A charming French novel about an old-school publisher trying to get to grips with the digital ageAt more than one point in this novel I found myself asking: could this be any more French? Early on we meet a character described thus: “She used to be incredibly good-looking and now at thirtysomething she is creditably handsome.” Sorry? What the narrator, an ageing male publisher, looks like, or how creditably or uncreditably good-looking he is, we don’t find out. Another woman leaves the room “in a wiggle of buttock” – I dropped my annotating pencil when I read that line. “Artichokes require a degree of elegance” – there’s another drop of essence of Gallic for you.But there is more to Dear Reader, and what kept me going was that one of the subjects exercising our narrator is the issue of electronic readers – Kindles or, as our hero Robert Dubois has it, the “dear reader” of the title. This book is an elegy for a dying world: that of the printed book and, that death’s darker corollary, the reader who is still interested in, or has the attention span for, the long-form narrative. (I always thought these things were arranged better in France, with no Net Book Agreement and tax breaks for bookshops, but apparently not.) In the world of Dear Reader, there has been a general collapse of cultural understanding: the interns point out to Dubois the remarkable coincidence that the publishing house they have landed in has the same name as him. Meanwhile, Dubois cannot quite get to... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2014-12-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Dave Grohl's memoir The Storyteller (S&S) was one of the critics most reviewed this week, picking up mentions in The Bookseller, the Observer, Guardian, Times, Sunday Times and Irish Times. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-17 21:25:03 UTC ]
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Gains of 26% in both the adult fiction and young adult fiction categories combined to increase total unit sales of print books by 2% last week over the comparable week in 2020. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-10-15 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“Silverview” features a young bookstore owner in an English seaside town, caught up in an investigation involving two cunning spymasters. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-10-11 09:00:03 UTC ]
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John le Carré's final novel Silverview (Viking) dominated the review pages this week, picking up mentions from the Sunday Times, Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Sunday Telegraph, the i and the Scotsman. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-10-11 06:20:33 UTC ]
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On Oct. 25, join The New York Times Book Review and special guests for performances of favorite letters and reviews from the archives, trivia and more. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-10-07 16:09:57 UTC ]
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We interviewed booksellers about their experience of the pandemic and their customers. Continue reading at The Conversation
[ The Conversation | 2021-10-07 05:14:45 UTC ]
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“The Taking of Jemima Boone,” the first nonfiction book by the novelist Matthew Pearl, recounts a legendary abduction case that complicates our view of relations between settlers and Native Americans during westward expansion. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-10-05 16:57:40 UTC ]
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Some of today’s best-loved books — think “Catch-22,” “Tender Is the Night” and even “Anne of Green Gables” — had a rocky reception in our pages. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-09-29 09:00:26 UTC ]
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“Cloud Cuckoo Land,” Doerr’s first novel since “All the Light We Cannot See,” unites five characters over a millennium in a tribute to books and those who love them. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2021-09-24 09:00:04 UTC ]
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Unit sales of print books fell 3.6% last week compared to 2020. The pattern was a familiar one—higher fiction sales offset by declines in nonfiction. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-09-23 04:00:00 UTC ]
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HarperNonFiction has launched an innovative marketing campaign for the early e-book release of Ben Mezrich’s The AntiSocial Network, which will allow readers to manipulate the title's price by micro trading in GameStop stock. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-13 00:36:07 UTC ]
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With all categories except adult fiction having declines, unit sales of print books fell 5.2% in the week ended September 4, 2021 from the comparable week in 2020 at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-09-09 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle (Fleet) danced across the review pages this week, picking up mentions in The Bookseller, the Guardian, the Times and the New York Times, consistently being labelled as "one to watch this autumn". Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-09-06 14:54:44 UTC ]
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There's more great children's books being published than ever before -- this is how to find the best children's book reviews online. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2021-08-30 10:36:00 UTC ]
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Unit sales of print books increased 1.6% last week over 2020, ending four weeks of declines. Adult fiction sales led the rebound, with sales up 26.3%. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-08-26 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Paul McCartney's forthcoming book The Lyrics will feature the newly discovered words he wrote for an unrecorded Beatles song alongside 153 of his other works. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2021-08-24 06:19:40 UTC ]
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The Lyrics will feature a ‘self-portrait’ in 154 songs, including the unrecorded Tell Me Who He IsPaul McCartney will include the previously unseen lyrics to an unrecorded Beatles song in his forthcoming book The Lyrics.On Monday, the former Beatle revealed the 154 songs to feature in the book,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-23 16:00:08 UTC ]
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While print unit sales improved last week over the week ended August 7, 2021, they still fell 1.3% compared to a year ago, as adult fiction remained the only category to post a meaningful increase. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-08-18 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Unit sales fell in all nonfiction categories last week, offsetting another week of increases in adult fiction and resulting in a 1.7% decline from the week ended August 1, 2020. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-08-05 04:00:00 UTC ]
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With sales in nonfiction categories all falling again, unit sales of print books declined 4.9% last week compared to the week ended July 25, 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2021-07-29 04:00:00 UTC ]
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