The NYT now has a full obituary for literary agent Robert Lescher.
As widely publicized elsewhere, Random House ceo Markus Dohle happily surprised staff at the company's annual holiday party Wednesday night in announcing that all US employees who have been with the company for a year or more will receive a special $5,000 bonus. (Roughly "a few thousand" people qualify; people who have worked there for less than a year will receive a pro-rated bonus.) Dohle invoked the memory of recently deceased cfo Anne Davis and said the "thank you payment" was one of the last initiatives he and she worked on together to reward US staff for their part in an extraordinary year. (Random House is traditionally generous with employees at holiday time and often awards bonuses across individual divisions, but this award is "unprecedented in scope and in amount.")
The Digital Reader noticed that Amazon appears to be in the process of launching a formal Canadian Kindle store.
