June 2010
67 posts
will Wylie be the agent who sells the e-books? →
Via Meanland on Twitter.
Wylie, often described as “the most feared and most influential authors’ representatives in the world of Anglo-American publishing”, does not much like the deals publishers are making on behalf of authors with “machine”-makers such as Apple, and is “dissatisfied” with the terms publishers have been offering for e-book rights.
He is now...
Magic tables, not magic windows – Blog – BERG →
This is really lovely, and reminds me of something I read about at uni about a study done with doctors in the Mayo clinic, regarding how they would best use a computerised document management system. The researchers decided a glass tabletop covered with documents best met these users’ needs. Going to look for the reference, I hope it’s online!
Link via Peter Horvath at Spime.
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'A creative-writing class may be one of the last...
First Story | Online Only | Granta Magazine
William Fiennes writes:
Katie Waldegrave and I set up the charity, First Story, in 2007 to arrange and pay for other writers to work as writers-in-residence in state schools across the country. We decided to focus on schools where at least 30% of pupils were eligible for free school meals. We saw First Story as a way of celebrating and fostering ...
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An interview with Harper Lee! Shirley, you must be... →
if all the world were paper, Stephanie would blog...
Crooked House: Another Paper Village
I do hope Stephanie gets to start her paper blog sometime soon.
“The Irish should “kick away a system that has failed them” (Guardian...”
– Ship of Fools by Fintan O’Toole
Kathy Foley reviews a book that reports the massive property inflation that has turned the Celtic Tiger into “a bedraggled alley cat”.
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if the computer killed the book, you would not be... →
Via Richard Nash. Must see what Readability makes of this one!!
The View from Elsewhere: the last post →
The passing of a fine Australian blog by writer Eleanor Hogan.
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more from Mark Mordue...
More from the article below, on his blog, The Basement Tapes:
Ironically the innovations in technology are now hinting at counter-currents to the frenzy for rapid motion and quick consumption, and are suggesting another possibility is opening up. The advent of the Kindle, the Nook and now the i-Pad are yet to be fully digested, but they point to scope for a more user-friendly, extended reading...
The curious case of More! magazine - Online... →
This is interesting in the light of conversations I’ve had on Twitter recently with a critic, regarding an article in our weekend review about online criticism.
Alison remarked that there seemed to be a greater confluence between word of mouth and criticism online, as Rosemary Neill also noted in her article. The writer of this piece would have more to tell them about this, I am sure.
...
Pioneers in the Digital Snow →
I feel more positive even as the house of the modern mind appears to be atomizing around me.
More from Mark Mordue, Australia’s current recipient of the Pascall Prize for criticism, on the state of same at that link.
There is also a very cool post by Gideon Haigh at Killings, the blog of Oz journal Kill Your Darlings, about Rosemary Neill’s article on online criticism in the...
“In other words, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it, and if...”
– When anyone can be a published author - Laura Miller - Salon.com
On how the slush pile of the future will be managed. Via James Bradley on Twitter.
Maitresse: blogging the 2010 Shakespeare & Company... →
Here’s Lauren’s unexpurgated version (click on the title for the link.)
…like any good soccer match, the spectators did get rowdy.
Getting together this many fabulous writers together under sort of a small tent and making the whole thing free means there were a lot of people fighting over seats. As far as I know no blood was shed, but I did see one woman try to sit on...
20 Writers to Watch - An Alternate List →
From Dan Wickett, the originator of the Emerging Writers’ Network and publisher at Dzanc Books. This is what US book blogging has fostered.
Lee Siegel wants fiction to be dirtier - New York... →
Someone send Lee Siegel a copy of The Slap, please!!! (click on the link above for the full article).
…in those postwar decades, there was another sign of how central fiction was to people’s lives. So-called commercial fiction was just as relevant to people’s lives as so-called literary fiction. Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, James Jones’ From Here to Eternity,...
Marcus Westbury dines at the Lodge: Spike blog at... →
And details his discomfort and concerns for arts policy, as he’s done in other places.
“(shopping made easy??)
Bob addresses a service that provides social...”
– The Trilogy of Webs for Machines: Mashing It All Together - ReadWriteWeb
Handy shopping services are on the way…
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The Book Bench: Shortwave Stories : The New Yorker →
Writes Book Bench Blogger , “I do own an iPhone, which will come in handy as the fledgling Paper Radio takes off.”
HOORAY GUYS.
“Whenever I google print-on-demand the first couple of pages of results make me...”
– Bibliostructures on Architects and Designers
Link via Richard Nash on Twitter.
Man Ray's films online →
Via @balllardian on Twitter. Thanks Simon.
At the Literary Saloon, a Bloomsday list with a... →
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Nash on Kellogg on Ellis - iz microblogging
Via
richardnash on Tumblr:
The Bret Easton Ellis Meets the Press routine http://tinyurl.com/2ejr5xy Poor @paperhaus! Poor BEE. (Likely this was true in 1985, too…)
Not sure I’m sorry for BEE though.
“Bloggers in the archive…
are academic essays the only textual form...”
– BLDGBLOG: Bloggers in the Archive
Link via Maud. Of course there are people like Peacay at Bibliodyssey who do this on a freelance basis.
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“Four negatives of Saint-Exupéry:
Anonyme également, le quatrième cliché -...”
– Le Figaro - Livres : Des photos inédites de Saint Exupéry avant sa disparition
(My translation)
Equally anonymous, the fourth negative - which appeared in the magazine Icare in the nineties but was unnoticed by the general public - shows Saint-Exupéry preparing for takeoff, sunglasses on his...
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“I took a life drawing class once but the model’s piercings freaked me out.”
– Meanjin · Stray questions for Oslo Davis
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readings: January to June 2010
Carey, Peter. Theft: A Love Story (reread)
Flanagan, Richard. Wanting
Hornby, Nick. How To Be Good
Hitchcock, Karen. Little White Slips
Marr, David. Patrick White: A Life NF
Meloy, Maile. Both Ways Is The Way I Want It
Michaels, Anne. Fugitive Pieces
______________The Winter Vault
Miller, Alex. Lovesong
Moore, Lorrie. A Gate At The Stairs
Murray, Les. Taller When Prone (poetry)
...
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in this poor body...
“In this poor body, composed of one hundred bones and nine openings, is something called spirit, a flimsy curtain swept this way and that by the slightest breeze. It is spirit, such as it is, which led me to poetry, at first little more than a pastime, then the full business of my life. There have been times when my spirit, so dejected, almost gave up the quest, other times when it was...
“She won a scholarship to study classical piano at DePauw University in Indiana,...”
– A life in writing: Barbara Kingsolver | Books | The Guardian
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Toby Litt reviews The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
If the bull’s-eye grotesqueness of this high-end vocab shtick is reminiscent of anything, it’s Martin Amis at his 1980s apogee. There’s a feeling in The Ask, as there was in Money, that not just the sentences but also the sentiments could go in any direction. Follow this aside, through its beautiful double back and sublime denouement: “Some argued that the creation of...
what we write about when we write about TV
In the end, it’s unsurprising that these were the shows to provoke the emergence of serious television criticism: a critic’s job is literally to transform everyone else’s leisure activities into interpretive work. “It’s worth the effort,” one reviewer wrote of The Wire, adding, with a hint of panic in his voice, “not because it is good for you but because it is fantastic entertainment.”
n+1...
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“The pacing of the novel is masterly; its rhythms are filled with hidden emotion....”
– Book Review by Colm Toibin: Amongst Women By John McGahern: NPR
And now, to read it.
“I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care....”
– ‘Paris Review’ Author Interviews: from Rushdie’s intro, NPR
“As a writer, you do build on your experience, but you also create another life...”
– Shirley Hazzard on Travel and Transit :The Book Club: The New Yorker
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inside story: books about books
TED STRIPHAS is a more subtle analyst of print media’s present and future. He’s neither as gloomy as the readers and writers that John Updike has called “holdouts, surly hermits refusing to come out and play in the electronic sunshine of the post-Gutenberg village,” nor as warm in that sunshine as Gomez. This chapter in book history, Striphas thinks, is one “in which books remain a vital if...
“There’s always someone blocking my clear view of an artwork and that someone...”
– Speech Given at a Dinner for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
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