Black Garterbelt: “In short, Nick Hornby suffered through The Road. So much so that he slipped the surly bonds of the first-person to touch the face of You.”
Author / Edward Champion
We Control the Distribution, We Control the Thought
With projects like this, we’ll no doubt be seeing plenty of critical or dissenting reviews. It appears that Penguin would rather bribe you with books, so that you can write about the books on their blog, rather than your blog. What makes this any different than a horde of Coca-Cola executives standing around watching you every time that you drink a soda?
Ahoy, Maties! The German Street Economy is a Tad Too Vigilant!
Variety: “Germany’s upper house of parliament on Friday approved a controversial copyright law, which makes it all but illegal for individuals to make copies of films and music, even for their own use. The Bundesrat pushed aside criticism from consumer protection groups and passed the law, which makes it illegal for anyone to store DVDs and CDs without permission. The law also covers digital copies from IPTV and TV broadcasts. “
Twenty Minute Roundup
- To paraphrase Groucho Marx, we’re going to speed things up here. If a blog readership orders a one-hour roundup, I’ll give it to them in twenty minutes. If they order a twenty minute roundup, I’ll give it them in ten minutes. If they order a ten minute roundup, I’ll give them my RSS feeds and let it work out for themselves. Time is limited. So here goes.
- Dan Green on the “marketplace of ideas” nomen. Since I have moved to New York, I have been contending more and more with people who view books as nothing more than a commodity and are not well-read and more taken with scarfing down canapes and free drinks at junkets than engaging with authors and books on even a remotely intellectual level. Even accounting for the reality that publishing is an industry, Dan’s words are well worth considering.
- Bill Benzon offers a provocative open letter to Steven Pinker about shared knowledge and stories.
- The Last Starfighter: The Musical. (via Jason Boog)
- On pumping out twenty books in six years. (via Slushpile)
- UC Santa Cruz plans to put its Heinlein archive online. I’d like to see more universities do this.
- Uncovered: A disturbing juxtaposition of Black Canary.
- You down with OED? Yeah, you know me. Crosswords, mothafuckahs!
- Tonight, 6:30 PM at the Bowery Poetry Club: Levi Asher and some other guy.
- Someone has stolen Erin O’Brien’s hat!
- Shame is the New Fame and related article.
- It appears that YA authors are using high school newspapers to market their books. I have a slight ethical problem with this, but there is currently no time to offer a lengthy argument. Perhaps later. (via Bookshelves of Doom)
- Timbaland on One Life to Live.
- I don’t see anything particularly wrong with the Harvard Classics approach to education, but is five minutes a day really enough time to take in a classic?
- And, finally, call me a prurient cad, but I’m extremely curious about the future of this man’s potency.