For me, books are like crack. I will seriously consider buying less food if there is a new title out that I want to read. And having a Kindle makes it all too easy to have instant gratification. At first I thought I was safe. After all, Kindle allows you to "sample" any book you…
Category: Books
Goodbye to a Modern Pioneer: Michael S. Hart, Project Gutenberg
"Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." ~ George Bernard Shaw. On September 6, the literary world lost a true pioneer. Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, died of a heart attack in his home in Urbana, Illinois.…
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Small Spaces, Powerful Words: Penguin Books’ “Making the Mini Modern Classics”
Penguin Books "Modern Classics" line is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. To honor that landmark, the press is offering fifty titles in "mini" form. Each text measures a mere six inches by four inches. You can purchase each one individually or buy the entire box set. The works offered range "from Beckett to Saki,…
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In Praise of Reading and Fiction
Last October, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize for his writing about the political power struggles of Latin America. In an article following the award, The New York Times called Vargas Llosa an "anti-totalitarian intellectual whose work covers the range of human experience, whether it is ideology or eros." This week,…
Raise a Glass of Dandelion Wine to Ray Bradbury
"Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which…
Judging a Book by Its Cover
Can you judge a book by its cover? Cricket House Book Design thinks so. Well, actually, this innovative company is bestowing new life on vetted classics, giving them much-needed and stunning updates. While Kindles and other e-Readers continue to take over more and more of the market, there are still plenty of bibliophiles who desire…
First Known Jane Austen Manuscript Sells for $1.6 Million
This week, the English auction house Sotheby's sold the earliest known work of novelist Jane Austen for a stunning $1.6 million dollars (£993,250 after taxes). The work fetched three times more than what Sotheby's had anticipated. The manuscript is titled The Watsons. The sixty-eight pages are written in Austen's minuscule hand and it clearly shows…
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You Offend Me, Sir! Top 10 Insults from One Writer to Another
Anyone who thinks authors would not stoop to trash-talking a fellow writer has another thing coming. Authors have egos that bruise like overripe peaches and will lash out at the slightest provocation. Provocations include boredom, low sales (you are convinced that it only takes the right person to acknowledge your brilliance), high sales (convinced that…
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