Great Regulars: Women, said [Teddy Wayne] Wayne, buy

around two-thirds of all books and 80% of fiction. They belong more frequently to book clubs, which are skewed towards female authors writing about female experiences, "the publishing industry has noticed this trend in reading habits", and it's the "midlist male author who writes about males" who is suffering.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Battle of the authors' sexes continues

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"When the laureate speaks to the Guardian columnist to the tremendous potential for a vital new poetry to be drawn from the practice of texting she is policing her patch, and when I beg her with all due respect to her high office to consider that she might be wrong, I am policing mine," said Hill, in a lecture entitled "Poetry, Policing and Public Order". The Oxford professor of poetry has previously described difficult poems as "the most democratic because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing they are intelligent human beings", saying that "so much of the popular poetry of today treats people as if they were fools".

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Carol Ann Duffy is 'wrong' about poetry, says Geoffrey Hill

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"Someone worked really hard to make the language just right, just the way they wanted it. They were so sure of it that they printed it in ink, on paper. A screen always feels like we could delete that, change that, move it around. So for a literature-crazed person like me, it's just not permanent enough."

For serious readers, [Jonathan] Franzen said, "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience".

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Jonathan Franzen warns ebooks are corroding values

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Authors C.S. Lewis, Roald Dahl and Aldous Huxley all turned down honours from the Queen, newly released documents have revealed.

A freedom of information request saw the list of people to have rejected an honour between 1951 and 1999 and since died published last night by the Cabinet Office.

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Roald Dahl and CS Lewis among writers revealed to have refused honours

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Vladimir Putin has laid out his plans to compile a canon of 100 Russian books "that every Russian school leaver will be required to read" in an attempt to preserve the "dominance of Russian culture".

from Alison Flood: The Guardian: Vladimir Putin plans 100-book Russian canon all students must read

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