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Big Box Brick and Mortar Singin’ the Blues

Last week, Barnes & Noble CEO Leonard Riggio released sang a dire song for his employees, citing: Never in all of the years I’ve been in business have I seen a worse outlook for the economy. And never in all my years as a bookseller

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Michael Crichton, author, dies at 66

Michael Crichton, author of bestselling books such as Jurassic Park, Sphere, and Andromeda Strain, died after a long battle with cancer. You can read his family’s recent memorial statement here.

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2008 Man Booker Prize Announced

Aravind Adiga, 33, won the 40th Man Booker prize on Tuesday night for his debut novel, “The White Tiger,” an exploration of India’s class struggle told through the story of a village boy’s journey from Indian village life to entrepreneurial success. Adiga, who lives in

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2008 Nobel Laureate for Literature Announced

And the award goes to…Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, whose work defined him as an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” To read more about Le Clezio’s life and writing, please visit the

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Don’t Miss the Nobel Prize for Literature!

For me, this is so much more exciting than those silly Olympic Games–check out the announcement tomorrow for the winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature. Watch the live webcast from the Swedish Academy, Stockholm, Sweden, on Thursday, October 9, 1:00 p.m. CET, 11:00

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Fall Movie Line-up: A Literary Feast

I absolutely love the entire experience of going to movie theatres: the smell of fake butter on popcorn, the plush but squeaky seats, the adorable little lights to guide your way down the aisles, the previews, and even the ridiculously high ticket prices. Nothing can

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Have you ever been ‘sheeped’?

OK–advance discalimer–this is not a post about fraternity hazing. I read Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase a few months ago and the striking images and unsettling moods evoked by this novel have continued coming to mind ever since. Like one of the characters from

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Open Source Textbooks: Menace AND Blessing?

I came across an interesting intersection of the worlds of Book and Geek yesterday. Previous rants in this space have discussed in detail the cost of textbooks, and how that impacts the poor and worthy demographic of students. On the other end of the spectrum,

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ReCAPTCHA’s so cool…

My afternoon has been spent trying to stop spam in Biblio.com’s forums. Stopping spam is usually a thankless job. Today it was fun. ReCAPTCHA is an interesting take on proving you are human. It displays two words from pages that could not be OCR’d. One