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In response to the "I Hate Reading" Facebook page (which is "liked" by nearly half a million people), Lindsay Thompson, an account manager at AbeBooks, created this brief appreciation of books. And if you find this inspiring, check out one of several (sadly less popular) "I Love Reading" pages that have popped up on Facebook.
The National Book Awards, a literary institution for more than sixty years, broke through their traditional submission guidelines recently, accepting for the first time an exclusively electronic book as a nominee. According to National Book Foundation (NBF) executive director Harold Augenbraum, although the rules stipulate that eligible books must be printable on paper—and the app in question, designed for the iPad, contains features such as graphics and video—the foundation reviews its guidelines annually, and broadening them to include e-books may be a natural next step.
"I wonder whether the tablet reader will lend itself to a new phase in the type of literary abstraction," Augenbraum told book culture website inReads, noting that the nominated app "combines text, graphics, and video in a seamless story. That will have an effect on the way we read. There will be people who will only want to read text, or watch video, and then there will be combinations."
Among the other books nominated for this year's awards are 191 poetry collections, 311 novels, and 441 nonfiction books.
For more of Augenbraum's behind-the-scenes perspective on the National Book Awards, check out the full interview at inReads. And stay tuned this fall as the NBF whittles down its list of nominees; the finalists for the ten-thousand-dollar prizes will be announced on October 12.
Last month, we reported on SMITH magazine's six-word memoir contest Six Words About Work, which launched with the theme My Job (or, "Why I do what I do").
For the next eight days, the magazine is accepting entries on a new topic: bosses—and not just any bosses, but the best bosses ever.
Like inaugural contest winner Mindy Getch, whose My Job memoir, "Who doesn't love the payroll lady," rose above more than four thousand entries, the winner of the boss-themed contest will receive as a prize her choice of an iPad2 or a BlackBerry PlayBook. The prizes are cosponsored by the consulting firm Mercer.
Today's featured memoir comes from Elisa Shevitz: "The CEO knew every intern's name." Other entries, which appear on the SMITH website, include, "Peter Pan complex, together we regress," "Said, 'If he goes, I go,'" and "Verbal pugilist, he's still my dad."
On August 13 the contest will refresh with a new theme. Until then, boss-related entries can be published (with no fee) directly to the contest page.
Yuvi Zalkow, the writer responsible for the previously posted clip about writing desk envy, is back with an irreverent trailer for his unpublished novel. Or is it a memoir?
This week Picador is publishing a tenth-anniversary edition of Barbara Ehrenreich's best-selling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. This clip, from the 2007 documentary The American Ruling Class, features Ehrenreich and former Harper's editor Lewis Lapham.
The Dayton Literary Peace Prize committee announced today that its first Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award will be given to novelist and nonfiction writer Barbara Kingsolver. The ten-thousand-dollar prize, formerly known as the Lifetime Achievement Award but renamed to honor the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke, celebrates an author for a body of work that promotes peace and understanding.
Kingsolver is the author of, most recently, The Lacuna (Harper, 2009), a novel examining the relationship between Mexico and the United States. Among her other works are the memoir Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (HarperCollins, 2007), coauthored with her husband and daughter, and the novels The Poisonwood Bible (HarperFlamingo, 1998) and The Bean Trees (Harper and Row, 1988).
The author will receive her award on November 13 at a ceremony in Dayton, Ohio, the site of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords. The finalists for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, given annually for a book of fiction and a book of nonfiction, will be revealed later this month, and the winners will be honored alongside Kingsolver.
In the video below, Kingsolver discusses nationhood, news and gossip, and schadenfreude in The Lacuna, which won the 2010 Orange Prize.
Check out this trailer for the new web series $1 Book Heaven, directed by Mike Lowther, about a bookstore where each new employee is crazier than the last one.
This short video promoting independent booksellers puts the words of Thomas Pynchon, Virginia Woolf, Kurt Vonnegut, and other famous novelists in the mouths of ordinary citizens.
An unexpected reunion in a bookstore gets awkward in this short film starring Anthony Ahern, Alison Bell, and Petra Kalive and written and directed by Miklos Janek.
The best-selling author of eleven books, including A Writer's Life (Knopf, 2006), a former reporter for the New York Times, and the father of The New Journalism, Gay Talese is also one of the best-dressed writers around. Check out this video of the elegent author by Jake Davis, and while you're at it, watch the latest episode of the web series Put This On, which features an interview with Talese.
