Reading Copy

The BBC has interviewed author Marina Lewycka about following up on the success of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Her second book is called Two Caravans and “follows the experiences of two Ukrainians, four Poles, two Chinese and a Malawian, who find themselves picking strawberries in the same field in Kent.”

Popularity: 8% [?]

I have an apology to make. When Oprah named Sidney Poitier’s The Measure of a Man as her book club pick earlier this year, I misspelt Poitier as ‘Poiter’ when I posted on this blog. I’m sorry for such shoddiness, but that mistake has opened my eyes to huge numbers of incorrectly spelt author names found on the Internet.

Here are a few easy-to-find Internet misspellings of bestselling authors. Bloggers are the main culprits but there are also a few mistakes from the mainstream media too:

Jodi Picoult becomes Jodi Picolt; Cormac McCarthy becomes Cormac MaCarthy; Jhumpa Lahiri becomes Jumpa Lahiri (NPR.org, the US public radio broadcaster, and The Age, one of Australia’s major newspapers); Christopher Paolini becomes Christopher Polini; Joan Didion becomes Joan Didon (RTE.ie - Ireland’s public service broadcaster); Khaled Hosseini becomes Khaled Hossieni (University of Colorado website); and Nora Ephron becomes Nora Efron.

If we step back to the classics, then JRR Tolkien becomes JRR Tolkein so frequently that it makes my head hurt (BBC.co.uk - shame on you) and Ernest Hemingway becomes Ernest Hemmingway.

Some people clearly do not know how to spell an author’s name even though they’ve just read the book. However, I see countless misspellings in comments left on blog postings and also in reader reviews left on major online bookselling sites (you know the ones) - I think people write at speed and really aren’t bothered about accurate spelling. This is one of the long-term influences of the Internet where everything is done at speed.

It’s not just authors - books titles are misspelt too. JK Rowling fans are having real trouble with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - there is Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows and Harry Potter and the Deathly Shallows, and several other various on a theme.

Does it matter? To ordinary folks surfing the web, it doesn’t because search engines help people find what they want pretty quickly regardless of how inept their spelling is.

But sometimes it does matter. Jodi Picoult’s new book is called Nineteen Minutes. When search on Google for ‘Nineteen Minutes’, I’m offered Jodi’s own website, a certain very large online bookseller based in Seattle and I’m not talking about Starbucks, the publisher’s website and other useful stuff like newspaper articles, reviews and interviews.

However, when I search on ‘19 Minutes’ - 99% of the sites I am offered have nothing to do with Jodi Picoult or her book. It’s much easier to type in ‘19′ than ‘Nineteen’ - and we know speed is the key to everthing on the Internet.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this subject.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Bibliophiles love books - even when they are in the middle of a warzone. That’s what we discovered after investigating the reading habits of US troops and western civilians living on bases in Iraq.

We put together a list of 50 books that have been purchased from AbeBooks.com and sent to bases in Iraq. We thought they’d be escapist paperbacks (Grishams, Kings etc) but the list is very surprising. What inspired someone to purchase The Physics of Blown Sand? The sand I suppose. And then there’s The Art of War, and Just and Unjust Wars, and whole series of other books about American politics, history and current affairs. Clearly people are trying to put the whole conflict into context.

The fact that one serviceman purchased The New Father: A Dad’s Guide to the First Year speaks volumes about a soldier’s life when stationed far from home.

Unlike soldiers stationed in North America or Europe, these troops cannot leave the bases during their leisure time, so I imagine reading plays an important role for many. I love the idea of people learning the saxophone or how to write poetry.

Our section on reading in Iraq also contains two not-to-be-missed interviews. David Abrams, a writer and a soldier, explains how Don Quixote saved his life from a mortar attack and how books kept him going while in Iraq. Another soldier Brian McNerney tells us how he helped to set up a library of 15,000 books on Camp Anaconda, a huge logistics base, thanks to donations of books from World War II veterans.

Popularity: 14% [?]

The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois is staging a book collecting contest amongst its students, according to the school’s student paper. We’d love to see more of these.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Times of London spoke to Ian McEwan several days ago - the writer’s first interview since he discovered that he had a brother who was given away at a railway station. McEwan’s new book, On Chesil Beach, is now out.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The news that Oprah has selected Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as her second book club pick of 2007 is intriguing. Not because she’s chosen a book that’s downright bleak, but because she’s selected an author who never gives media interviews. It appears only he’s only ever done one interview in over 40 years of writing and that was as a favor to his editor. I wonder what he’ll say when Oprah puts him in front of the cameras.

I doubt if his thoughts will be along the same line as those expressed in The Secret - a book about the power of positive thought that shot to mega-sales after two appearances from the author, Rhonda Byrne, on Oprah’s TV show.

Perhaps Oprah could put both Byrne and McCarthy on together - and then bring in James Frey as a late ’surprise’ guest?

Popularity: 14% [?]

The cover art for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has just been released - fuelling more speculation about the book’s plot. Here is Bloombury’s for the UK, and Scholastic’s for the US, and Raincoast’s for Canada.

Harry looks distinctly older on the Scholastic version - hardly the boy-wizard anymore, more like the youth-wizard.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Time magazine has the bestselling books for 2027.

Popularity: 10% [?]

LibraryThing.com members attended a ‘party’ in the Second Life 3-D virtual world at the weekend. It seemed very successful, especially as a Second Life newbie turned up naked after losing her clothes and being unable to recover them. I know a few people who have this problem at ‘this life’ parties.

Popularity: 16% [?]

This story about the launch of an audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows broke yesterday but I’ve only just had a chance to think about it. Why isn’t a downloadable version of the book to be released? Harry Potter 7 on an iPod - that’s a ‘dream team’ combination and the easiest sell in the world!

Popularity: 13% [?]

Oh boy, there’s trouble at the Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. Last spring, the college library’s annual book sale took place and it seems someone accidently put one of the library’s rare books up for the sale. History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England by Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon, should not have been sold for between 10 cents and $1 - this 1719 book is worth rather more than that. Take a look at this listing for another copy from 1719.

If you bought it, the library would like you to bring the book back and then share the profits on the book’s sale at its correct market value. I wonder if this will happpen. I have a feeling the new owner might have gone straight home, logged on to AbeBooks.com and looked up its value….

Popularity: 13% [?]

JRR Tolkien’s unfinished book will be finished and published in April, according to the BBC. His son, Christopher, has completed The Children of Hurin - a book his father started and abandoned in 1918.

Popularity: 9% [?]

One of the America’s most influential rare book dealers, Glenn Horowitz, was profiled in yesterday’s New York Times.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Hello, here we go again with another week in the book world. It seems that it isn’t getting any easier for first-time novelists to win a publishing deal, according to yesterday’s Observer newspaper in the UK. The article explains how a two-book deal might yield rarely above £12,000.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Hello to Dan and Rachel at Old Saratoga Books in the upstate New York village of Schuylerville. Check out their excellent, and wonderfuly named, blog Book Trout. 

Old Saratoga Books is an example of a classic used and rare bookstore - the sort that you’d like to visit on a Saturday morning and just browse. More than 50,000  books including plenty of interesting titles in their American colonial and Revolutionary War sections, as well as vintage paperbacks, children’s literature, jazz and other music books, handicrafts titles, loads of art books, history and classic novels.

So if you are in upstate New York this weekend, check out them out and ask them ‘why is there a zebra in your bookstore?’

Popularity: 10% [?]