TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| Paperback Trade Fiction Top 5 at a Glance1. BED OF ROSES, by Nora Roberts2. PUSH, by Sapphire3. SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM, by Uwem Akpan4. THE SHACK, by William P. Young5. OLIVE KITTERIDGE, by Elizabeth Strout feeds.nytimes.com |
Books of The Times: Vile Heroes and High-Seas Swagger “Pirate Latitudes” has unremarkable ambitions, standard genre flourishes and the stiff, uncomfortable tone of early work. feeds.nytimes.com |
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe | Theatre review New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeBehaving like some kind of faithful but clumsy mutt, most stage adaptations of CS Lewis's story only end up magnifying its less attractive class and religious aspects. But Theresa Heskins's new version, which she also directs, is by far the best I've ever seen. It's a gloriously inventive, fluid and stream-lined version that pitches it precisely in its second world war context. The White Witch, in her gorgeous art deco sleigh, is clearly a dictator aiming for world domination, her henchmen are SS-style bullies and the final assault between the forces of good and evil is played out like the Battle of Britain: images of tiny planes fly across the floor in Laura Clarkson's superbly simple design.If that makes it sound too serious, there is plenty of fun, too, in the stamping reindeer, the eager beavers and an Aslan with a roar like thunder. Heskins's production does for CS Lewis what Carol Ann Duffy and Tim Supple did for the Grimm brothers in the 1980s, making a virtue of the storytelling style. This is a wonderful box of theatrical tricks, full of artifice, and yet simple and bursting with invention.Sometimes the actors are better at playing fur coats and mirrors than people; but they are all multi-skilled, and I particularly liked Jack Blumenau's sulky Edmund. It's a triumphant little show with a song in its heart and a catch in its throat, at a theatre that is increasingly proving itself a significant regional player.Rating: 4/5Panto seasonTheatreCS LewisLyn Gardnerguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Amazon e-book sales overtake print for first time Online retailer may be on target for sales of 500,000 Kindle e-readers over ChristmasSpare a thought for the humble hardback this Christmas. It seems the traditional giftwrapped tome is being trumped by downloads, after Amazon customers bought more e-books than printed books for the first time on Christmas Day.As people rushed to fill their freshly unwrapped e-readers – one of the top-selling gadgets this festive season – the online retailer said sales at its electronic book store quickly overtook orders for physical books. Its own e-reader, the Kindle, is now the most popular gift in Amazon's history.Amazon's shares rose sharply today after it updated investors on a strong Christmas performance. On its peak day, 14 December, the retailer said customers ordered more than 9.5m items worldwide, the equivalent of a record-breaking 110 items a second.The Seattle-based company's top sellers in its home market included Apple's iPod touch, Scrabble Slam Cards, Nintendo's Wii Fit Plus with balance board, the latest Harry Potter DVD, Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue and Susan Boyle's album, I Dreamed a Dream.Although Amazon has repeatedly trumpeted "record-breaking" Kindle sales, it has refused to say exactly how many have been sold since the 2007 launch.Sandeep Aggarwal, an analyst with Collins Stewart in New York who has tracked the Kindle's performance, believes that across both models – the paperback-sized Kindle 2 and larger DX – Amazon may be on target to have sold a little over 500,000 units by the end of the year.Nor does it divulge data about the Kindle-compatible books it sells from a Kindle Store that now includes more than 390,000 titles.After first taking off in the US, e-readers are becoming increasingly popular in the UK and the Kindle went on sale in Britain in mid-October. The department store chain John Lewis highlighted the popularity of e-readers this Christmas, reporting a jump in sales of Sony's eBook readers.British publishers have also been exploring the market for electronic versions of books in the hope of enjoying strong sales when e-book stores and reading devices achieve critical mass in the coming years.The Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury made the 2009 Wisden Cricketers' Almanack available as an e-book for the first time this year, while Penguin has been selling a range of its classics in electronic form with extra features such as contemporary recipes.Retail industryAmazon.comKatie Allenguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Hardcover Fiction Top 5 at a Glance1. THE HELP, by Kathryn Stockett2. THE LOST SYMBOL, by Dan Brown3. NOAH’S COMPASS, by Anne Tyler4. IMPACT, by Douglas Preston5. I, ALEX CROSS, by James Patterson feeds.nytimes.com |