AbeBooks' Reading Copy

A prisoner in an Alabama jail claims his jailers have prevented him from reading a Pulitzer prize-winning book called Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II written by Douglas Blackmon. The Guardian reports. The prisoner is serving a life sentence after being charged at 14 [...]

83-year-old Maurice Sendak’s new book, Bumble-Ardy, is about an orphan pig who goes on a mischievous party rampage.

Albert Uderzo, co-creator of Asterix, is retiring after 52 years of drawing the Gaul because he is “a bit tired,” reports The Guardian. He’s 84.

Has the UK’s book-buyers given up on chick lit? The Independent asks why sales for some major writers are tanking. Even books from Marian Keyes and Jodi Picoult are remaining on the shelves. Anyone familiar with a book called The Tipping Point?

The Harvard Book Store employs a scientific and methodical approach to predicting the winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

Last month I was in San Francisco and visited three booksellers who sell on AbeBooks. This is the video of what I saw in the Brick Row Book Shop, the Argonaut Book Shop and the Russian Hill Bookstore. All three are well established part of the Bay Area’s literary scene. The Brick Row Book Shop [...]

Never has the power of literature been better demonstrated than with Shirley Jackson’s short story, The Lottery. The New Yorker magazine printed the story in June 1948 and were stunned by the response. Readers cancelled their subscriptions and hate mail poured in. Today, this story is taught in schools and Jackson’s work is highly influential. [...]

A bookseller by the name of Larry McMurtry from Archer City in Texas explains how to run a used bookstore – lots of books and cheap real estate – in Business Week. I’m sure I’ve heard of that guy somewhere else.

A previously unpublished novel by Arthur Conan Doyle is published today. The Narrative of John Smith was written between 1883 and 1884, and sounds a cheerful story – it features the reflections of a man confined to his room by gout. The novel was lost in the post and then had to be rewritten from [...]

Half-Blood Blues is Esi Edugyan’s second novel and it’s in the news right now because it has been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize. Esi is also from our neck of the woods, here in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Her story is set partially in World War II and partially in the 1990s, and [...]