Open Letter and the Best Translated Book Award on Facebook
I know we should’ve done this sooner, but we just set up an Open Letter group and a Best Translated Book Award group on Facebook. So if you’re on Facebook, please join. (And feel free to invite all of your friends.) We don’t have much on the Open Letter site (yet), but on the BTB group there are cover ...
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Will You Like It?
Although he includes a few caveats about its effectiveness, Tim’s post at the LibraryThing blog about their new “Will you like it?” feature is pretty interesting. Each book page now has a little bar that, after clicking, will predict whether or not you’d like a particular book. How does it ...
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Obituary: Richard Seaver
One of the legends of publishing, Richard Seaver died from a heart attack on Tuesday. The New York Times has a very nice obituary that highlights his stint at Grove Press, and a bit about what he did at Arcade over the past twenty years. For the past 20 years, Mr. Seaver and his wife ran Arcade Publishing, which has ...
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Obituary: Inger Christensen
Reclusive writer Inger Christensen who “built experimental poems, essays and novels around systematized and mathematical structures” passed away at the age of 73. One of the books of 2009 that I’m most looking forward to is her novel Azorno, which New Directions is bringing out this summer. But after ...
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Best Translated Book 2008 Longlist: The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre
For the next several weeks we’ll be highlighting a book-a-day from the 25-title Best Translated Book of 2008 fiction longlist, leading up to the announcement of the 10 finalists. Click here for all previous write-ups. The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre, translated from the French by Jordan Stump. ...
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CALQUE's Interview with Absinthe's Dwayne Hayes
It’s great to see two of the best translation journals in conversation . . . Just yesterday, Steve Dolph of CALQUE published this interview with Dwayne Hayes, editor and founder of Absinthe. There’s a lot of great stuff in here, including Dwayne’s comments about wanting to become the biggest-selling ...
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The Blockbuster Model: A Reader's Response
Yesterday morning, I got all bent out of shape about Anita Elberse’s “Blockbuster or Bust” article in the Wall Street Journal. I wasn’t the only one—GalleyCat has a few nice responses, including this quote from a senior editor at a major house: “many of the bestsellers that keep us afloat ...
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