Wednesday, November 30, 2011
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Sunday, July 03, 2011
For Ebook Fans, Reading Is Becoming A Whole New Experience
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — David J. Loehr, a playwright who lives in southern Indiana, was taking his car to the dealership when a story on the radio caught his attention. A short science piece about "an obscure subject" gave him an idea for a new play.
Ordinarily, Loehr would have had to make do with jotting down some notes or trying to remember his inspiration. But since he had his iPad with him, he bought a few books on the subject and downloaded them as soon as he got to the dealership. He started his research for the play right there, while his car was being serviced.
"I can have all that research on a single tablet instead of carrying around 40 books," Loehr said.
Welcome to the future of books, where your entire library is as portable as a cellphone.
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Is This The Tipping Point For E-Books & Libraries?
From Tinyread:The American Library Association (ALA) has just released its 2011 Public Library Funding and Technology Access Survey, and among its findings, 67% of public libraries in the U.S. now offer free access to e-books for their patrons. That's up 30% since 2007. Of course, access to e-books ranges greatly from state-to-state: 100% of Maryland and Utah libraries offer e-books, while only 25% of ilbraries in Mississippi do so, for example.
But even in the states where e-book access is commonplace, when it comes to making digital literature available to their patrons, libraries face a number of challenges. We've covered many of these issues here. Most well-known among these obstacles was the controversial announcement earlier this year by publisher Harper Collins to have library e-books "self-destruct" after 26 checkouts, forcing libraries to re-purchase titles in order to secure more checkouts. This among other factors (including, of course, budget issues) has made the future of e-books in libraries unclear.
Read more ....Saturday, May 21, 2011
Another Sign The Ebook Readers Make Business Sense
Nook Hook: Liberty Media Eyes E-Books With $1 Billion Bid for Barnes & Noble -- EpicenterEconomist Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction” — the process by which technological innovation disrupts, and in many cases destroys, old business models, paving the way for new ones to emerge. It was little more than a decade ago that bibliophiles were bemoaning the loss of traditional neighborhood bookstores, crushed by big-box behemoths like Barnes & Noble and Borders.
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My Comment: This is a billion dollar gamble, but it is a good match if Liberty Media can make both the e-book and brick and motor business work together.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Kindle E-Book Outsells Print Versions For First Time Ever
Bestseller: The e-book is outselling text versions for the first time everSales of digital e-books have outstripped real books for the first time, according to Amazon.
Four years after the launch of electronic novels, the firm announced it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books over the past six weeks.
While e-book sales have previously outsold hardback books, never before have they exceeded sales of all books, in both hardback and paperback forms.
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My Comment: We predicted this years ago .... but it is still a surprise to now know that this point has been reached.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
E-Book Sales Now Surpass Printed Books At Amazom
Amazon Says E-Book Sales Surpass Printed Books -- New York Post/APAmazon.com says it’s selling more electronic books than printed books, less than four years after it started selling e-books.
Since April 1, Amazon.com Inc. says it has sold 105 e-books for every 100 printed books, including printed books for which there is no electronic edition. The comparison excludes free e-books.
Printed books include both hardcover and paperback books. Amazon said in July that e-book sales had outstripped hardcover sales.
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My Comment: My prediction .... within 10 years print will only be about 10 - 25% of sales.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
The Right Questions To Ask About Literature
PHOTO : http://www.slate.com
The Right Questions To Ask About Literature
Harvard's Marjorie Garber gets them all wrong.
Marjorie Garber's new book brought me back to my days as an English professor; I thought I was reading a freshman essay. My marginal comments might as well have been written in red: "What is the point of this paragraph?" "Where are we in the argument—and what exactly is the argument?" "Sloppy thinking." "You need to unpack this." "Again, is there a point here, or just a mass of notes?" "You have to develop your thesis, not just keep reiterating it
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Last 24 hours
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1. Niall Ferguson: 'The left love being provoked by me ... they think I'm a reactionary imperialist scumbag' - 2. What's wrong with popularising poetry? Well, the poets don't seem to like it . . .
- 3. Karen Green: 'David Foster Wallace's suicide turned him into a "celebrity writer dude", which would have made him wince'
- 4. Patrick Ness's top 10 'unsuitable' books for teenagers
- 5. AC Grayling: 'How can you be a militant atheist? It's like sleeping furiously'
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Thinking the Impossible
PHOTO : http://www.guardian.co.uk
Thinking the Impossible: French Philosophy Since 1960 by Gary Gutting – review
The theories of Derrida and Foucault are revisited in this fair-minded history of French deconstructionism, and guess what? It wasn't all bunkum…
Are the theory wars over? Twenty-five years ago you couldn't cocoa your cappuccino without someone accusing you of floating a signifier, much less close down the, ahem, discourse with a simple "I prefer my coffee that way". Who is this mythic "I", the theorists wanted to know, and how could he presume to know what he prefers? Has he forgotten he's as fictional as Oliver Twist or Mrs Dalloway? Doesn't he know that his likes and dislikes are as ideologically determined as the medium-term financial strategy?
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Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Among the Hagiographers
PHOTO : http://online.wsj.com
Early on Gandhi was dubbed a 'mortal demi-god'—and he has been regarded that way ever since
Joseph Lelyveld has written a generally admiring book about Mohandas Gandhi, the man credited with leading India to independence from Britain in 1947. Yet "Great Soul" also obligingly gives readers more than enough information to discern that he was a sexual weirdo, a political incompetent and a fanatical faddist—one who was often downright cruel to those around him. Gandhi was therefore the archetypal 20th-century progressive intellectual, professing his love for mankind as a concept while actually despising people as individuals.MORE.........
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Hardcover fiction
1. The Troubled Man
By Henning Mankell. Knopf.
2. The Land of Painted Caves
By Jean M. Auel. Crown.
3. The Tiger's Wife.
By Tea Obreht. Random House.
4. Drawing Conclusions
By Donna Leon. Atlantic Monthly.
5. A Lesson in Secrets.
By Jacqueline Winspear. Harper.
6. The Pale King
By David Foster Wallace. Little, Brown.
7. Live Wire.
By Harlan Coben. Dutton Adult.
8. Lover Unleashed
By J.R. Ward. NAL.
9. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Roderick Rules
By Jeff Kinney. Amulet.
10. Sweet Valley Confidential
By Francine Pascal. St. Martin’s.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
Group Think
PHOTO : Illustration by Dienstelle 75
Group Think
Tina Rosenberg joins a popular club for nonfiction writers.
If I had the money, I would send Tina Rosenberg on an all-expenses-paid trip to Cairo. Here’s why: Back in 1987, the MacArthur Foundation, which does have the money, awarded her a “genius” grant. Rosenberg used it to research and write an excellent book, Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America. Afterward, she turned her attention to Eastern Europe and to the moral, political, and ethical difficulties of apportioning guilt and innocence in post-Communist nations. The resulting book, The Haunted Land, possesses a rare combination of nuance and force. It also possesses a rare combination of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
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Monday, April 04, 2011
13, Rue Thérèse
PHOTO : GOOGLE IMAGE
13, Rue Thérèse
Review by Simon Schama
Published: March 25 2011 22:00 | Last updated: March 25 2011 22:00
13, Rue Thérèse, by Elena Mauli Shapiro, Headline, RRP£12.99, 288 pagesYou take a quick shufti at this debut novel and you clock its cuteness right away: the title for a start – treize, rue Thérèse; yeah got it; then all those old photos, facsimile letters, the chequered covers of a mysterious box embedded in the text and your bricolage alert is ringing like billy-o.
So you have a browse and you see right away that Elena Mauli Shapiro is having a bit of a lark, scrambling time, setting us up for the Unreliable Narrator who is made to happen upon that box full of stuff – an opening to a bigger mystery.
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Sunday, April 03, 2011
Is Pakistan a ‘jelly state'?
PHOTO : www.hindu.com
Is Pakistan a ‘jelly state'?
SHAIKH MUJIBUR REHMAN
| The book seeks to build a body of knowledge that falls under the rubric of Pakistan scholarship |
TINDERBOX - The Past and Future of Pakistan: M.J. Akbar, HarperCollins, A-53, Sector 57, Noida-201301. Rs. 499.
The publication of this book has brought some dignity to the claim that India has some serious academic expertise on Pakistan. Although more than a score of diplomats and journalists are projected by the Indian media as Pakistan experts, hardly any Indian author figures in the list of top 20 books written on Pakistan over the past two decades. This could also be said of Indian scholarship on Middle East, Latin America, and many other regions. But it becomes a bit too embarrassing in respect of Pakistan because it happens to be our most important and, at the same time, highly sensitive neighbour.
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Saturday, April 02, 2011
The future of the English language
PHOTO : GOOGLE IMAGE
The future of the English language
Will English survive as a lingua franca, or will translation technology make it unnecessary? In the British film Code 46 of 2003, the director Michael Winterbottom creates a visually and verbally hybrid world for a dystopian love story. Cityscapes are an architectural collage of Shanghai, Dubai and London’s Jubilee Line, simultaneously recognizable and alien, and are populated by speakers of a world language that mixes English with Spanish, Mandarin Chinese and Persian. The linguistic hybridization signals that in the world of Code 46 the balance of economic and political power has shifted away from English-speaking nations and hence English is no longer quite the global force to which we have become accustomed.
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Friday, April 01, 2011
The Use and Abuse of Literature
PHOTO : www.sfgate.com
The Use and Abuse of Literature
By Marjorie Garber
(Pantheon; 320 pages; $28.95)
Why read? You'd think that with the e-book and the Internet, with Google searching and channel surfing, the experience of curling up with a good book is as archaic as a buggy ride. You'd think, too, that with graphic novels and celebrity memoirs, and with Wikipedia offering their entries in "simple English," the very idea of literature itself had disappeared and, along with it, the language of craft and cadence that made memorable all writers from Shakespeare to Shaw.
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Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Quick-Change Artist
PHOTO : www.bookforum.com
A writer who actively resists categorization these days might seem to be deliberately flouting common sense. Writing is a lame-duck art form at best, since readers go for data, preferably without having to chop their way through encroaching idiosyncrasies such as style. For all we know, the pursuit of data will soon enough be free of the encumbrance and ambiguity of words. In the meantime, the writer should be building a brand identity and hitching it to a neatly delimited subject area. If you've written a successful memoir about fishing, Manitoba, and suicidal ideation you would do well not to stray too far from those ingredients in your subsequent works. You want to turn your lemonade stand into a chain.
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This week's bestsellers
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1. Ten Poems About Tea
by Sophie Dahl
- 2. Hundred Doors
by Michael Longley
- 3. Troubled Man
by Henning Mankell
- 4. Zero Degrees of Empathy
by Simon BaronCohen
- 5. Hanging Shed
by Gordon Ferris
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Can neuroscience explain art?
PHOTO :GOOGLE IMAGE
Idle Chatter
This Is Your Brain on Art
Can neuroscience explain art?
Twenty percent of art can now be explained by neuroscience. That, at least, is what V.S. Ramachandran thinks. Ramachandran is the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, and Distinguished Professor with the Psychology Department and Neurosciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. He is, in short, one of the top neuroscientists around at the moment. He is also a clear and engaging writer. His 1999 book, Phantoms in the Brain, brought him much popular attention and his most recent book, The Tell-Tale Brain, is doing more of the same.
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Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Oxford Book of Parodies
PHOTO :
Mickey or Bugs?
The Oxford Book of Parodies
Edited by John Gross
Oxford, 416 pages
For decades, comedy writers have puzzled over a mystery: Why is Mickey Mouse more famous than Bugs Bunny? Mickey isn’t funny or interesting. He cannot produce an anvil or a Carmen Miranda hat out of the air. All in all, his “good mouse” act is a toothless, nice-guy bore.
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Hardcover fiction
1. The Tiger's Wife
By Téa Obreht. Random House.
2. Sing You Home
By Jodi Picoult. Atria.
3. The Wise Man's Fear
By Patrick Rothfuss. DAW.
4. The Paris Wife
By Paula McLain. Ballantine.
5. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
By Stieg Larsson. Knopf.
6. The Help
By Kathryn Stockett. Amy Einhorn.Putnam.
7. One of Our Thursdays Is Missing (tie)
By Jasper Fforde. Viking.
7. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules
By Jeff Kinney. Amulet.
8. Swamplandia! (tie)
By Karen Russell. Knopf.
8. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Ugly Truth
By Jeff Kinney. Amulet.
Monday, March 28, 2011
REPORT ON THE STATE OF FOOD INSECURITY IN URBAN INDIA
PHOTO : www.hindu.com
Poverty norm or calorie norm?
SWARNA S. VEPA
| Kerala and Tamil Nadu with the lowest calorie consumption seem to show better health outcome indicators |
REPORT ON THE STATE OF FOOD INSECURITY IN URBAN INDIA: MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Third Cross Street, Taramani Institutional Area, Chennai-600113.
This report, a joint initiative by the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation — an institution with a remarkable long term commitment to issues related to food security — and the United Nations World Food Programme, should serve as an excellent hand book on urban food insecurity. Aside from providing all the relevant information in a consolidated fashion — something that is hard to come by in these days of information overload — it highlights the issues that are of critical importance. If its recommendations are meant for policymakers and those charged with the responsibility of formulating action-oriented programmes, the publication is no less useful for researchers in the field.
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Sunday, March 27, 2011
Superficial & Sublime?
PHOTO : www.nybooks.com
All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age
by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly
Free Press, 254 pp., $26.00
Hamburger Kunsthalle/Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz/Art Resource
Helen of Troy; painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863
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Saturday, March 26, 2011
In Defense of Tenure
PHOTO : GOOGLE IMAGE
In Defense of Tenure
It might be under attack, but academic tenure is essential to preserving academic freedom.
I inhabit two worlds. The first is where I work most of the time—the American academy or, more specifically, a state-funded university. What do I see here? A full-time faculty dwindling in numbers and whose salaries are flatlining; rising ranks of “contingent” and contract-based teachers who have little job security; and stressed students who face rising tuitions and ballooning class sizes.
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