Booklist Online: More than 130,000 book reviews for librarians, book groups, and book lovers - from the trusted experts at the American Library Association

It’s been so long since I’ve posted that I had to dust off the blog’s dashboard before I could start. And, somehow, my fingers got stuck inside the computer monitor, and it was hours before the IT department could come to my desk and set me free. Very embarrassing. The real problem has been a combination of [...]

In case you were unable to attend the first-ever Booklist Online Forum, “Books and Blogs: Made for Each Other?” in Chicago this month, panelist Mary Burkey recorded the proceedings and very generously shared the audio with me. You can listen to it here. Librarian, blogger, and good guy Rick Roche also posted a wrapup on his blog, [...]

It used to hold that one of the reasons you became a writer was that you were the sort who ducked out of photographs and preferred to communicate through quill-written correspondence. These days, though, these Salingeresque avoidance techniques won’t win you much love from your publisher–and probably won’t push many books, either. So Penguin’s the [...]

I am so sick of “death of publishing” articles, so tired of talking about the ridiculously oversimplified “print versus web” argument that I could spit. (But I won’t, because Mama Graff didn’t raise no spitter.) So what did I do last night? Why, I hied myself down to “The Future of the Book: A Conversation on [...]

After getting a ton of ink in 2008 (much of it electric ink right here at Likely Stories), Sherry Jones’ controversial Jewel of Medina hasn’t made much news this year. Now, however, in a story with a tabloid-worthy headline (“Muhammad child bride novel author condemns UK ‘censorship’,” by Alison Flood) The Guardian reports that Jones “has [...]

A recent issue of Shelf Awareness had a really interesting Q&A with Greg Ames (Buffalo Lockjaw). This was my favorite part: One day, by mistake, I took home an Edgar Allan Poe collection from the bookmobile. I was in third grade. Reading Poe was like learning a foreign language. I understood every third word. After [...]

So, according to an article on Bookseller.com, which I found out about through the ArtsJournal‘s excellent daily newsletter, the author R. N . Morris is republishing his 2007 crime novel, A Gentle Axe, in a surprising fashion. Not content with hardcover and paperback — and, I pre sume, audiobook, Morris is serializing A Gentle Axe [...]

From the New York Times (“Alfred A. Knopf Jr., Influential Publisher, Dies at 90,” by Christopher Lehmann-Haupt: When he was discharged, he telephoned his father, who asked what he planned to do for a career. “I guess I’m going to work for you,” he said, and did. We’ve seen a lot of big names passing [...]

On the off chance that you missed it, here’s the interview I did last night:

Given the problems in publishing, this line, from Nicholas Rankin’s review of Valerie Holman’s Print for Victory (British Library), is provocative. From the Times Literary Supplement: Even though book publication was halved in the war, book sales doubled and booksellers made money. (Or was that too wordy?)