January 2010
All Tied Up
Sun, 01/31/2010 - 22:40 — Anonymous
Literary Luncheon with Maya Soetoro-Ng
Sun, 01/31/2010 - 05:20 — AnonymousStart: 04/21/2011 12:00 pm
Start: 04/21/2011 12:00 pm
Aut
...another fine mess – Patterson, Amazon, and the commodification of reading
Sat, 01/30/2010 - 17:05 — AnonymousI’ve been mulling over how to respond to the amazing profile of James Patterson ™ in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, but this morning’s news that Amazon has instantly removed Macmillan’s books over a dispute on e-book pricing adds an interesting wrinkle.
“Removed” is an oversimplification; used copies are on sale, because Amazon and the seller make money on those, but Macmillan and their authors do not. There is no indication, of course, that new books exist and could be bought elsewhere. Amazon will sell you the book, just not share profits with the publisher and, by default, the author. Full disclosure: I am one of Macmillan’s authors. I love my editor, and I appreciate them publishing me, but I also enjoy my day job and it’s a good thing because I’d never make a living writing crime fiction. I’m not too bothered that the listing for my forthcoming book is among los desaparecidos. I’d rather you...
another fine mess – Patterson, Amazon, and the commodification of reading
Sat, 01/30/2010 - 17:05 — AnonymousI’ve been mulling over how to respond to the amazing profile of James Patterson ™ in last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, but this morning’s news that Amazon has instantly removed Macmillan’s books over a dispute on e-book pricing adds an interesting wrinkle.
“Removed” is an oversimplification; used copies are on sale, because Amazon and the seller make money on those, but Macmillan and their authors do not. There is no indication, of course, that new books exist and could be bought elsewhere. Amazon will sell you the book, just not share profits with the publisher and, by default, the author. Full disclosure: I am one of Macmillan’s authors. I love my editor, and I appreciate them publishing me, but I also enjoy my day job and it’s a good thing because I’d never make a living writing crime fiction. I’m not too bothered that the listing for my forthcoming book is among los desaparecidos. I’d rather you...
Borders Lays Off 164 Employees
Fri, 01/29/2010 - 20:00 — AnonymousPublisher's Weekly reports that Borders has laid off another 164 people in its distribution centers and its corporate headquarters.
In the newest round of cuts, 124 corporate jobs were eliminated at Borders' Ann Arbor headquarters and other offices with 40 coming at its warehouses and distribution centers. The downsizing is a response to poor holiday sales and the closing of 183 outlets in the Walden specialty group. A majority of the corporate cuts came in the company's finance and information technology divisions. The company said in an e-mail to employees that it is evaluating the staffing needs of its stores and changes could come in a few weeks. Employee blogs are filled with speculation that store cuts are imminent.
PW says that the company is also planning more cuts to the workforce at its stores. Last year the company laid off 700 store employees.
Catcher in the Rye Author J.D. Salinger Dead at 91
Fri, 01/29/2010 - 00:00 — AnonymousJ.D. Salinger has
died
at the age of 91. The reclusive author of The Catcher in the Rye was a controversial figure in his later years, refusing all interviews and claiming that he hasn't written a book since 1965. He died at his home, according to his literary agent. CNN reports:
The author died Wednesday of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire, according to a family statement that his literary agent, Phyllis Westberg, provided Thursday.
"Despite having broken his hip in May, his health had been excellent until a rather sudden decline after the new year," the statement said. "He was not in any pain before or at the time of his death."
Salinger has long been known for his reclusiveness, and "in keeping with his life long, uncompromising desire to protect and defend his privacy there will be no service," the statement said.
"The family asks that people's respect for him, his work, and his privacy be extended to them, individually and collectively, during this time."
Though he wrote more than 30 short stories and a handful of novellas -- many published in The New Yorker and collected in works such as "Nine Stories...
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Thu, 01/28/2010 - 18:59 — AnonymousWhat I really wanted for ChristmasAnd have been wanting for years, is something like an atlas of physiognomy. I want to be able to judge, definitively, whether the character I have in my mind’s eye really has hooded eyes, or not. What, exactly, is a Roman nose or a Grecian brow and if I say a woman has the square lower lip of a Pre-Raphaelite model, does anybody actually know what I mean or does it just go straight over everybody’s head.So maybe I am strange – maybe everybody else has a much clearer sense of what these terms actually mean, or maybe nobody cares, but it has always really troubled me that while I can identify a retrousse nose without the faintest difficulty, I can’t possess the same absolute certainty about the squareness of a square chin or the scale that a forehead must possess to be considered broad.Perhaps it only matters if you’re writing historical fiction (that’s a subtle clue as to what’s absorbing my hours right now) where the convention of describing characters is more developed than it contemporary literary fiction where it seems the convention is much more to describe sexual characteristics or gr...
Blackout / Connie Willis
Thu, 01/28/2010 - 18:40 — AnonymousConnie Willis returns with an epic time-travel saga so rich in scope that it's taking two volumes to tell, yet so intimate in its observation of character. One theme is driven home throughout: time is the most precious commodity we have. (****)
...and now we have an ipad
Thu, 01/28/2010 - 16:00 — AnonymousThe iPad has arrived, to no one's surprise: as soon as you use an iPhone, you start wondering what a computer-sized version of the same would be like. (Those interested in how past predictions look now might look at this post by Ben from five years ago.) The iPad is an attractive device and at $500, it seems likely to take off. It seems entirely possible that a tablet could replace laptops and desktops for many computers, to say nothing of Kindles and Nooks. My MacBook Pro suddenly feels rickety. Hardware-wise, it feels like the iPad might finally be Alan Kay's Dynabook.
And yet: standing on the verge of a potential transformation in how people use computers, I think it's worth stepping back for a second to think about where we are. I suggest that now might be a useful time to re-read Neal Stephenson's manifesto, "In the Beginning Was the Command Line". This is, it needs to be said, a dated piece of writing, as Stephenson has admitted...
