"To Read Too Many Books is Harmful" — Mao Zedong

Photo: Michael Hale

" [...] Readers are now faced with a glut of books they can't wade through. Booksellers are suffering because they are faced with customers who are frustrated and who have no way to choose books, plus the booksellers themselves have no chance to read a sizable number of the books they sell and therefore are less educated about what to recommend and rely more and more on bestseller lists." — M. J. Rose
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"[...] Every month, it seems, some reporter drops by my office to request a leave of absence to write a book. I patiently explain that book-writing is agony — slow, lonely, frustrating work that, unless you are a very rare exception, gets a lukewarm review (if any), reaches a few thousand people and lands on a remaindered shelf at Barnes & Noble. I recount my own experience as a book failure — two incompletes, and I’m still paying back a sizable advance with a yearly check to Simon & Schuster that I think of not as a burden but as bail." — Bill Keller, The New York Times
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