Archive for November, 2007

Tis the season November 30th, 2007

    Books are always my first gift of choice for folks I know. It’s fun to try and match up your friends and family with books they might not have heard of, but you think “are right up their alley”. But this year, I keep getting sucked into “bookish” sites though… like Levenger and such.
    That’s when [...]

Kindle cancels savings November 30th, 2007

    The folks over at Media Bistro have posed a neat theory: Amazon has started selling mass-paperbacks and some trade papers at full price, rather than the usual Amazon discount, to help push people towards their new e-book reader.
    It’s a pretty good theory and after some cursory clicks, I can verify that many paperbacks are now [...]

Who knew? November 29th, 2007

    While cruising the local Emmet O’Neal Library blog I ran across a post about the ‘official’ US Federal Govt. blog called “Gov Gab: Your U.S. Government Blog”. That’s pretty cool. Especially the post about “all things library in the US“.

I have to agree… November 29th, 2007

    with Bookslut.
    Penguin’s new graphical covers for their classics series is great and gets this week’s “Thumbs Up”.

Kidd on the Kindle November 29th, 2007

    Chip Kidd has voiced his view about Amazon’s Kindle. And while some folks don’t agree with him, I think I do. I mean, a handheld unit like the Kindle would be nice if I’m a mechanic and referencing specs or manuals while working, but not to read. I agree that digital is the future, but [...]

“Bad sex” award announced November 29th, 2007

    I am always surprised when the “Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction” winner is announced. It’s always a pretty big-name author with a pretty awful excerpt. I can’t believe some of these analogies and descriptions make it through. This year’s is REALLY bad.

The Secret is out November 28th, 2007

    Workplay is the venue for an event slated as “FOUND Magazine vs. Postsecret“. All of the sites and printed books/magazines for FOUND and Postsecret are fantastically voyeuristic and comforting at times.
    Tickets are $15 a pop (or $40 for the VIP treatment, which includes some kind of ’smaller intimate setting’) proceeds benefit HopeLine.
    {via Pop Goes the [...]

A book of book blogs November 28th, 2007

    I ran across The Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs the other day while doing some holiday shopping. I have seen plenty of online writings about the cottage-industry of “book blogs” and “lit blogs”, but never an actual book. Are there others?
    This 254-pager seems to give the backgrounds for some ‘big names’ in the book blog [...]

Speaking of Reviews November 27th, 2007

    Here is my review of David Silverman’s Typo. Which also happens to be listed in the running for “Best Business Book of 2007″ (click here to vote) as presented by 800-CEO-READ.
    It looks to be their first (VERY open) competition, but they have some good titles on there. The first round of voting closes Dec. 15th, [...]

Reviewing the reviews November 27th, 2007

    This last weekend I caught a panel of reviewers talking about themselves and book reviews over on BookTV. To be honest, they didn’t say much that hasn’t been said already, just a whole lot of complaining about the “shift in the industry” and how the mega-media companies see no value in printing book reviews.
    And then [...]