books

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Celebs Who Penned NYT Best Sellers

...or, at least, whose name is on the dust jacket

(Newser) - At this very moment, Barack Obama, Amy Chua, George W. Bush, Malcolm Gladwell, and Mark Twain are sitting pretty on the New York Times Best Sellers list —and so are Jay-Z, Keith Richards, and Portia de Rossi. Further proving that you don't have to be a literary genius to...

Google Database Tracks Popularity of 500B Words

We use 'women' a lot more than we used to

(Newser) - Google has quietly released a massive database that's as scholarly a tool as it is fun to play with. Called Ngram , this digital storehouse contains 500 billion words from 5.2 million books published between 1500 and 2008 in English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, and Chinese. It lets anyone search...

Best Books of 2010, Chosen by Authors

Dave Eggers, Tao Lin, and more offer their picks

(Newser) - Who better to ask for book suggestions than an author? Nineteen of them share their favorites of 2010 with Salon :
  • Dave Eggers: The collection Beirut39: New Writing From the Arab World is "a really necessary undertaking" highlighting the "kind of renaissance taking place ... among young Arab writers."
...

Tiny Borders Looks to Buy Mighty Barnes & Noble

Even though it's a fraction of the size

(Newser) - A major Borders shareholder is offering to finance a $960 million bid to buy much larger rival Barnes & Noble. That would amount to $16 a share, unlikely to be the highest bid for the bookseller, which put itself on the block in August. Sources tell the Wall Street Journal...

Let's Celebrate Sex in Literature
Let's Celebrate Sex in Literature
OPINION
Nov 30, 2010 2:43 PM CST

Let's Celebrate Sex in Literature

Why the 'Bad Sex in Fiction Award' is a prudish disgrace

(Newser) - Every year the Literary Review of Britain hands out its Bad Sex in Fiction Award, and every year it draws loads of press and snarky giggles at the expense of big-name nominees (who have included Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and, this year, Jonathan Franzen). Well, Laura Miller of Salon is...

15 Books That Will Never Hit Theaters

Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow'? Not likely

(Newser) - The Great Gatsby is about to get the celluloid treatment again . And while we can only hope that Baz Luhrmann does it justice, a great book does not automatically equal a great film. (The Scarlett Letter much?) The Huffington Post lists 15 novels that it considers "unfilmable":
  1. Pale Fire,
...

E-Books Joining NYT Bestseller List

Fiction and nonfiction will be ranked early next year

(Newser) - E-books are gaining sales and credibility: The New York Times will add two e-book bestseller lists, fiction and nonfiction, beginning next year. The company has been working on a system to track and verify sales for two years, using weekly data from publishers, bookstores, and online retailers. “It was...

Wal-Mart Sells Anti-Gay Kids' Book
Wal-Mart
Sells Anti-Gay Kids' Book
Oct 8, 2010 12:44 PM CDT

Wal-Mart Sells Anti-Gay Kids' Book

Its big lesson: Homosexuality is a sin that can be overcome

(Newser) - Wal-Mart is selling a book for kids and parents that makes the case that homosexuals can overcome their "sin" and revert to heterosexuality, Q Salt Lake reports. Chased by an Elephant, the Gospel Truth about Today’s Stampeding Sexuality is by Janice Barrett Graham—the wife of Stephen Graham,...

Thief Grabs Franzen's Glasses, Demands Ransom

Author runs into latest Brit snafoodle at Hyde Park event

(Newser) - A London literary event featuring US author Jonathan Franzen was gatecrashed yesterday by a crazed thief who grabbed the glasses right off the writer's face, left behind a $150,000 ransom demand for them, then leaped in a lake as he fled British bobbies. Franzen was said to be "...

Book: Steering Blunder Sunk Titanic

And we thought it was the soundtrack...

(Newser) - The mystery of the Titanic , like Céline Dion 's heart, goes on and on...and on...and on... But a new book hopes to end the debate over the ship's demise by outlining a new theory: the crew saw the iceberg in plenty of time, but a helmsman panicked...

Internet May Kill Printed Oxford Dictionary

Its full set currently clocks in at 750 pounds...

(Newser) - Add another item to the Internet's hit list : It looks like the Oxford English Dictionary may one day exist in online form only. Its publisher said yesterday that it's uncertain whether the next edition will be printed on paper at all. And it's easy to see why: The digital version...

E-Readers Read More
 E-Readers Read More 
Aug 25, 2010 2:26 PM CDT

E-Readers Read More

Device owners read more slowly, make up for it by reading everywhere

(Newser) - If your New Year’s resolution was to read more, you might want to buy an e-reader. About 40% of e-reader owners say they read more than they used to, according to a new study. On average, they say, they finish 2.6 books a month compared to a traditional...

Readers Swoon for Amish Romance

Novels depicting the simple life fly off the shelves

(Newser) - Getting tired of True Blood? If sex-soaked entertainment has lost some of its punch, you might look to the pure, simple pleasures of Amish life and love. That's right: Amish romance novels are flying off the shelves as readers find that nothing scintillates like the chaste. "It's a huge,...

Romance Novel Publisher Goes All Digital

Dorchester expects e-books to carry its business

(Newser) - With e-book sales constituting a small but growing portion of the publishing industry, one mass-market paperback publisher is ditching its bread and butter and going all digital. Dorchester Publishing puts out 25 to 30 books a month, two-thirds of them romance novels. But the firm saw sales fall by 25%...

Google Counts the World's Books: 129,864,880

Of course, it all depends on what a 'book' is

(Newser) - After a lengthy and surprisingly complicated discourse on what constitutes a "book," a Google software engineer offers up the day's most bandied-about number: 129,864,880. As in, that's how many books exist in the world. After all, a company in the business of digitizing all of them...

Barnes &amp; Noble May Sell Itself
 Barnes & Noble May Sell Itself 
Aug 3, 2010 6:17 PM CDT

Barnes & Noble May Sell Itself

It's in dire straits amid digital revolution

(Newser) - Book retailer Barnes & Noble said its shares have slumped so low it may put itself on the block—possibly selling the chain to an investment group that would include its founder and biggest shareholder, Leonard Riggio. The world's largest bookseller said late today that its board is evaluating several...

10 Smart, Entertaining Beach Reads

They're not trashy, but they're still page-turners

(Newser) - Looking for a page-turner to read on the beach, but just can’t bring yourself to buy a trashy supermarket romance novel? Allow Sadie Stein to introduce you to 10 respectable summer reads “that you can show with pride—but will devour like a tween guilty pleasure,” on...

Dating Site Matches Up Book Lovers

Meet someone else who hated 'The Da Vinci Code'

(Newser) - Tired of meeting up with a girl from Match.com only to discover—horrors!—she’s into Nicholas Sparks ? Sign up for Alikewise , a dating site that matches you based on your taste in literature. It’s the latest in a string of niche dating sites like Cupidtino...

For True Knowledge, Close the Laptop and Grab a Book
For True Knowledge, Close the Laptop and Grab a Book
David Brooks
Jul 9, 2010 11:38 AM CDT

For True Knowledge, Close the Laptop and Grab a Book

For now, old-fashioned tomes beat the Internet for learning

(Newser) - David Brooks rounds up the latest studies on books vs. the Internet as a learning tool and comes down squarely on the side of paper and ink. The web may be better at imparting facts, but books are better at imparting knowledge to interpret those facts. The Internet produces "...

Real Books Faster Than Kindles or iPads

Satisfaction is about the same for all three

(Newser) - People read faster with old-fashioned books than they do with Kindles or iPads, a new study says. Compared to print readers, iPad users finished 6.2% slower and Kindle readers 10.7% slower, reports Mashable . (They read Hemingway short stories.) Reader satisfaction was about the same, however, and the...

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