Opinions And Observations From Someone Who Has Been Reading Constantly For 30 Years, And Who Knows Where All The Books On The Internet Are Buried.
This Blog Will Also Be A Diary On My Journey To Make "Bookyards The Library" A Commercial Success.
After a long hiatus, online bookseller Amazon is back trying to encourage us to read in a new way. Its Web site now features this description of its Kindle reading device: "Availability: In Stock. Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available." This good news for consumers comes after the first batch of the devices sold out in just six hours late last year.
This seems like a fitting time to ask: If the Internet is the most powerful communications advance ever – and it is – then how do this medium and its new devices affect how and what we read?
Two years into his job as a features writer at a South Florida daily newspaper, J.C. Hutchins left the newsroom to follow his dream: writing a novel. Thirteen hundred pages later, Hutchins finished 7th Son, a thriller about human cloning. Then, reality set in: no one would publish it. But Hutchins has found a way around the first-time writer's heartbreak — and he is now part of a technological wave that may carry writers into a next age of publishing.
In 2005, Hutchins joined a fledgling community of primarily unpublished science fiction authors who turned their works into audio recordings and posted them online. The authors released their work in 30 to 45 minute episodes — free of charge. They aggressively marketed their work with the help of word-of-mouth and cross-author promotion. Over time, tens of thousands of listeners downloaded podcasts of Hutchins' 7th Son. By 2007, St. Martin's Press, a division of MacMillan, was intrigued enough by his success and soon Hutchins scored a book deal. He has just co-authored a book in a new series called Personal Effects, scheduled for a summertime release; and St. Martin's will publish 7th Son in book form as well this year.
The joy of books enthralled 4-year-old Olivia Stipe during her visit Thursday to the Johnson County Public Library’s Antioch Branch in Merriam. But a pending federal rule is worrying librarians nationwide. TAMMY LJUNGBLAD
From Kansas City Star:
Toys with dangerous levels of lead, toxic chemicals in clothing, hazardous baby cribs — the soon-to-be-enforced Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act aims to protect children from all of them.
But library books?
Unless the Consumer Product Safety Commission exempts them from the sweeping legislation, libraries nationwide could be forced to pull children’s books from their shelves or, alternately, ban children.
That would put roughly 2 million public library books — plus children’s books in school libraries — in the Kansas City area out of commission unless each volume was tested for lead, an unrealistic possibility.
“You’re talking about separating children from books, which has got to be the most ridiculous thing this commission has ever attempted,” said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s Washington office.
“Books are safe. They are not a dangerous product.”
Flexible Display Screens: Bend Me, Shape Me, Anyway You Want Me -- The Economist
Electronic screens as thin as paper are coming soon
OVER the years, the screens on laptops, televisions, mobile phones and so on have got sharper, wider and thinner. They are about to get thinner still, but with a new twist. By using flexible components, these screens will also become bendy. Some could even be rolled up and slipped into your pocket like a piece of electronic paper. These thin sheets of plastic will be able to display words and images; a book, perhaps, or a newspaper or a magazine. And now it looks as if they might be mass produced in much the same way as the printed paper they are emulating.
Last week the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that the attorney-general should bring a case against Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. This leader of the right-wing Freedom Party has made a number of extreme remarks about Islam and Muslims, such as calling the Koran the "Islamic Mein Kampf" and referring to "fascist Islam." The Amsterdam court contends that these and other such statements "affect the dignity of Muslims." The attorney-general's office had previously concluded that these and similar remarks were not punishable.
Wilders was initially shocked by the court's decision, but he may well turn the case into a show trial outlining the threat to Western society from violent and hate-inciting forces in the Muslim world. His lawyers only have to go through websites such as FrontpageMagazine, Jihad Watch and MEMRI to bring overwhelming proof for two central claims.
The first is that there are many radical Muslim authorities, Sunni and Shi'ite, whose incitement to murder and other crimes is similar to that of the Nazis. The same goes for Muslim lay leaders such as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As usual, many of the movies all over the Oscar nominations announced this morning have the prestige of a literary property behind them: four out of the five Best Picture noms are based on a book (to varying degrees...). Here's the list:
* The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: based on a short story by the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald, although as many have pointed out, it seems based much more on another movie, Forrest Gump, which was itself based on a book. See the excellent faux trailer below for evidence. * Frost/Nixon: based directly on the play by Peter Morgan (who wrote the screenplay), but he used as one source a manuscript by James Reston Jr. (played by Sam Rockwell in the movie), which has been published since as The Conviction of Richard Nixon. (Read Reston's interesting take on how history was turned into drama.) * The Reader: based on Bernhard Schlink's Oprah-approved bestseller of the same name. * Slumdog Millionaire: based on Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A, which has since been rereleased with the same title as the movie. * Milk: The only Best Picture nominee with an original screenplay, but for more about Harvey Milk, you can go to Randy Shilts's classic bio, The Mayor of Castro Street.
Photo: Larry McMurtry’s 29th novel is due in bookstores later this year. Kevin Winter Getty Images
From The Houston Chronicle:
Novelist, essayist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry makes a rare Houston speaking appearance Wednesday night when he delivers the 2009 Friends of Fondren Library Distinguished Guest Lecture.
Best-known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novelLonesome Dove, the 72-year-old McMurtry remains extraordinarily prolific. He contributes frequently to the New York Review of Books. His screenplay for Brokeback Mountain, co-written with Diana Ossana, won an Academy Award in 2006.
And while he has turned in the last decade to memoir, chronicling his evolution as a writer and antiquarian-book dealer, he’s not done with fiction. His 29th novel hits bookstores later this year.
McMurtry also continues to operate Booked Up, his massive used- and rare-book shop in his hometown of Archer City.
He talked by phone with Chronicle books editor Fritz Lanha
Thousands of painstakingly handwritten books produced in medieval Europe still exist today, but scholars have long struggled with questions about when and where the majority of these works originated. Now a researcher from North Carolina State University is using modern advances in genetics to develop techniques that will shed light on the origins of these important cultural artifacts. Many medieval manuscripts were written on parchment made from animal skin, and NC State Assistant Professor of English Timothy Stinson is working to perfect techniques for extracting and analyzing the DNA contained in these skins with the long-term goal of creating a genetic database that can be used to determine when and where a manuscript was written. "Dating and localizing manuscripts have historically presented persistent problems," Stinson says, "because they have largely been based on the handwriting and dialect of the scribes who created the manuscripts – techniques that have proven unreliable for a number of reasons." Read more ....
We've been tracking, and speculating on, Barack Obama's reading on a regular basis here (e.g., Fareed Zakaria, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Fred Kaplan, and JFK), and from various press reports (and his Facebook page), we've cobbled together a list of books he's mentioned reading, and in most cases admiring, in different places, for our Inauguration 2009 store.
Today in the Times, Michiko Kakutani has put her own list together, along with a little analysis of Obama as a writer and a reader ("Mr. Obama tends to take a magpie approach to reading — ruminating upon writers’ ideas and picking and choosing those that flesh out his vision of the world or open promising new avenues of inquiry."), so I thought I'd put a reading list together here in one place, based on her research and mine, to kick off inauguration week:
Inaugural Address of President Barack Obama -- 20 January 2009
Thank you. Thank you.
My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.
I thank President Bush for his service to our nation as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.
So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.
That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land; a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, that the next generation must lower its sights.
Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real, they are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this America: They will be met.
On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.
On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less.
It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame.
Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life. For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West, endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.
For us, they fought and died in places Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.
Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.
This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed.
Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.
The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.
We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
We will restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its costs.
We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.
All this we can do. All this we will do.
Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them, that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply.
The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
And those of us who manage the public's knowledge will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.
Our founding fathers faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations.
Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake.
And so, to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with the sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.
They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use. Our security emanates from the justness of our cause; the force of our example; the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
We are the keepers of this legacy, guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We'll begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard- earned peace in Afghanistan.
With old friends and former foes, we'll work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat and roll back the specter of a warming planet.
We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense.
And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you."
For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.
We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.
And because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.
To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.
To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy.
To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages.
We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service: a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.
And yet, at this moment, a moment that will define a generation, it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.
It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.
It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.
Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.
These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.
What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship.
This is the source of our confidence: the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
So let us mark this day in remembrance of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by nine campfires on the shores of an icy river.
The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood.
At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:
"Let it be told to the future world that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet it."
America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words; with hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come; let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.
Thank you. God bless you.
And God bless the United States of America.
End Of Inaugural Address
Useful Links For President Barack Obama's Administration
Australian writer Harry Nicolaides was sentenced to three years in prison Monday, for defaming Thailand's crown prince. (Sukree Sukplang/Reuters)
Thailand Sentences Writer For Insults -- International Herald Tribune
BANGKOK: An Australian writer was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for insulting the Thai monarchy in a self-published novel.
Harry Nicolaides, 41, originally received a six-year sentence, which the court said it reduced because he had pleaded guilty. The book, "Verisimilitude," was published in 2005 and reportedly sold fewer than a dozen copies.
The case was brought under the country's strict lèse-majesté laws, which call for a jail term of up to 15 years for anyone who "defames, insults or threatens the king, the queen, the heir to the throne or the Regent."
This image made available Friday, Jan. 16, 2009 by the London's Metropolitan Police shows Farhad Hakimzadeh, 60, who had pleaded guilty in May 2008 to 14 offences of theft. The wealthy, Iranian born, U.S. businessman with a passion for books about the Middle East was sentenced to two years in jail Friday for stealing pages from rare texts at two of Britain's most venerable libraries. Farhad Hakimzadeh sneaked a scalpel into London's British Library to surgically remove leaves from books, according to staff. He used the pilfered pages to replace lower-quality parts of his own copies of the works. Hakimzadeh targeted books at the British Library and Oxford's Bodleian Library which dealt with Europe's interaction with the Middle East. (AP Photo/Metropolitan Police, HO)
From Yahoo News/AP:
LONDON – A wealthy U.S. businessman with a passion for books about the Middle East was sentenced to two years in jail Friday for stealing pages from rare texts at two of Britain's most venerable libraries.
Farhad Hakimzadeh sneaked a scalpel into the London's British Library to surgically removed leaves from books, according to library staff. He used the pilfered pages to replace lower-quality parts of his own copies of the works.
Judge Peter Ader at London's Wood Green Crown Court said Hakimzadeh, the director of an Iranian cultural organization and a published author, must have known the damage he was causing.
"You have a deep love of books, perhaps so deep that it goes to excess," Ader said. "I have no doubt that you were stealing in order to enhance your library and your collection."
About 14 percent of U.S. adults won't be reading this article. Well, okay, most people won't read it, given all the words that are published these days to help us understand and navigate the increasingly complex world.
But about 1 in 7 can't read it. They're illiterate.
Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can't read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills.
The figures are for 2003, the latest year available. State and county results are available here.
"The crisis of adult literacy is getting worse, and investment in education and support programs is critical," said David C. Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, in response to the finding.
Oprah Winfrey was recently embarrassed yet again when a memoir she had promoted on her television show and in her book club was revealed to have been faked. The book, "Angel at the Fence," told the story of a young boy and girl, each on the opposite side of a Buchenwald fence in Nazi Germany. Little Roma would throw apples to her little boyfriend Herman, her love keeping him alive through the horrors of the Holocaust.
It was, Oprah said, "the greatest love story" she had ever heard. It was also a fake; the author, Herman Rosenblat, admitted that he and his wife actually met on a blind date years ago in Manhattan. The book has since been scrubbed, though plans for a film version of the tale are continuing.
It is the latest in a series of faked (or partially faked) memoirs. Among the more memorable:
It's been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among the most prominent of all the demographic groups claiming a piece of Barack Obama for themselves. In the last year, Obama's 1995 memoir, "Dreams From My Father" (though not his later, more conventional campaign book, "The Audacity of Hope") has been discovered by the literary profession as if it were the Comstock Lode: He wrote it himself! Every sentence has its own graceful cadence! He could as easily be a novelist as a politician!
It's an uncommon coincidence. The solitary existence of the writer, recasting the world alone in a room, generally unfits him for the intensely sociable, collegial life of practical politics, just as most successful politicians would as soon turn into Trappist monks as face the daily silence and seclusion of the writer's study. There are of course exceptions: Benjamin Disraeli entered British politics as a fashionable novelist, and went on to twice become prime minister; the playwright Vaclav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia, then of the Czech Republic. But there's no particular correlation between literary ability and high political office: think of a Melville administration, or a novel by George Washington.
About 14 percent of U.S. adults won't be reading this article. Well, okay, most people won't read it, given all the words that are published these days to help us understand and navigate the increasingly complex world.
But about 1 in 7 can't read it. They're illiterate.
Statistics released by the U.S. Education Department this week show that some 32 million U.S. adults lack basic prose literacy skill. That means they can't read a newspaper or the instruction on a bottle of pills.
The figures are for 2003, the latest year available. State and county results are available here.
"The crisis of adult literacy is getting worse, and investment in education and support programs is critical," said David C. Harvey, president and CEO of ProLiteracy, in response to the finding.
Photo: The art for a 1999 postage stamp. (Getty Images)
From The Wall Street Journal:
Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.
Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.
Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.
American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the PulpsEdited by Peter StraubThe Library Of America $35, 750 pages
A body is discovered in woods in rural Indiana, skinned from the neck up. The head is like “the cupped husk of a peeled orange”. The detective investigating soon unearths evidence that this grisly murder is linked to a war between two ancient secret cults, one celebrating laughter, the other despondency. The victim, a circus clown, was an adherent of one cult. His killer, from the opposing cult, removed his face – clown makeup and all – in order to appease a joyless deity and help usher in a dismal apocalypse.
The Kindle (Image from Amazon)
