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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Publishers are planning to celebrate the life and work of Sylvia Plath on the 50th anniversary of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Booksellers across the UK have put up signs in their windows reading 'We pay our taxes' in response to a hearing by the Public Accounts Committee on Amazon's business practices. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-11-21 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Jeff Kinney's seventh Diary of a Wimpy Kid novel, The Third Wheel (Puffin), has become one of... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-20 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Thinking about how to give the next generation a step up, four young booksellers started the Emerging Leaders Project in 2006 with the support of the American Booksellers Association. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Tim Godfray, chief executive of the Booksellers Association, has backed the stance taken by House... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
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This month's starred reviews of self-published books includes a SF mystery set in dystopia where people live in domed cities and a memoir of Mexican immigration to the US. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-11-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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One day, the year 2012 may be remembered as the year of the multimedia tablet device. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-11-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Colin Firth and Michael Fassbender are to star in a film about the relationship between writer... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Women-only literary prizes have been created in both Canada and Australia to help balance the attention given to work by male authors vs. female authors. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-11-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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More Info Hands-on with Kobo's Glo and Mini e-readers (video) Kobo Glo review: another illuminated e-reader lights up the market Amazon Kindle Paperwhite review While tablet and smartphone manufacturers battled it out over screen sizes, e-reader makers seem to have settled on an... Continue reading at Engadget
[ Engadget | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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First Barnes & Noble, then Indigo Books and Music and Books-A-Million – now some indie bookstores are choosing not to add Amazon-published titles to their bookshelves. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-11-06 00:00:00 UTC ]
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The Rosalind Prize for Fiction – named for Shakespeare's 'As You Like It' heroine – follows awards like Australia's women-only Stella Prize and the U.K.'s Orange Prize. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2012-11-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Canongate has signed up a Swedish true crime book telling the tale of a man wrongly imprisoned... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-11-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Members of the public have voted Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Technology Review has relaunched itself as MIT Technology Review, completing a digital-first transformation worthy of its cutting-edge namesake. Continue reading at Folio Magazine
[ Folio Magazine | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Little, Brown imprint Abacus has acquired a debut novel by Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, The... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Facing financial and other pressures, the Canadian Booksellers Association voted October 18 to become a division of the Retail Council of Canada, which CBA has been affiliated with since 2009. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-10-26 00:00:00 UTC ]
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E.L. Doctorow, Michael Henry Heim and many other poets, authors and translators were given awards and honored during the 2012 PEN Literary Awards. Continue reading at Publishing Perspectives
[ Publishing Perspectives | 2012-10-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Some 20 weeks before Newsweek set the media into a frenzy with its announcement of a digital-first publishing strategy, Jason Pontin was already grappling with how to move his 113-year-old publication toward a digital future. Pontin announced in June that MIT's Technology Review magazine would... Continue reading at AdWeek
[ AdWeek | 2012-10-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
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