Virginia Woolf laid out her views pretty clearly in A Room of One’s Own, the book-length essay based on the lectures on Women and Fiction that she gave at two colleges in 1928: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” She could...
News
A curated selection of articles we find interesting, or relevant, for the times and our readers!
Furloughed Waterstones booksellers are petitioning their hedge fund owner for minimum wage.
Waterstones has told staff that furloughed workers will not receive any increase to their wages until shops can reopen, after a petition was launched calling on the book chain to help workers who are being paid below minimum wage on the scheme.
Here’s some surprising good news: In the US and the UK, book sales are up and indies are growing.
Here’s some surprising end-of-2020 good news: books are doing . . . well? According to NPD BookScan, unit sales of print books in the United States rose 8.2% in 2020. Units hit 750.9 million this year—57.2 million up from last year. This is fairly surprising, given the pandemic was expected to...
Eric Jerome Dickey, bestselling author, dies aged 59
Bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey, a leader in contemporary black literature, has died at age 59.
"It is with great sadness that we confirm that beloved New York Times bestselling author Eric Jerome Dickey passed away on Sunday, 3 January, in Los Angeles after battling a long illness,” a rep for Dutton, an imprint...
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Nearly a Century Later, We’re Still Reading — and Changing Our Minds About — Gatsby
I’ve long held to the completely unsupported notion that a protagonist is simpler to write than a truly memorable supporting character. Sometimes just a silhouette — created with a few slashes of the pen, a few charismatic adjectives — seems the more unlikely accomplishment, born out of some surplus wit...
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Simone de Beauvoir's 'remarkable' letters to Violette Leduc sold at auction
Almost 300 letters, mostly unpublished, from the influential feminist thinker Simone de Beauvoir to the French novelist Violette Leduc, including The Second Sex author’s rejection of her friend’s romantic advances, have sold for €56,700 (£51,500).
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The Best Books About the Trump Era, According to the Critic Who Read 150
"So many books have been published on Trump, Trumpism, and the flurry of issues surrounding his time in office, you could never possibly make a dent in them. Unless you’re Carlos Lozada, Washington Post book critic, who read and wrote about 150 of them for his own book, What Were We Thinking: A Brief...
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Magical Realism
" “NICE ONE … but where is the magical realism?” commented a friend, after reading one of my stories. A joke, yes, but there was also an element of blunt sincerity to his words — it isn’t rare for me to bump face-first into the expectation that I deploy the magical...
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£2.5m Of Books Stolen In ‘Mission Impossible’ Heist Recovered From Underground Romanian Lair
Some 200 “culturally significant” books including works by Galileo, Sir Isaac Newton and Goya that were stolen in a west London heist have been found buried underground in Romania.
The books were swiped in January 2017 during a burglary in Feltham, which saw thieves cut holes in the roof of...
In Publishing, ‘Everything Is Up for Change’
A wave of deaths and retirements prompted publishers to name new leaders. Now the industry is in a rare moment of transformation that promises to influence the books put out into the world.
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Library of Congress to Honor Author Colson Whitehead
Already this year’s recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Orwell Prize for political fiction, Whitehead is now being honored by the Library of Congress. On Monday, it announced that he had won the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.
...
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Dana Canedy to Be First Black Publisher of Simon & Schuster
Dana Canedy has been named senior vice-president and publisher of Simon & Schuster’s namesake imprint, one of the biggest jobs in the industry, according to the New York Times. She is the third woman and first Black person to hold the role.
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10 Books Recommended by Black-Owned Bookstores
There are a lot of anti-racism reading lists floating around the internet, and there are a lot of people interested in buying the books on those lists. This caused a good problem: Black-owned bookstores have been so inundated with anti-racism book orders that they can hardly keep up with the demand. (A few not-so-understanding...
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‘A Conflicted Cultural Force’: What It’s Like to Be Black in Publishing
An author, literary agent, marketer, publicist, editors and booksellers talk about how race affects their careers — and the books you read.
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5 Best Bookstores in Jacksonville
The top rated Bookstores in Jacksonville are:
- Chamblin Bookmine -sells new and used books
- San Marco Bookstore -a shop that sells books, papyrus greeting cards and other literary gifts
- Books-A-Million -a chain of bookstore
- 2nd & Charles -a second-hand bookstore
- Barnes & Noble -one of the largest book chain in the US market
Turning the page: How Chamblin's Bookmine is getting back to business.
Chamblin's Bookmine is back in action, albeit with a few changes to ensure public health and safety.
Click here for the full Jacksonville Business Journal article!
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Coronavirus Shutdowns Weigh on Book Sales
Total U.S. sales in March were down 8.4 percent to $667 million, a sign of how the early days of the pandemic hurt booksellers and publishers.
Clive Cussler: Dirk Pitt novels author dies aged 88
Clive Cussler, the US author of the popular Dirk Pitt novels, has died at the age of 88.
He wrote 25 books in the adventure series, including Sahara and Raise the Titanic, and sold more than 100 million copies of his novels in total.
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Ronan Farrow, Emily Bazelon and Colson Whitehead among L.A. Times Book Prize finalists
Ronan Farrow, Emily Bazelon, Attica Locke, Michael Connelly and Colson Whitehead are among the finalists for the 40th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizesannounced Wednesday, with crime novelist Walter Mosley named as the winner of the 2019 Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement.
...Charles Portis, Elusive Author of ‘True Grit,’ Dies at 86
The publicity-shy Mr. Portis earned a modest but devoted readership and accolades as America’s “least-known great writer.”
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Kobe Bryant Was Working on a Children's Book When He Died. His Co-Author Just Deleted the Draft
Kobe Bryant and Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho were working together on a children’s book, but the author of “The Alchemist” said he deleted the draft after Bryant’s death in a helicopter crash.
The 72-year-old novelist told The Associated Press on Monday that the two men started discussing the project in...
It is absolutely fine to rip your books in half
We treat books like sacred objects. They’re not. They’re value-neutral delivery systems.
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The Best Books About Jacksonville
The Jaxson's list of 36 of the best nonfiction books ever written about Jacksonville and the people who made it what it is today.
10 Black Women Writers You Should Read Right Now
The ZORA Canon, our first-of-its-kind list of the 100 most important books written by Black American women, celebrates established literary giants. To shine a light on the next generation of greats, we asked a few of our contributors and columnists — Feminista Jones, L’Oreal Thompson Payton, Erika Stallings, and Danielle Jackson — to...
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Here are 10 of the decade's most influential books
A decade is in part defined by its books. And recent days have seen many roundups of the best books of the 2010s -- the titles that critics consider the pinnacle of literary excellence.
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The Best Books of 2019
According to Slate’s book critic.
Small business, big impact: Keeping Jax’s holiday shopping local
Black Friday might bring throngs of shoppers to major retailers nationwide and Cyber Monday has consumers clicking away for the best online deals, but in between the two is a day just for the locals: Small Business Saturday.
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John Le Carré Fears For The Future In 'Agent Running In The Field'
Decades ago, Le Carré worked for British intelligence services MI5 and MI6. He has channeled that experience into more than 50 years of espionage thrillers.
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Richard Jackson, Who Had an Ear for Children’s Books, Dies at 84
"As an editor he championed writers, like Judy Blume, who changed the landscape of literature for young people. He later became a writer himself."
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Two Authors Just Won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Here's What to Know About Them
"For the first time in the Nobel Prize for Literature’s 118-year history, two authors were announced Thursday as recipients of the award: Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke and Polish author Olga Tokarczuk. (Handke received the Prize for 2019. Tokarczuk received the Prize for 2018.)
Last year’s Nobel Prize for Literature...
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Here Are The Finalists For The 2019 National Book Awards
"Just 25 books can still be called contenders for the 2019 National Book Awards.
The National Book Foundation on Tuesday unveiled the finalists, listing five books each in five categories. And while there are some readily recognizable names among the remaining authors — some with past shortlist appearances and other...
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The Authoritarian’s Worst Fear? A Book
"Governments are spending a remarkable amount of resources attacking books — because their supposed limitations are beginning to look like ageless strengths."
Check out the 3 top spots in Jacksonville's Fairfax neighborhood
"Spending time in Fairfax? Get to know this Jacksonville neighborhood by browsing its most popular local businesses, from a a bookstore to a garden and home decor shop.
Hoodline crunched the numbers to find the top places to visit in Fairfax, using both Yelp data and our own secret sauce...
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