Your weekly round-up of the best in book blogging:
.
1) On the re-jacketing of Cindy Pon’s Silver Phoenix – and book covers and the issue of race in general
A taste:
Recently there have been rumblings in the blogosphere about the re-jacketing of Cindy Pon’s book SILVER PHOENIX that have been brought to my attention. Reactions have been mixed, from outrage to support, with many bloggers pointing to the re-jacketing as yet another example of publishing cover racefail (the first being Justine Larbalestier’s LIAR and the second being Jaclyn Dolamore’s MAGIC UNDER GLASS)…
http://sjaejones.com/blog/2010/cover-matters-silver-phoenix/#more-5224
2) Sea Serpent sightings in the Hudson
A taste:
While doing research for the Bella Terra Northwest Lighthouses map, I happened across a 19th century New York Times article about a sea serpent off the coast of Oregon. Whereupon I searched the Times online archives for “sea serpent” and found a treasure trove. Apparently summer brought sea serpent sightings from around the globe, which the Times often covered with tongue firmly in cheek. In 1904 correspondent F. Carruthers Gould wrote, “It used to be called the Silly Season because of the perennial appearance at this time of the sea serpent…”
http://readingunderthecovers.blogspot.com/2010/07/sea-monsters-in-hudson.html
3) Author Lorenzo Carcaterra picks his 10 best, 10 worst thriller films adapted from books
The just completed Thrillerfest—think Comic-Con for thriller authors and their fans—featured a lecture that caught my eye. Sleepers author Lorenzo Carcaterra chose the 10 best thriller films made from books, the 10 worst, and the 10 he most wants to see get made.
http://www.deadline.com/2010/07/thriller-books-to-films-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/#more-53094
4) David Brooks on how books vs. the internet affect learning
A taste:
This study, following up on others, finds that broadband access is not necessarily good for kids and may be harmful to their academic performance. And this study used data from 2000 to 2005 before Twitter and Facebook took off. These two studies feed into the debate that is now surrounding Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows.” Carr argues that the Internet is leading to a short-attention-span culture. He cites a pile of research showing that the multidistraction, hyperlink world degrades people’s abilities to engage in deep thought or serious contemplation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/09/opinion/09brooks.html?_r=2&hp
5) The Warping of Young Minds – a quick history of comics, by Cathy Clamp
A taste:
In 1954, Congress reacted to the ever-darkening tone of comics by forming the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. The hearings made claims that young minds were being warped. It echoed through the halls of Congress and several senators successfully tied juvenile delinquency to the images on comic pages. Fearing governmental regulation, the comic book industry decided self-regulation was preferable.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/07/the-warping-of-young-minds-including-my-own
6) An author sells his books by hand on the subways in NYC
A taste:
With little or no marketing muscle behind him, Mr. Kearse said he had sold some 14,000 copies of his self-published books in the last three years, at $10 each, mostly through hand-to-hand sales. He has also sold about 4,000 copies of a 750-page, 10,000-entry dictionary of urban slang terms, “Street Talk,” through Barricade Books of Fort Lee, N.J., the publisher said. Most novice authors would be lucky to sell that many books through traditional and online stores. Mr. Kearse seems to have reached those numbers largely on his own hustle.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/10/nyregion/10books.html?_r=1
7) How Twitter could save publishing
A taste:
HarperPerennial observed that a tag would be helpful in tracking these kinds of tweets and offered #dearpublisher as a solution. The tag was swiftly picked up by booksellers, publishers and readers alike, and within a few hours a search for #dearpublisher turned up hundreds of diverse requests and observations, ranging in tone from thoughtful to snarky (and often both).
Katrina Lantz: Combine ebooks with hardcovers, but please don’t stop printing books ever. The book is not dead. It just had babies.
Bloggers[heart]Books: I’ve seen a LOT of gorgeous covers this year. But why are people not allowed to have a head anymore?
Justina Ireland: People of color don’t all live in the ghetto or have abusive parents or wish they were white. Why can’t we be vampires?
http://news.shelf-awareness.com/ar/theshelf/2010-07-14/hashtags_could_save_publishing.html
8 ) Stacia Kane talks about the perception of writing genre fiction
A taste:
I don’t believe genre fiction is any less artistic than literary fiction. I don’t believe genre fiction writers put any less of themselves into their work or expose themselves any less, at least not good genre fiction writers. I’m tired of fantasy or science fiction or romance being treated like they’re not “real” books. But I also wonder, at what point does that become, not a self-fulfilling prophecy, but one which we ourselves contribute to?
…Is it because in some ways genre fiction feels more like a popularity contest than literary fiction, by which I mean we’re expected to network with our readers and interact with them; we’re expected to be accessible and friendly and open, in a way I don’t think litfic writers are? (I could be totally wrong about that, it’s just the impression I get and something I’ve noticed). Litfic writers get on Oprah; genre fiction writers get on Twitter. I love interacting with readers, I honestly do. I don’t mind the expectation that I promote and Tweet and blog and all of that other stuff, because I enjoy doing all of that. But again, I wonder if the desire to be liked by readers, the desire to be popular, to not offend them, to make them want to support us, has made us deny our art?
…Sometimes it feels as thought the denial of genre fiction as art is really writers being told to get the hell over themselves, they only wrote a fantasy novel, you know? I admit part of that is true. As proud as I am of the Downside books and as much of myself as I put into them, I don’t think they’re WAR AND PEACE. I know they’re not. But they are art. They are my art. They are an expression of something deep inside me and the way I see the world. That’s what art is; the expression of something to elicit an emotional reaction, remember?
http://www.staciakane.net/2010/07/15/what-are-we-afraid-of/
9) Penguin’s plan to reissue Raymond Chandler leads to an investigation all it’s own
A taste:
Back in summer 2008, when we came up with the idea of reissuing a selection of four of Chandler’s most well-known books (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, and The Long Good-bye) we vaguely waved away the issue of getting hold of the actual covers. Chorion, who look after Chandler’s estate, had already established that the Bodleian library in Oxford had a jacket for The Little Sister, so we assumed that it would be quite straightforward to get the other three. Easy, I thought. We get in touch with the Bodleian, they dig up copies of all of the books from the stacks, and then they whack the jackets on a scanner and whizz them over to our ftp site for me to send to our art department. And then I go home at 5.30 and run around fields and eat strawberries.
Wrong.
(Byrt confession: this was posted last year, but it’s just too fun to miss)
http://thepenguinblog.typepad.com/the_penguin_blog/raymond-chandler/
10) Who do you write like?
Stephen King? Kurt Vonnegut? Charles Dickens? Head on over to http://iwl.me/ and plug in a paragraph of your writing to find out! (I was David Foster Wallace… Not bad….)
Leave a Reply