Philip Roth’s Creative Surge & the Death of the Novel

in Books, Literature | August 31st, 2010

Philip Roth, now 77 years old, keeps pub­lish­ing with a cer­tain urgency. Every­man in 2006, Exit Ghost in 2007, Indig­na­tion 2008, The Hum­bling last year, and next comes Neme­sis, due to be released in ear­ly Octo­ber. After The Hum­bling hit the shelves, mag­a­zine edi­tor Tina Brown con­duct­ed a rare video inter­view with Roth, and they cov­ered a fair amount of ground in 14 min­utes: his cre­ative surge, how he approach­es writ­ing sex scenes, Oba­ma’s lit­er­ary tal­ents, the com­ing extinc­tion of the nov­el and whether the Kin­dle can make any bit of dif­fer­ence, etc. You can watch the video above, or read a tran­script here.

Now a lit­tle free­bie. A nice copy of Indig­na­tion goes to the first read­er who sends along a com­pelling piece of open/intelligent media that we choose to post on the site. (If you’re look­ing for more guid­ance on what we have in mind, please read the tips on this page.) You can sub­mit your media picks here. Cheers…

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Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom: The First Two Chapters

in Books, Literature | August 26th, 2010

Last week, Jonathan Franzen appeared on the cov­er of TIME mag­a­zine – the first time in a decade that a liv­ing nov­el­ist has graced the cov­er page. Authors only get there if they’re flirt­ing with great­ness (TIME’s piece is called “Jonathan Franzen: Great Amer­i­can Nov­el­ist”) and if they have a new nov­el com­ing out. Free­dom hits the book­stores next Tues­day, but you can get start­ed with the first two chap­ters right now. Good Neigh­bors and Agree­able both appear on The New York­er mag­a­zine web site.

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Where to Find Free Textbooks

in Books, e-books | August 22nd, 2010

Life­hack­er just ran a new fea­ture today “Five Best Places to Buy Cheap Text­books.” Cheap is good, no doubt. But free is even bet­ter. So we fig­ured why not take the wraps off of a new Open Cul­ture col­lec­tion: 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion.

This new and grow­ing col­lec­tion pulls togeth­er an assort­ment of free text­books avail­able online. The list is most­ly slant­ed toward sci­ence and math (that’s what is out there), and the texts are almost entire­ly writ­ten by col­lege pro­fes­sors or qual­i­fied high school teach­ers. In some instances, these texts were orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in book for­mat, and now the authors have decid­ed to pub­lish them online. In oth­er cas­es, authors join­ing the “open text­book” move­ment (see Flat World Knowl­edge, CK-12, Cur­ri­ki, etc.) have pub­lished their works for the first time in elec­tron­ic for­mat, often under a Cre­ative Com­mons license. We will update the list con­tin­u­al­ly. But if you see good texts miss­ing, please feel free to ping us. You can access 100+ Free Text­books: A Meta Col­lec­tion here, and please for­ward the link to any young stu­dents or life­long learn­ers who might ben­e­fit…

P.S. This col­lec­tion will always appear in the top nav­i­ga­tion of the web site. Just look for “Text­books” in the top nav bar.

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How to Find Cheaper College Textbooks

in Books, e-books | August 12th, 2010

A quick fyi for any col­lege stu­dent look­ing to save some mon­ey on text­books this year. Last week, The New York Times pub­lished a help­ful guide to low­er­ing text­book costs. The com­pre­hen­sive list tells you where you can find free ebooks and cheap elec­tron­ic text­books online, while high­light­ing e‑commerce ven­dors that rent tra­di­tion­al text­books at a reduced cost. (Take Chegg for exam­ple.) In total, the guide lists 20 dif­fer­ent resources. If you’re head­ing to col­lege soon, it’s well worth a look.

Don’t miss Open Cul­ture on Twit­ter and Face­book!

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Penguin Turns 75 & Two Bestsellers to Give Away

in Books | July 30th, 2010

Today marks the 75th anniver­sary of Pen­guin Books. And to cel­e­brate this mile­stone, they’re dri­ving a Mini Coop­er adorned with the Pen­guin logo across the US this sum­mer, donat­ing books to local libraries and lit­er­a­cy groups. Then, in Sep­tem­ber, the fes­tiv­i­ties will cul­mi­nate with a fundrais­ing par­ty at the New York Pub­lic Library. The folks at Pen­guin were kind enough to include us in their cel­e­bra­tion. So today, we have two free books to give away. One is a copy of Eliz­a­beth Gib­ert’s best­seller Eat, Pray, Love; the oth­er is a copy of The Omni­vore’s Dilem­ma by Michael Pol­lan. They’re just two among Pen­guin’s 4,000 books in print.

So how does this work?: The two copies will go to the first read­ers who send us a com­pelling piece of open/intelligent media that we choose to post on the site. (If you’re look­ing for more guid­ance on what we have in mind, please read the tips on this page.) You can sub­mit your media picks here. And when you do, please indi­cate which book you want. We will select two win­ners (one per book) and announce the names when we post the media picks on Open Cul­ture next week. Thanks for your sug­ges­tions, and have a great week­end.

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Mike Wallace and Bennett Cerf (Founder of Random House) Talk Censorship

in Books, Television | July 27th, 2010

Long before 60 Min­utes, Mike Wal­lace host­ed his own talk show, The Mike Wal­lace Inter­view (1957 — 1960), where he asked prob­ing ques­tions to celebri­ties of the day. The com­plete archive – now avail­able via the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas (access it here) – fea­tures inter­views with Frank Lloyd Wright, Eleanor Roo­sevelt, Sal­vador Dali, Rein­hold Niebuhr, Aldous Hux­ley, and Hen­ry Kissinger, to name a few. In anoth­er notable inter­view, Wal­lace talked with Ben­nett Cerf (watch here), co-founder of the pub­lish­ing giant Ran­dom House, and even­tu­al­ly the con­ver­sa­tion turned to cen­sor­ship. Cer­f’s com­ments date back more than 50 years, but the issue nev­er real­ly goes away. File under: “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

WALLACE: Well, yet you say, one of the great­est threats fac­ing book pub­lish­ing and the entire coun­try is cen­sor­ship.

CERF: That’s right.

WALLACE: What is the… Who does the cen­sor­ing, and what is the motive of those who cen­sor?

CERF: Well, now that would take a lot of explo­ration Mike. I think there are an awful lot of peo­ple in this coun­try, who are not sat­is­fied to gov­ern them­selves and their own fam­i­lies. Or the peo­ple who belong to the same cult that they do, but who have tak­en upon them­selves, to tell every­body else what they should read, what they should see, and what they should think.

WALLACE: For what rea­son do they do it?

CERF: I guess, they think it will make them more sure of get­ting to heav­en. I don’t know why they do it. I think they’re sell­ing short, the good taste of the Amer­i­can pub­lic.

WALLACE: Who are these peo­ple, who would like to inflict this kind of cen­sor­ship upon the Amer­i­can pub­lic? What are the groups?

CERF: Self-appoint­ed snoop hounds.

WALLACE: Such as… such as…

CERF: They come from all… walks of life, er… in all the way back to colo­nial days, and in times of the Puri­tans. There were peo­ple who were telling oth­ers, what they most think, how they must behave, and what their morals must be. These peo­ple can­not resist butting in.

via Richard S.

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Clay Shirky: How Cognitive Surplus Will Change the World?

in Books, Media, TED Talks | June 29th, 2010

Clay Shirky’s book tour col­lid­ed with the TED con­fer­ence in Cannes ear­li­er this month, and what you get is a crisp, 13-minute pre­cis of the argu­ments in Shirky’s new book, Cog­ni­tive Sur­plus: Cre­ativ­i­ty and Gen­eros­i­ty in a Con­nect­ed Age. The big ques­tion after watch­ing Shirky’s piece: How can Open Cul­ture draw on the col­lec­tive “cog­ni­tive sur­plus” of our read­ers and deliv­er a more pow­er­ful site to learn­ers world­wide? A lot of it comes down to design/architecture. But what would a re-archi­tect­ed Open Cul­ture site look like? If you have some thoughts, please take a few min­utes to send them our way. Who knows, your think­ing might inspire a whole new approach here.

To delve fur­ther into Shirky’s think­ing, you can lis­ten to his extend­ed inter­view last week on KQED’s Forum, my favorite morn­ing talk show in San Fran­cis­co. Down­load here, or stream below.

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Hitchens Cancels Speaking Engagements

in Books | June 25th, 2010

Hav­ing recent­ly turned 60, Christo­pher Hitchens decid­ed it was time to write a mem­oir. Hence Hitch-22, his new book pub­lished ear­li­er this month. For a moment, the pub­lic­i­ty machine got rolling. (Above, we have him talk­ing with Antho­ny Layser in a short video called “Drink­ing with Hitchens.” Watch Part 2 here.) But, for what­ev­er rea­son, things have now come to a halt.  Mul­ti­ple speak­ing engage­ments on the West coast (my neck of the woods) have sud­den­ly been can­celed, as True/Slant notes. And, right­ly or wrong­ly, there’s now spec­u­la­tion about Hitchen­s’s health. Nei­ther Hitchens nor his rep­re­sen­ta­tives have offered any offi­cial expla­na­tion. Dailyhitchens.com will inevitably keep mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

Note: You can down­load Hitch-22 (nar­rat­ed by Hitchens him­self) for free via Audible.com. Read more about their no-strings attached pro­mo­tion here.

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