The fact that Amazon has introduced (yet another) faster, cheaper Kindle, or that Anne Rice, after ditching vampires for Christ, has decided to ditch Christianity as well?
Instead, how about killing some time before the weekend watching the trailer for Howl, the story of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark obscenity trial about a poem that isn’t available in a Kindle edition.
Really? People need online services for book recommendations?
I would have thought that readers were naturally curious people and would, I don’t know, maybe talk to other readers (friends and family maybe?) for book recommendations.
Or, they could go to their local bookstore and get any number of suggestions, which they can then race home and download onto their Kindles.
Don’t laugh, this happens more times than you think. In fact, if it happens much more, they’re going to describe random violent outbursts as going bookseller, instead of postal.
But, if you’re an agoraphobic shut-in, Lifehacker lists their five most popular book recommendation services, the result of a reader survey.
Funny thing is that a lot of folks voted for friends and family, but not enough to make the top five. Then again, we are talking about what is primarily a tech blog.
But it was kinda lame, so instead here is the video for Jane Austen’s Fight Club, which is a viral video I can really sink my teeth into.
And if Chuck Palahniuk would grant permission for some enterprising author to use his concept and tropes, I know it would cure my overexposure to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.
Mad Men returned to the airwaves Sunday, bringing in highballs and Brylcreem to relieve the summer doldrums.
I don’t want to spoil anything for folks who haven’t watched all of the third season, but it looked like some big changes were in store for Don Draper and the denizens of Sterling Cooper, and I can’t wait to see where things are going.
While I’m sure that pieces similar to this have run before (and I’m sure I’ve probably linked to them before), but Flavorwire has compiled what they call a definitive Mad Men Summer reading list, featuring books that have been prominently displayed or referenced in the show.
I don’t recall the show doing much to revive interest in Leon Uris’ Exodus, but it did create a sales spike for Frank O’Hara’s poetry collection Meditations in an Emergency.
Personally, I have a fantasy where Don Draper uses Bert Cooper’s copy of Atlas Shrugged to hammer the bejeezus out of the smarmy Pete Campbell. I think it’s safe to say that it’s a plot line we can all get behind.
As an added AV bonus, here is a video from College Humor featuring a montage of Mad Men’s neanderthal pick-up lines.
Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour hit the streets (in most places) on Tuesday to the delight of legions of Scottaholics.
Check out the picture below at the release party held in Scott’s stomping ground of Toronto, where an estimated 2000 lined up to meet Scott Pilgrim’s creator, Bryan Lee O’Malley.
If you think it’s crazy now, wait until the movie comes out next month. O’Malley, on his blog, gives the soundtrack to the film a listen, comparing the cuts he suggested with those suggested by director Edgar Wright. I have to admit that Frank Blank’s I Heard Ramona Sing often popped into my head as I was reading this series.
Maybe, just maybe, this film will enthrall a tidal wave of girls into thinking that slacker boys who spend way too much time playing videogames are far more interesting than pigeon-chested vampires that sparkle in sunlight, sparking a new trend and making people forget ol’ whatshisname.
(Photo via radiomaru.com)
Laura Miller, Salon’s book critic, has penned an interesting article about the craft of recommending books.
To add some heft to the piece, she brings in the uberfrau of book suggestions, famed Seattle librarian and Book Lust scribe Nancy Pearl, whose go-to books are To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonesome Dove and Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner.
It kills me (in a good way) that Pearl is still recommending Mockingbird. I mean, is there anybody over 17 that didn’t have to read it for school? How awesome would it be to read that novel for the first time without the filter of a well-meaning teacher?
The article reminded me of my more waggish days as a bookseller, where I wanted to make “if you like X, you’ll like Y” shelf-talkers with the most absurdly tenuous connections. Ones like “If you liked Fatherhood by Bill Cosby, you’ll like Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver” and “If you liked Sherman Alexie, you’ll like Arundhati Roy” (they’re both Indians, right?).
Sorry if that last joke went a little to far, I was trying to make fun of some of the absurdity that goes into book suggestions, not Native Americans or Booker Prize-winning authors.
In another press release heard ’round the world, the house of Bezos’ declared that readers are living in la Belle Époque Kindle.
Amazon claims that:
Over the past three months, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 143 Kindle books. Over the past month, for every 100 hardcover books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 180 Kindle books.
What isn’t mentioned is exactly how many of anything Amazon has sold. While ratios are trotted out, there are no metrics by which to measure these claims (except when they declare that of the 1.14 million James Patterson books sold, 867,881 of them were Kindle editions.
One conspicuous absence is the mention of how Kindle editions fared against trade paperback and mass market version when available. Making these comparisons when price isn’t an issue would give the industry something much closer to an apples-to-apples snapshot.
I’m not the only person to notice this. Bertelsmann’s Madeline McIntosh told the Wall Street Journal “Our conclusion is that there’s no data to prove any connection—good or bad—between growth in e-books and the growth or decline, in trade paperback sales”.
There is a great blog called Picture Book Report, which is basically illustrated book reports drawn from books that are frequently assigned in middle/high school, such as Mrs. Frisby & the Rats of Nimh, and A Wrinkle in Time (as well as a few that were not, as I can’t imagine anything but a well-adjusted honors program assigning Geek Love).
Even books as benign and banal as Where the Red Fern Grows (below) takes on new life with these illustrations.
(via io9)
Here’s a video primer to get you ready for both Tuesday’s release of the final volume in the series, Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour (Oni PB 9781934964385 $11.99), and the film adaptation due August 13th. There are a few spoilers if you prefer to not know such intimate details of a movie before you see it, but if you’re clueless about the phenomenon (okay, that’s too strong of a word if you compare it to Twilight).
(via io9)
I saw this on Tuesday before I went to bed and wanted to blog about it, but the Benadryl kicked in and I was out like a light.
Jacket Copy linked to the fabulous website that reads whatever text you put into it and determines what famous writer is similar in style.
The good news is that some of my reviews came out saying I wrote like James Joyce, but when I put in my blog postings, it said I wrote like Dan Brown. Could be worse, I guess; it could have said that I wrote like Robert James Waller (Bridges of Madison County).
Now, here’s a trick for the kids at home: type in the text from Joyce, or Nabokov or Salinger, and see who they come up as.
I have to say, this is almost as much fun as the Wu Tang Name Generator.