Even though we sometimes give Amazon’s Kindle a hard time, the device is undoubtedly handy for reading e-books. The Kindle lets you seamlessly download books straight from Amazon in a matter of seconds. And, even better, you can load the Kindle with thousands of free e-books from sources such as Project Gutenberg. (Few people know this.

It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.

Making the Web Work for Science – Full
How can the web advance the progress of science? It’s a big question, obviously. And some smart folks have something to say about it.

A quick fyi: On Monday morning, Stanford Continuing Studies opens up registration for its fall lineup of online writing courses.

One month you’re the governor of Illinois; the next you’re indicted and kicked out of office for trying to sell President Obama’s Senate seat; and several months later, you wind up imitating Elvis at block parties. Oh how the mighty have fallen. The money moment comes 50 seconds in. Have a good weekend.

J.M. Coetzee won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003. This coming December, Viking will release his latest novel, Summertime. The New York Review of Books recently published two excerpts from the book (here and here). And you can now listen to Coetzee read the first of the two excerpts. It’s called “Undated Fragments.

Les Paul, the guitar master and inventor, passed away today at the age of 94. The clip above shows Paul at 90, just a few years ago, living a still vigorous life. He’ll be missed.

The folks who brought you Librivox (one of our favs) are now rolling out a new site: Book Oven. The beauty of Librivox is that it has used crowdsourcing to produce the largest collection of free audio books on the web (and we’ve featured many of them in our collection of Free Audio Books).

A little sidebar to our previous post that wonders whether Amazon’s Kindle can revolutionize the book industry…
1) When you buy an iPod, you can transfer all of your current music onto it. With Kindle you have to start buying all new books.

If you’re wondering where the book/publishing market is heading, then you’ll want to give this insightful article a read.  Fast forward five years, here’s what you’ll likely find: Amazon, using the Kindle and on-demand publishing, starts working directly with authors and cutting traditional publishers out of the loop.