November 14, 2013

Say you run a huge corporation, with $2.7 billion in annual revenue. Say, too, that a major part of your empire is a series of college bookstores—over eight hundred of… Read more »

Booksellers & bookselling

Ask a bookseller---Book Court's Bonnie Chau — Melville House
Customer threatens Northshire Bookstore for displaying the Qur’an — Kait Howard
Isis Books & Gifts changes signage, dodges blind wrath of ignorant brick-throwers — Simon Reichley
Barnes & Noble takes penultimate step to exiting Queens — Liam O'Brien

Mahmoud Dowlatabadi wins the 2013 Jan Michalski Prize

Sal Robinson

Some prizes are important, and some prizes are just not to be trusted. For instance, a prize where when you win it you, you have to go to Stockholm and… Read more »

This week in 1913: Swann’s Way is published, Georg Trakl gives a bad reading of a fantastic work

Melville House

Just before one of its darkest moments came the twentieth century’s most exciting year . . . It was the year Henry Ford first put a conveyer belt in his car factory, and the… Read more »

It’s that time of year again for sweating profusely and sniggering: the Bad Sex Award is back

Zeljka Marosevic

‘So are we going to do it, Lawrence?’ ‘Yes,’ he whispers. ‘Yes.’ That’s a quote from Motherland by William Nicholson, which is one of the novels that have been shortlisted… Read more »

Blackwell’s bringing pop-up shops to British cities for Christmas

We’re getting close to the holiday season—which seems to begin earlier with each passing year—so brace yourself for the barrage of incessant caroling, ubiquitous snowmen, and the horrifying, oppressive crowds.… Read more »

Melville House Books

How to lay off 600 booksellers: with a delicious dollop of horseshit

Dustin Kurtz