During its ongoing contract talks with the publisher, Amazon has been displaying that Hachette’s books ship in “up to 3-5 weeks.” James Patterson, one of their biggest authors, has declared on Facebook that “there is a war going on between Amazon and book publishers.” The Washington Post has more on the backstory of Amazon’s strategy, while the New York Times blog details how Patterson and other authors are fighting back.
Dispatch from the Online Retail War
Unearthing Neruda
20 unpublished poems by Pablo Neruda were recently discovered. You can read one (in Spanish) over here. The poems will be published in Chile this year, and in Spain next year. Meanwhile, a local judge is not quite ready to abandon his probe into whether or not Neruda was poisoned – a theory that’s been reported for quite some time now.
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The Lost City of Chabon
Michael Chabon teases us with a synopsis of his “wrecked” 1,500-page novel, Fountain City (to be excerpted in a forthcoming issue of McSweeney’s).
Just Give Me a Minute
Is Karl Ove Kanusgaard’s seven-volume, 3,600-page, vaugely-autobiographical epic possible to pitch over the course of an elevator ride? The good people over at n+1 are willing to give it a shot! Have you ever wondered about the view outside of Knausgaard’s window? I bet you have now.
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The Common in the City Party
Tonight! Celebrate 3 years with The Common. You can still buy tickets to this elegant lit party here. André Aciman reads from his latest novel Harvard Square.
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Welcome to Book Town
“Book lore and book history and everything around them, to do with libraries or culture, I think it centers so much of civilization.” Atlas Obscura interviewed journalist Alex Johnson about his forthcoming title, Book Towns, which explores off-the-beaten-path towns bursting with bookshops.
Prime Minister, Poet
A rare manuscript dealer has put up for auction a 10 stanza poem written (in crayon!) by Winston Churchill. The poem, entitled “Our Modern Watchwords,” is believed to be the only known poem written by the British prime minister in his adulthood.
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