Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: lit crit, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 26 - 50 of 290
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: lit crit in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Bethanne Patrick (pictured, via) has joined Shelf Awareness. According to the publishing site, Patrick will serve as “editor of our upcoming consumer publication.”
We reached out to the site, but no more details were offered about the new publication. Patrick is known as The Book Maven on Twitter and has written two books for National Geographic. Her book reviews have appeared in a number of publications, including O the Oprah Magazine and TheWashington Post.
Here’s more from Shelf Awareness: “From 2008 until early 2011, Bethanne hosted The Book Studio for WETA-PBS, an online author interview show. She was a contributing editor to Publishers Weekly, editor of AOL Books from 2004-2007 and from 2001-2004 was an editor for Pages magazine, where she wrote the ‘Global View’ column.”
Did you know that President Thomas Jefferson, novelist Mark Twain, and evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin all wrote in the margins? According to the New York Times, marginalia was denounced in the 20th century as a form of graffiti. These days, scholars love marked up books.
The article offers these observations from University of Toronto professor Heather Jackson: “Books with markings are increasingly seen these days as more valuable, not just for a celebrity connection but also for what they reveal about the community of people associated with a work…examining marginalia reveals a pattern of emotional reactions among everyday readers that might otherwise be missed, even by literary professionals.”
The Caxton Club and the Newberry Library will host a symposium in March to debate this subject; Jackson will be speaking there as well. The event will spotlight on a new essay collection entitled Other People’s Books: Association Copies and the Stories They Tell. This title contains 52 essays and 112 illustrations.
If you enroll in a mediabistro.com course today, you can get a 25 percent discount to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Simply enroll in a course using the promotional code “LOVE25″ by 5 p.m. ET today and you’ll get the discount on any course. You could sign up for Advanced Nonfiction Book Proposal with Ryan Fischer-Harbage (pictured), an agent at the Fischer-Harbage Agency.
Here’s more about the course: “In this advanced class, you’ll work closely with an established literary agent and former editor on your completed draft of a proposal. Through lectures and heavy workshopping, you’ll fine-tune your title, subtitle, pitch letter, comparable titles, author bio, table of contents, and sample material to get your proposal ready to submit to agents. This class is ideal for writers who are serious in their desire to get an agent and/or a book deal. Not all proposals are created equal. Come see exactly how twenty of this instructor’s proposal students have published books with major publishers.”
The Washington Post will increase its Sunday edition paper by creating separate Arts and Sunday Style sections. Beginning with the January 23rd issue, book coverage will play a larger role in the modified Sunday edition.
According to Yahoo! Finance, two types of book reviews are planned. The Sunday Style section reviews will examine books that focus on pop culture topics and the Arts section reviews will focus on arts-related books.
Responding to the news, fiction editor Ron Charlesposted on Twitter: “INCREASED book coverage in a mainstream newspaper! When’s the last time you saw that? (Maybe indie bookstores will come back too!)” Other changes will include a new KidsPost tabloid and a more developed Real Estate section.
As households around the country prepare Thanksgiving menus, we’ve started a #literarythanksgiving hashtag on Twitter to collect book-related dishes.
Post your ideas in the comments or on Twitter. Here are some ideas to get you started:
James & the Giant Peach Cobbler: Roald Dahl‘s protagonist couldn’t legally have a cocktail, but hopefully you can. This peach-flavored whiskey concoction would be perfect for the pre-dinner palette.
An anonymous “academic mercenary” wrote an essay for The Chronicle of Higher Education recently, explaining how he wrote 5,000 pages of academic writing for cheating college students this year. Tomorrow the Chronicle will host a live chat with the anonymous writer.
According to his shocking article, he has written 12 graduate theses. He has been hired for projects in a range of subjects, from history to anthropology to literature. He earned $2,000 for a recent business school essay. What do you think?
Here’s more from the article: “I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work. And as my peers trudge through thankless office jobs that seem more intolerable with every passing month of our sustained recession, I am on pace for my best year yet. I will make roughly $66,000 this year.”
In 1818, Jane Austen‘s brother Henry Thomas Austen praised his sister, writing: “Everything came finished from her pen.” Since then, Austen has been well known for her highly-polished prose. However, new evidence has surfaced disputing Henry’s claim.
In an interview with NPR, Oxford University professor Kathryn Sutherland explained how she analyzed more than 1,000 handwritten Austen pages and found that they are littered with misspellings and grammar errors. Sutherland quoted Austen’s editor, William Giffordabout a draft of Emma: “It is very carelessly copied. Though the handwriting is excellently plain and there are many short omissions which must be inserted, I will readily correct the proof for you.”
Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility have been re-written by 21st Century editors, adding zombies and sea monsters into the classic stories. In August, Emma received the same treatment from Wayne Josephsonwith Emma and the Vampires.
We don’t think animals should be denied the right to get into the Halloween spirit. The video embedded above shares a cornucopia of pet costume ideas for Halloween, but we are building a list literary costume ideas for the galley cat (or dog) in your life.
We suggest: Clifford the Big Red Dog, Curious George, or The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Tweet your literary pet ideas with the hashtag #literarypetcostumes to or share them in the comments section.
The Book Bench hosted the Critterati contest this year, asking owners to submit a photo of their pet dressed like a literary character. Last year’s five winners included a puppy imitating Hunter S. Thompson. This year’s winners will be announced today.
Sir Frank Kermode has passed away at age 90. His illustrious resume included WWII Royal Navy officer, British knighthood, journal editor, university professor, and literary critic.
Alan Samson, the critic's publisher at Weidenfeld & Nicolson told the Guardian: "He knew he had exceptional gifts, but there was a modest manner about him. He knew he was smarter than everyone else, but he was this pipe-smoking, beguiling man who listened to what you had to say. It's the wreath of pipe smoke and the benign smile and wisdom which I'm really going to miss."
The Prague-based artist Matej Kren has created a number of gigantic book sculptures, fascinating pieces for all literary folk to check out.
In the installation Passage, the artist used mirrors, light, and thousands of books to create a surreal chamber of texts.
Here's more about the Book Cell Project, the work of art pictured above: "The metaphor indicating that all those books are part of and enrich the universal editorial production, gains visibility in the blend orchestrated in the construction of Book Cell, between the Foundation's publications and several other books from around the world." (Via Flavorwire)
News broke this afternoon that U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker had struck down California's Proposition 8--a legal move that will probably send the same-sex marriage ban to the U.S. Supreme Court.
...novels should not be honest. They are a pack of lies that are also a set of metaphors; because the lies and metaphors are chosen and offered shape and structure, they may indeed represent the self, or the play between the unconscious mind and the conscious will, but they are not forms of self-expression, or true confession.
Filmmaker and developer Garrett Murray is pioneering a new kind of short short story on his blog--a movement we have dubbed crash report fiction. Every time Photoshop crashes, Murray emails a short and bitter story to the company instead of a crash report (like the story posted above).
We'd love to see more writers follow Murray's example, sending software corporations stories that channel a unique sense of frustration. As Murray explained on his blog: "You know, I hadn't planned on this being a regular feature of the site, but these days Photoshop is just begging me to do it."
All of his crash report stories are archived at this link. Here's an excerpt from a recent story with a particularly violent ending: "Tracy was the youngest in her family, but by far the smartest. While her sisters were in high school they had focused on boys and parties and cheerleading, but Tracy hit the books and received top marks. She was the valedictorian. The class president. The head of Model UN. When Samantha dropped out of college to take a job as a backup dancer for Beyonce, Tracy laughed and shrugged."
Today the web-based "I Write Like" game distracted the online literary and publishing set. Created by Coding Robots and the journal-writing software Memoires, the program measures your prose against famous writers.
You just cut and paste a sample piece of text to play the game. According to the program, this GalleyCat editor writes like Dan Brown in blog post and Believer stories. However, when writing in the first person, the program compares our writing to Chuck Palahniuk.
Who do you write like? Share your reactions in the comments section--we'd love to get a cross-section of the literary influences in the audience. (Via Edward Champion)
Washington Post Book World editor Ron Charles received an unexpected response after posting to Twitter that the book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality sounded "trite": One of the book's authors, Christopher Ryan, read it and got in touch with him.
In a surprisingly civil conversation, Charles and Ryan discuss the suspicions that led Charles to dismiss the book via Twitter. (In short: Charles hasn't read the book, but he thinks some of its assertions seem flimsy; Ryan assures him that he devotes entire chapters to "laying out precisely what we're arguing against.")
In the end, they don't seem to come to an agreement but they settle on two nice conclusions: It was unfair of Charles to take a potshot at the book via Twitter, but, as they say, all publicity is good publicity.
Last week a NY Observer article alleged that The New York Review of Books editor Robert Silvers shared a galley copy of Michael Gross' Rogues' Gallery: The Secret Story of the Lust, Lies, Greed, and Betrayals that Made The Metropolitan Museum of Art with one of the book's subjects.
Writing about the May 2009 hardcover release of nonfiction book, the reporter explained: "[Silvers] asked Random House for five galley copies, supposedly for reviewing purposes. Mr. Silvers also wished to secure at least one for the Met's vice chairman, Annette de la Renta, so she could read the 110-page chapter ('Arrivistes') about her and her mother, Jane Engelhard, whom Mr. Gross considers one of the most fascinating women of the 20th century and great American characters of all time."
Soon after, Gross (pictured, via) received legal letter from de la Renta's lawyer at Cravath, Swaine & Moore calling the article "gratuitous and false character assassination." We caught up with Gross to find out his response to the Observer article.
Fed up with the hype surrounding The New Yorker's "20 Under 40" list, Ward Six has released a "10 Over 80" list. The excellent collection rewards writers for "kicking a** for longer than we have been alive."
Here's an excerpt, including two under-appreciated authors: "PAULA FOX [pictured, via]: I read Desperate Characters in the mid-nineties because Jonathan Franzen wrote about finding it at Yaddo and how it's a perfect short novel. It is. She's had an interesting life and has written two memoirs. Also, the daughter she gave up for adoption gave birth to Courtney Love. WILLIAM GASS: "In the Heart of the Heart of the Country" is a collection of five strange and linguistically brilliant short stories."
Just like the New Yorker list, we are sure there are more writers to include on the list. Add your favorite writers over 80-years-old in the comments section. Via Maud Newton & The Awl)
The literary world exhaled today as the New Yorker released its "20 Under 40" list of young (and envy-inducing) writers.
The NY Timeshad the scoop: "there is an even number of men and women, a characteristic that Deborah Treisman, the magazine's fiction editor, called 'a rewarding accident, in terms of what it says about equal opportunity on the literary playing field these days.' (The 1999 list included only five women, The New York Observer noted in May.)"
Among the winners, only two were in their twenties: 24-year-old Tea Obreht and 28-year-old Karen Russell.
The complete list follows after the jump. Add all the writers they missed in the comments section for a future post.
Former GalleyCat editor Ron Hogan has left his post as director of e-marketing strategy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's trade & reference division.
Hogan joined us on the Morning Media Menu this morning, talking about his departure and sharing thoughts about the future of book blogging. At the Book Blogger Convention on Friday, Hogan spoke about professionalism and ethics for book bloggers, declaring: "the war between book critics and bloggers is over, [and] the bloggers won."
Press play below to listen.
Here is an excerpt from the interview, looking back at a time when book critics and book bloggers seemed to be at odds: "Book critics were saying, 'These bloggers aren't as professional as we are, they aren't doing as smart of criticism as we are, and basically holding themselves up as a standard of writing about books. What we've seen in recent years in particular is that the editors and leadership at these publications have come to the opposite conclusion."
The novelistic television show Lost concluded its epic run last night, completing a long bookshelf of reference books and allusions. Today's guest on the Morning Media Menu was Nikki Stafford, author of the five unofficial guides to the hit television show. She also keeps the popular blog, Nik at Nite.
Today Stafford shared her overall theory about the show. She also answered some of the thorniest questions from the last episode: What did the final shot mean? Why were crucial characters missing? Why did all the characters end up in church?
Press play below to listen.
Here's an excerpt, an important reminder for all storytellers: "The thing I love about our reactions to the show is we take those moments that were so sentimental, the moments that came right down to the people. There were people complaining today, 'I got so wrapped up in the science and the physics and they didn't answer any of that!' But it's about people! That's what it came down to. And that's what's so important about the finale, to me."
Our literary remix contest made a cameo appearance in a Salon.com article by Laura Miller, our experiment landing squarely in the middle of a debate about the usefulness of reading bad writing.
Check it out: "This confirms the secret weapon of many writing workshops. Students often don't get much helpful advice from critiques of their own work, as more than one teacher has confided to me. Instead, they learn the most from identifying the mistakes made by others. Sadly, if bad writers have one thing in common it's that they're all firmly convinced that they're good writers. Really good writers."
What do you think? This editor believes that we can learn a lot from the tortured sentences of other writers. Besides sponsoring the literary remix contest, we've celebrated a bad writing documentary and bad writing contests. After the jump, read some Alger excerpts.
Salon.com is bulking up on new content partnerships, bringing in writing from a couple other well-respected book-oriented publications. In addition to the recently announced partnership with McSweeney's, Salon and the BN Review (the book review published by Barnes & Noble) have announced a content-sharing agreement.
BN Review and Salon.com will swap content--reviews from BN will appear on Salon and pieces from Salon will appear on BN Review. Each site will select the shared content from the other. The content-swapping has already begun, though the partnership was officially announced today.
Novelist and MFA-graduate Lionel Shriver gave her candid opinion about higher level writing courses in an interview with Big Think last week. Watch the video embedded above to find out what she thought.
The author of So Much for That expressed some reservations about writing programs, despite the fact she has studied and taught writing. What do you think?
Here's an excerpt from the interview: "it does have a kind of indulgence, middle-class gestalt. The grim truth is that most people who get MFAs will not go on to be professional writers ... My husband is a jazz drummer and he has the same sense of queasiness about teaching jazz drumming. There's more of a career in teaching jazz than there is in playing it right now and so at the very best, most of the students are going to go on to become jazz instructors. So there's something a little corrupt in that, something unwholesome. And I share his discomfort in participating in it."
Soon The New York Times will offer a "disaggregated" digital version of the paper's Book Review, a special edition of the publication intended for eReading devices.
Times marketing director James Dunn spoke with Bill Mitchell from Poynter about the initiative. A full Kindle subscription to the Times currently costs, $13.99 a month, a steep price for readers who only want to read book reviews.
We like the idea. Using the magic of Scribd last week, we created a monthly print(out) version of GalleyCat Reviews that you can download for printing, eReaders, or mobile devices.
Here's more from the article: "Mitchell reports the Times will introduce a separate version of its Book Review for three e-reader platforms, beginning with the Sony e-reader in the next couple of weeks. Versions for Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook will follow. Dunn declined to say what the price will be for the Book Review on these platforms ... Dunn told Mitchell that examples such as The New York Times Crossword and Book Review were 'low hanging fruit' for disaggregation." (Via Mike Cane)
Today the Media Source Inc.--an Ohio-based company that owns Junior Library Guild (JLG) and The Horn Book, Inc.--announced that they had acquired Library Journal (LJ) and School Library Journal (SLJ).
Both publications were part of the Reed Business Information empire, and many were concerned about the future of the two publications--providing book reviews to hundreds of thousands of librarians around the country. Media Source has acquired "all print and Web products, services, supplements, and newsletters, including Library Hotline."
Here's a statement from Media Source CEO Randall Asmo: "Library Journal and School Library Journal are valuable magazines that deserve a corporate home focused on libraries ... We respect the history and contribution of LJ and SLJ...Editor-in-Chief Brian Kenney and Publisher Ron Shank are important to the success of SLJ and LJ, and they will remain in their current roles. Our goal is to build upon those strengths to provide a vital and comprehensive service to the librarian community."
Bethanne Patrick (pictured, via) has joined Shelf Awareness. According to the publishing site, Patrick will serve as “editor of our upcoming consumer publication.”
The Washington Post will increase its Sunday edition paper by creating separate Arts and Sunday Style sections. Beginning with the January 23rd issue, book coverage will play a larger role in the modified Sunday edition.
As households around the country prepare Thanksgiving menus, we’ve started a 
In 1818, 
Sir 
News broke this afternoon that U.S. District Judge 
Washington Post Book World editor 
Last week a 
Fed up with the hype surrounding The New Yorker's 
The literary world exhaled today as the New Yorker released its 
Former GalleyCat editor 
The novelistic television show Lost concluded its epic run last night, completing a long bookshelf of reference books and allusions. Today's guest on the 
Our 
Soon The New York Times will offer a "disaggregated" digital version of the paper's Book Review, a special edition of the publication intended for eReading devices. 
Today the Media Source Inc.--an Ohio-based company that owns Junior Library Guild (JLG) and The Horn Book, Inc.--announced that they had acquired Library Journal (LJ) and School Library Journal (SLJ).