Tag Archives: Books

Did you Know?, General, Information

ALA’s top ten “Most Frequently Challenged” books list, 2010 (via MobyLives

 

 

Off the list this year are such classics as Alice Walker‘s “Color Purple”; “To Kill A Mockingbird” by Harper Lee; “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger; and Robert Cormier‘s “The Chocolate War.” Replacing them are books reflecting a range of themes and ideas that include “Brave New World” by Aldous Huxley; “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” by Sherman Alexie; ”The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins; and Stephenie Meyer‘s “Twilight.”

“While we firmly support the right of every reader to choose or reject a book for themselves or their families, those objecting to a particular book should not be given the power to restrict other readers’ right to access and read that book,” said Barbara Jones, director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. “As members of a pluralistic and complex society, we must have free access to a diverse range of viewpoints on the human condition in order to foster critical thinking and understanding. We must protect one of the most precious of our fundamental rights – the freedom to read.”

via MOBYLIVES » Amy Sonnie makes the ALA’s top ten “Most Frequently Challenged” books list.

Did you Know?, General, Information, New Books

Truth about Blurbs – via MOBYLIVES

 

 

As publishers, we love getting good blurbs for our authors. At their most basic, they’re a simple marketing tool: for readers not familiar with an author, seeing a quote from another author they’re familiar with offers a way into a world they might not have exposed themselves to otherwise.

But there’s a trick to getting blurbs. It involves fostering the right relationships, leveraging contacts, calling in favors, and sometimes just plain extortion. Often enough, savvy readers understand this and no doubt many of them resist blurbs for just this reason.

Here is Mark Jude Poirier on blurbs:

A blurb from an author I actually know and dislike on a personal level—usually based on their abhorrent behavior in graduate school—means I will turn the book backward on the shelf in the bookstore or hide it under a stack of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue.

via MOBYLIVES.

Did you Know?, General, Information

2011 Best Translated Book Award Finalists Announced

 

 

The shortlist comprises ten books, and six languages are represented:

  • The Literary Conference by César Aira, translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver
  • The Golden Age by Michal Ajvaz, translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland
  • A Life on Paper by Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud, translated from the French by Edward Gauvin
  • The Jokers by Albert Cossery, translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis
  • Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck, translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
  • Hocus Bogus by Romain Gary writing as Émile Ajar, translated from the French by David Bellos
  • The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, translated from the Swedish by Thomas Teal
  • On Elegance While Sleeping by Emilio Lascano Tegui, translated from the Spanish by Idra Novey
  • Agaat by Marlene Van Niekerk, translated from the Afrikaans by Michiel Heyns
  • Georg Letham: Physician and Murderer by Ernst Weiss, translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg

via The Millions : 2011 Best Translated Book Award Finalists Announced.

Book Reviews, Did you Know?, General

2010 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced

 

 

Fiction: Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad (at The Millions, Egan’s Year in Reading, excerpt)

Nonfiction: Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (excerpt)

Autobiography: Darin Strauss, Half a Life (excerpt)

Criticism: Clare Cavanagh, Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West

Biography: Sarah Bakewell, How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer (at The Millions, excerpt)

Poetry: C. D. Wright, One with Others

via The Millions : 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award Winners Announced.

Did you Know?, General

Banned books unbanned in Tunisia and Egypt (MOBYLIVES)

 

 

Books once considered too dangerous, scandalous, or offensive are now beginning to see the light of day according to this report in the Guardian by Benedict Page.

Living up to the ideals of the popular democratic revolutions that sparked region-wide protests and demands for greater political freedom, the people of Tunisia and Egypt are exercising and enjoying their right to a free press. In his report, Page outlines several titles making their way back into circulation that were censored by the exiled former president of Tunisia, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali:

La Regente de Carthage by Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, a critical book about the former president’s family, focusing in particular on the role of his wife, Leila, is among those now openly on sale in the country, according to the International Publishers Association.

Alongside it is a previously banned study of the long-serving Tunisian president from whom Ben Ali took over following a 1987 coup: Habib Bourguiba: La Trace et l’Heritage by Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser.

Also now appearing in the country’s bookshops are The Assassination of Salah Ben Youssef by Omar Khlifi, a book about the shooting of a former Tunisian minister of justice in Frankfurt in 1961, and works by journalist Toaufik Ben Brik, a prominent critic of Ben Ali’s presidency.

Page also reports that long-banned books in Egypt are starting to be circulated at street sales and newspaper kiosks. As we mentioned last week, the newly instituted Tahrir Square Book Fair is set to take place later this month. One imagine publishers will take full advantage and put out loads of books on their tables they would once have only brought out when asked discretely.

Still, as Page alludes, there’s an open question as to whether this new-found desire to un-ban books will translate to a commitment against censorship when it comes to new works. One hopes that in the midst of the excitement generated by these new freedoms the folks doing the hard work in creating transitional governments and drafting new constitutions will make a firm commitment to the freedom of the press.

If not, I suspect the people won’t be timid about voicing their disapproval.

 

MOBYLIVES » Banned books unbanned in Tunisia and Egypt.