We don’t all feel this strongly about our reading hobby, but Amazon announced today that they are partnering with critic Nancy Pearl for what they’re calling the “Book Lust Rediscoveries” series.
The idea behind Book Lust is to bring back to print six out-of-print books each year; each of them a Pearl recommendation. They will be available in print, audiobook, and on Kindle.
For the uninitiated, as a librarian and professional critic Pearl has been active for decades, and has been publishing printed book recommendations and winning awards since the mid- to late-1990s. She’s from Detroit, and later Tulsa, and finally she moved to Seattle where she earned the bulk of her critical accolades.
One of her most famous dicta is her “Rule of 50,” in which she argues that a reader should like a book by the end of the first 50 pages, and if he or she doesn’t, it may not be worth finishing. She also says that those over 50 years of age should subtract their age from 100 “and only grant it that many pages.”
The partnership has announced two books so far; among them, Merle Miller’s A Gay and Melancholy Sound and Rhian Ellis’ After Life.
Pearl has promised to donate some of the proceeds to a librarian’s endowment at the University of Washington’s Information School.
