dietsch ::

Seed Mag follow-up

Christopher Mims of the Seed staff was kind enough to post here, to reassure all three of my readers that the Seed Magazine site will be relaunched soon, and that it will be “fully the equal of the magazine.”

Good news.

I see from various blogs [links below] that the print edition of Seed has indeed relaunched, with advance copies going out to prominent science bloggers. The Seed Media Group site says the mag will be available worldwide on October 1, but I'm going to sneak down to the big Hudson News in GC after work to see whether it has arrived yet.

I'm pleased to see that its cover story, a Chris Mooney piece on the evolution/intelligent design “controversy,” is already sparking debate on Luboš Motl's blog, even before the magazine hits newsstands. That's both the point and the value of Seed, in my opinion: to highlight the role of science in our governance and culture. To see such a vibrant discussion appear so soon is, to my eyes, delightful.

[Links: Luboš Motl; Clifford Johnson; Peter Woit; Chris Mooney and his The Republican War on Science.]

I'm eager to get the new Seed, but this is a busy period for me, and I don't know how quickly I'll actually read the thing. Here's a list of things I'm working on right now, usually at lunch and on the train:

• the book Evolution : The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory
• daily reads of the Wall Street Journal
• a self-taught review of algebra, trigonometry, and calculus
• the book The Joy of Mixology : The Consummate Guide to the Bartender's Craft
• a reread of Tender Is the Night, which I've sort of stalled on, because I pretty much hate Dick and Nicole Diver and their social circle
• Planning a wedding
• Revamping my website (look, Todd, color!)

All this in addition to watching cool TV shows (My Name Is Earl, Everybody Hates Chris), cooking yummy dinners, and sleeping. I don't know where I'm going to slot Seed in, but I'll have to find some place for it.

Science journalism

Ever since reading my grandfather's Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines as a kid, and later subscribing to the kids' science magazine Odyssey, I've had a thing for sci-tech publications, so two news items this week pricked up my interest.

Seed Magazine returns this month, after almost a year off. I've been looking for a new issue for months, with no luck, so this is happy news. I started reading with the second issue and loved its emphasis on science and culture. Its publisher, Seed Media Group, secured a new round of capitalization and is poised to launch ventures online, on television, and in other media. The website, which just yesterday featured content from the magazine's last issue, a year ago, is now vacant pending a relaunch.

I love Seed's mission: to increase public awareness of science to equip citizens to understand the fast-changing world around them. To that end, it features a mix of short fiction, interviews, conversations between scientists and writers, profiles of artists whose works incorporate science themes, and voters' guides to science issues in political campaigns.

But it was often plagued by lateness. Its worthwhile series about science issues and the 2004 presidential campaign published its final voters' guide after the November election, and its calendar of upcoming events often featured stuff that had already come and gone. I'm hoping the new financing will help Seed address these problems.

I was also frustrated that after an initial round of blogger and web interest (Boing Boing called it Maxim for science writing, which was a bit facile), it seemed to drop off the radar, and I could never find anything online, whether from official sources or connected bloggers, to explain its absence from newsstands.

However, I'm glad it's back, because I think the magazine plugs a big hole in the media.

[Links: WWD Memo Pad: Seed Money … Art Of Style; Seed Media Group; Seed Magazine Online]

Also, there's word today that Bob Guccione Jr. is buying Discover magazine from Disney. Old-timers might recall that isn't the Guccione family's first attempt at science publishing.

Omni began in the late 1970s and featured articles and fiction, usually wrapped up in lovely cover paintings. I remember reading it as a kid, and although I don't really recall much about the contents, I do remember really enjoying the hell out of it. The Wikipedia page did remind me, though, that I first read portions of Stephen King's Firestarter in its pages.

I've never really cared for Discover. (I'd rather see a resurrected Omni.) If Seed is Maxim for science writing, Discover is probably TV Guide. But its good to see the Gucciones back in popular-science.

[Links: New York Times: Disney's Discover Magazine Soon to Have a New Owner; Omni (magazine)]

Be smart, by the way, and do not try out omnimag.com on a whim, for it now leads to penthouse.com.

Oh yes, they did...

From the can't-believe-they-said-it department (emphasis added):

In his ribald and tender first book, “Wild Animals I Have Known: Polk Street Diaries and After” (Green Candy Press, 2002), and now in a new memoir, “Let's Shut Out the World” (Green Candy Press), Mr. Bentley announces himself to a gay literary scene suffering from middle-aged doldrums. And he does so in back-door fashion, with a diary and a memoir whose substance is, raunchily, bracingly and tenderly sex.

[Link]

The Dueling Covers of Queen Loana

I've been reading recently about Eco's new novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. The premise is simple: a bookseller awakens to discover he has forgotten his wife and children but not the hundreds of books he's read. He then retreats to his childhood home and tries to reconstruct his memory by sifting through the books and ephemera of his life. The text is then woven around poetry snippets and reproductions of the comic-book pages and postcards and sheet music that the bookseller encounters in his boxes and attics.

It all sounds interesting enough that I'd like to read the book, even though the reviewers are not exactly wildly enthusiastic.

[Link: The New York Times review]

But while reading reviews on U.S. and British sites, I found out that, once again, the American and U.K. editions have different covers. I cannot decide which I prefer. The covers appear after the jump (note that one might not be safe for work).

Netboox?

I received an email today from Mitchell Silverman, a cofounder of the new book-trading site Bookins, which encourages readers to trade their books via the mail system. But let's let Mr. Silverman describe the service:

I just launched a very unique book-trading website. Ron mentioned it on Beatrice — perhaps your readers would also be interested. It is an automated system that finds good homes for members’ used-books, while getting them titles they want in exchange.

Membership is free, and it's easy to use. Like Netflix (the famous DVD-by mail website) everything is automated, and postage is provided. But instead of getting DVDs from a warehouse, members get books of equal value from other members. They receive a much greater return on their trade-in than at used bookstores, and we are connected to the US postal service, so postage and mailer labels print from their own printers ($3.99 to receive a book, no charge to ship them).

Well, color me intrigued. I think I'd seen some stirrings about this on other sites but never followed through to the link. Jen and I have been talking about offloading some of our books anyway, and this might be a great way to do that.

[Links: Bookins; Ron's comments]

Geek = me

Here's exactly how aliterate I am: This will probably be my first Allende novel. It's a bit like waiting around for Eco to write the Green Hornet.

Econ 101

I'm on an economics kick right now because I'm tired of not understanding a damn thing people are talking about when they discuss stock markets, GDP, the consumer price index, steel tariffs, inflation, recession, or government bonds. When politicians pander for my vote and flog their economics plans, I have no way of evaluating their claims, since I haven't the foggiest idea what the hell they're yammering about. (And, believe me, I know that they play on this ignorance to win votes.)

[more]

Hard Case

Hard Case Crime is a new publishing imprint that's been putting out a line of pulpy crime novels. The imprint is reprinting old books by classic authors like Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and Erle Stanley Gardner. It's also putting out books by newer writers.

Hard Case hired illustrators to paint old-style pulp-detective covers, and the imprint designed the trade dress in that fashion as well. The books look like this:

I'm going to buy and read them all because they look so great. They need to be in my home. They're fun reads, too. Eight of them are available right now, with eight more on the way; I've bought four and read two.

I'm buying them in publication order because there's no thinking that way. I just go out and look for the next one in the list. If I find it, I get it. Sometimes a guy just likes to be big and dumb and not think about what to read next.

Comparing covers

Yet another instance in which I prefer the UK cover (left) over the US version (right).

Iranian sues U.S. for rights to publish memoir

Human-rights activist Shirin Ebadi (شیرین عبادی), a 2003 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is suing the U.S. government. Ebadi argues in her lawsuit that Treasury Department restrictions will prevent her from publishing her memoir in the United States. Treasury forbids American companies from publishing the works of authors in Iran, Cuba, or Sudan unless those works were written without American involvement.

Ebadi wishes to publish her book here in the U.S. because, in her home country, it would be subject to state approval—but ironically, it's subject to state approval in the land of the “free” as well.

[more, via Blog of a Bookslut]

No books, please, we're democrats

I'm a little sorry to see that Maud Newton is disspirited, although I'm pretty damn depressed myself.

But news like today's is EXACTLY why books seem important to me, and why I take such consolation in them. I read not only for entertainment but also for edification, and had I not made such strong efforts to educate myself by selecting worthy books, I'd be just as willfully ignorant as the feelgood security NASCAR parents who reelected the Chimp.

bouquiner

I think it's funny that just after reading this article, by a book-collecting professor, I read today's French-Word-A-Day:

bouquiner (boo-kee-nay) verb
1. to hunt after, to collect, old books
2. (informal) to read

I really need to read more after work, and I definitely should start studying French again, but I'm always tired and the TV's so distracting. Sigh.

Gleick critiques Newton exhibit

James Gleick, author of a recent biography of Sir Isaac Newton, critiques the NYPL's new exhibit, The Newtonian Moment.

I saw this exhibit during its opening weekend, and to my embarrassment, what struck me most is how little I actually know about Newton's life and work. I don't think I've studied anything about him since high school, to be honest, aside from perhaps a brief mention in a college history course. Gleick's bio might be a good jumping-off point.

Carver? Franzen? Whu?

I'm sorry, Mr. Post, but I suspect most American readers have no idea who Carver and Franzen are, let alone over-read their imitators. Besides, Mr. Post, would you rather see a third-rate Raymond Carver, or a third-rate Dan Brown?

Tristan and Laurenn

Sexy and Loathsome: Author J. T. LeRoy talks to Tristan Crane and Ted Naifeh

Tristan Crane appears tonight with Laurenn McCubbin, at Jigsaw Gallery.

Get me some bookplate!

Oooooh. I likes me some Queen and Country.

New York photo atlas

Here's a must have: New York: The Photo Atlas. From the book's description page at Harper:

For those who think they know the streets of New York City like the back of their hand, think again. For those who don't know how to get around Gotham, here's a chance to get to know the city in all its glory. New York: The Photo Atlas combines exquisite aerial photography and detailed street atlas maps to provide a truly unique perspective of the city -- high above the concrete. The breadth of the area covered is stunning: All five boroughs are included, as well as several New York and New Jersey suburbs. Trace your bike route, find your apartment building, or take in the sights without leaving your living room. Even if you don't know New York well, you will find this book fascinating.

The New York Times discussed the book yesterday, calling it "remarkable in its intimacy and its breadth." The article goes on to discuss the book's inception and the way it reveals otherwise-unseen elements of the city, such as a biplane on a building's roof or the hidden backyards of New York neighborhoods.

I have serious lust for this book.

Events: Satrapi, Spiegelman

Marjane Satrapi speaks at the Chelsea Barnes and Noble on Wednesday, Sept. 8. Art Spiegelman speaks at Cooper Union at 6:30pm on Friday, Sept. 10.

[via flavorpill]

Rent Girl

Laurenn McCubbin has illustrated a new book: Rent Girl, a collection of autobiographical essays written by Michelle Tea.

Laurenn talked to Reyhan Harmanci of the San Francisco Chronicle about the new book. Harmanci says of Rent Girl:

In tracing Michelle's journey from Boston to San Francisco, with a stop in Arizona, "Rent Girl" doesn't flinch from showing the physical and emotional cost of sex work. "Rent Girl" also tells of the allure of such an outlaw lifestyle. McCubbin's drawings stick with you. Her style is so natural, it looks as if she could have drawn her images in one sitting. This is far from the case. McCubbin took "hundreds and hundreds" of photographs after setting up elaborate staging of the scenes Tea described. To create the drawings, she would meld the photos together, taking an expression she liked and pairing it with an especially effective pose.

The Chronicle also talked to Michelle Tea.

Saving Peanuts

Here's something cool from a while back: Adam Kempa blogs about Nicholson Baker's connection to the recent Fantagraphics reprints of the Peanuts comic strip. Baker made recent headlines with his new novel Checkpoint, in which two men discuss an assassination attempt against presidential fuckchimp George W. Bush.

But in 2001, Baker released Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper [excerpt and review at NYTimes.com], which documents the destruction of newspaper and magazine archives. Baker discovered that the only existing copies of hundreds of periodicals were being discarded in favor of microfilm. Baker formed a foundation to rescue these print archives from destruction, and he donated the archives to Duke University.

This is where Fantagraphics comes in. Co-founder Kim Thompson, posting on the Fantagraphics message board, writes that the company was able to find most of the really rare strips from the first two years of Peanuts in the Duke archives. So if not for Baker's work, many strips from the early years of Peanuts would now be lost.

Regenerative reading

[T]he best way to think about reading is as life's grand second chance. All of us grow up once: we pass through a process of socialization. We learn about right and wrong and good and bad from our parents, then from our teachers or religious guides. Gradually, we are instilled with the common sense that conservative writers like Edmund Burke and Samuel Johnson thought of as a great collective work. To them, common sense is infused with all that has been learned over time through trial and error, human frustration, sorrow and joy. In fact, a well-socialized being is something like a work of art.

Yet for many people, the process of socialization doesn't quite work. The values they acquire from all the well-meaning authorities don't fit them. And it is these people who often become obsessed readers. They don't read for information, and they don't read for beautiful escape. No, they read to remake themselves. They read to be socialized again, not into the ways of their city or village this time but into another world with different values. Such people want to revise, or even to displace, the influence their parents have had on them. They want to adopt values they perceive to be higher or perhaps just better suited to their natures.

--Mark Edmundson, The Way We Live Now: The Risk of Reading

American anti-intellectualism

Or, why are we so proud to be so dumb?

Two writers discuss the anti-intellectual tide in American culture. First, Lawrence M. Krauss discusses science education with Claudia Dreifus of Scientific American magazine.

Kraus makes two points that I find significant:

We live in a society where it's considered okay for intelligent people to be scientifically illiterate. Now, it wasn't always that way. At the beginning of the 20th century, you could not be considered an intellectual unless you could discuss the key scientific issues of the day. Today you can pick up an important intellectual magazine and find a write-up of a science book with a reviewer unashamedly saying, "This was fascinating. I didn't understand it." If they were reviewing a work by John Kenneth Galbraith, they wouldn't flaunt their ignorance of economics.

Why is this a problem? Because the more ignorant Americans are about science, the easier it becomes for politicians to distort science to their own ends. Krauss continues:

Because we're living in a time when so many scientific questions are transformed into public relations campaigns--with truth going out the window in favor of sound bites and manufactured controversies. This is dangerous to science and society, because what we learn from observation and testing can't be subject to negotiation or spin, as so much in politics is.
The creationists cut at the very credibility of science when they cast doubt on our methods. When they do that, they make it easier to distort scientific findings in controversial policy areas. We can see that happening right now with issues like stem cells, abortion, global warming and missile defense. When the testing of the proposed missile defense system showed it didn't work, the Pentagon's answer, more or less, went, "No more tests before we build it."

Next, Henry Louis Gates Jr., discusses black anti-intellectualism in aguest column for the New York Times. He reports on a conversation with Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois. Obama told Gates:

Americans suffer from anti-intellectualism, starting in the White House. Our people can least afford to be anti-intellectual.

I'll never fully understand the problem of anti-intellectualism among black Americans (for that matter, I'll never understand why anyone is willfully dumb, no matter their ethnicity or country of origin), but it seems to me part of a larger societal problem affecting all Americans--from, as Obama points out, a White House that seems to scorn intellect, to a popular culture that mocks as nerds everyone from scientists and mathematicians to music theorists and political scientists.

Random book news

1. If there's truly a decline in literary reading, I blame books like this. (See also Slate's scathing review.)

2. I don't know much about Neal Pollack (although I gather that I should), but a graphic novel (final item) about 1840s New York sounds pretty great to me.

Alice's Adventures Underground

In 1862, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took a rowboat outing with friends, among whom were three daughters of the dean of Oxford's Christ Church. Dodgson made up a story to entertain the girls--Alice, Lorina, and Edith Liddell--during the short trip. Alice asked Dodgson to write the story down, which he agreed to do.

The result was an illustrated manuscript, Alice's Adventures under Ground, which, in revised form, became Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Scans of this manuscript reside online; I'm displaying three of them, but you can read the whole story by following my first link.

Each image links to larger images:

Zero over Berlin

Vertical is a New York publisher specializing in English-language translations of Japanese fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels. Popular designer Chip Kidd does Verticals covers and packaging, providing a visual style that matches Vertical's fresh literary style. (Posman Books in Grand Central currently has up a lovely window display of Vertical's titles, and the designs are really fetching.)

Among Vertical's recent releases is Zero over Berlin, a WWII-era novel that explores Hitler's lust for the Zero warplanes flown by Japanese pilots. Hitler wants a prototype, and the novel centers on two pilots who have to deliver a plane to Germany without being spotted by Allied air forces. The premise sounds intriguing, and as you can see, the cover is lovely.

[Via Foreword]

Booklust

Farrar, Straus founder dies

"Roger W. Straus Jr., a Guggenheim heir who co-founded one of the great publishing houses of the 20th century, has died. He was 87."

From the obituary:

Straus believed it necessary to be "an international publisher, at ease in the world of letters," and he had great success attracting authors from around the world. In 1971, for instance, he acquired American rights to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's classic novel "August 1914."

Contrast that with this NY Times piece from July 2003, which I discussed here, about the trend among publishers to shy away from translated fiction because they claim there's no market for it among American readers.

Book cover designs at Fordham

Foreword gives word of an exhibit of book covers at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University. Unfortunately, a quick sweep with Google doesn't turn up any direct links for the exhibit or for the gallery that's housing it.

It sounds lovely, and I'll keep trying to learn more.

UPDATE (5/27, 10:33am): Foreword has posted the PDF that Chip Kidd sent them advertising the event. Here are the details, as listed on the PDF:

Against the Grain
Book cover and jacket designs by Alvin Lustig, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Chip Kidd, Barbara de Wilde

Curated by Abby Goldstein and Paul Shaw

June 3 - August 3, 2004
Monday through Saturday, 10am - 8pm
Opening reception Thursday, June 3, 6 to 8pm

Center Gallery Fordham University at Lincoln Center
113 W. 60th St.
New York 10023
212-636-6303

No word on entry fees or ticket prices for the reception, if any.

This is...

I've seen This is New York around, but I didn't know it was part of an eighteen-book series that is now being reissued.

I Like has a reproduction of a charming image from the London release, showing the tube station at Piccadilly.

Patents

Here's a fun-looking book:

You can't really tell from the picture, but it's covered in bubble wrap. Strangely, Amazon has no listing for the bubble-wrapped hardcover, only a trade paperback, and even the Powell's listing describes the binding as "paperback." I wonder whether the bubble-wrapped hardcover was sent out as a gimmicky review copy or some sort of limited-edition release. (I saw the hardcover in the library at my workplace.)

The continuous city

Last week, Cory Doctorow posted to Boing Boing his thoughts on Peter Ackroyd's book London: The Biography, which I've been meaning to read for a while.

Doctorow discusses the idea of people, books, and cities as continuities--things that shift form, develop, grow, recede, and change while still remaining the same. I realized as a young teenager that the stuff of which I am composed had all died and been replaced many times over. I'm smarter than I used to be but dumber than I will be.

Likewise, books. Not only does a particular book's voyage from idea to bound volume morph slowly from one stage to the next, but that same book then acquires a body of commentary and criticism that shapes and is shaped by the book itself. And, as Doctorow also points outs, what we call "book" has changed many times over the past centuries--tablet, scroll, codex, e-text, audiobook, etc.--without changing the essence of what a book is and how it communicates with readers.

Cities, too, but here I'll simply quote Doctorow, who says it better than I could:

London is continuous. It's not a place -- its borders have shifted and shifted again over thousands of years. It's not a race of people -- its inhabitants have changed in individual identity and culture so many times that the culture and ethnicity of London 2004 is nearly completely different from London 0000. It's not a collection of architecture, or a map of roads, or a political system, for all of these have changed and changed and changed. London isn't even its name: London's had many names over the years.

London is a practice: London is what Londoners are doing right now, which is informed by, midwifed by, descended from what Londoners were doing yesterday. London is what Londoners do.

I'm now reading Gotham, and I think it'll be interesting to read it through the lens of the continuous New York.

Catcher in the Rue

Via Maud Newton, this amusing riff on book titles: change one letter and get a different story.

Exquisite corpse of page 23

From here, because it amuses me.

"Don't be silly," I replied. I was fretful about my abilities as a lover. From the salad station at the other end of the line, I saw a brief, slurry exchange between Bobby and some of the guests. M pulled the thick file towards him. His eyes wandered slowly up to the date, which Ford was idly tapping at. The stale, rancid smell of cigarette butts, the ashtrays all brimming. He is gasping now.

Pulps, at TNR

Pulps looks like an interesting idea. The New Republic, which normally reviews only literary fiction, begins a regular column covering genre fiction and non-fiction.

I would have thought the introduction was condescending ("After all, influential ideas have a way of turning up in the strangest places") until I read the George Pelecanos mystery Right as Rain and found that I really don't understand the good reviews this novel received. So perhaps mainstream novels really are "strange places" for good ideas.

[via Beatrice]

Lessig releases Free Culture under CC license

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig has released his new book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, for free under a Creative Commons license. This means you can download and read the book without paying a penny.

Of course, you can still buy a printed copy, but the free version allows you to review the book before purchasing.

Lessig follows the example of Cory Doctorow, who has released three books in this fashion. For Doctorow, the experiment has been a success. Having the free downloads available appears to have helped, not hindered, sales of the book's physical copies, by encouraging word-of-mouth recommendations and allowing readers to try before they buy.

[via Boing Boing]

LibraryLookup

Jon Udell offers a nifty web tool. Install one of his bookmarklets for your local public library. If you're browsing a book site, say at Amazon.com or All Consuming, you can click the bookmarklet and a window will pop-up displaying the book's availability at your local library. Note that not only U.S. libraries are supported.

[via muxway]

Art deco bookbindings, on display at NYPL

Opening this Friday at the NYPL is an exhibit of art deco bookbindings from Paris, in the early twentieth century. From the press release:

French bookbinders led the world in their craft in the earlier part of the 20th century — especially from the 1920s to the 50s — and fostered the designer-bookbinder movement that took firm root in several other countries. The most influential of these were Legrain and Adler, who between them created some 525 bindings for the French bibliophile, couturier, collector, and philanthropist Jacques Doucet.

The exhibit has a companion volume from Princeton Architectural Press.

[via Beatrice]

Home library software

Want!

Well, perhaps not the NYPL software, but something similar.

Rip up your books?

Via Maud Newton comes this article by Christopher Howse, in which he confesses to ripping out finished pages from cheap paperbacks while traveling.

About a year ago, I started reading Gotham, a 1,424-page history of New York City. Unfortunately, my prime-time for reading is during my commute, and I found that carrying around such a large brick makes for uncomfortable travel.

One solution would be to rip out about 100 pages at a time and just carry those sheaves around, but I still can't quite allow myself to rip up a book, even for the purpose of easier reading.

Subtle censorship

Kids' books face censorship over gay characters

Martha Freeman got the bad news at lunch from her publisher and literary agent. Although "The Trouble With Babies" had received good reviews, the sales of her children's book about a young San Francisco girl were poor compared with the first title in her series, and the paperback rights would not be sold.

The reason: A brief passage...about two gay fathers and their adopted son apparently had discouraged many librarians across the United States from buying the title....

Freeman's publisher now wants her to write a third book in the series, but that leaves her with a question: Fight the censorship and retain the gay characters, or leave them out in the hopes of selling more books?

[via ArtsJournal]

Colon: Punctuation of Doom, Helpful Mark, or Publishing Wankery?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the use of colons and subtitles in academic publishing. Some editors and authors argue that university publishers have overused the "title: subtitle" format in an attempt to make book titles either more descriptive or catchier.

Some examples from the Chronicle piece: With All, and for the Good of All: The Emergence of Popular Nationalism in the Cuban Communities of the United States, 1848-1898 (Duke University Press); Essential Subtleties on the Silver Sea: The Yin-Hai Jing-Wei: A Chinese Classic on Ophthalmology (University of California Press); Edwin J. Cohn and the Development of Protein Chemistry: With a Detailed Account of His Work on the Fractionation of Blood During and After World War II (Harvard University Press); and (my own favorite example) My Story as Told by Water: Confessions, Druidic Rants, Reflections, Bird-Watchings, Fish-Stalkings, Visions, Songs and Prayers Refracting Light, From Living Rivers, in the Age of the Industrial Dark (University of California Press).

[via Arts & Letters Daily]

The Playmakers

The Playmakers is an upcoming book about toys and games; it looks just beautiful and sounds like a helluva lot of fun. [via Foreword: The Book Design Blog]

Typography and design at the Economist

I'm a little behind on this, I know....

Jon Coltz examines the history of the typography and design of the Economist in this interesting piece.

I've been considering a subscription.

Book of subway maps

New geek fetish: Metro Maps of the World. So far, it's not available in the U.S. I might just pony up the extra cash and buy it from Amazon.co.uk.

Future of the book

Today I read two articles discussing books and electronic publishing: Gary Wolf's piece for Wired about Amazon's Search Inside the Book feature, and Umberto Eco's lecture at Alexandria. I see some interesting parallels between the pieces, but I want to reread both before I can comment on them.

French update

After stalling out a bit, I've returned to studying French. I ordered a copy of Easy French Reader, which has an ugly cover, I'll admit, but is still a good introductory book. The book is in three parts: Part I contains a set of dialogues between an American teenager, Christine, and her French friend Charles, both of whom live in Paris. Part II is a collection of essays, written in French, about figures from French history. Part III contains several short stories, from writers such as Zola, that are mostly intact but have a few edits to make the vocabulary more suitable for beginning readers.

I'm still also working through French for Reading, but it's slow-going. The audience for that book is graduate students who need French to do study and research, and so the prose is academic, scientific, and, I think, stilted and dry. I found myself bogging down, so I wanted something a little less erudite.

With my focus so squarely on written French, my pronunciation lags behind. That's okay to an extent; I don't foresee conversing in French in the near future, but I would like to read it. I do, however, want to begin developing an ear for the language so that I can understand, for example, the dialogue in French-language movies. Also, I'd eventually like to take a French class, and a head-start in verbal abilities will help.

With that in mind, I've been working through the French-language activities offered as part of the BBC's languages series. Without buying the videos, of course, I can't view the Beeb's French programs, but the website offers interactive modules that allow you to listen to and practice conversational French.

It's standard introductory material--asking for directions, ordering a drink or a meal, buying Metro tickets, inquiring about the price of a piece of merchandise--but it's a good start to picking up the sounds of French words.

What I'm reading

You'll note a new Media option in the list of links. There I have a running list of what I'm reading and listening. My eventual goal is to have all that on the main page, but that's still down the road a bit.

Google to offer book search?

Days after Amazon launched a new full-text search of books in its system comes word that Google is considering a similar offering.

Search the full text of books at Amazon

Amazon has announced a new feature on its site: You can now search the full text of books in its database. This is pretty cool, as Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, points out in a letter to customers. And it's easy to use. All you do is enter your search term in the same search box you'd normally use to find an item at Amazon.

What I really like is how the feature highlights your search term on a PDF copy of the book's page, as this example shows. By the way, I don't recall ever having made bread in a tin can.

But I think the biggest surprise was this excerpt from Enormous Prayers: A Journey into the Priesthood. Surprise, because William Dietsch is my uncle, my father's brother, and I never knew (or I'd forgotten) that he'd been profiled in such a book.

Thirties

A new book about life in your thirties has a new associated weblog: Book of Ages: How Do You Stack Up?

[via Gothamist]

Slew of books

My company's having a book sale this week, and everything's a quarter, so it's a chance to try out some stuff for which I'd never probably pay full price. (Six books for a buck fifty!) It amuses even me, however, what a hodgepodge of stuff I selected. Here's a list:

Metacognition : Cognitive and Social Dimensions, by Vincent Y A Yzerbyt, Guy Lories, Benoit Dardenne
Life, the Movie, by Neal Gabler
Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico, by Anne Rubenstein
Genesis `: The Evolution of Biology, by Jan Sapp
TechGnosis : Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, by Erik Davis

The sixth book is a directory of art by Quebecois illustrators, with full-color reproductions of each piece. It's beautiful.

UPDATE: Well, that's clearly not working correctly. I'll have to figure out the problem later and fix it. Eek! Fixed now.

Fortress of Solitude

Christopher Sebela interviews Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem.

True Porn release party

Tonight's the New York City release party for the new comics anthology True Porn.

Toys in Babeland, 94 Rivington Street, 7pm - 9pm.

I saw a preview of this at the MoCCA Art Festival over the summer, and it looked very nice, so I'm excited to see the finished product.

New Media

MIT Press has published New Media, 1740-1915, a collection of essays that examine the adoption of new media in historical, social, and cultural contexts.

Test: Gleaning, Exchanging and Vernacular Media discusses one such new medium, newspaper and magazine scrapbooking, which apparently arose during the nineteenth century, and its similarities to today's weblogs.

[New Media, 1740-1915: MIT Press; Amazon.com; via Anil's Daily Links]

Gay writers, gay couples

This quote is coming at me from about ten different blogs this morning, and it obliquely illustrates a point I want to make about living in New York. Interviewed by Publisher's Weekly, Michael Cunningham (writer of the book The Hours) discusses being labelled a "gay author":

"What I do look forward to is the day when the notion of gay and lesbian books or a gay and lesbian section in a bookstore will seem as strange and old-fashioned as a section devoted to books by women or books by people of color. I'm more than ready for books to be on the shelves all together and for readers to be trusted to decide for themselves what books they want. For me and my friends, whether gay or straight, it's never a question whether or not a book is by a gay writer or if it's a story about gay people. We just read books."

I've made a similar comment about seeing gay couples on the streets of New York. I never saw gay couples walking hand in hand in Indianapolis, for example, and I rarely saw it in Bloomington (and when I did, it was always lesbians--never gay men).

But gays in New York can be openly coupled no matter where you go (holding hands on the train, quick smooches in the bagel shop, cuddling in Starbucks), and I'm tired of thinking that's significant or exceptional. I don't see straight couples hand in hand and think, "Oh, how cool that they can be so open!" Similarly, I'm tired of thinking it's exceptional to see interethnic couples together, especially now that I'm part of one myself. I don't want to see a "gay couple" or an "interethnic couple"; I just want to see a couple.

I'm an idealist, of course, but I think all this should be wallpaper--something you see but never really notice because it's just part of your daily life.

CIA World Factbook, 2003 edition

BeSpacific reports that the 2003 edition of the CIA World Factbook is now available. Whenever I edit a country-specific project (like my current book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding North Korea), I always find the CIA Factbook to be a valuable reference. It's also fun just for browsing.

BeSpacific quotes the press release:

This reference work provides a snapshot, as of 1 January 2003, of wide-ranging, hard-to-locate information about the background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. The nine primary information categories and 134 subcategories for most entities include geographic coordinates, Gross Domestic Product, number of telephones, natural resources, legal systems, political parties, illicit drugs, mortality rates, and more. Included among the 268 geographic listings is one for the "World," which incorporates data and other information summarized where possible from the other 267 listings.

[via beSpacific]

High Hat magazine

The High Hat is a new online magazine covering culture, the arts, and politics. Looks promising. [MetaFilter]

I agree with the Metafilter commentator: it looks promising.

New York Public Library: Hat in hand

NY libraries putting out donation boxes in an attempt to offset deep budget cuts. [librarian.net]

NYT: Americans yawn at foreign fiction

Another reason to study a foreign language: Stephen Kinzer, writing in today's New York Times, discusses America's current apathy for works of foreign literature.

Writers, publishers and cultural critics have long lamented the difficulty of interesting American readers in translated literature, and now some say the market for these books is smaller than it has been in generations.

...

Readers in other developed countries still have appetites for translated literature. German publishers, for example, bought translation rights to 3,782 American books in 2002, while American publishers bought rights for only 150 German books.

Kinzer cites several reasons for the growing trend--among them, he mentions the concentration of ownership in publishing, which has resulted in a growing obsession with profits and best-sellers, at the expense of new or innovative writers and foreign authors. He also mentions that some publishers have no editors on staff who read foreign languages. I also thought this comment was telling:

"A lot of foreign literature doesn't work in the American context because it's less action-oriented than what we're used to, more philosophical and reflective," said Laurie Brown, senior vice president for marketing and sales at Harcourt Trade Publishers. "As with foreign films, literature in translation often has a different pace, a different style, and it can take some getting used to. The reader needs to see subtleties and get into the mood or frame of mind to step into a different place. Americans tend to want more immediate gratification. We're into accessible information. We often look for the story, rather than the story within the story. We'd rather read lines than read between the lines."

I've noticed this when watching European films. They're usually paced differently than American movies and they generally tend to be driven by character rather than plot. But instead of viewing that as a turnoff, I normally enjoy shifting my brain into another mode of viewing and thinking.

Learning French, sort of

In my latest demonstration of geekery, I've decided to teach myself to read French. I've been wanting to pick up another language for a long time, and some of you might remember the whole week, about two years ago, during which I was enrolled in a Japanese class at IU.

I have several reasons for doing this:

1. I want the specific mental challenge of learning another language. It's unlike any other intellectual activity I've encountered, and it's been a decade since I've done it. (I know, that reason probably sounds really pompous.)


2. I'm ashamed of myself for not having at least reading knowledge of a modern language. I took German in high school and in the first two years of college, but that was--oh christ--15 years ago. Aside from a week of Japanese, the only other language I've ever studied was classical and Biblical Greek. Not much call for that outside the academy, I'm afraid.


3. I'd like to start reading books and magazines published in French, just to keep the skill up and also to read authors' thoughts in their original tongue--not filtered through a layer of translation.


4. France is one of the world's largest publishers of comic books, most of which are never translated into English. French comics cover a much wider spectrum of interests than do American comics, and many of them are said to be brilliant. But I've never been able to read them.

So what I'm doing is, I'm working through a book called French for Reading, by Karl Sandburg. Sandburg wrote for graduate students who need reading knowledge of French for the purpose of study and research in their disciplines. He wrote his book to be used either individually or for classroom purposes.

I'm through about seven chapters so far, and it's going well. I'll check in from time to time to discuss how I'm doing with it.

The three New Yorks

Dog-sick this weekend. Blargh. But it gave me a chance to read E. B. White's excellent little essay, "Here Is New York." If White's name seems familiar, you probably know him either through Strunk and White's The Elements of Style or through his own book, Charlotte's Web.
White writes of the City:

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and aceepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter--the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last--the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is the third city that accounts for New York's high-strung disposition, its poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company.

New book alert

Library: An Unquiet History, by Matthew Battles. [publisher's synopsis and excerpt; Newsday review; Amazon link]

New Harry Potter book released...

...Dietsch yawns and shrugs.

Quantum Computing

Harnessing Atoms to Create Superfast Computers. George Johnson's book makes the arcane topic of quantum computing accessible and understandable. By Ian Foster. [New York Times: Technology]

This looks like one for the Amazon wishlist. Hint hint hint...

Copyright and IP stuff again.

Copyright and IP stuff again. I know, it ain't your bag, probably. Oh fucking well. But this is more ha-ha than zzz-zzz, so be cool.

I was out at St. Mark's Bookshop tonight and I bought a couple issues of 2600, along with the paperback edition of Laurence Lessig's latest book, The Future of Ideas. My interest in copyright and IP stuff went on hold while I moved, found a place to live, found a job, and so on, but now I can pay more attention to these things again.

Anyway, I started reading Lessig's book tonight. I'm not far in yet, but it's interesting. Remember the days, about six years ago, when everyone said the Internet would revolutionize communication and entertainment? "Watch out, big boys," they all said. "When consumers can get music and movies and books over the Internet, why will they need cable or record stores or Borders, eh? It's a new world, old media, so adapt or get the hell out of the way."

So, it's 2002, and where are we? Napster is dead. Audiogalaxy, dead. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act have double-teamed the American public, stifling innovation and keeping older works from entering the public domain. Someone "adapted" in the old vs. new media war, and it sure wasn't old media.

These are the issues Lessig covers. And, really, I've been meaning to read his book for months. But it took until now. So, I sat and read about 30 pages tonight and then I got to thinking, "Hmmm. Anna Mojo has been discussing IP stuff off and on in her Web log also. I wonder whether she has anything new on this."

Go have a peek and see what I saw when I got on her log. Maybe you'll chuckle as I did.

Cracked, yellowing

Cracked, yellowing--in which I muse about bookstores I've loved.

Berlin: City of Stones

I'm going to talk comics right now, and I hope that's okay with everyone.

Berlin: City of Stones is the first collection of Jason Lutes's excellent historic novel, Berlin. Set in Germany during the early rise of the Nazi party, Berlin follows a diverse cast through their lives, as they see and affect and react to the changes about them. Berlin is a human story, an adult story. If there's a little child in you that's begging to be spoonfed explosions and hero archetypes and rocket ships and cute robots, you don't want Berlin. If, however, you like stories in which complex characters live in realistic settings and have emotions and reactions that you recognize in your own life, try Berlin.

Don't let the "historic" in "historic novel" turn you off. Lutes is telling a story, not teaching a lesson. He's chosen this backdrop, these people, this time to tell his story, but it doesn't require advance understanding of the period. Just read.

I'm not the only person who thinks it's worth your time, either. Check out reviews on Artbomb, the Stranger (a Seattle newsweekly), and Ninth Art; read Time Magazine's choices for Best Comics of 2000, including Berlin; view sample pages on Amazon; or order directly from the publisher, Drawn and Quarterly.

Down and Out

I've been reading George Orwell's first novel Down and Out in Paris and London in preparation for my trip. I've intended to read this book for quite a while, and this seemed like the perfect time. Orwell writes about a young writer living in poverty in the two cities. The book is based in part on his own experience as a young writer living in poverty in the two cities, and that comes across in rich character detail and his descriptions of living for days without food.

It's quite a brilliant book, really, and although I'll be actually be rather up and in while in Paris and London, it seemed a perfect title to borrow for my log.

Have patience

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer...

-Rainer Maria Rilke
"Letters to a Young Poet," letter four

Finder

Comic-book writer Warren Ellis has been pushing a book called Finder on his forum for quite some time now. Finder is a soft sci-fi series by Carla Speed McNeil. It's not an easy book to describe, but if you go out to her Web site, you can learn a bit more about it.

The comic gets a lot of acclaim and when Carla popped up on Warren's forum, saying she had copies for sale straight from her site and that the first collection was very nearly sold out, I ponied up and bought a copy, straight from her.

So, it arrived in the mail today. I opened the mailer and pulled out a copy of the first trade paperback ("Sin Eater") and several folded sheets of paper. "Hm, what's these?" I wondered. "Too much paper here to be a receipt."

When I opened them, I saw three pages of pencil sketches by Carla.

She apparently works in breakdowns before drawing each issue. What that means is she makes rough sketches of the panels that will appear on each page. This technique helps artists work out storytelling problems and create a sense of the flow of each issue. Think of it as storyboarding a movie before filming. She also apparently drafts her captions and dialogue balloons on those pages. Even though the Web site clearly states "All orders will include original production sketches while supplies last" I didn't notice it.

Here's links to the finished version of the pages she sent me:

page 14

page 15

I have earlier versions of page 14 (minus the captions) and an early version of the top half of page 15, including rough captions and dialogue.

Remarkable.

Atlantic Monthly and chain bookshops

Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article on chain bookshops. It's worth reading and I think it makes some valid points about why they might not be as evil as they're frequently made out to be.

Tale of One Bad Rat

I just finished reading a magnificant comic book--one that I think everybody I know should read. Please don't stop reading just because you've seen the words "comic book." I'm not talking about muscle-bound morons slugging each other or zapping people with ray guns. Read the next two paragraphs. If you're still not interested, that's fine, but at least give me a shot here.

Bryan Talbot's The Tale of One Bad Rat concerns a teenaged girl, Helen Potter, the so-called bad rat of the story.* Helen runs away from home to escape abusive parents: a father who molests her and a mother who hates and screams at her. Helen goes to London, where she begs for coins in subway stations and sleeps rough in a cardboard box under a bridge. As do many incest survivors, Helen comes to despise herself. Rather than blame her abuser for her pain, she internalizes it and suffers deep guilt and surpressed anger.

But being homeless and alone in London places Helen at great risk and, one night, a strolling MP encounters Helen in a park and tries to rape her. A group of seeming street toughs comes to her rescue and she gets to know one, Ben, rather well. He earns her trust as a friend, but when he attempts an innocent kiss, she freaks out and leaves. Her abuse at her father's hands has made her distrustful of physical contact.

I won't say much else about the plot, except that Helen undergoes tremendous personal growth through the course of this story. Talbot tells Helen's story in a way that is realistic and harrowing but still, ultimately, optimistic. Talbot, in writing this story, conducted extensive research into sexual abuse and interviewed various survivors. His story shows there's a pathway out of guilt and self-loathing.

The Tale of One Bad Rat made me cry, which is something few comics do anymore. I was so caught up in Helen's story that I actually felt empathy for her. She was such a realistic character--her motivations and reactions seemed so true-to-life--that I identified with her and her emotions. As I've mentioned, Talbot spoke with survivors of similar experiences and their words, their emotions, and their responses inform virtually every decision Helen makes and every word she speaks.

Talbot mentions in the afterword that he chose to model his characters and settings on real-life people and places. Expect to see people and places that look very much like the world you inhabit. Again, this isn't a superhero comic. This is London, not Superman's Metropolis. The streets don't gleam and not everyone is buff and beautiful. Even those who are buff and beautiful aren't necessarily the good guys.

He includes photographs of his character models in the afterword and these pictures demonstrate what a wonderful job he did in creating realistic characters. And I think it was a wise choice, because that grounding gives the comic a basis in the reality we know. Even if we've never seen a London Underground station or been to the Lake District, the details in these scenes make them seem wholly realistic. This choice benefits the book by bringing the reader into the world and life that Helen inhabits. I almost felt I was viewing her world through her eyes, in a way.

The Tale of One Bad Rat is a haunting, surprising book. I expect Helen Potter and her story to remain in my head for some time to come.

Footnote

The title derives from young Helen's hero, children's-book writer/artist Beatrix Potter. Beatrix wrote a book called The Tale of Two Bad Mice and she also used the fortune she made from her books to purchase up chunk after chunk of England's Lake District. Upon her death, she willed her now-extensive holdings to the National Trust, placing them into the public's hands. The Lake District plays a pivotal role in this story.