A heart-warming love letter to books and bookshops, by an amenable fellow turned antisocial old misanthrope“I was in here two years ago and you had a book by Roger Penrose. Do you know what happened to it?” Shaun Bythell – owner of the Book Shop in Wigtown, Galloway – has 100,000 books in stock, sells 20,000 a year, and has handled nearly 1m second-hand books since he bought the shop in 2001. Unsurprisingly, the Roger Penrose volume had not stuck in his mind.Before he entered the book trade at the tender age of 31, he was “amenable and friendly”. Now, after many years of fielding bizarre questions, constant haggling over prices (why is it “acceptable to try to screw the profit out of struggling small businesses” but not supermarkets?), and struggling to survive despite Amazon’s “icy grip” on bookselling, he has been forced to embrace the stereotype of the “impatient, intolerant, antisocial proprietor”. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-24 10:58:38 UTC ]
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Philip Pullman and Jackie Morris have donated to a £14,000 crowdfunding campaign for the New Welsh Review after the literary magazine saw its funding slashed by 20% last year. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-03-03 23:24:10 UTC ]
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The bills propose to give elected parental review boards the power to decide which “age-appropriate" materials can be accessible to minors within a public library, with librarians who don’t comply with the board’s decisions subject to prison time. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-28 05:00:00 UTC ]
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When Amazon accounts for at least 40% if not half of US book sales, independent bookstores in the US are looking to stay afloat using a combination of innovation, mobility, as well as a little taste of Amazon’s own medicine. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-27 23:06:03 UTC ]
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#independent bookstores
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Booker shortlisted author and former Blackwell's bookseller Daisy Johnson has joined the judging panel for the Vintage Independent Bookseller of the Year Award 2020. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-27 22:21:00 UTC ]
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The bookselling landscape shifts and rumbles, and underlying concerns remain. What’s next? Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2020-02-25 13:37:18 UTC ]
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A court in eastern China has sentenced a Swedish seller of books that took a skeptical look at the ruling Communist Party to 10 years in prison for "illegally providing intelligence overseas," in a further sign of Beijing's hard line toward its... Continue reading at CBC
[ CBC | 2020-02-25 13:14:25 UTC ]
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The Booker Prize winner’s seventh novel follows a daughter looking back at her famous mother’s life. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-02-25 13:00:00 UTC ]
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The Booker Prize winner’s seventh novel follows a daughter looking back at her famous mother’s life. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-02-25 13:00:00 UTC ]
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Mr. Gui, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, ran a publishing house that appeared to anger the Communist Party Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-25 10:07:44 UTC ]
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Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish citizen, ran a publishing house that appeared to anger the Communist Party Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-02-25 06:02:16 UTC ]
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This amusing memoir feels like a Silicon Valley version of The Devil Wears Prada. Continue reading at Stuff
[ Stuff | 2020-02-21 16:00:00 UTC ]
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Publisher Eva Bonnier and author David Lagercrantz are among the signatories of an open letter calling for the release of Gui Minhai, a bookseller imprisoned in China. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-20 16:34:50 UTC ]
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HarperCollins has bagged the sequel to Katherine Applegate’s novel The One and Only Ivan, soon to be a film from Walt Disney Studios. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-17 22:17:44 UTC ]
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A pitch-dark comedy on the wages of violence from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of "Milkman" Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-15 15:00:16 UTC ]
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The London Review of Books saw its circulation increase by 3.6% in 2019, marking its 20th year of consecutive growth. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-02-14 06:40:59 UTC ]
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Could a bespoke book subscription service break you out of your reading rut or encourage you to explore new genres?Heywood Hill bookshop has stood on the same spot since 1936. It inhabits a Georgian townhouse at 10 Curzon Street in Mayfair, London, a blue plaque outside commemorating its most... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-02-13 11:00:00 UTC ]
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Emily Nemens' debut novel about a fictional baseball team takes on the social swirl of spring training. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-02-02 15:00:12 UTC ]
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In his memoir 'Children of the Land,' poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo writes of border journeys, family separation and crossing a 'threshold of invisibility.' Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-01-29 15:00:08 UTC ]
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The satire, told in screenplay form, follows an Asian actor trying — and failing — to find good roles. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-01-27 20:55:47 UTC ]
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#charles yu
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“Anyone can be a critic.” It’s a common lament these days now that the book review landscape is changing. English professors and book reviewers in newspapers aren’t the only tastemakers in literary criticism anymore: Goodreads community members, anonymous or top reviewers on Amazon, and... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-01-23 09:48:23 UTC ]
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