Amazon reported earnings today and, for those financial buffs out there, its third quarter results were far less dazzling than second quarter—in other words, even the mammoth e-tailer is feeling the effects of the slow economy.
More to my interest, though, was their statement that Kindle2 will not be released in 2008, but rather 2009, at the earliest, which jives with my prediction that there will be a worldwide release of Kindle2 and that it will be able to be used in Europe as well as the US. There was also a statement that Kindle sales have exceeded expectations—of course, they don’t tell us what those expectations are or were, nor do they tell us total sales figures thus far. So, how are we to know what in the world that means?
It’s now known that Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture placed second in the running for the Booker Award and that the results were far from unanimous. It all makes one wonder whether there might be too many awards in the first place and whether it might be better not to name one winner but simply congratulate those who make the short list and allow them to divide the loot.
The British Library Online Shop has just released a three CD set called The Spoken Word. Rare recordings of some of the last century’s greatest writers have been released for the first time - from F Scott Fitzgerald reciting Othello to Tennessee Williams lambasting critics and Raymond Chandler drunkenly slurring his way through an interview with Ian Fleming.
The British Library CDs are a literary goldmine, with recordings of 30 British writers and 27 from the US, most of whom are being heard for the first time since they were in front of the microphone. They include the only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf, the sole recording of Arthur Conan Doyle, battily explaining the importance of spiritualism and the existence of telepathy, and Gertrude Stein incomprehensibly explaining how she writes. No word yet on when (or whether) they’ll be released in the US.
