Basbanes at Borders
Nick’s new book, About the Author: Inside the Creative Process, has been picked by Borders for its Scholar’s Corner promotion, running now through September 20 in select stores. Shown here at the Borders in New York City’s Columbus Circle, About the Author shares a cozy endcap with Bill Morgan’s The Typewriter is Holy, Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, James Salter’s Dusk, The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories 2010, and other literary delights. About the Author was published by Fine Books Press earlier this year, in both a trade edition and a numbered limited edition. The Midwest Book Review highly recommended the book, calling it "a fascinating read from beginning to end."
New from Nicholas Basbanes
About the Author
The final quarter of the last century was a period of extraordinary fervor in American letters—a time when post–World War II authors reached their peak and well before the Internet had eroded book publishing and changed everything. Writer Nicholas Basbanes, acclaimed author of A Gentle Madness, enjoyed the rare opportunity as literary editor of the Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram & Gazette to interview literally hundreds of authors passing through Boston on publicity tours.
About the Author: Inside the Creative Process collects together more than forty of Nicholas Basbanes’s interviews and essays that grew from this unique period of publishing. The list includes novelists, biographers, poets, historians, and others who were regularly among the best-selling authors. Perhaps no one has been more suited to this kind of reporting than Nicholas Basbanes. Using the skills of an experienced interviewer and the considered analysis of an impartial critic, Basbanes pioneered a new kind of journalism for his weekly column. These pieces collected together paint a remarkable picture of authors at the heights of their creativity.
With the loss of so many of these writers and the imposing behemoth called the Internet, this sort of collection may never again be culled from the morning papers. As alive and refreshing as the day they were published, About the Author explores the creative process that was—and is—the foundation of books and publishing.
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New Children’s Book Reviews
Books for the Holidays
Superstar author-illustrator Jan Brett has two books for the holidays, a double-barreled treat that includes “Home for Christmas” (Putnam, $17.99, 32 pages, ages 3 to 6), an enchanted trip to the northlands with a young lad eager to explore the snowy tundra. Those interested in a more traditional theme, meanwhile—and with no concession made to Brett’s trademark style and illustrative design—also have her take on Clement Moore’s timeless poem, “The Night Before Christmas, $20, 32 pages, ages 3 to 6)¸ with a DVD featuring music by the Boston Pops and narration by Jim Dale.
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From the Fine Book’s Blog
Reynolds Price, Author, “Fellow Bibliomaniac”
Reynolds Price, a true southern gentleman and one of the outstanding American writers of his generation, died yesterday at 77, in Durham, North Carolina, of heart failure. While known best for his thirteen novels, Price was a magnificent stylist adept in many genres, with volumes of poetry, essays, plays, short stories, memoirs, and translations from the Bible among his other credits. read more …