In recognition of Abraham Lincoln’s brithday, 200 years ago today, I thought I would mention some of my favorite Lincoln books. Two books published recently are very good. First, I would highly recommend Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer, by Fred Kaplan. It paints a […]

What will books, or the entire publishing industry for that matter, look like in the near future? Much is changing. Time magazine offers some insight in their recently published article, Books Unbound. An excerpt: “Not that Old Publishing will disappear–for now, at least, it’s certainly […]

I found this photo from a blog that I recently mentioned: Books on the Nightstand. If you haven’t subscribed to their podcast already, you should. It’s wonderful. Ann and Michael have a great rapport and while their tastes in genres may differ they share a […]

As you know, the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded this week to French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. Many readers and thinkers feel the list of writers the Nobel has passed over makes a much more impressive group. Writer Ted Gioia would give this […]

Is the book business over as we know it? I hope not. An article in New York magazine has some people talking about the subject. Here is their headline: “The book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales […]

“Fame is always a product of the present culture: topical and variable, hence ephemeral. Writers are made otherwise. What writers prize is simpler, quieter and more enduring than clamorous Fame: it is recognition. Fame, by and large, is an accountant’s category, tallied in Amazonian sales. […]

Are we still a nation of readers? Test scores, surveys, and just our own assessment of how we spend our free time today tell us that something has changed over the past few decades. We aren’t spending as much time with the written word as […]

Robert McCrum writes about the nature of the publishing industry, and how it changed during his ten-year stint as literary editor of The Observer. “When he started it was a world of ‘cigarettes, coffee and strong drink’. But that has all changed – new writers, […]