The Guardian echoes a suggestion of ours from earlier this month, saying that 2009 “was the year of the short story.” They add, “the consensus running through the end-of-year reviews is that it’s been a vintage year for short fiction.” On top of the releases we already mentioned, they cite collections from Kazuo Ishiguro, Ha Jin, James Lasdun, and AL Kennedy–plus the reissued versions of Raymond Carver’s stories. They praise David Vann’s Legend of a Suicide, “supposedly a novel [but] originally published as a story collection in America.”Guardian
Possibilities for Kirkus
Twitter-watchers spotted a brief tweet from Kirkus Reviews noting the publication has “a few interested buyers.” Sarah Weinman reported the managing editor telling her, “no new info at the moment. Just still working through possibilities, but nothing to report.”
Making 2010 Wimpy
One of the 2009’s sales all-stars announced a new book for early next year: Jeff Kinney’s The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary will have a one-day national lay-down on Tuesday, March 16. It releases a couple of weeks ahead of Fox’s Wimpy Kid movie, and “goes behind the scenes to humorously chronicle the making of the film.” Kinney says “I was fascinated by the filmmaking process, and I thought my readers might be as wide-eyed and interested as I was. In The Wimpy Kid Move Diary, I’ve tried to tell the story of how a movie gets made in a way […]
On the Year and the Decade
USA Today picked The Help as their book of the year, and added these ten top critics’ picks:Spooner, By Pete DexterThe Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, By Katherine HoweStitches, By David SmallUnder the Dome, By Stephen KingTriangular Road, By Paule MarshallLet the Great World Spin, By Colum McCannLosing Mum and Pup, By Christopher BuckleyDorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, By Linda GordonRevelation, By C.J. SansomHow to Be a Movie Star: Elizabeth Taylor in Hollywood, By William J. MannUSAT And the newspaper’s Bob Minzesheimer wrote on a essay on the decade in books. Looking further forward, “asked about 2019, Stephen King […]
Bookselling: Black Oak Gets New Space
Berkeley’s Black Oak Books, which closed in June 2008, will reopen in a new location, offering “30 percent more space and ample street parking.” “De-facto owner”/investor Gary Cornell, who had tried to save the store once, hopes to have secured its future by buying the West Berkeley building that will serve as the store’s new home. The mortgage payment will be about 25 percent of what they had been paying in monthly rent.SF Chronicle About 20 Waldenbooks outlets slated for closure next month have been spared.Daily Finance
Kindle and Nook Over the Holidays, and More eNews
Amazon celebrated the holidays with a bounty of Kindle-related press releases: Since Amazon already told us December was their biggest month for Kindle device sales, it stands to reason that when many of those Kindles were unwrapped on Christmas day the etailer sold more electronic books than physical books “for the first time ever.” Let’s put out a release. Random House’s units in other English-speaking territories have made their titles available for sale in the international Kindle stores.Release They have added more books for kids, now offering approximately 390,000 titles in the US. So much for publishers withholding titles.Release In […]