A Common Reader: Books for Readers with Imagination was an American mail-order book catalog, established in 1986 by James Mustich Jr., a bookseller, editor, and writer. It was notable among general-interest book catalogs for its eclecticism, with large sections of each issue given over to obscure literary classics. [1]
The catalog was named in honor of Virginia Woolf's two-volume collection of essays, entitled The Common Reader (1925) and The Second Common Reader (1932), which collected her lectures and writings about the nature of reading and how best to approach it. [2] [3]
A Common Reader's in-house publishing imprint, the Akadine Press, [4] initiated in 1996, republished over 60 out-of-print books [5] by authors such as Lillian Beckwith, Alice Thomas Ellis, Barbara Holland, Reynolds Price, and John Ciardi.
A Common Reader was published up to 17 times a year, with a readership in the tens of thousands. Each edition listed an average of 700 books, accompanied by editorial write-ups. At its peak, A Common Reader sold over 300,000 titles per year.
The business closed in January 2006, [6] to the regret of many readers who appreciated its discerning finds and well-written précis. [7] [8] [9]
An author is the creator or originator of any written work such as a book or play, and is also considered a writer or poet. More broadly defined, an author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. Since October 12, 1931, The New York Times Book Review has published the list weekly. In the 21st century, it has evolved into multiple lists, grouped by genre and format, including fiction and non-fiction, hardcover, paperback and electronic.
Electronic publishing includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the editing of books, journals and magazines to be posted on a screen.
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Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. Kirkus Reviews confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, nonfiction, young readers' literature.
Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Western canon, though many titles are translated or of non-Western origin; indeed, the series for decades from its creation included only translations, until it eventually incorporated the Penguin English Library imprint in 1986. The first Penguin Classic was E. V. Rieu's translation of The Odyssey, published in 1946, and Rieu went on to become general editor of the series. Rieu sought out literary novelists such as Robert Graves and Dorothy Sayers as translators, believing they would avoid "the archaic flavour and the foreign idiom that renders many existing translations repellent to modern taste".
Open Library is an online project intended to create "one web page for every book ever published". Created by Aaron Swartz, Brewster Kahle, Alexis Rossi, Anand Chitipothu, and Rebecca Malamud, Open Library is a project of the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization. It has been funded in part by grants from the California State Library and the Kahle/Austin Foundation. Open Library provides online digital copies in multiple formats, created from images of many public domain, out-of-print, and in-print books.
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James Mustich, Jr. is a bookseller, editor, and writer. In October 2018, Mustich's book 1,000 Books To Read Before You Die: A Life-Changing List was published by Workman Publishing, receiving starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal, as well as the praise of other notable independent reviewers. The Washington Post listed it as one of the 50 best nonfiction books of the year.
Arcadia Publishing is an American publisher of neighborhood, local, and regional history of the United States in pictorial form. Arcadia Publishing also runs the History Press, which publishes text-driven books on American history and folklore.
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Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. The term usually refers to written media, such as books and magazines, either as an ebook or as a physical copy using POD technology. It may also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, games, video content, artwork, and zines. Web fiction is also a major medium for self-publishing.
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"Modern Fiction" is an essay by Virginia Woolf. The essay was published in The Times Literary Supplement on April 10, 1919 as "Modern Novels" then revised and published as "Modern Fiction" in The Common Reader (1925). The essay is a criticism of writers and literature from the previous generation. It also acts as a guide for writers of modern fiction to write what they feel, not what society or publishers want them to write.