At The Reading List, we’re trainspotters when it comes to interesting book links, and here are a number that caught our eye.

• Bob Dylan’s publisher Simon & Schuster admits that ‘hand-signed’ copies of his new book, selling for $600, were signed using an automated signing machine.
• Rod McKuen was the bestselling poet in American history – selling 60 million books and 100 million records. Why was he forgotten?
• The world’s leading literary agent Andrew Wylie: ‘Amazon is like ISIS; it takes no prisoners’.
• George RR Martin has confirmed he’s ‘3/4 done’ with the next instalment of Game of Thrones. The author equivalent of ‘I’m leaving now’ …
• A new report by PEN America has found that ‘deep and persistent obstacles’ in publishing houses impede greater diversity in terms of authors and stories told.
• Pablo Neruda is cancelled – but should reproachable behaviour negate artistic contributions?
• John Irving wrote a 900-page novel about skiing. Here’s why.
• How author Colleen Hoover – who outsold the Bible by more than 3 million copies so far this year – went from tending cows to writing bestsellers.
• Behold: A rare Alan Moore interview spotted in the wild.
• Author RL Stine – three-time winner of the RL Stine Creative Writing Award – has celebrated 30 years of ‘Goosebumps’.
• New Zealand’s arts council ends funding for a popular school Shakespeare programme, citing ‘imperialism’.
• But the Bard is still laughing all the way to the bank: The University of British Columbia has paid almost $7.4 million for a rare copy of William Shakespeare’s First Folio.
• What makes a bestseller? It seems like the answer should be simple – a book that sold the best. But the truth is more complicated.
• And finally, ‘Books should be seen as brussels sprouts, not because they taste bad, but because they are good for you.’

 

• Find our previous Footnotes here.

Categories Fiction International

Tags Footnotes