Mr Townshend at The New York Public Library

From the NYPL Live series a meeting with Mr. Pete Townshend:

In conversation with Paul Holdengräber, one of rock-and-roll’s biggest icons will talk about his most intimate memories; from the inner sanctum of Eric Clapton’s drug-ridden hotel rooms to the feet of Jimi Hendrix and his electric kool-aid guitar; from the first trial performance of Townshend’s rock opera, Tommy, in a London bar to setting the record with The Who as the world’s loudest band, Townshend will unload the journey that left him writing songs for “the best live band of all time.” Hear the stories straight from the mouth that sang on the front lines of rock-and-roll’s takeover of the music world.

Larry David Cautions: It Could Have Been Worse

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Bradbury reads "If only We had Taller Been"

On Nov. 12, 1971, on the eve of Mariner 9 going into orbit at Mars, Bradbury took part in a symposium at Caltech with Arthur C. Clarke, journalist Walter Sullivan, and scientists Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray. In this excerpt, Bradbury reads his poem, "If Only We Had Taller Been."

Judge Dismisses UCLA Copyright Case: Could Impact Authors Guild/HathiTrust Case

The Chronicle reports on a case brought against UCLA for breaching copyright in using streaming video.  James Grimmelmann, an NY Law School professor believes the dismissal of the case could have repercussions for the recently filed Authors Guild/HathiTrust case.  Gimmelman is quoted as saying "If the HathiTrust suit were to be decided tomorrow by the same court, it would be dismissed.”  (Grimmelmann has been a close follower of the Google books digitization program from it's inception on his blog).

From the article: 

But U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall found multiple problems with their arguments. Among the most important: He didn’t buy the plaintiffs’ claim that UCLA had waived its constitutional “sovereign immunity,” a principle that shields states—and state universities—from being sued without their consent in federal court. The judge also held that the association, which doesn’t own the copyrights at issue in the dispute, failed to establish its standing to bring the case.

The decision means “universities will have a little more breathing room for using media,” says James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at New York Law School.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 39): Robert Harris, Dickens, Cultural Decline (or not), Colm Toibin + More

A life in writing: Robert Harris: 'I've written a piece of fiction that suddenly starts coming true around me. The markets are crashing, people are blaming algorithms' (Guardian):

"Orwell has always been a huge influence on me," he says. "He first came to mind regarding this project about 12 years ago when I read a book by Bill Gates in which he said one day the McDonald's headquarters in America would know when a Big Mac was sold in Newbury and then a computer algorithm would work out when the cattle had to be slaughtered in Chicago. I got very interested in these ideas but couldn't find a way to make them work in fiction. Then came the financial crash and I realised I could marry the two things. These algorithms that were driving companies were nowhere more dominant than in the City. Was it more scary that banks were run by bad guys in braces smoking cigars, or by computers and mathematicians?"

Recently finished Claire Tomalin's Biography of Pepys which had long been on my shelf and which was ultimately richly rewarding. An interview with her about Dickens (Guardian):

She is confounded by this desire to preserve the Victorian image of Dickens as a monogamous and kindly husband. "When Anthony Burgess reviewed Peter Ackroyd's biography [Ackroyd, whose book came out in 1990, strikingly failed to acknowledge Nelly], he said, 'Now we know. Dickens was a good man. He didn't have a mistress.' What? There are other ways of being good. All writers behave badly. All people behave badly." She agrees with Dickens's clever daughter, Katey, who believed that in the second half of his life, when he rejected Catherine and cruelly forbade her children and even her sister, Georgina, to see her, the great writer went a little mad.

"The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny. His wonderful glossy hair! His capacity for friendship, and for work! And then... yes, he went mad. But I know that people do go mad. I expect you do, too. Old biographers have got something extra: they've lived a long life themselves. They're more able to see things in perspective. It's not a matter of forgiving. That would be an impertinent thing to say. But it is a case of trying to understand.

The New Yorker: Changing reading forever (NewYorker)

“Cultural decline is not inevitable,” said Dana Gioia, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, upon the announcement that more Americans were reading books than in previous years. It was a small victory—“literary” reading rose seven per cent from 2002 to 2008, in part, Gioia suggested, because of programs like the N.E.A.’s Big Read—but it was a welcome one, because reading has been on the decline in our country for a very long time. The steady drop since the nineteen-fifties correlates directly with the rise of television and visual media, but much of the damage has been done in the past two decades, well after TV had solidified its place in Americans’ lives. Some of the recent bump must be attributed to the rise of e-readers, whose owners report an increase in their own reading habits thanks to the devices’ conveniences. But despite the small gains, a solid half of the country still rarely, if ever, picks up a book for pleasure. In the same press release, the N.E.A. said that “The U.S. population now breaks into two almost equally sized groups—readers and non-readers.”

Colm Toibin: 'The audience always want to know, what did you mean?' - video

From The Twitter:

Pew Media Study Shows Reliance on Many Outlets: (NYT)

EBSCO Rolls Out 64 New Ebook Subject Sets: (Link)

Bodleian Library shows off treasures, from Magna Carta to Shakespeare (Guardian)

Agatha Christie's real-life surfing thrills to be published (Guardian)

Could ebooks open a new chapter in legal publishing? (Guardian)

Are You Kidding? LJ Editor Francine Fialkoff's scathing response to Authors Guild's HathiTrust Lawsuit (LJ)

Apologies for the over reliance on the Guardian - I'm going to have to be more conservative.

So You Want to Write a Novel: "I'm the talent."

On semi hiatus until January but I saw this via The Rejector:

Texas Board of Education Censors History

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Texas Dentist sends education back to the Dark Ages. NYTimes

Future of Publishing from DK and Penguin

I was curious why visitors to PND were looking for a Penguin video - now here it is (hat tip to paidcontent):



Link

Penguin's View of the Future (Video)

Penguin CEO Makinson - Definition of the book itself is up for grabs and we're not sure yet what consumers are willing to pay for. We will only find out via trial and error and 'dynamic' pricing.

Video of his comments:



Video demo of some of their current ideas:



Via Paidcontent

Bill Folman, The Scandal Plan

Pretty good book video via @chapmanchapman and @harperstudio

Stewart Eviscerates CNBC.

Remember when McCain bailed on Letterman and how Letterman milked that for weeks. This is better. A lot better. What I found interesting about this is that the audience was hardly laughing. There was a lot of unease as he went through the examples.

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Paris Hilton On Oil Dependency

Remember that tasteless ad the McCain campaign ran denigrating Obama as a "celebrity?" Well, I think the celebrity just got the better of them:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Here is the link for those on email or if you are using MS Explorer. Firefox seems to work fine.

I am curious why they can't afford towels at the Hilton mansion. Nice suit.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming later.

Tom Waits Press Conference

Say hi to your mother...

London Book Fair

BBC video from the London Book Fair.

Here

My Wall Street Journal!

A parody of the Wall Street Journal is to be published in celebration of tax day tomorrow. Apparently some of the copies have leaked in advance and one copy has made its way to the executive suite at News Corp.




(Fake, but funny; especially the bit about Roger Ailes).

Chicken with Pears

Frequent readers of the NYT will know of Mark Bittman who writes a weekly column on Thursdays named the Minimalist. Each column describes a recipe that on the surface may seem complicated but is simplified significantly by Bittman. (Last week tomato paella). He also has several cookbooks all of which are quite good. Regrettably we can't afford an in house Chef here at PND and it being Thursday I thought I would nevertheless present the following video. Chris Walken the minimalist chef.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43VjLCRqKNk

Book Videos and Simon & Schuster

The New York Times (via Associated Press) has a short article on video promotions for books. It is becoming all the rage now. Here is the McEwen (Chesil Beach) video produced by Powells Books mentioned in the article.



Also mentioned is Susan Wiggins' novel The Shadow Catcher which is one of the new crop of videos launched by Simon & Schuster today. From the article:

Wiggins is one of 40 writers featured on a video site launched Thursday by Simon & Schuster that includes clips of Wiggins, Zane, Jeannette Walls and Sandra Brown. The publisher expects to add videos for books by Vince Flynn, Michael Connelly and Jodi Picoult among others.

Once a novelty, book videos are increasingly common and, publishers say, essential. Hyperion Books, HarperCollins and Penguin Group (USA) are among those using them. Powell's Books, a leading independent store based in Portland, Ore., plans its own series of films, starting with a video for Ian McEwan's new novel, ''On Chesil Beach.''

''I don't know if we're reaching people we wouldn't otherwise be reaching, but we are reaching people who are not necessarily reading book review sections, or always watching a TV show,'' says Sue Fleming, Simon & Schuster's vice president and executive director for online and consumer marketing.

Here is the link to the Wiggins video and here is the link to Bookvideos.tv where you can watch videos of favorite authors (when they do a video) and learn more about the books.

Help, My Book Won't Open

New technology hits the monastery and the monks appear baffled. The trust worthy and reliable help desk support team arrive to sort it all out.

Thanks to Martyn Daniels for the link.

Berlitz: Improve your English

I used to work for Berlitz and they were a very conservative organization who relied on yellow pages and newspaper advertising to generate sales leads. Internationally, the company tended to be a little more adventurous particularly in Germany and Japan. Here is a link to some new style advertising that shows you can teach an old dog some new tricks.

Publishing Week in Review

It was banned books week this week (Sponsored by ALA). Here is a list of the most challenged books from 2005. No word yet on 2006 but I expect to see perennial favorite Catcher in the Rye on the list again. Pretty much any children's or young adult book that deals with sex education, dangly bits, and snogging is guaranteed at least an honorable mention. Throw in Why do I have two daddies? and you will have cracked it.

Litlove had a recent post about two new mystery writers she has started reading. Both Reginald Hill and Susan Hill produce great stories but as she points out in the case of Reg that the characters have been hijacked by TV script writers. I am not sure I like this trend which also happened with Morse and is now happening with Inspector Linley. The 'ghost' written stories don't seem to have the same substance of those that come from the authors books.

Many years ago I attended a conference given by Stanford University and Guy Kawasaki was the dinner speaker - it was a small affair. He was at Apple in the early days and is now a VC among a number of other things. His blog is very interesting and he had this recent post on 'distribution' which does sound boring but he has an interesting view point. Additionally, he also published a post at the end of last year which if you are a frequent user (and abuser) of Powerpoint you will want to read. Lastly, from a traffic and design stand point you can see how he has taken a particular approach to the way he creates the content for his blog that results in maximum attention. If you are interested in this - and who wouldn't be - here is an article.

Here is a little more on the Google decision made by the Belgium court that I commented on earlier this week. Google clearly did not like the requirement to post the judgment and replied very strongly to the court on this issue. There is another hearing in November where they are likely to rely on industry practice that enables any web site to effectively close itself off to spidering. In this case had this technology been invoked by the plaintiff would have avoided the law suit. But then, where's the fun in that?

Eoin Purcell had a post on comics and beat me to a reference from the New York Times article on same. There have been a few other articles that I have noted over the past several weeks in addition to this one. Firstly, the 9/11 Report is being published in a comic book version. Interesting...I am not sure the point, but perhaps comprehension and reading ability has something to do with it or maybe it is a "...let's see if we could do this.." kind of thing. As the article points out it is a little hard to generate the gravitas of two aircraft slamming into the WTC with a simple ...KABOOM!! Here also is an article from the Houston Chronicle about Comic book Bibles. (I just report the stuff I don't believe it). Comics are of course huge business and a number of large US publishing houses have undertaken publishing programs or distribution deals for comics or Manga.

Finally, I haven't had a link to The Daily Show for a while but Hugo Chavez was such great comedy that it has to be referenced. Oh and Norm Chomsky - assuming he earned out his advance - running all the way to the bank.