We've got issues.
… at least for the next seven hours. Actually, no; I only wish I could be utterly lost in Harry Potter land until 12:09, at which point I’ll be highly caffeinated and ready to (hopefully) enjoy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But reality will intrude. It does that. So annoying. Continue reading
May 1, I hear, is Buy Indie Day. The idea, as described at Indiebound, is simple: “Buy one book — paperback, hardcover, audiobook, whatever you want! — at an independent bookstore near you.” (Those of you on Facebook can check out the movement’s Facebook page, too.) Continue reading
Congratulations to Eugene’s Nina Kiriki Hoffman for winning a Nebula Award — the awards given by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America — for her short story “Trophy Wives.” Continue reading
The week of Winter Reading, you could give us the whole paper and we’d still want more space. And, for that matter, more time; it’s the time needed to read, consider and review that keeps Winter Reading somewhat under control. Continue reading
I’ve been saving links for nearly two weeks now for this post — since December 3, when the publishing industry, by all accounts, imploded. Dramatically. Continue reading
Don’t love Nintendo? Love books? What if they crossbred? In the UK, people will soon be able to read classics on the Nintendo DS. COOL. Nintendo, the Japanese video games has announced a deal with the publisher HarperCollins to make the classics available to read on its DS games consoles. Continue reading
So now that Peter Matthiessen has won the National Book Award for Fiction for Shadow Country, will the literary world erupt into a noisy discussion about whether a “reworking” of an older trilogy should really be eligible for the award at all? I admit to a bit of skepticism myself, but the book description on Amazon goes to great pains to suggest it’s a totally different thing (except not): Continue reading
Goodness. First it’s the Oregon Book Awards, then it’s the Booker Prize. Shortlists for both arrived today; in the words of Bookslut, “Tonight, fans of world literature symbolically lock Salman Rushdie back in a closet and inwardly dread the prospect of working through 5,000 pages of something called ‘The Northern Clemency’.” Continue reading
This one made me whimper aloud: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince pushed back to summer 2009. The details are all in that link, but here’s a key quote from the press release: Continue reading
In tomorrow’s paper, I review — in a roundabout, bowled over kind of way — Ursula K. Le Guin’s new novel, Lavinia. I had to write swiftly, and I kept thinking how, given about 1200 words, I’d have a million things to say — things that have since flown out of my head. But, er, the point is, I left out one very pertinent thing: the book doesn’t officially come out until Monday, April 21. Continue reading