**Interesing Articles - November thru December

Last bi-monthly article thread of 2012!

Does every major industry enjoy shooting themselves in the foot? Bookstores not willing to sell books because they are published by Amazon

Interesting article about book reviews on Amazon.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/suwcharmananderson/2012/11/07/amazon-tackles-review-...

Good or bad for books? The National Book Awards' attempt at glamor.

Is English the one language? Is there any use for other languages? In the world? Academically? A discussion of the matter centered on Larry Summers's rejection of language training and education

Robert

A critique of Mo Yan's language.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ihBWrsxhT3oJ:www.kenyonrevi...

The complexities of deciding how to arrange your bookshelves:
http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/people-of-the-bookshelf/413/

>6 wandering_star: Love it :)

Things found in books: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/dec/05/secret-contents-secondhand-books - the comments are worth reading too.

Nobel Lecture by Mo Yan

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2012/yan-lecture_en....

#5, 9 Very interesting, especially since I've been reading Mo Yan.

ETA I am adding these links to the Resources thread in the new Read Mo Yan group.

Another article about Mo Yan, from the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books:

Does This Writer Deserve the Prize?

2012 Man Asian Literary Prize Longlist

http://www.manasianliteraryprize.org/news/2012/12/3/2012-man-asian-literary-priz...

Unless there's a new sponsor for the prize, it may be the last batch of longlist as Man Group backed out for next year's edition of the prize.

Saw a reference to this in a South African newspaper this morning and thought, hey, April Fool's Day is early this year!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9729383/Catcher-in-the-Rye-dro...

Apparently not...

Best book covers of 2012 according to the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/12/19/books/20favorite-book-covers.html

The Building Stories cover is too illegible for me but on the other side of the scale I love the simplicity of The Yellow World cover. Penguin really does make some great covers.

I like a lot of the other selections as well. At first I was convinced that The Flame Alphabet cover was 3D!

Interesting -- and often beautiful -- covers. Some kind of made me go "meh," like the Auslander one which annoys me every time I see it in the bookstore, but others are quite spectacular.