The truth about book prizes, why Amazon is like an old-fashioned library and how much famous writers really earned from their journalism …Periodically, signs go up saying that Grub Street is closed to through traffic. Observers speculate that the street is being redeveloped as gentrification forces the former inhabitants to move out, or else that the closure may be due to the expansion of the neighbouring university’s English department. Older heads are shaken in what had been the local pub but is now a coffee’n’crafts shop: there used to be more life in the place, they mourn, when bohemian writers could dash off a review against the clock to pay for their round. Even if Grub Street is eventually reopened, it will never be the same again, and anyway it will probably have been renamed “Creatives Crescent”.Such cliches and exaggerations are characteristic of this genre of lament. Like most keening for the good old days, these threnodies are not pieces of dispassionate historical analysis: they are attempts to compensate for so much that is disagreeable about one’s own time by inventing a more or less idealised version of the past. Still, it is worth wondering why “Grub Street” should be the form taken by paradise lost in this case. After all, the street originally so named in London (it was real before it was metaphorical) came to be the home of that kind of “grub” defined by the OED as “a person of mean abilities; a dull industrious drudge; a literary hack”. Even allowing... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
The truth about book prizes, why Amazon is like an old-fashioned library and how much famous writers really earned from their journalism …Periodically, signs go up saying that Grub Street is closed to through traffic. Observers speculate that the street is being redeveloped as gentrification... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-09 00:00:00 UTC ]
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DJ Taylor’s survey of the English literary scene of the last century is vivid and rich but lacks analysisTo Dr Johnson, it was Grub Street, where “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”. To Thackeray, it was “the Corporation of the Goosequill”. In the 20th century, Bloomsbury’s... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-01-03 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#starting point
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An urbane attempt to offer belated autonomy to a small band of well-born, well-connected young womenThe scene with which DJ Taylor begins his 26th book, Lost Girls, in which a girl enters, with some trepidation, a literary party in a house in Bloomsbury, is striking for many reasons. It is, as... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-08-31 07:58:41 UTC ]
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#missing link
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The New York Times writer is stepping down from her role, leaving behind a remarkable career characterized by razor-sharp reviews and intra-literary rowsMichiko Kakutani, the New York Times’ revered chief book critic, announced she was stepping down from her post on Thursday after 38 years,... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2017-07-29 00:00:00 UTC ]
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A stack of new books illuminates the wonder of printed books — writing them, buying them, reading them. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2022-05-04 13:00:42 UTC ]
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#book stores
Frank Herbert on his Boeing, Stephen King on his Wang, and Philip Roth worrying that writing would become too easy … Matthew Kirschenbaum’s account of literature in the digital ageIn a photograph taken in his high-tech home office at 29 Merrick Square, London, in 1968, thriller writer Len... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2016-06-30 00:00:00 UTC ]
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#stop printing
The UK’s literary magazine scene is crumbling due to rising print costs. But I’ll keep printing my own magazine, which gives writers of colour a voice, for as long as I canTen years ago, Jeff Sparrow, editor of Overland, which describes itself as Australia’s only radical literary magazine, wrote... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-10-10 10:30:07 UTC ]
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A statement cited increased costs and removal of UK state funding as the magazine, which featured writers including Paul Murray, Caleb Azumah Nelson and Sally Rooney, is to consider its future Literary magazine the White Review will not be published “for an indefinite period” according to a... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2023-09-26 09:06:39 UTC ]
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“We are thrilled to announce that The Paris Review has won a 2023 Whiting Literary Magazine Prize.” Continue reading at The Paris Review
[ The Paris Review | 2023-09-13 14:10:36 UTC ]
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John Hendrickson's memoir “Life on Delay” recounts his experience with this poorly understood neurological disorder, tracing an arc from frustration and isolation to acceptance and community. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2023-01-18 10:00:22 UTC ]
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On the occasion of the death of the Queen of England, we've rounded up a handful of reviews of books on the queen and her court that we've run over the years. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-09-13 04:00:00 UTC ]
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“Life’s Work” is a memoir of outrageous youth, creative obsessions and ruinous habits. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-09-12 15:07:05 UTC ]
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This New York City Children’s Theater adaptation of Maya Angelou’s celebrated memoir faces the challenge of faithfully telling a story that encompasses a great deal of pain. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-05-25 20:59:11 UTC ]
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This year, writers and publishers learned about the power of #BookTok—a literature-loving corner of TikTok where readers post videos inspired by the books they love. Viral trends involving certain books launched backlist titles to the top of the fiction charts; particularly, tearjerkers with... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2021-12-03 16:56:08 UTC ]
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Thomas Mann may have written some very heavy books, but this biographical novel offers a more lighthearted portrait of the German writer. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-09-14 12:00:00 UTC ]
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‘Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden’ whisks readers to Cambridge, Wales and Venice, in the company of a delightful gang of scholars. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2021-09-10 12:00:00 UTC ]
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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... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-19 09:00:45 UTC ]
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JoAnn Wypijewski is a writer, editor, and journalist based in New York. From 1982 to 2000, she was an editor at The Nation magazine and co-editor, with Kevin Alexander Gray and Jeffrey St. Clair, of Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (2014). She has written for CounterPunch,... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-11-26 18:00:16 UTC ]
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'Uncanny Valley' by Anna Wiener is a biting, funny memoir from inside San Francisco's start-up culture. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-01-10 20:16:25 UTC ]
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We look inside the bookish Northeast, where publishers with deep roots turn innovation into tradition. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-12-01 05:00:00 UTC ]
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