2009 is really zipping by. It’s almost March, which means Spring is just around the corner. I guess time flies when you’re having fun!
I don’t have much to add, other than I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend. I hope all of you out there on the tubes have a relaxing two days as well.
As always, have a happy and safe weekend!
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With all this talk of doom and gloom surrounding the economy nowadays, it’s always nice to read some good news for a change – especially if that good news is in the publishing industry.
According to this Publishers Weekly article, Harlequin did have a pretty good year:
Harlequin was a bright spot for parent company Torstar in 2008. Revenue at the romance publisher rose 2.2%, to C$472.9 million ($379 million), while operating profit increased 11.2% to C$67.4 million. Sales in the company’s North American retail and Overseas segments were up in the year, offsetting declines in the North American direct-to-consumer segment. Harlequin also had a slight benefit from the strengthening of the U.S. dollar.
The article also points to strong ebook sales as well:
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Making its public debut, the Kindle 2 has finally been shipped to customers anxiously awaiting the updated and improved ebook reader. I wrote this previous post about the new Kindle, so I won’t spend a lot of time re-hashing the same old features.
But what I do want to discuss is something that I (and a lot of others around the net) have discussed – the pricing of ebooks and subscriptions for the Kindle. Here’s a brief pricing rundown from this article in the New York Times:
The Kindle catalog is bigger, too; now 240,000 books are available. New York Times bestsellers are $10 each, which is less than the hardcover editions. Older books run $3 to $6.
The article continues:
You can have any of 30 newspapers, including this one, wirelessly beamed to your Kindle each morning ($10 to $14 a month) — minus ads, comics and crosswords. Magazines (22 so far, $1.50 to $3 monthly) and blogs ($2 a month) can arrive automatically, too.
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I don’t think I have ever watched the Oscars in my entire life. And last night was no exception. Seeing Hollywood pat itself on the back with these awards for the plethora of filth they churn out is less than appealing to me.
However, I did find it interesting to read that the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button did win a few minor awards. Then I was shocked to read this LitKicks post that no one even mentioned F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote the short story that the movie was loosely based on.
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I’m not afraid to admit when I might be wrong. Like many others, there are times when I jump to conclusions based on sketchy information. This is one of those times. I wrote this post about the Dubai Literary Festival allegedly censoring a certain book from the festival, and outright banning it from Dubai.
In case you missed it, here’s what happened according to this Guardian article:
The row began brewing on Monday, when newspaper reports emerged of a "ban" imposed by the festival on The Gulf Between Us, a novel by Bedell, because one of its characters, a sheikh in a fictional Gulf state, was gay. Bedell had been told by the festival organisers that her book was unsuitable for inclusion because they "[did] not want our festival remembered for the launch of a controversial book", she told reporters. Meanwhile, her publishers, Penguin, had been told by booksellers in UAE that the novel itself had been censored by the authorities.
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This weekend I’ll be giving away a copy of the latest issue of Poets & Writers Magazine (aff link)! I have been a faithful subscriber to this magazine for a few years now and I love it. The magazine talks about literature, writing, publishing and a variety of other content that keeps me going.
Why the giveaway? For some reason I received 2 issues in my mail rather than one. Instead of letting the extra copy go to waste and throwing it out, I thought I’d give it away to one of my faithful readers!
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Things are finally back to normal. After having my computer crash, losing lots of data, not being able to repair crashed computer and then having to buy a new computer, I’m finally feeling like things are getting back to normal. For those of you who don’t know me: I don’t deal with change very well.
Nevertheless, Friday is here and the weekend is upon us. I’m looking forward to getting a lot of writing done, reading, and maybe catching a movie on Saturday. Hopefully all of you out there in internetland can have an equally enjoyable and relaxing weekend. Spoil yourself and spend time doing something you really love.
And as always, have a happy and safe weekend!
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It’s rare that I finish a book in one day. Not that I’m a slow reader, I just like to savor the experience of reading a book (yeah, that’s it!). But I just started, and finished this book in less than a day. Of course I’m talking about Lisa Genova’s book Still Alice (aff link). I have written briefly about this book in this post because Lisa originally self-published this book before signing on with a traditional publishing house.
The novel follows Alice Howland, a fifty year old Harvard professor, married and a mother of three. She is, by any measure a successful woman at the top of her game. And this is what makes it so tragic and chilling when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. The symptoms start innocently enough; forgetting words, an occasional appointment and other lapses of absentmindedness we all fall into during the course of our lives. But when she is out running and becomes lost in Harvard Square, a place she has known for 25 years, her life is kicked off track.
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This story caught my attention for two reasons: First, it’s in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. I have been to Dubai and it’s a beautiful, vibrant city with very nice, hospitable people. Dubai is also very much a "literary" city where poetry is very popular (much more so than here in the US).
The second reason why this story caught my attention is because it deals with censorship. I take a hard, unyielding stand on any form of literary censorship because I firmly believe that literature reveals fundamental truths about the human condition – and those truths cannot be suppressed.
The book A Gulf Between Us by Geraldine Bedell was rejected from the Dubai Literary Festival that is coming up next week. Bedell wrote this piece in the Guardian, obviously upset by her book’s exclusion from the festival. She first describes how her book is not offensive to the Arab culture and might even shed some positive light in that region:
The book certainly isn’t a PR handout for the region, but I suspect (even hope) that makes the overall warmth towards it that much more telling. The book is an affectionate portrait, and I rather expected readers to be surprised that there could be so much to like.
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This past week has been a rather difficult one, to say the least. It started when my Powerbook G4 decided to suffer a catastrophic failure – the details of which you can read in this previous post. And the week reached its low point on Saturday February 14 (yes, on Valentine’s Day, but I wasn’t feeling the love) when it became clear that the computer was beyond my ability to repair it.
Here is the result of my efforts:
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