Latham, a bookseller for 35 years, has put together a heady mix of history, philosophy, anecdotes and entertaining factsWhat most people know about the American librarian Melvil Dewey is his phenomenal classification technique, the Dewey decimal system, which is still used in 135 countries. Less well known is how he liked to classify people, too. In a chapter entitled “Dubious Dewey”, Martin Latham describes how the great librarian created groups from A to D, banning all in the D group – Jews, African-Americans, Cubans and the “new rich” – from his Lake Placid resort. He was also a prolific groper of women. Latham speculates that Dewey’s hypocrisy, and his “obsessively domineering persona”, were what caused his lifelong constipation and piles.This is a book that is down on banning, rigidity, abuse of power and all kinds of snobbery, bookish and otherwise. It celebrates stories, scribbling in margins and the collecting, cherishing and even kissing of books – something done with surprising frequency, apparently. Latham, a bookseller for 35 years, currently runs Waterstones Canterbury, where he proudly filed the biggest petty cash claim in the chain’s history to pay for the excavation of a Roman bath house under its floor. But this is not one of those funny “anecdotes from a bookshop” books that have recently been popular – though anecdotes there are aplenty. It is rather a history and celebration of all things bookish, from Alexander the Great’s unusual habit of reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-19 09:00:45 UTC ]
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Setting up Wednesday's #EtherIssue debate on Twitter, Porter Anderson looks at recent writing on perceptions of elitism in the literary world. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-02-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Ahdaf Soueif spoke with The Daily Beast about life in Cairo since the uprising as well as its impact on the city’s writers and bookstores. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-02-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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An independent report on the public library service in England has been commissioned by culture... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-02-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Are brands the new celebrity weeklies? A tweet announcing the news and first pic of the birth of pop singer Kevin Jonas' daughter came not from People or OK! Magazine but a non-media source altogether: the detergent maker Dreft. The Jonas Brothers singer and his wife Danielle teamed up with the... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2014-02-04 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Daunt Books in Marylebone is holding its first literary festival on 27th to 28th March. Authors... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-02-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Yesterday we called the pre-Super Bowl for Doritos, but a lot can happen overnight when you put a Clydesdale and a bunch of Labrador puppies in the same ad. Therefore, upon further review, we're reversing the call: Budweiser's "Puppy Love" is champion the pre-Super Bowl champion, really crushing... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2014-02-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeremy Paxman offers a view of the first world war that has its insights but avoids important questions that need answeringThe battle to carve up the 100th anniversary of the first world war began early this month with education secretary Michael Gove accusing historians and Blackadder – he... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Wikipedia. It's one of the cornerstones of the internet. It's a global resource which has quite a reputation and has spawned numerous copycats and offshoots; the latest addition to the wiki canon is the Wikipedia Voice Intro Project (or WikiVIP). As you may have guessed from the name, this is a... Continue reading at Betanews
[ Betanews | 2014-01-28 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The existence of the D-notice (aka DA-notice) committee is under threat, reports the Sunday Times. It cites sources who say some officials in the Ministry of Defence, which is considering a review of the system, want to fold the committee into the new press regulator or place it within the MoD's... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers as far away as New Zealand, Guatemala and Denmark joined the ABA's Winter Institute to talk shop and pick up tips about better bookselling. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-01-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Library chief, Roy Keating, says show will explore field from Misty comics and superhero classics to graphic novelsBoys in the late 1970s probably assumed the girls comic Misty was all boring romance, puppies and ponies. How wrong they were. They were full of "incredibly dark, weird,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A fitting salute to the Guardian's late parliamentary sketch writerI thought it unnecessary, and perhaps ethically dubious, to cover this book when its first edition came out in 2012; but now, following Simon Hoggart's death earlier this month, and the addition of a selection from a year's worth... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Author Vanessa Curtis, whose novels include Zelah Green and The Haunting of Tabitha Grey (both... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-01-17 00:00:00 UTC ]
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After three years in a row of declining sales, German book retailers ended 2013 on a more... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2014-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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For the first time the Zee Jaipur Literary Festival (JLF) has introduced a professional program to discuss the ongoing challenges to book publishing in India. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-01-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tasters of the reviews competing for the annual prize that recognises 'the angriest, funniest, most trenchant book review of the past 12 months'News: Hatchet Job of the Year award draws and quarters shortlistCraig Brown on Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Internet by Frederic... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-14 00:00:00 UTC ]
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For the past 15 years or so, poets and poetry lovers around the world have earmarked January 17 as a day to pay tribute to the late poet and pacifist William Stafford (1914–1993) with public readings from his works. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-01-10 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Should book publishing be all about profit? The success of OUP, despite its elitism, suggests notOUP is one of Britain's truly great institutions, up there, or nearly, with the NHS and the BBC. As in these other cases, its modern history has been largely dominated by the struggle to preserve its... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2014-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Beth Kephart celebrates the launch of Shebooks, a new digital imprint of mini books written by top women authors. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2014-01-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Academy Chicago Publishers will become an imprint of Chicago Review Press and will expand its publishing program to 15-20 titles per year. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2014-01-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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