Despite an overall decline in book sales, it was a banner year for rare books. According book dealer Abe Books, the site made over $220,330 from the sales of ten books alone, with a copy of Marx’s Das Kapital going for $51,739 (irony!) and a signed first edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird bringing in $25,000.
The Rumpus interviews Marie Calloway, a twenty-one year old writer whose story “Adrien Brody,” a thinly fictionalized account about sleeping with an older New York writer, has been creating a stir among the internet literati. Kate Zambreno has also weighed in on Calloway on her blog.
Philly has named Sonia Sanchez as its first Poet Laureate.
At Splitsider, Rebecca O’Neal rounds up the year’s best humor writing, and Longform rounds up the year’s best sex writing.
Amazon has issued another enigmatic press release about sales of its Kindle e-readers, bragging that customers purchased “well over 1 million Kindle devices per week” throughout December and that the “Kindle Fire is the #1 best-selling, most gifted, and most wished for product” on Amazon. Even so, the company is keeping quiet about how many Kindles they’ve actually sold.
