News: Book Snobbery, Copyshop Capers, And "Am I Good Enough?"

Among 30 things to tell book snobs:

People should never be made to feel bad about what they are reading. People who feel bad about reading will stop reading.

...Stories, at their essence, are enemies of snobbery. And a book snob is the enemy of the book.

I suppose it's a fair point, but a world without book snobs can be potentially dreadful. Another point:

...Snobbery leads to worse books. Pretentious writing and pretentious reading. Books as exclusive members clubs. Narrow genres. No inter-breeding. All that fascist nonsense that leads commercial writers to think it is okay to be lazy with words and for literary writers to think it is okay to be lazy with story.

What about commercial writers who think it is okay to be lazy with story? Hate to trot out Fifty Shades for this, but there you go.

In other stuff:

• A teacup whirlpool is being stirred in India over whether photocopying of textbooks will kill their publishers. An on-campus copy shop in Delhi University apparently drew the ire of several big publishers over photocopied material from some of their textbooks.
• These famous quotes are grammatically incorrect - but only technically. Linguistic perfection is seemingly overrated when the message is the most important thing. Thoughts?
• Books are said to be reviewed in The New York Times at the reviewers' own discretion - and that's the system. Probably the same story elsewhere.
• How to write about nature. Probably not like how Nabokov does it.
• The nine ways big publishers are like Big Pharma.
• The Hitler diary hoax - how did it happen?
• Words like "penmanship" and "fisherman" are gender-biased? For the love of...
• Here's one question every new writer asks and wants answers to: "Am I good enough?" The next question then, is: "Do I wanna be 'good enough'?"