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 ]
News tagged with:
#electronic readers
#attention span
#tax breaks
A new survey found that more than 70 percent of parents still prefer print books to the iPad when it comes to reading to children. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-09-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#survey found
It happened. Amazon says ebook sales have surpassed physical book sales on Amazon.com. Continue reading at PC World
[ PC World | 2011-05-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#ebook sales
Amazon.com said that it sold 105 ebooks for every 100 printed books, a milestone that its chief executive, Jeff Bezos, said had occurred sooner than expected. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2011-05-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#jeff bezos
The Book Manufacturers Institute’s annual state of the industry report sees manufacturing returning to a more normal business pattern in 2024, with digital printing playing a larger role in making the manufacturing process more efficient. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-04-23 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#annual state
The Circana BookScan analysis of the US print market in March shows that Q1 2024 was 15 percent ahead of where it was in 2019. The post Circana BookScan on March 2024: US Print Books 2 Percent Under 2023 appeared first on Publishing Perspectives. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2024-04-16 20:56:31 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#circana bookscan
#print market
#bookscan
In the debut novel “The Band,” a burned-out pop idol meets a disillusioned professor, raising the question: What if the dangers of fame resemble white-collar ennui? Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-04-13 09:02:30 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#debut novel
Led by books by Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, fiction sales were up in the first quarter this year, but nonfiction declines resulted in a 1.7% drop in total unit sales of print books. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-04-09 04:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#print books
#rebecca yarros
#fiction sales
#print book
Irish author’s ‘suspenseful and linguistically astonishing’ fourth novel praised for its ‘great wit and humanity’ by judge Bernardine EvaristoThe Irish author Paul Murray has won the inaugural £30,000 Nero Gold prize for The Bee Sting, a comic family saga set in rural Ireland.Murray was... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2024-03-14 19:30:28 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#paul murray
#rural ireland
#year prize
#judging chair
#irish author
#book of the year
Vinson Cunningham’s impressive debut novel finds a watchful campaign aide measuring his ambitions on the trail of a magnetic presidential candidate. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-03-12 09:00:38 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#great expectations
#debut novel
In Andrew Boryga’s debut novel, a young writer creates a career for himself by exaggerating, or sometimes completely manufacturing, stories of tragedy. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-03-09 10:00:20 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#young writer
Britain’s youngest code-breakers, brought to life in a new nonfiction book by Candace Fleming, were normal teenagers: playing pranks, attending dances. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-03-08 10:01:52 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#nonfiction book
In his eighth book, the best-selling author Cal Newport offers life hacks for producing high-quality work while working less. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-03-06 10:03:11 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#eighth book
#best-selling author
Chronicling the high-heeled path to drag-queen superstardom, the new memoir also reveals a celebrity infatuated with his sense of a special destiny. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-03-05 10:00:18 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#memoir
“A Woman of Pleasure,” Kiyoko Murata’s first novel to be translated into English, explores the world of sex work in early-20th-century Japan. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-02-26 10:00:14 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#sex work
#first novel
Difficult comparisons to last January, when 'Spare' sold more than 900,000 copies, led to a 6% decline in unit sales of print books in January from a year ago. Sales improved at the end of the month with the release of 'House of Flame and Shadow' by Sarah J. Maas. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2024-02-20 05:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#6% decline
#print books
His charming memoir “What Have We Here?” traces the path from a Harlem childhood to “Star Wars,” while lamenting the roles that never came his way. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-02-13 10:00:45 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#star wars
#memoir
Without even the slightest sentimentality about it, Laird Hunt's new book, 'Float Up, Sing Down,' provides an elegy for a lost generation. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2024-02-07 17:33:54 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#laird hunt
Lucy Sante recounts the trials and joys of her gender transition in the memoir “I Heard Her Call My Name.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2024-02-03 10:14:55 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#memoir