World’s Most Expensive NEW Book

Posted by trav in Book Talk, News      No comments

Nov
26

Not what you’d call light reading (it weighs 62 lbs.), the World’s Most Expensive newly published book has just been released. It’s a velvet and marble-covered tome worth around $100,000. It was printed, chiseled, sewn, constructed in Italy and now resides at the New York public Library. It’s a portfolio/art study/biography of Michelangelo and took some six months to make.

So far the Renaissance-inspired publisher FMR has sold 20 books. No word yet ifGoogle Books Scan will get to have a go at it…

The Future of Libraries

Posted by trav in library, Media, Technology      1 comment

Nov
21

I am a HUGE fan of our library system here in Birmingham. They are great and very rarely do I feel let down. I’m betting the folks in Boston feel the same way about their library system too. Especially with the launch of their Open Library Scan-on-Demand program.

Here are the directions from their site:

…if it’s at the Boston Public Library and hasn’t been scanned yet, there will be a “Scan This Book” button… …we’ll have a librarian go and get the book from the stacks, bring it to our scanning center, and have our team of scanners digitize it page-by-page. Within 3-5 days, you should receive an email follow-up with a link to the newly-digitized copy, complete with PDF, online flip book, full text (using OCR technology) and more, all thanks to your request!

How cool is that? You can tell these people have put a ton of thought into their library system. if you go the site, you can even see which titles are in the process of being scanned. Kudos Boston!

The Bad Sex Award of Fiction

Posted by trav in Authors, News      No comments

Nov
21

The Literary Review has released the shortlist for this year’s Bad Sex in Fiction award. The award is designed to

“…gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels”.

Here is the shortlist, in full:

James Buchan for The Gate of Air
Simon Montefiore for Sashenka
John Updike for The Widows of Eastwick
Kathy Lette for To Love, Honour and Betray
Alastair Campbell for All in the Mind
Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell
Isabel Fonseca for Attachment
Ann Allestree for Triptych of a Young Wolf
Russell Banks for The Reserve
Paulo Coelho for Brida

Last year’s winner was Norman Mailer and it was well deserved. This year’s winner will be awarded the Plaster Foot award November 25th.

{the Guardian}

Bill Bryson BookTV.org

Posted by trav in Authors, On the Web      No comments

Nov
20

BookTV has re-posted an appearance Bill Bryson did back in 2003 when he was traveling to promote his then-new A Short History of Nearly Everything. You’ll need the Real Player to watch, but he always makes me laugh.

Greencup Books goes Guerilla

Posted by trav in Birmingham, Bookstores, Events      No comments

Nov
20

One of Birmingham’s more eclectic literary spots is breaking out the guerilla tactics to help keep the doors open. Home to one of the best local collections of used books and staffed by volunteers, Greencup Books sponsors local music shows, reading and classes. Most of which bring in a few dollars in donations as best. The shop has tried to make a go at it on meager foot traffic and online sales, but they’re just not footing the bill.

So, the every energetic and creative staff have organized a Read-a-thon. They’re asking local Birmingham folks to gather up “nickle a page” sponsorships and then stop by the store and start reading 8am Friday, December 19th through 8am Monday, December 22nd.

That’s a lot of coffee to stay up reading… but I did just start Dan Simmons’ 784-page Drood…. hmmmmm.

Amazon’s Editors Need Glasses

Posted by trav in Book Covers, On the Web      No comments

Nov
20

Now, I’m no Alvin Lustig or Paul Rand, but does anyone at Amazon REALLY think these are the “10 Best Covers of 2008″ in all of the tens of thousands of books that were printed this year? Really?

I mean, there were some GORGEOUS covers done this year. Maybe Amazon’s editors just let some random number generator pick these. Even with the Chip Kidd cover included, this list is just weird, at best. Feel free to disagree and if you do, please explain why. I just don’t get it.

Reading makes you happy

Posted by trav in News      1 comment

Nov
15

The numbers have been tallied and it’s official, reading makes you happy (or was it you are happy so you read?). The December issue of Social Indicators Research contains the results of a 30-year University of Maryland study which kept up with 30,000+ adults. Their findings seem to be pretty straight forward:

…unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as very happy spend more time reading and socializing.

Another interesting tidbit was that half of the unhappy television watchers felt they had too much time on their hands and the unwanted free-time just added to their woes. Whereas less than 20% of the happy reading socializers said they had extra free-time to fill.

I’m not real sure what all this says about our culture, but after studying it for 30 years, they should get some props. And to be honest, all these numbers and percentages make me grumpy. So I’m just going to go read.

A little Title Trivia

Posted by trav in Book Talk      No comments

Nov
14

BookFinds has a fun post on the”10 Best Changes of a Novel’s Title”. My favorite is #5…

5. Originally, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 was titled “Catch-18? but the year that he was going to publish his novel, Leon Uris published a novel about German-occupied Warsaw called Mila 18, so Heller had to pick another number.

I mean, who would have thought that the 22 was such an arbitrary choice? I bet I heard three people this week refer to something as a Catch-22. Which just seems better than Catch-18, with the double digit and all. Have a good weekend!

Librarian Powered Search

Posted by trav in Media, On the Web      No comments

Nov
13

There is a new search engine being developed, Reference Extract. It’s a search engine that gives preference to results tagged by librarians. So where Google and others are trying to remove the human part of the search equation, the folks at Reference Extract are trying to harness the expertise of all the card carrying MLS people out there.

This trained “professional filter” is exactly why I will always watch the network news and read newspapers. There is just too much bunk out there that I want to know that some sort of professional has done the leg work and sorted it for me. But I’m not sure how successful Reference Extract will be…

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Check out this Reading Challenge

Posted by trav in Book Talk, On the Web      1 comment

Nov
13

I have signed up for my first ever book challenge (I feel like a grown up blogger now). I’m tossing my hat in the ring for J.Kaye’s 2009 Support Your Local Library Challenge. Basically, I’m committing to borrowing and reading 25 books from my local library. I check out a LOT of books from the library, that I almost feel like I’m cheating. I even started tagging all of my borrowed books with JCLC on LibraryThing.

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