Book Bits

(from npr.org
by Annalisa Quinn)

Note: This post was written before news of writer Maya Angelou's death emerged. Annalisa will be away until early next week, but feel free to send her your bookish thoughts and questions on Twitter at @annalisa_quinn.

Amazon, which has so far stayed quiet about its ongoing dispute with the publisher Hachette, released a statement defending its tactics, which include removing the option to pre-order many Hachette titles, to put pressure on the publisher in negotiations. Amazon says it has been "unable to reach mutually-acceptable agreement on terms," adding, "we are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon." Amazon compared its approach to the way physical bookstores negotiate, noting, "A retailer can feature a supplier's items in its advertising and promotional circulars, 'stack it high' in the front of the store, keep small quantities on hand in the back aisle, or not carry the item at all, and bookstores and other retailers do these every day." Authors have been some of the most outspoken critics of Amazon's strategy. James Patterson wrote on his Facebook page, "What I don't understand about this particular battle tactic is how it is in the best interest of Amazon customers. It certainly doesn't appear to be in the best interest of authors." Amazon says that it "take[s] seriously" the impact on authors, adding, "We've offered to Hachette to fund 50 percent of an author pool - to be allocated by Hachette - to mitigate the impact of this dispute on author royalties, if Hachette funds the other 50 percent."

Meanwhile, in Germany, Amazon has delayed shipment on a number of backlist titles from the publisher Bonnier. "The delays appeared to be a tactic aimed at forcing the publisher to give Amazon, the American retailing giant that has come to dominate book sales, a bigger cut of the proceeds," The New York Times reports.

Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn will write an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet for the Hogarth Shakespeare series. "Hamlet has long been a fascination of mine: murder, betrayal, revenge, deceit, madness ‒ all my favorite things," she said in a statement. The series, which features major novelists rewriting Shakespeare's plays, will launch in 2016, the 400th anniversary of his death. Other novelists taking part in the series include Margaret Atwood (The Tempest), Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbø (Macbeth), and Jeanette Winterson (The Winter's Tale).

Hillary Clinton released the "author's note" to her memoir Hard Choices on Tuesday (link requires registration) saying, "I wrote it for anyone anywhere who wonders whether the United States still has what it takes to lead. For me, the answer is a resounding 'Yes.'" (If you care for a close textual analysis, The Washington Postreads as much meaning as can possibly be read into the blandly optimistic sentences that tend to populate political memoirs).

Ian Parker has an exceptional profile of the novelist Edward St. Aubyn in the New Yorker: "St. Aubyn's movements have a bomb-disposal delicacy. He'll brush the tips of two or three fingers against his lower lip for half a minute, or he'll tilt his head slightly backward, as if in response to a tiny surprise. He is fifty-four and the father of two, and has the air of someone who is puzzled, and rather impressed, to find that he is not dead."

Book Bits

(from npr.com
by Annalisa Quinn)

American classics like To Kill A Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men will likely be cut from a major British standardized test, the GCSE, or General Certificate of Secondary Education. NPR's Ari Shapiro reports from London: "British Education Secretary Michael Gove has decided that the English literature list for a national exam needs to be more English, so he is swapping American texts in the curriculum for British ones. The new books have not yet been announced, but Gove's changes have prompted an outcry." Gove says that the new rules would require a core of British literature be included on the exam, but teachers and the exam boards could continue to add whatever other literature they like. Responding to his critics in the Telegraph, he wrote, "I have not banned anything. Nor has anyone else. Teachers are as free to introduce children to the brilliant writing of Lee, Steinbeck and Miller today as they were yesterday and nothing this government is doing will change that future."

Clive James, the Australian poet and translator whose emphysema keeps him from returning home from the U.K., told the BBC that, though he misses home, "The mind is quite a wonderful thing. It can translate past experience into immediate experience and I practically hallucinate the sheer beauty of Sydney Harbour, for example. It couldn't be more vivid in actuality than it is in my recollection." He also read from his poem "Sentenced to Life":

"Sentenced to life, I sleep face-up as though
Ice-bound, lest I should cough the night away"

Some Notable Books Coming Out This Week:

Joel Dicker has written a book within a book. Unfortunately, neither book is very good. In The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, rugged, manly celebrity novelist Marcus Goldman writes a book to clear the name of his mentor, a similarly rugged, similarly manly celebrity novelist accused of killing the 15-year-old girl he was having an affair with. The affair, we are led to believe, is fine, because it was True Love. Before she died, Nola, the girl, waited on Quebert while he worked, acted as his muse, and, when he was done writing, typed it up for him, "like the most passionate, devoted secretary imaginable." The dialogue is atrocious ("A man like Harry would never want a common diner waitress like me!") and the women are cartoons.

Patricia Lockwood's Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals is a collection of wildly original poems: obscene, sharp, and funny, with titles like "Bedbugs Conspire to Keep Me from Greatness" and "Last of the Late Great Gorilla-Suit Actors." The collection's most devastating poem, and Lockwood's most famous, is called "Rape Joke" ("The rape joke is that you were nineteen years old. / The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend."), which is up online at The Awl. It – and the whole collection — is unforgettable, literally: once read, it cannot be forgotten.