Scribner Books

Because they’re not available as an e-book, and won’t be, for the foreseeable future.

[via]

6. The Read A Book Guy. “Not one of these movies is as good as reading a book.” On a list of books, by the way, he will say none of the books is as good as books used to be. He also hates Kindles, which he may or may not mention.

from The 20 Unhappiest People You Meet in the Comments Sections of Year-End Lists on NPR.org

We applaud this guy and his own special brand of stubbornness.

“I wanted a bookstore because the book business is the business of life.” -George Whitman

The original “independent bookstore.”

I attended a reading of Toibin’s in Princeton, and when I mentioned that I was going to give the stories to my mother, he warned me not to: too much explicit gay sex, apparently. Well, that’s true about a couple of stories here, but I think my mother could have handled it, if only because she’s a good reader, knows what art is, and would have enjoyed the range of subjects and lives treated here.

—Jeffrey Eugenides on his favorite book of 2011 in Salon, The Empty Family by Colm Tóibín

A brilliant movie with career-cementing performances by Charlize Theron and our own Patton Oswalt. (Yes, we’re claiming him.) Scribner saw a special screening several weeks ago (Thanks, Patton!) and can vouch that this is a provocative, unflinching film with terrific performances.

As A.O. Scott says in his rave review,

“Shorter than a bad blind date and as sour as a vinegar Popsicle, “Young Adult” shrouds its brilliant, brave and breathtakingly cynical heart in the superficial blandness of commercial comedy.”

“Most of the editors I have worked with over the past thirty-five years have made crucial contributions to the books entrusted to them, and the copy-editors have always, in every case, done exactly the same. They have enriched the books that came into their hands. Can you have good, thoughtful, creative editing and precise, accurate, immaculate copy-editing if you self-publish? And if you can’t, what is being said about the status or role of selflessness before the final form of the fiction as accepted by the audience, I mean the willingness of the author to submerge his ego to produce the novel that is truest to itself?”

—Peter Straub to Edan Lepucki (emphasis ours), in an excellent article on the value of traditional publishing in The Millions, see also this leaked memo from Hachette that explains what traditional publishing actually does (if you’re curious)

“Tebow wrecks all that, because he makes blind faith a viable option. His faith in God, his followers’ faith in him — it all defies modernity. This is why people care so much. He is making people wonder if they should try to believe things they don’t actually believe.”

—Chuck Klosterman in Grantland

“A professional nonpayer of rent paid his deposit, his first and last, a few more months to establish his bona fides, then settled in for a spell of hard luck. It had come to this, he would declare, choking a sob, his mother’s medicine or the rent.

Just this once slid into twice and after a while his mother died again. By then the landlord knew he was in for a porking but too late. The nonpayer would claim hardship and file for bankruptcy. In like a tick, it could take two years and lots of money to get him out. Sometimes ten grand in legal fees alone. That’s when a heads-up landlord would call me.

I’m Dick Henry. The Shortcut Man.”