Language, Power and Success: Bestselling Translations in the Dutch CPNB Top 100 archief

This paper investigates origins, original languages and authors of bestselling translations on the annual Dutch Top 100 bestseller list. Considering the first fifty entries on the lists from the period between 1997 and 2019, the study aims to determine the Dutch position within the World Language System. The results show that about half of all the books surveyed are translations. These come from fifteen different source languages, although a clear majority are translations from English (73.2%). The analysis confirms the notion of a World Language System with central, semi-peripheral and peripheral languages and places Dutch among the peripheral languages. Furthermore, the study reveals strong globalisation and commercialisation tendencies in the Dutch book market.

Colson Whitehead

Over the course of a career now in its third decade, Colson Whitehead has produced a nine-book oeuvre that has made him one of the foremost 21st-century American literary authors. Born Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead in New York on November 6, 1969, he spent his childhood and adolescence devouring pop culture—in particular, science fiction and horror films. His early years were generally divided between Manhattan and his family’s summer home in Sag Harbor on Long Island. In 1987, he began studying literature at Harvard University, where he befriended poet and editor Kevin Young and other members of the influential Dark Room Collective. After graduation, he spent several years in New York writing for the Village Voice. During this time, he also started working on what eventually became his debut novel, The Intuitionist (New York: Doubleday, 1999). Although his initial readership remained relatively small, Whitehead’s critical reputation grew quickly, with each of his first two books earning rave reviews and literary prizes. The Intuitionist was a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for debut fiction and his second novel, John Henry Days (New York: Doubleday, 2001), won the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a prize given to exemplary American literary works dealing with racism and diversity. John Henry Days was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2000, he received the Whiting Award, which supports promising new writers, and then followed that up with a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (colloquially known as a “Genius Grant”) in 2002 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. Although his third novel, Apex Hides the Hurt (New York: Doubleday, 2006), was less critically lauded, it nevertheless won the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, which recognizes outstanding multicultural literature. Over the next decade, Whitehead’s readership began to catch up with his critical acclaim and each of his subsequent five novels has landed on the New York Times bestseller list. The Underground Railroad (New York: Doubleday, 2016) has been his most noteworthy book to date, reaching the top of the New York Times bestseller list, as well as earning him the Pulitzer Prize, the Carnegie Medal, the National Book Award, and public endorsements from Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, among others. He followed this success up with a short historical novel, The Nickel Boys (New York: Doubleday, 2019), whose release was accompanied both by considerable fanfare (including Whitehead’s appearance on the cover of Time magazine) and continued critical praise. Although he has gravitated away from the comic-satirical tenor of his earlier work, Whitehead remains both a masterful prose stylist and a pointed social critic.

STYLISTICS AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE IN SUE MONK KIDD’S THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES

The goals of this study are to find out kinds of figurative language used by Sue Monk Kidd in his novel, The Secret Life of Bees, to investigate how the artistic effect and linguistic evidence achieved through figurative language and to describe how figurative language supports the theme. The research deals with the use of figurative language in a literary work, novel. Hence, this study contains the figurative language and also Sue Monk Kidd’s stylistics. The Secret Life of Bees was a New York Times bestseller list, it won 2004 book sense book of the year awards, and it was nominated for the orange broadband prize for fiction. This novel also adapted to film directed by Gina Prince-bythewood.

The Entire Mystery: Paratexts and the Ever-Expanding Twin Peaks Universe

This chapter explains how the Twin Peaks universe has expanded beyond the mediums of film and television and into the areas of literature and digital media, which inspired countless works of fan-made artwork and fiction. It reviews a brief survey of some of the key paratexts that interlock with David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which opens up new facets and insights into the film's narrative. It also mentions The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, which was written by Lynch's daughter Jennifer and published in October 1990 in between airing of the first and second seasons of the Twin Peaks series. The chapter details the The Secret Diary's initial release that reached number four on The New York Times bestseller list during the height of Twin Peaks mania. It explains book stands as a powerful testimony of the harmful and damaging effects of sexual abuse.

History Comes Alive

During the 1976 Bicentennial celebration, millions of Americans engaged with the past in brand-new ways. They became absorbed by historical miniseries like Roots, visited museums with new exhibits that immersed them in the past, propelled works of historical fiction onto the bestseller list, and participated in living history events across the nation. While many of these activities were sparked by the Bicentennial, M. J. Rymsza-Pawlowska shows that, in fact, they were symptomatic of a fundamental shift in Americans’ relationship to history during the 1960s and 1970s. For the majority of the twentieth century, Americans thought of the past as foundational to, but separate from, the present, and they learned and thought about history in informational terms. But Rymsza-Pawlowska argues that the popular culture of the 1970s reflected an emerging desire to engage and enact the past on a more emotional level: to consider the feelings and motivations of historic individuals and, most importantly, to use this in reevaluating both the past and the present. This thought-provoking book charts the era’s shifting feeling for history, and explores how it serves as a foundation for the experience and practice of history making today.

Study of Three Levels of Design for Cultural and Creative Products Pertinent to Consumer Personality Traits

To meet consumer requirement, the cultural and creative products underscore the route of developing personality products in a bid to satisfy unconventional and independent psychological demand of consumers. The purpose of this study is to explore correlation of consumer personality traits in selecting products or preference for products. Professional Dynamitic Program (PDP) personality traits testing has been used, and as for products three levels of emotional design proposed by Norman (2004) is adopted: Visceral, behavioral and reflective. The flow of study is divided into four major stages, the first stage of literature review and theoretical construction, the second stage on websites of Palace Museum Boutique Pavilion, Taiwan Cultural and Creative Souvenirs Pavilion and Pinkoi, and invite experts to screen cultural and creative products on bestseller list; the third stage focuses on PDP personality traits testing in a bid to understand consumers’ personality traits; The fourth stage provides cultural and creative products after screening and selection of questionnaire for individual intuitiveness of testee’s preference for product design. The conclusion of this study shows significant correlation in preference of consumers’ differential personality traits on design of cultural and creative products. It also conducts statistics on preference for levels of emotional design for cultural and creative products in accordance with different personality traits and the correlation result may provide reference for product planners, designers or sales.

The construction of a bestseller: theoretical and empirical approaches to the case of the Fifty Shades trilogy as an eBook bestseller

In both eBook and print versions, EL James’ Fifty Shades trilogy has made a substantial impact on bestseller lists across the world. But what does it mean to be a bestseller? Is the eBook bestseller different from its print counterpart? Taking the case of the Fifty Shades trilogy as a starting point, this article looks into the overall topic of bestsellers and digital publishing with specific attention paid to the Norwegian book market and the publishing history of the trilogy in Norway. The article examines these issues in line with an understanding of the bestseller as the product of a cultural logic rather than a reflection of popular taste. The article argues that since a bestseller is identified through its position on a bestseller list, the status is dependent on a general cultural recognition and the inclusion in a particular market information regime. The case of Fifty Shades highlights new trends in publishing and new elements to the construction of the bestseller, but also how the construction of the bestseller was dependent on its integration into the traditional channels of publishing.