Recently, the New York Times came out with their list of 100 Most Notable Books for 2014, and the literary world took notice. I certainly will admit to taking notice. I immediately ran down the list and counted up how many of the books on the list I had read. […]
From WSJ: Amazon.com’s announcement last month that it was purchasing book-recommendation site Goodreads did more than land the e-commerce giant a social-networking service. It also thwarted a possible partnership between the reading social network and Apple. Over the past year, Apple and Goodreads had begun discussing integrating Goodreads’ service, which […]
Mark this one under “Stuff Just Got Real.” From GalleyCat: The Authors Guild called Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads ”a truly devastating act of vertical integration” in an online dispatch. Guild president Scott Turow had this statement: Amazon’s acquisition of Goodreads is a textbook example of how modern Internet monopolies can be built […]
From GalleyCat: Amazon has just revealed that they will acquire Goodreads, the social network for readers. The online retailer did not share the terms of the deal and expects to finalize the acquisition by the second quarter of 2013. Here’s more from the release: Following the acquisition, Goodreads’s headquarters will […]
As the year approaches an end, readers, and Goodreads members, are now given the opportunity to vote on their favorite books of 2012. “Choose the best books of the year with three rounds of voting. The Goodreads Choice Awards are the only major book awards decided by readers.” The following […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.