Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Over the last few years we've seen virtually all newspapers cutting back on their book coverage and, according to the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), all but two have now closed their standalone book review sections. One of the remaining bastions of the book world is the Washington Post which first introduced the standalone 'Book World' section to its Sunday edition in 1972.  But this literary stalwart appears to be crumbling.  According to the NBCC's blog Critical Mass, a reliable source at the Washington Post says that "among the budgetary recommendations new editor Marcus Brauchli is making to his board is the elimination of 'Book World'."

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Kim Kovacs, BookBrowse reviewer

The following is in response to Lynda East's question to Kim after reading her Jan 1st blog "My Secret Addiction".Lynda asks, "Can you comment on the benefits and problems of the Sony eReader versus the Amazon Kindle? Their prices are comparable and both out of my price range right now (like you, my Christmas gift hints fell on deaf ears) ..."


I've thought ebook readers were a nifty idea ever since seeing one in the first Star Trek movie way back in 1979 (the technological dark ages!).  I purchased my first digital reader in 1998, but paid the price of being an early adopter when the model I had was discontinued a few years later and I could no longer purchase books for it. I tried reading digital books on my Dell Axim for awhile, but it just wasn't the same. I eventually abandoned that, too, coming to the conclusion that the rest of the world just wasn't as ready for digital books as I was, and contented myself with old-fashioned paper for the next several years.

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Davina, BookBrowse editor

A couple of people have emailed recently to ask whether The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is based on, or at least inspired by, Andrew Sean Greer's 2004 novel The Confessions of Max Tivoli, and if so, why the movie title was changed?

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Kim Kovacs, BookBrowse reviewer

Once again I begin my New Year's resolutions with the promise, "I will not buy more books than I can read" (followed by the corollary, "I will buy just one book at a time"). Once again, I suspect I'll fail.

Ever since the fourth grade (don't ask), books have been a refuge for me. Each one represents a new world or adventure, my own little escape pod from the traumas of the day. Books call to me as I stroll the bookstore aisles, unable to resist their alluring covers and captivating premises. How can I possibly leave one of these unexplored worlds sitting, unread, on a shelf at my bookstore?

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past .....

Literary highlights (from a modern perspective) published in 1908, one hundred years ago, include The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame; War of the Classes and The Iron Heel by Jack London; Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery; The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck by Beatrix Potter; A Modern Utopia and The War in the Air by H G Wells; My Double Life by Sarah Bernhardt; The Man Who Was Thursday and All Things Considered by G K Chesterton;  A Room With a View by E M Forster; Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum; and the births of Ian Fleming and Louis L'Amour.  The Nobel Prize for Literature was won by German philosopher Rudolf Christoph Eucken.

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Davina Morgan-Witts, BookBrowse editor

Each year, as the holiday season comes around and news becomes thin on the ground, we look back into history for a snapshot of the news in centuries past. This time we travel to 1808:

In the USA, the Theatre St Philip opened in New Orleans.  In Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published the first part of Faust. In Britain, the first Royal Opera House in Covent Garden was destroyed by fire and Sir Walter Scott published Marmion, an epic poem about the Battle of Flodden Field.  In France, Francois Marie Charles Fourier (credited by modern scholars with originating the word feminisme) argued in his Theory of the Four Movements that the extension of the liberty of women was the general principle of all social progress, though he disdained 'equal rights'. Followers of Fourier would go on to establish about 30 socialist colonies based on his principles in various parts of the USA.

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