10 Best and Worst Lists The New York Times released its list of the top 10 books for 2006. The list will appear in the December 10th print issue of the Book Review. And in case you missed this one: Here is another list that I thought might be worth a revisit. It is called the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Century and it was published by the national conservative weekly Human Events, or as it has been called 'a Bible for the right', last May. 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders voted to determine...
"Mediocre Writers Borrow; Great Writers Steal" – T.S. Eliot
Google Book Search: The New Literary Lie Detector The plagiarism police have found a new weapon: Google Book Search First there is the story of Winston Churchill borrowing a few lines from H.G. Wells, though not directly attributed to the Google Book Search technology one would assume there was a good chance the writer employed it during his research.War of the Worlds - World Wars - Talk about the boundaries of truth and fiction.I can't wait to find out who President Bush is getting his lines from. Then the story of Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan "copying phrases and sentences...
Google Book Search: The New Literary Lie Detector
"Mediocre Writers Borrow; Great Writers Steal" - T.S. EliotThe plagiarism police have found a new weapon: Google Book SearchFirst there is the story of Winston Churchill borrowing a few lines from H.G. Wells, though not directly attributed t0 the Google Book Search technology one would assume there was a good chance the writer employed it during his research.War of the Worlds - World Wars - Talk about the boundaries of truth and fiction.I can't wait to find out who President Bush is getting his lines from.Then the story of Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan "copying phrases and sentences for his...
I Love the Smell of Books in the Morning
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty. First appeared here SlateBeing a bookseller I know that smelling books is part of the job. Who knows how many books I smell a year, hundreds? thousands? It is an important step when trying to determine a books value. Does it smell musty? mildewy? damp?Steven Poole has a nice blog piece on the smell of books, "Smells Like Literary Spirit", at the Guardian Unlimited
Abebooks – They Just Don’t Get It -Part 2
So I blogged yesterday about the OJ thing how out of touch Abebooks is with the booksellers who have put them on the mapThen today I see they sent out a press release on the results from their ridiculous poll about the new OJ book.What a set up! They email their clients (us) and promote the poll on their blog and their website and then in turn take the results and send out a press release about the "revulsion" from the book world regarding the book.Simply blatant self promotion to get in on the hyper-attention the OJ story is getting...