The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Fifty previously unpublished poems by Rudyard Kipling, the author of The Jungle Book and Just So Stories, were discovered by Thomas Pinney, a professor emeritus at Pomona College. The lost works by Kipling, whose most famous poems include "If" and the notorious "White Man's Burden," are to be published next month. Kipling was widely derided as an apologist for British colonialism — George Orwell called him "a jingo imperialist" — though he was also a respected novelist who won the Literature Nobel in 1907.
Barnes & Noble founder and Chairman Leonard Riggio wants to buy the company's stores and website — but not the Nook e-reader division, which it turns out is not doing especially well.
The easiest way to become a bestselling author? Buy your way onto the list. The Wall Street Journal reports that some authors are hiring marketing firms to buy up large numbers of their books to get a spot on the bestseller lists.
New York Magazine asks 30 prominent writers about Philip Roth's legacy, and whether the Portnoy's Complaintauthor is a misogynist. (The poll results might be more convincing if it weren't for the fact that only five out of the 30 writers featured were women).
Penguin Press announced Monday that the next novel from reclusive Gravity's Rainbowauthor Thomas Pynchon will be published in September. Bleeding Edge will be set in 2001 in "the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11," according to a press release.
The New Yorker has published a lovely short story set partly during the Spanish Civil War by Irish author Colm Toibin.
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