This is a pretty interesting NYT article about the evolution of Barnes & Noble from enemy to ally of smaller bookstores. And a good lesson about organizing a business in the form of the profile of James Daunt as CEO.
They've done an excellent job of coming back after the sale to the group that revitalized one of the top UK booksellers. I still think one of the biggest missed opportunities in the last 10 years is Starbucks not buying B&N and fully integrating their businesses.
Yay! Cormac McCarthy's long delayed book The Passenger will finally be released in October! I added it to my Amazon Wishlist.
And there's a sequel, Stella Maris, coming out soon after that. A festival of riches is about to arrive.
Amazon Prime's Early Access Sale has some really interesting stuff. Just picked up a Smithsonian book of 80 maps of the biggest battles in history for $18.
I went to an author panel a week or so ago, three authors from different countries - US, Germany, and Peru - discussing their experiences and inspirations. And when answering the inspiration prompt, the German guy cited John Grisham and Terry Pratchett instead of just Nobel Laureates and authors of literary classics. I almost cheered out loud to hear a popular author cited, much less two. Grisham, he said may write forgettable books but the way he commands plot and pacing is masterful. And Pratchett, he said, can write anything and make it believable and engaging (for the uninitiated, he cited the flat Disc World, resting atop four elephants, standing on a giant turtle which is swimming through space - and you totally buy it in Pratchett's hands).
Re: the bolded. Inseem to remember reading that David Foster Wallace used to assign Grisham and Louis L'Amour (IIRC) to creative writing classes for that reason. In typical DFW style, he would tell the students "these writers are surprisingly complex -- at least, in the way we will be reading them."
Here are some of the most scathing book reviews of the year, gathered in one place by Lit Hub. Brutal indeed.
I enjoyed reading Newbery Award winning books as a kid. I recently saw that scholars at major universities recommend against kids reading those novels. Boo!
The Midnight, a modern band that is part of the new retro wave or synth wave music movement, is having a graphic novel based on their music published in October by Dark Horse comics, called The Midnight: Shadows.