I was never that aware of The Monkees but the passing of Davy Jones generated a lot of reminiscing. Mrs. PND recalls the time her Dad brought home the record - unprompted - becoming 'cool' in the process and in the last few days she has DVR'd what must be 24hrs worth of the show. Here some thoughts from Neil McCormick at
The Telegraph:
One of the most remarkable things about the Monkees is that the show, like the
band itself, was sophisticated enough to be open to interpretation. Watching
those endless repeats in my teens, I formed further ideas of the pop
process. The myth of the Monkees is one of the great myths of pop culture:
the manufactured band rebelling against svengali manipulators, briefly
shining before burning up in the fires of ego. We see the same story played
out again and again in the “real” pop world, from the Bay City Rollers to
the Spice Girls, but with The Monkees, we can watch it happen in repeat,
from the zany innocence of the TV series to the mad rush of their
self-immolating movie, Head, in which the band attempted to break free of
their constraints by exposing their own essential fiction, but only ended up
destroying the illusion that sustained them.
All of this is really sustained, however, by genuinely fantastic music that
has, remarkably, stood the test of time. The miracle of The Monkees is that
this exploitative, manipulative, derivative children TV series was
underpinned by brilliant pop songs, written to order by some of the great
writers of the era (from Neil Diamond to Goffin and King), framed in
colourful arrangements that captured the happy essence of the band’s spirit,
performed with conviction and emotion. Last Train To Clarksville, I’m A
Believer, Randy Scouse Git, Pleasant Valley Sunday … these are songs of such
dynamic originality they put the imaginary band shoulder to shoulder with
the heroes they were imitating.
PayPal the censorship enforcer? Stranger than fiction as PayPal says it will strike off certain self-publishers (
Independent):
From now on, the firm said, it will begin aggressively prohibiting
erotic literature which contains scenes of bestiality, rape, incest and
under-age sex. Ebook websites that sell such works will have their
PayPal accounts deactivated. "It's underhanded, unfair and ludicrous,
and it bodes badly for the future of free speech and expression," said
Juillerat-Olvera, adding that Demon's Grace is now banned by
self-publishing sites.
Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, one
of the world's largest such sites, said the announcement has so far
caused roughly 1,000 of the 100,000 novels that he stocks to be
withdrawn from sale. "Regardless of whether you or I want to read these
books, this is perfectly legal fiction and people have a right to
publish it," he told The Independent on Sunday. "It surely isn't for
some financial services company to control what is written by an
author."
Mr Coker said that attempting to enforce PayPal's
effective ban is likely to be impossible. "They say they won't have
rape, bestiality or incest presented in a way that might titillate. But
deciding what constitutes titillation is completely subjective," he
said. "The Bible has incest in it, and rape. Nabokov's literature does.
Should we ban the sale of those books?"
Articles about Self-publishing and the death of traditional publishing are as freckles on a haole. Here's an interesting take from
Atlantic author Alan Jacobs
But one of the illusions most common to writers -- an illusion that
may make the long slow slog of writing possible, for many people -- is
that an enormous audience is out there waiting for the wisdom and
delight that I alone can provide, and that the Publishing System
is a giant obstacle to my reaching those people. Thus the dream that
digital publishing technologies will indeed "disintermediate" -- will
eliminate that obstacle and connect me directly to what Bugs Bunny calls
"me Public." (See "Bully for Bugs".) And we have heard just enough unexpected success stories to keep that dream alive.
Well, here's hoping. But a couple of months ago I decided to dip my toes into these waters: I wrote a longish essay called "Reverting to Type" about my own history as a reader -- a kind of personal epilogue to The Pleasures of Reading -- and decided to submit it as a Kindle Single. Amazon wasn't interested, so I decided to publish it myself using Kindle Direct Publishing.
I announced its existence to the world: that is, I posted a link on my
tumblelog and tweeted about it. A few people downloaded it; some pointed
out typos that I had missed, but that a copy editor surely would have
caught. I thought about ways to promote it better but haven't been able
to come up with anything other than becoming a self-promoting jerk on
Twitter. Last time I checked it had sold 98 copies.
And from the BBC, no more boring waffle (
BBC):
Buy an e-book through, say, a Kindle, and one of the first things you
will notice is that the length of the text itself is nowhere to be seen.
Unlike a hardback, an e-book doesn’t have to have 250 pages any more
than it has to cost a set amount, or sit handsomely on your shelf. There
are some great losses wrapped up in these facts. As far as actually
writing a book goes, though, the digital format has one significant
advantage over the physical: it is much harder to get away with
producing boring waffle.
...
Buy an e-book through, say, a Kindle, and one of the first things you
will notice is that the length of the text itself is nowhere to be seen.
Unlike a hardback, an e-book doesn’t have to have 250 pages any more
than it has to cost a set amount, or sit handsomely on your shelf. There
are some great losses wrapped up in these facts. As far as actually
writing a book goes, though, the digital format has one significant
advantage over the physical: it is much harder to get away with
producing boring waffle.
From the
Economist:
Taking the long view - Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, owes much of his success to his ability to look beyond the short-term view of things.
Mr Bezos’s willingness to take a long-term view also explains his
fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive
company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building
spacecraft with private funding. It might seem like a risky bet, but the
same was said of many of Amazon’s unusual moves in the past. Successful
firms, he says, tend to be the ones that are willing to explore
uncharted territories. “Me-too companies have not done that well over
time,” he observes.
Eyebrows were raised, for example, when Amazon moved into the
business of providing cloud-computing services to technology firms—which
seemed an odd choice for an online retailer. But the company has since
established itself as a leader in the field. “A big piece of the story
we tell ourselves about who we are is that we are willing to invent,” Mr
Bezos told shareholders at Amazon’s annual meeting last year. “And very
importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of
time.”
Could they have made Jeff's eyes more freaky in that image?
From the
Twitter this week:
Librarians Feel Sticker Shock as Prices for Random House Ebooks Rise 300 Percent -
College Publishing Comes of Age: Highlights of the BISG Higher Education Conference (
BookBus)
Jackie Collins experiments with self-publishing The Bitch Hilarious headline. So is "Queen of bonkbuster"
