The Year in GalleyCat: December

By now, you will have noticed that I didn’t mention any of the notable literary deaths that occurred this year. Book Chase‘s compiled list addresses the situation quite effectively.

⇒People kept knocking Amazon.com‘s Kindle e-book reader, calling it “fugly,” pointless, and not quite modern. For others, it was a portent of publishing’s future.

⇒As The New Republic finally noticed something was up in the book reviewing world, Publishers Weekly and the Association of American Publishers jostled each other in the rush to reassure America’s book critics that people really do take what they do seriously. Then the Chicago Sun-Times hacked its reviews into little bits so they’d fit in the Sunday arts section.

⇒NY Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus got a second gig editing the “Week in Review” section.

⇒Harlequin prepared to serialize novels via email, a medium in which the Japanese are way ahead of us.

⇒Walter Mosley went to Riverhead, and Karl Rove sold his memoir to Threshold. Insert your own “scorning the reality-based community” joke here.

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