Jacket Blurbs: 12-4-09

• "You are not running the Bill Clinton Festival, however, you are running the X Literary Festival." – Amanda Craig, How Not To Run A Literary Festival;
  
• "The hand of Nature may also alter texts, essentially transforming them into 'found objects,' which when presented by artists, are imbued with symbolic and implicative presence." – Altered art books at the Museum of Biblical Art this past summer;
  
• "'These are our sandwiches,' said Mamet. 'We have our sandwiches here.'" – Roger Ebert, on lunch with David Mamet;
• "Obsession figures largely in several — and meteors, too, weirdly enough." – Glen Weldon, on books to share with friends.
• "This facility has turned a piece of street furniture into a community service in constant use." – a phonebooth becomes a library in the UK, via;
• "…disseminated tuberculosis affecting the joints and liver – probably of bovine origin – would offer a simpler explanation for her symptoms." – cow flu killed Jane Austen?
• "This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon's head." – the winning passage from this year's Bad Sex Awards.
  
• "The books are better, the mood is better and the year is actually going better." – Bookseller Steve Bercu, to NPR on the Xmas bookselling outlook.

Jacket Blurbs 11-16-09

• "But, since it was just the two of us, he had additional questions. So I told him: "Father, I cannot tell a lie. As I've already told you, I cut the tree." [Sarah, this seems somewhat similar to a story about George Washington. – eds. THAT'S VERY COOL. – SP]" – Editing Going Rogue;
• "Anyone can do a dystopia these days just by making a collage of newspaper headlines, but utopias are hard, and important…" – Kim Stanley Robinson on utopias, via;
• "I'm sure he only used to buy books about macho detectives who murder people mindlessly and sportsmen who have recovered from alcohol dependency and significant injury." – Chris Matyszczyk, on Kindles and covers;
• "…that as long as they are carrying books that affirm homosexuality as moral, you will not purchase books from them." – easily offended bigots respond to Scholastic's inclusion of a 'pro-homosexual' book in their catalog;
• "…the two revived one of the old characters and added in a few, including a Scotland Yard detective and a lesbian vampire countess." – A Stoker writes a Dracula sequel, with some help;
• "…someone with a 'personal blog, writing a genuine or organic review,' did not need to disclose how they got the book or assign it a value." – the FTC, on pay-per-post reviewing;
• Edison’s Concrete Piano: Flying Tanks, Six-Nippled Sheep, Walk-on-Water Shoes and 12 Other Flops from Great Inventors – the best book title of the year, per the LA Times;
• "If you can’t discount books, how can you get customers and market share? This is some communist-style shit…" – Chad Post, on French book discounts;

The 'book burning' mentioned in "Hard on the Bible", via:

Jacket Blurbs, 10-9-09

• "And the point of buying a book isn't just to read it. It's to read it multiple times, write in the margins, curl up in bed with it, refer to it on the spur of the moment, have it on the bookshelf when friends come over so it's the source of conversation or shared interest." – MDN, via Metafilter
• The agreement limits consumer choice in out-of-print books about as much as it limits consumer choice in unicorns." – Google's Sergey Brin on their digitizing deals, via
  
• "My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will." – Roger Ebert, on owning books.
• "'If a blogger received enough books,' said Cleland, 'he could open up a used bookstore.' – FTC's Richard Cleland, on disclosure of blogging review copies.
• "Now, I can guarantee something. As the ability to publish books gets easier, we'll have more 'bad' books than you can shake a stick at." – Hugh McGuire, adding "cloud" to self-publishing to make it more iWeb2.0mbklr
• "We hope you enjoy it, and, by the way, we hope everything comes out okay for you." – Toilet-based marketing, free books touched by other poopers.
• 'I believe in angels and a divine intervention to write this book,' he said. The book is dedicated to 'the angels who guide us.' – Thomas Ray Crowel, on his book reopening a child's murder case.
• "At a time when there are other forms that people can buy books in, it becomes more important than ever for the physical book to look really attractive…" – Paul Slovak, Viking, on new books without dustjackets.

Jacket Blurbs 9-1-09

• "…And great, wet book tears were falling down my face — I think book tears are wetter than normal tears." – editor Susan Hirschmann, on Watership Down and tears (listen here, towards the 47min mark);
• "By highlighting Wuthering Heights...[she] has introduced Emily Brontë to the Twilight generation." – Wuthering tops charts, thanks to Twilight;
• "Twelve years of mandatory education, with millions going through sixteen years, and our goal is only to make lifelong readers?" – John Fox, on self-directed gradeschool literature classes;
• "…readers have this idea that they know you, or want to know you and want to have this personal connection to you, however tenuous…" – Author Dara Horn, on book clubs' impact on sales;
• "Meanwhile, fans of unicorns, maps, and stilettos had a disappointing year, and perhaps were lost to other genres." –Tim Holman, on fantasy novel cover elements;
• "…they say, 'You don't look like a librarian', and now that I'm a roller derby girl, they say, 'You don't look like a roller derby girl, either.'" – 53-year-old Beth Hollis, roller derby librarian; Via;
• "…however, getting out of a good book and into their wife's shoes may pose challenges." – Stephen Gertz, on book and shoe collecting parallels;
• "It is because information has proliferated like Weimar bank notes, with everyone shoveling it into wheelbarrows, till the old economic arrangements have collapsed." – Tom Scocca, on facts in print; Via.

Pseudonymous Bosch at Once Upon A Time, Montrose, CA, 29 Aug 09
(from the Publisher's Weekly email newsletter; sorry, no link)

Jacket Blurbs 8-15-09

• "I think it’s the way the words are printed on every page, the right way up and in just the right order." – Fake Gwyneth Palthrow blog, via.
• "[I]ndeed, all we need to do is to question the value of literature itself and, abracadabra, we have eliminated the need to teach it." – Carol Jago, on literature in school (pdf in entirety).
  
• "I don’t do Facebook, I don’t do Twitter. Maybe I should have." – Cindy Dike, closing NOLA children's book shop after 34 years.
• "While these words certainly suggest ancient tomes, the term "antiquarian book" actually has a broader meaning, one that is at once simple and difficult to articulate." – Chris Lowenstein, what's an antiquiarian bookseller?
  
• "They told us guys don't read, would never read any kind of anthology, and most certainly wouldn't read an anthology about men. Apparently we are all mindless fools." – Tom Matlack, Book Publishing: Death or Rebirth?
• "This is the tradition we wanted to revive with our edition of The Valley of Fear — presenting something 'good for you' in 'bad for you' garb…" – Publisher Charles Ardai, Sherlock Holmes appears in pulp drag.
• "I didn't know that a book could be that good. I became a book lover, and a thinker." – Hakim Hopkins, Tioga bookstore community.
• "I have no idea where he finds the time to read a book blog. I'm just a blogger and I can barely find time to do laundry." – Carolyn Kellogg, on Bill Clinton reading her blog. Via.

Jacket Blurbs 8-5-09

• "Where were sharp black letters laid out like lacquered chopsticks on a clean tablecloth?" – Kindle and the Future of Reading, via.
• "Tree loves boy. Boy loves tree. Boy grows up. Boy exploits tree. Tree takes it all silently, growing less happy with each lonely year." – The American Scene, via.
• "Besides posting on my blog, I've begun also to distill some of my views into 140 characters or fewer. Welcome to my orgy, Twitter." – Soapbox: Critics Don't Need Free Books.
• "I dumped you because I can't bear being called Josh. Every posh twat in a rom-com is called Josh." – Confessions of a Bridget-Jonesalike.
• "How welcome is a black teen going to feel in the YA section when all the covers are white?" – Judging the book business by its covers, via.
• "Optical-scan, Multi-use hardcopy files imprinted on dedicated, crashproof media…" – Jackson St. Books sign.
• "I personally know half a dozen librarians, and not one of them is anything close to happy. One of them is named Darryl, and there’s no way someone with that name could be happy." – Why books are stupid, via.
• "[The book is] a story of the human relationship with food, told through biographies of the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato." – Kottke's favorite books.
  

Jacket Blurbs: 7-31-09

• "The sale of the group is part of RBI’s strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the U.S." – PW For Sale.
• "He loved to read. He had over 10,000 books at his house." – Michael Jackson 'Extremely Well Read'.
• "The two main complaints? 'It’s boring' and 'It’s too hard.'" – Why Won’t My Kids Read My Favorite Old Books?
• "100% of our affiliate revenue from your purchases goes to charity…50% to your favorite charity, 50% to Book Wish Foundation" – Bibliotarian, via.
• "Girlebooks aims to make classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium." – Girliebooks: DRM-free Ebooks.
• "[A]uthorities turned down permission for him to read the books on the grounds that they contained material 'potentially detrimental to national security'…" – Supermax prisoner denied Obama books.
• "The staff at Stanraer library think she is a remarkable lady and look forward to her weekly visits." – 91-year-old is UK's most prolific library borrower.