Hear the Essential American Poets

via www.poetryfoundation.org

During his tenure as U.S. poet laureate, Donald Hall chose to share his lifelong pleasure of hearing poetry read aloud with others. He selected more than 100 essential American poets for people to listen to. This week, we're making available the first set of these recordings on poetryfoundation.org and on poetryarchive.org as part of a collaboration between Donald Hall and the U.K. Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Audiobooks - Poetry

Overrated?

via online.wsj.com

Overrated is a popular word in the lexicon of literary critics, and who isn't a critic today? The word has the virtue of suggesting that the critic is smarter than other raters, which is always fun. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Literary Criticism

Classic Donald E. Westlake Series Reissued

via www.bookgasm.com
The University of Chicago Press is reissuing Richard Stark's Parker novels, giving one of the great crime series of our time a facelift that Parker himself would approve. Full Story

Powell's Books:
The Hunter
The Man with the Getaway Face
The Outfit

Amazon Creates Political Map Based on Book Sales

via features.csmonitor.com

To help push political books from now through the election, Amazon has created "Amazon Election 2008 Store." Here, customers can see a map of the United States, highlighting red and blue states based on sales patterns of political books. It only takes a glance to see that, apart from the Northeast, the US is awash in "red" books. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Politics - New Arrivals

MacGyver Meets Betty Crocker

via www.powells.com

Featuring twenty projects ranging from edible origami to glowing lollipops, cryogenic martinis to Tupperware boom boxes, the book draws from the expertise of programmers, professors, and garden-variety geeks and offers something to delight DIYers of all skill levels. Full Story

Powell's Books

James Crumley Dies at 68

(Photo: Michael Gallacher)

via www.missoulian.com

Missoula author James Crumley, 68, died Wednesday afternoon at St. Patrick Hospital after many years of health complications. Full Story

Powell's Books

Reprint Publishers Increasingly Important

via www.latimes.com

People whose lives are tied up with books, as writers, critics, booksellers or readers, are always -- always -- looking for something new. But in the last few years, they've been turning to something old. The publishers specializing in reprints have become increasingly important to the people who haunt bookstores searching for the next great read. For some, these reintroduced books are as eagerly awaited as any mainstream house's seasonal list. Full Story

Powell's Books:
New York Review Books
Europa Editions
Hard Case Crime
Persephone Books

John Grisham Libel Suit Dismissed

via news.yahoo.com

A federal judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed against best-selling author John Grisham and two other writers over books they wrote about the wrongful conviction of two men in a 1982 murder. Full Story

Powell's Books:
The Innocent Man

Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlist Announced

via www.thebookseller.com

Writers from London to Vietnam have been shortlisted for the £60,000 Dylan Thomas prize. The award, which is sponsored by the University of Wales, is designed to encourage creative talent in writers under the age of 30. It is a global award, open to any work from any genre which has been published in the English language. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Trouble Came to the Turnip by Caroline Bird
God's Own Country by Ross Raisin
Blood Kin by Ceridwen Dovey
Blackmoor by Edward Hogan
The Boat by Nam Le
Children of the Revolution by Dinaw Mengestu

A Peaceful Revolutionary

via online.wsj.com
In February, the Iranian government showed a fictionalized video on the dangers of foreign plots against the state. One of its stars: a mysterious American named Gene Sharp. In June 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez publicly accused Mr. Sharp of stirring unrest in Venezuela. Last year in Vietnam, authorities arrested several opposition activists who were distributing a book written by Mr. Sharp. In 2005, fires destroyed two Moscow bookstores selling Russian translations of the same book. Full Story
The Albert Einstein Institution

Powell's Books

Free Fantasy E-Books

via www.tor.com

With the recent announcement of the finalists for this year's World Fantasy Awards, Emma Bull and Will Shetterly scored an odd historic first: they're the first married couple to each have a novel on the same final ballot for one of the field's top awards. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Emma Bull
Will Shetterly

New Literary Review

via www.saltpublishing.com

The name of this new magazine, Horizon, was also the name of a groundbreaking literary review edited by Cyril Connolly back in the 1940s. I've always been fascinated by the history of literary reviews, the 'little' magazines; such ephemeral things — yet charged with astonishing intensity and potential to create change. Full Story

Powell's Books

A Trilogy in Six Parts

via www.guardian.co.uk

Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Douglas Adams

Print-on-Demand Service Found Not Liable for Defamation

via www.pbs.org

If print-on-demand services don't exercise any oversight over their books, are they still liable when those books are found to contain defamatory statements? That was the question in a motion recently decided in Sandler v. Calcagni, a defamation action filed in the federal district court in Maine over a book that was printed and distributed by BookSurge, a print-on-demand service that's owned by Amazon.com. Full Story

Powell's Books

Berlin Libraries Returning Nazi Loot

via www.welt.de

Up to 150,000 of the books on the shelves of Berlin's Central and Regional Library headquarters (ZLB) are thought to have been stolen by the National Socialists from Jews, freemasons, social democrats and many other minorities persecuted under Hitler's regime. Full Story

Powell's Books

Agatha Christie Audiotapes Discovered

via www.nytimes.com

The tapes — 27 reels running a total of more than 13 hours — are filled with Christie's painstaking dictation of her life story, rough material recorded in the early 1960s that eventually made up her autobiography, published posthumously in 1977. It stands as one of only a handful of recordings of Christie, the British mystery writer, who rarely agreed to be interviewed. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Agatha Christie

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

via www.washingtonpost.com
A brilliant concierge and a precocious girl consider the secrets of life. Full Story

Powell's Books:
The Elegance of the Hedgehog

John Ashbery Debuts as Visual Artist

(Photo: Tibor de Nagy Gallery)

via www.nytimes.com

Of the hundreds of openings in the city this fall, this one will be particularly distinctive. Because the artist is the pre-eminent American poet John Ashbery, making his solo debut as [a] professional artist at 81, with a modest but polished exhibition of two dozen small collages. Full Story

Powell's Books:
John Ashbery

Great American Publishers, Their Editors and Authors

via www.nytimes.com
...Al Silverman has come along with an amiable and doggedly researched history, "The Time of Their Lives," in which he makes a strong case for a Golden Age of Publishers and Editors (with writers trailing along behind them), stretching from 1946 into the early 1980s. Full Story

Powell's Books:
The Time of Their Lives

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Centennial

via www.nytimes.com

When the novelist Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis died 100 years ago this month, his passing went little noticed outside his native Brazil. But in recent years he has been transformed from a fringe figure in the English-speaking world into a literary favorite and trendsetter, promoted by much more acclaimed writers and by critics as an unjustly neglected genius. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

David Foster Wallace Dies at 46

via www.latimes.com

David Foster Wallace, the novelist, essayist and humorist best known for his 1996 tome "Infinite Jest," was found dead last night at his home in Claremont, according to the Claremont Police Department. Full Story

Powell's Books

Why Are Wyoming's Public Libraries So Good?

via www.economist.com

Burns is a tiny town in southern Wyoming surrounded by wheat fields and ranches. It has a school, a water-tower and barely a dozen roads. As in many towns of its size, Burns's Main Street is somewhat run-down. But it does contain one thriving, well-lit place. This town of just 300 people has a public library containing 11,500 books. Full Story

Powell's Books:
Wyoming

I, Claudius to be Filmed

via www.hollywoodreporter.com

Relativity Media has picked up the rights to Robert Graves' classic Roman Empire-set novel "I, Claudius." Jim Sheridan will write the screenplay with longtime collaborator Nye Heron and direct as well. Full Story

Powell's Books:
I, Claudius