Armistead Maupin Heads East; Penguin Brings E-Books to the Library
Today in books and publishing: Armistead Maupin is leaving town; everything is coming up e-books (almost); to burn books or not to burn; the French are still hanging on to their beloved print.
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Armistead Maupin is leaving San Francisco. He's been there 41 years, he told the San Francisco Chronicle, the paper in which he serialized his Tales of the City. Everybody's gotta change it up sometimes. The question is, where do you go from there? Santa Fe, apparently: "Maupin, husband Christopher Turner and their Labradoodle, are driving cross-country to Provincetown, Mass., where they'll spend a chunk of summer, before returning west for a stop at Burning Man before winding up in New Mexico, where they plan to re-settle." Road trip, then Tales of a New City. [San Francisco Chronicle]
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E-books are coming to the library. Penguin Group and e-book distributor 3M and the New York City Public Library are in cahoots! Well, in so much as they are working together to bring Penguin e-books to libraries for a trial year. Publishers had been resistant to this, for a number of reasons, but if all goes well, Penguin may do the same for libraries across the country, inspiring other publishers who don't now sell e-books to libraries to change their tune and get in the game as well. It's a crazy, crazy e-book world we've got here. Still, there will be some restrictions: "The pilot, crafted to protect e-book sales, will delay the release of e-books to the libraries for six months after the titles go on sale in stores and online. Each library e-book will expire after a year." [Wall Street Journal]
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Madeleine L'Engle's grandaughter Léna Roy shares her summer reads. The first book she fell in love with, of course, was A Wrinkle in Time. She had it read to her by the nuns at school. [Patch]
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The books alleged to be burned in Canada might not be burned at all. According to reports, a woman named Shaunna Raycraft was going to burn her 30-ton 300,000 volume book collection in Canada if people would not take them off her hands. Page Views, The New York Daily News' book blog, spoke to Raycraft, however, and found that her threat was... For publicity. Ah, the times in which we live! But really, she might burn some of it: "Raycraft explained her hope is for only the truly damaged and irreparable books to be burned." She's holding a book-sorting event in July to separate the bad from the still-good and to attempt to distribute 200,000 of the books to new homes. Why the urgent need to give away all the books? Raycraft and her husband, who together had purchased the books from a widowed neighbor who herself was starting to burn them, have split, with Orion Raycraft wanting to sell the land that currently houses the collection. This is all positively biblical, booklical somehow. Or at least, War of the Roses-esque. [Page Views]
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You know who loves bookstores? The French! Bookstores are, in fact, trés Brooklyn. Not really. But the French love them anyway. "The book market in France is doing just fine. France boasts 2,500 bookstores, and for every neighborhood bookstore that closes, another seems to open. From 2003 to 2011 book sales in France increased by 6.5 percent." And they barely care about e-books at all! So intent on being French, the French. [New York Times]
Canadian poet wins $20,000 prize. Phil Hall, author of the already award-winning Killdeer, has been given the $20,000 Trillium Book Award for the best book and best poetry collections in English and French. [CBC News]
Total E.L. James domination is nigh. You knew this already, but here it is again. [USA Today]
