Archive for the 'reading' Category

A panel at the PEN World Voices session came up with the following titles:
Antonio Muñoz Molina: Absalom, Absalom by William Faulkner
Catherine Millet: The Lily of the Valley by Honoré de Balzac
Yousef al-Mohaimeed: first the Arabian Nights, then poetry (including haikus), and then, of all things Nikos Kazantzakis Zorba the Greek
Olivier Rolin: Under the Volcano by [...]



Preaching in the Desert

The New York Times Sunday Book Review has an interesting piece on the book trade:
In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. [...]



The unsolved murder of a private investigator 21 years ago which prompted claims that it was linked to police corruption moved closer to resolution yesterday after it was announced four people, including a former detective sergeant with the Metropolitan Police had been arrested in connection with the killing.

Thanks to The Independent for this news

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American writer and critic Cynthia Ozick has won the $5,000 PEN/Malamud prize for short fiction AND the $20,000 PEN/Nabokov award for “enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship”.
Ozick is known as a “writer’s writer”. Her 2004 novel, Heir to the Glimmering World, was shortlisted for the inaugural Man Booker International prize in 2005.

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No matter what happens in the military there’s always a euphemism for it. But the RAF may have set a semantic record with its description of Prince William’s helicopter landing in a field next to his girlfriend’s house. The mission, it said, “achieved necessary training objectives”.

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The Guardian reports that the actor Wesley Snipes has been sentenced to three years in prison for wilfull tax evasion.
Snipes was cleared of five charges including fraud and conspiracy, but convicted on lesser charges. During the three years he failed to file a tax return, Snipes earned at least $13.8m (£7m), prosecutors alleged, and would be liable for $2.7m in taxes. Snipes claimed he owed only $228,000.

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An interesting article in The Guardian from Stephen Page, publisher and chief executive of Faber and Faber:
Technology, often feared by the bookish world, is a growing friend. As the mass market has risen so has the reality of a technologically connected society. This doesn’t just mean Facebook. Global communities are gathering around common interests online, [...]






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