Archive for May, 2014

History of eBooks (infographic)

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

40 Years of E-books

Explore more visuals like this one on the web’s largest information design community – Visually.

A Day In the Life of New York City’s Public Libraries (video)

Friday, May 23rd, 2014

How Famous Writers Wrote Their Best Work (Infographic)

Thursday, May 22nd, 2014

Writers infographic

Jimmy Fallon’s Do No Read List for Summer 2014

Thursday, May 22nd, 2014

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Alexandria, Virginia is the most well-read city in America. What other cities are on the list?

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

Amazon.com recently released their fourth annual list of the most well-read cities in America. Alexandria, Virginia topped the list for the most well-read city in America.

Amazon crowned Alexandria, VA as the most well-read city in America by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle format from April 2013 to April 2014, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents. If you look at cities with more than 1 million residents, San Diego, Calif. is the most well-read, according to Amazon.com.

Virginia is for Lovers

If you’re not familiar with Alexandria, VA here are the pertinent details from Wikipedia:

Alexandria (formerly Belhaven and Hunting Creek Warehouse)[3] is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2010 census, the population was 139,966,[4] in 2013, the population was estimated to be 151,218.[5] Located along the Western bank of the Potomac River, Alexandria is approximately six miles (9.6 kilometers) south of downtown Washington, D.C.

Like the rest of Northern Virginia, as well as central Maryland, modern Alexandria has been shaped by its proximity to the nation’s capital. It is largely populated by professionals working in the federal civil service, in the U.S. military, or for one of the many private companies which contract to provide services to the federal government. One of Alexandria’s largest employers is the U.S. Department of Defense. Others include the Institute for Defense Analyses and the Center for Naval Analyses. In 2005, the United States Patent and Trademark Office moved to Alexandria.

So, what other cities made the list of most well-read cities in America? Drum roll, please.

2. Miami, Fla.

3. Knoxville, Tenn.

4. Seattle, Wash.

5. Orlando, Fla.

6. Ann Arbor, Mich.

7. Berkeley, Calif.

8. Cambridge, Mass.

9. Cincinnati, Ohio

10. Columbia, S.C.

11. St. Louis, Mo.

12. Pittsburgh, Penn.

13. Vancouver, Wash.

14. Salt Lake City, Utah

15. Atlanta, Ga.

16. Gainesville, Fla.

17. Dayton, Ohio

18. Clearwater, Fla.

19. Richmond, Va.

20. Tallahassee, Fla.

In taking a closer look at the data, Amazon also found that:

Inferno by Dan Brown was the best-selling book overall in Alexandria, Va., followed by Divergent by Veronica Roth and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Divergent was the most-read book by Goodreads users in Alexandria.

While Alexandria, Va. bought the most books overall, Cambridge, Mass. bought the most print books, and Knoxville, Tenn. purchased the most Kindle books.

Seattle, Wash.—home to Amazon.com’s corporate headquarters—made the biggest gain this year, jumping from the #13 spot in 2013 to #4.

Cambridge, Mass. continues to grow more budding entrepreneurs than any other city, ordering the most books in the Business & Investing category. Top titles include Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman and perennial best seller StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

Beach Reads 2014 – The Definitive List of Lists!

Wednesday, May 21st, 2014

What will you be reading this summer? Summer beach reads and summer reading lists are an annual pursuit. We decided to create a definitive list of 2014’s summer beach reading lists.

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Librarian Nancy Pearl Maps Out A Plan For Your Summer Reading

TED Summer 2014 Reading List – Rashida Jones, Elizabeth Gilbert, Bill and Melinda Gates and many more share their book recommendations

Amazon.com’s 2014 Summer Beach Read List

USA Today’s Heat Up Your Summer With 30 New Books

NPR’s Kate DiCamillo’s Picks For Summer Treehouse Reading

On Point With Tom Ashbrook’s Best Summer Reads 2014

Publishers Weekly’s 10 Books to Read If You’re Not Traveling This Summer

American Library Association – Summer Reading List 2014 (Lists broken down by grade level)

Christopher S Penn’s 2014 Summer Reading List

Ebony’s 6 Caribbean Writers To Discover This Summer

Travelers Today’s Beach Books for 2014

Lucky’s Five Favorite Summer Beach Reads

Stefan Mesch’s Best Summer Books / Beach Reads / Young Adult Novels

PopSugar’s The Best Beach Reads For a Summer Getaway

Business Insider’s 20 Best Business Books To Read This Summer

New York Post’s The 29 Best Books of The Summer

Conde Nast’s Traveler’s David Sedaris Tells You What to Read This Summer

Orlando Weekly’s Beach Reads

The Brooklyn Paper’s Turn the page on the best beach reads

12 YA Books for Your 2014 Summer Reading List

Bookish’s 2014 Summer Previews

StyleBlueprint’s Summer Reading List 2014

Dune London’s Our Favourite Summer Beach Reads

A Southern Girl’s Bookshelf – Summer Beach Reads (2014) Part 1 and Part 2

Design Sponge’s 5 Great Beach Reads

Mother Nature Network’s 2014 summer reading list: 9 green home tomes for the beach and beyond

Carolina Belle’s Summer Beach Reads

Cleveland.com’s Summer Books You’ll Love

JP Morgan Chase’s 2014 Summer Reading List

The Zoe Report’s Best Beach Reads

Glamour’s The 10 Best Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List Right This Second

InStyle’s These 4 Page Turners Are This Year’s New Beach Reads

Stylist’s Summer’s Best Beach Books and Holiday Reads

Arhaus Jewels’ 10 Beach Reads and The Jewelry To Match

CBC’s Summer Reading List 2014

Flavorwire’s 10 Highbrow Books to Read on the Beach (and What Each Says About You)

Flavorwire’s 2014 Summer Non-Fiction Reading List

NPR’s Top 100 Best Beach Reads Ever

Publishers Weekly’s Best Summer Reads 2014

11 Smart Books You Should Read This Summer from 250 Words

11 Fun Summer Reads for Moms

Buzzfeed’s 22 Books You Need To Read This Summer

Boston Globe’s Summer Reading Suggestions

Guest of a Guest’s Summer Reading List: 8 Hamptons-Based Books For The Beach

New Republic’s 9 Smart, Entertaining New Books To Get You Through The Summer

The Daily Beast’s The Summer’s Juiciest Beach Reads

Did we miss your favorite 2014 summer reading list? If so, email us a link.

What will you be reading at the beach this summer?

Quintessential Beach Reads From Years Past – That Are Still Worth Reading Today!

Tuesday, May 20th, 2014

Beach reads and popular bestselling books are as American as the proverbial slice of apple pie, baseball, and backyard cookouts. Today, you can’t swing a fat, bestselling beach read or a loaded Kindle without hitting a slew of annual Beach Read lists. Everyone from Oprah to Entertainment Weekly are intent each summer on letting you know about the hot beach books of the year that will add a little more enjoyment to your vacation idyll.

Instead of looking at this year’s beach reads, we thought it’d be great to look back at those quintessential beach reads and bestsellers from year’s past. Most vacation beach houses or mountain cabins are guaranteed to have at least one of these books on their bookshelves – if not more. These books may not be the “it” book of the 2010s, but they’re still worth a good, fun, beach read.

Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

One of the earliest paperback bestsellers, PEYTON PLACE was a book that ripped away the polite, genteel veneer of a New England town to reveal the tawdry scandals and s-e-x going on behind closed curtains. PEYTON PLACE stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 59 weeks. It sold 20 million copies in hardcover and another 12 million as a Dell paperback.[1]

This fascinating Vanity Fair article – Peyton Place’s Real Victim – delves into how the bestselling novel impacted Grace Metalious’ life.

At the age of 30, Metalious began work in the fall of 1954 on a manuscript about the dark secrets of a small New England town. The novel had the working title The Tree and the Blossom. By the spring of 1955, she had finished a first draft. However, she and her husband regarded The Tree and the Blossom as an unwieldy title and decided to give the town a name which could be the book’s title. They first considered Potter Place (the name of a real community near Andover, New Hampshire). Realizing their town should have a fictional name, they looked through an atlas and found Payton (the name of a real town in Texas). They combined this with Place and changed the “a” to an “e”. Thus, Peyton Place was born, prompting her comment, “Wonderful—that’s it, George. Peyton Place. Peyton Place, New Hampshire. Peyton Place, New England. Peyton Place, USA. Truly a composite of all small towns where ugliness rears its head, and where the people try to hide all the skeletons in their closets.”

Peyton Place

JAWS by Peter Benchley

Benchley’s bestselling novel JAWS was published in 1974, a year before the Steven Spielberg-directed movie was released and everyone was too scared to go swimming.

The title was not decided until shortly before the book went to print. Benchley says that he had spent months thinking of titles, many of which he calls “pretentious”, such as The Stillness in the Water and Leviathan Rising. Benchley regarded other ideas, such as The Jaws of Death and The Jaws of Leviathan, as “melodramatic, weird or pretentious”.[3] According to Benchley, the novel still did not have a title until twenty minutes before production of the book. The writer discussed the problem with editor Tom Congdon at a restaurant in New York.

We cannot agree on a word that we like, let alone a title that we like. In fact, the only word that even means anything, that even says anything, is “jaws”. Call the book Jaws. He said “What does it mean?” I said, “I don’t know, but it’s short; it fits on a jacket, and it may work.” He said, “Okay, we’ll call the thing Jaws.

Jaws paperback

Stephen King

It’s impossible to just list one Stephen King beach read. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, King published a string of bestselling novels and every one was a bestselling beach read – CARRIE, THE SHINING, THE STAND, DEADZONE, FIRESTARTER, and many others.

The Shining paperback

CENTENNIAL or HAWAII by James Michener

Every beach cabin is required to have at least one James Michener novel – it’s a law. People who appreciate fine literature grit their teeth and often can’t finish a James Michener novel. His characters were often wooden with motivation simply to move the plot forward. But, Michener’s novels – history lessons with ponderous characters – were hugely popular in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. HAWAII and CENTENNIAL were only two of Michener’s many bestselling novels.

CENTENNIAL traces the history of the plains of northeast Colorado from prehistory until the early 1970s. Geographic details about the fictional town of Centennial and its surroundings indicate that the region is in modern-day Weld County. Since the novel was written, the Denver suburb of Centennial has been incorporated, although its location in Arapahoe County is far from Michener’s fictional town of the same name. Much of his book was based on the Weld County town of Greeley.

Many episodes in the book are loosely based on actual historical events in eastern Colorado and southeast Wyoming, which for novelistic reasons are brought to a single locale. For example, “The Massacre” is based on the Sand Creek Massacre which took place in Kiowa County, Colorado in 1864. Other parts of the book are loosely based on a family from Sterling in Logan County.

Centennial was made into a popular twelve-part television miniseries, also entitled Centennial, that aired on NBC from October 1978 through February 1979, and was filmed in several parts of Colorado.

Centennial paperback

THE THORN BIRDS by Colleen McCullough

THE THORN BIRDS by Colleen McCullough is another mega-bestseller from the 1970s. Published in 1977, THE THORN BIRDS is set primarily on Drogheda, a fictional sheep station in the Australian outback named after Drogheda, Ireland, the family saga focuses on the Cleary family and spans the years 1915 to 1969.

The book’s title refers to a mythical bird that searches for thorn trees from the day it is hatched. When it finds the perfect thorn, it impales itself, and sings the most beautiful song ever heard as it dies.

The Thorn Birds paperback

What has been your favorite beach read – from recent years or years past?