Fun Fact: British radio and television presenter Alan Partridge (a fictional character played by Steve Coogan) is referenced in not one, not two, but seven entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Oh, you cheeky Brits.
Citation, Please
Pinochet’s Library
According to The Secret Literary Life of Augusto Pinochet author Cristóbal Peña, the Chilean dictator “was tormented by an intense inferiority complex, which he tried to deal with by collecting books.” A recent article in The New York Times provides a look at that book collection, which totaled around 50,000 books and has been valued at around $3 million.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Attenberg; Galassi; Vida; Dave; McManus; Dinerstein; Tremblay; Goolsby; Hughes; Pauls, Parajuly; Charyn
Out this week: Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg; Muse by Jonathan Galassi; The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida; Eight Hundred Grapes by Laura Dave; The Unfortunates by Sophie McManus; The Sunlit Night by Rebecca Dinerstein; A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay; I’d Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them by Jesse Goolsby; The Loved Ones by Mary-Beth Hughes; A History of Money by Alan Pauls; Land Where I Flee by Prajwal Parajuly; and Bitter Bronx by Jerome Charyn. For more on these and other new titles, check out our Great 2015 Book Preview.
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6 Book Titles That Will Blow Your Mind!
“7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism.” From McSweeneys, great literature retitled to boost website traffic.
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Is All publicity Good Publicity?
Is all publicity good publicity? Are all reviews—even bad ones—good for books? The answer, according to a new study [pdf] by the journal Marketing Science, depends on whether the writer is well known or unknown. The study examined the impact of a New York Times review on the sales of more than 200 hardcover titles. For books by established writers, a negative review led to a 15% decrease in sales. For unknown authors, a negative review increased sales by a healthy 45%.
Boss Fight Books
Boss Fight Books is a new series in the mold of the classic 33 1/3 model. In lieu of covering music albums, however, each Boss Fight book “will take a critical, creative, historical, and personal look at a single classic video game.” The first titles in the series will investigate Earthbound and Galaga, and they should be out by next December and January, respectively.
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“As a goal in life, you could do worse than ‘try to be kinder.'”
The Above Average team animated an adaptation of George Saunders’s Syracuse University commencement speech, “The Importance of Kindness.” (You can read the original over here.) The speech has since been expanded, and it was published this past week.
Diary of International Pynchon Week
At n+1, Nick Holdstock’s diary of International Pynchon Week, held in Lublin, Poland: “The conference room looked like the United Nations as depicted in ’60s spy movies … on the pad of the man to my left there were no notes, just a drawing of a cat wearing a shirt and tie.”