

In our special Christmas short story series, we're parcelling up two of our most popular short stories each day – one to read and one to listen to. Today…

• Listen to Helen Simpson reading The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

• Read Roddy Doyle's short story The Plate

• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 31 December 2011 

Helen Simpson and Angela Carter. Photograph: Graham Turner/Jane Bown

Helen Simpson reads Angela Carter's short story The Kitchen Child, which "shows her stories can be sunnier, funnier and altogether more high-spirited than her more minatory, gothic tales might suggest."

Listen to The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

Link to this audio

Read The Plate, a short story by Roddy Doyle

 'He was in hell and he'd never recover'. Photograph: Wassink Lundgren


–I love you but I think I'm dying.
This was what he said as he came in the back door. Then he turned around and walked back out. Maeve thought he was leaving her. He'd said he was the night before. Until she saw the way he was walking. And she knew it: he was dying. He walked like he'd been stabbed, away from the door, out into the garden. It was after nine but still bright enough, early September. His back to her, crouched, he moved quickly, sideways, clutching something – his stomach. The back door was a slider, all glass. She watched him move down the garden. She waited for him to fall. She waited for the blood.
But he didn't fall.
–Are you all right?
She stayed at the door.
–Jim?
He'd gone to the end of the garden. The sun was down, behind the high back wall. He was dark, crouched, still moving. She saw now; he was coming back.
Read more…

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery Exhibited New Collages by Poet John Ashbery

Art Knowledge News - : 30 Dec 2011 

New York City.- The Tibor de Nagy Gallery presented an exhibition of new collages by acclaimed poet John Ashbery. This is the gallery’s second solo exhibition devoted exclusively to Ashbery’s collages, following his hugely successful debut with the gallery in 2008. "John Ashbury: Recent Collages" Ashbery was fascinated in his youth by the collage novels of Max Ernst and the partly collaged Cubist paintings of Picasso and Braque. He started making collages as an undergraduate at Harvard, and has continued the collage process in both his visual and literary creations ever since. Influenced by such collage giants as Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell, and more directly, Joe Brainard, Ashbery’s work combines equal doses of art historical and contemporary pop culture references. These recent works are more inventive and confidently his own than ever before. Ashbery continues to explore the collage medium, pushing the imagery into increasingly amorphous shapes with unexpected and often humorous juxtapositions, in much the same way that he has consistently pushed the boundaries of poetry. 

Gourmand World Cookbook Awards - two NZ titles make the finals......

Cookbook of the Year – 12 Finalists
Canada – The Art of Living According to Joe Beef ,Meredith Ericson (Ten Speed-Parfum d’Encre)
Chile – Patagonian Cuisine , Francisco Fantini (Gourmet Patagonia)
Colombia – Vida y Sabor Judio, Perla C.Gilinski (Gilinski)
Iceland – Stora Bokin um Villibrad, Ulfar Finn Björnsson (Salka)
Italy – Nuovi Cclassic, Diego Crosara (Reed Gourmet)
Malaysia – The Best of Chef Wan (Marshall Cavendish)
Mexico – Una Herencia de Sabores, Susanna Palazuelos (Random House Mondadory)
Monaco – J’aime Monaco (Alain Ducasse Editions)
Netherlands – Kookaravaan, Yassine Nassir, Marcel van Silfhout (Zilverstermedia)
New Zealand-Wanaka-,McKay,Myer (Random House NZ)
Peru – La Ruta de la Papa , Sara Beatriz Guardia (Universidad San Martin de Porres)
USA – The Cooks Illustrated Cookbook, America’s Test Kitchen (Cooks Illustrated)

TV-English
New Zealand – Free Range in the City, Annabel Langbein (Harper Collins)
South Africa – Cooked out of the Frying Pan, Justin Bonello (Penguin)
UK – Baking Made Easy – Lorraine Pascale (Harper Collins)
USA – Food Network Star (William Morrow)