The Meta Summer Reading List

Now time for some beach wor­thy books… Fla­vor­wire has pulled togeth­er a meta col­lec­tion of sum­mer read­ing lists, aggre­gat­ing books rec­om­mend­ed by The New York Times, NPR, UC Berke­ley, Details, Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library and sev­en oth­er sources. Some­where in this mix you’ll find that per­fect read.

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Putting the Web Inside the Printed Book

There’s a lot of talk about “vooks” these days. Usu­al­ly vooks are all about mov­ing tra­di­tion­al books over to dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments (e.g., the iPad) and sur­round­ing them with sup­port­ing web media. But one com­pa­ny, Ubi­mark, is tak­ing a dif­fer­ent approach. They’re keep­ing the print­ed word and putting the web inside the tra­di­tion­al book. Kind of. Using smart phones, read­ers can take pic­tures of “2D codes” embed­ded in print books. And, from there, the smart phone will launch maps, video, and oth­er web media that will col­lec­tive­ly enrich the words on the page. The video above, using Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days as an exam­ple, shows what this all looks like in action.

via Wired Cam­pus

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Mark Twain Finally to Publish Autobiography

File this under “bet­ter late than nev­er.” Mark Twain spent his last decade writ­ing his mem­oirs, pro­duc­ing some 5,000 unedit­ed pages. How­ev­er, he stip­u­lat­ed that they could­n’t be pub­lished for at least a cen­tu­ry fol­low­ing his death. (Apro­pos see this very rare footage record­ed by Thomas Edi­son show­ing Twain in his last year.) Fast for­ward to 2010. We have now clocked 100 years. And this Novem­ber, UC Berke­ley will pub­lish the first vol­ume of Twain’s man­u­script. The Inde­pen­dent tells you more about this lit­er­ary event, and sug­gests why Twain want­ed to keep his auto­bi­og­ra­phy under wraps. Get the full arti­cle here.

via @ebertchicago

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HuffPo on Literary One-Hit Wonders

Huff­Po has pulled togeth­er a list of The 12 Great­est Lit­er­ary One-Hit Won­ders. And it’s a strange list indeed. When you think of “one-hit won­ders,” you think of mem­o­rable songs record­ed by very unmem­o­rable artists – artists who got their 15 min­utes of fame and then fell right off the radar. Mean­while, the Huff­Po list includes some of the most endur­ing names in Amer­i­can lit­er­a­ture  â€“  F. Scott Fitzger­ald, J.D. Salinger, and Her­man Melville. They gave us their big nov­els – The Great Gats­by, The Catch­er in the Rye, and Moby Dick – then wrote some oth­er last­ing pieces of fic­tion, both short and long. They hard­ly fad­ed into obliv­ion. And, years lat­er, we’re cer­tain­ly not ask­ing, “what ever hap­pened to old what’s his name?”

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Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man, A Free Documentary on the Argentine Writer

He was Argenti­na’s favorite son, one of the great South Amer­i­can writ­ers of the last cen­tu­ry (along with Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, Car­los Fuentes, and Mario Var­gas Llosa), and the win­ner of 46 nation­al and inter­na­tion­al lit­er­ary prizes. We’re talk­ing about Jorge Luis Borges, the mas­ter of the post­mod­ern short sto­ry. Borges was born in 1899, and to cel­e­brate his 100th birth­day (though he died in 1986), Philippe Molins direct­ed the doc­u­men­tary, Jorge Luis Borges: The Mir­ror Man. The film’s major strength (as one review­er put it) is that it’s a “bit of every­thing – part biog­ra­phy, part lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, part hero-wor­ship, part book read­ing, and part psy­chol­o­gy.” It runs 47 min­utes and includes a fair amount of archival footage. (You can watch it in a larg­er for­mat on Vimeo here.)

A big thanks goes to Mike for send­ing The Mir­ror Man our way. If you have your own great piece of cul­tur­al media to share with us and your fel­low OC read­ers, please feel free to send it along.

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Open Meets New Meets Old Publishing

YOUNG JUNIUSOC con­trib­u­tor Seth Har­wood has some­thing excit­ing going on over at his site today: he’s launch­ing the pre-order sales of his new nov­el YOUNG JUNIUS, which is due out this fall. This is part­ly worth not­ing because Seth’s path to pub­li­ca­tion involves giv­ing away his work for free as MP3 audio­books. You can even lis­ten to all of YOUNG JUNIUS before you make a buy. If you’re a fan of crime or mys­tery fic­tion, or you dig The Wire, you’ll love this book!

Now, Seth is part­ner­ing with inde­pen­dent pub­lish­er Tyrus Books to break new ground in pub­lish­ing strate­gies. To read the full descrip­tion of what he’s up to, go here. The brief ver­sion involves the pre-order of spe­cial, lim­it­ed edi­tion copies of the book that fea­ture cloth bind­ing, fan-cre­at­ed cov­er art, pho­tos of the sto­ry’s loca­tions, signed per­son­al­iza­tion and more. By offer­ing these for a lim­it­ed time via his site, he and Tyrus are able to print just the quan­ti­ty sold and bal­ance some of the cost (reduce the risk) of the book’s full print run–hardcover, paper­back AND spe­cial edi­tion.

If you’d like to read more about this or order a copy, head over to sethharwood.com. When you do, use the code OC to save $3 off the cov­er price of the book! Enjoy!!

Seth Har­wood is a vora­cious read­er, sub­ver­sive pub­lish­ing maven and crime nov­el­ist.

Alice In Openland

This year, Tim Bur­ton’s pro­duc­tion of Alice In Won­der­land was wel­comed by a flur­ry of media buzz and a rather polar­ized pub­lic response debat­ing whether the icon­ic direc­tor had butchered or rein­vent­ed the even more icon­ic chil­dren’s clas­sic. But dis­cus­sion of the film’s cre­ative mer­its aside, one thing it did do bril­liant­ly was rekin­dle the pub­lic’s inter­est in what’s eas­i­ly the most beloved work of chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture of the past two cen­turies.

So beloved, in fact, that Lewis Car­rol­l’s 1865 nov­el has gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of reprints, film adap­ta­tions and var­i­ous deriv­a­tive works over the years. Many of these works are now avail­able in the pub­lic domain — even a sim­ple search in the Inter­net Archive sends you down a rab­bit hole of adap­ta­tions and remakes, span­ning from land­mark ear­ly cin­e­ma trea­sures to off­beat prod­ucts of con­tem­po­rary dig­i­tal cul­ture.

Today, we’ve curat­ed a selec­tion of the most inter­est­ing and cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant — the “curi­ouser and curi­ouser,” if you will — free ver­sions of, trib­utes to, and deriv­a­tives of Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land.

  • The fun­da­men­tals: A Project Guten­berg free dig­i­tal copy of Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal Alice’s Adven­tures In Won­der­land text
  • A 1916 abridged ver­sion intend­ed for younger chil­dren, dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress, is avail­able from the Inter­na­tion­al Chil­dren’s Dig­i­tal Library and fea­tures some won­der­ful illus­tra­tion — though, regret­tably, it lacks the Cheshire Cat
  • For a clas­sic with a spin, try this audio ver­sion read by blog­ger extra­or­di­naire, Boing­Bo­ing co-edi­tor, Pop­u­lar Sci­ence colum­nist and vocal free con­tent advo­cate Cory Doc­torow
  • The ear­li­est cin­e­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of the book, direct­ed by Cecil Hep­worth in 1903, is a silent film gem, clock­ing in at just 8 min­utes and 19 sec­onds. Watch above.
  • In 1915, W. W. Young direct­ed the sec­ond Amer­i­can adap­ta­tion of Alice — a mas­sive six-reel pro­duc­tion that show­cased the rapid evo­lu­tion of film­mak­ing in just a decade since the first pro­duc­tion. Though much of the film is now lost, 42 min­utes of it can be seen at the Inter­net Archive for free
  • A 1966 British adap­ta­tion by direc­tor Jonathan Miller for the BBC fea­tures an ambi­tious cast — includ­ing Peter Sell­ers as the King of Hearts, Sir John Giel­guld as Mock Tur­tle, Michael Red­grave as The Cater­pil­lar and Peter Cook as the Mad Hat­ter — and its sound­track, scored by the leg­endary Ravi Shankar, exudes the bor­der­line folk-psy­che­delia sound of the Wood­stock era. The film, divid­ed into sev­en parts, is avail­able for free on YouTube.
  • This 2‑minute ver­sion of Alice In Won­der­land shot in the vir­tu­al world Sec­ond Life is an eerie tes­ta­ment to just how wide­ly Car­rol­l’s clas­sic res­onates.
  • Per­haps the biggest trea­sure of all, Lewis Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, avail­able from the British Library — 91 pages of pre­cious lit­er­ary his­to­ry, with orig­i­nal illus­tra­tions from artist John Ten­niel. The online gallery also fea­tures a pref­ace telling the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of the Oxford math­e­mati­cian’s real-life inspi­ra­tion for the book and the fate of the real Alice

Maria Popo­va is the founder and edi­tor in chief of Brain Pick­ings, a curat­ed inven­to­ry of eclec­tic inter­est­ing­ness and indis­crim­i­nate curios­i­ty. She writes for Wired UK, GOOD Mag­a­zine and Huff­in­g­ton Post, and spends a dis­turb­ing amount of time curat­ing inter­est­ing­ness on Twit­ter.

Google Creating Grants to Study Digital Books

The details are still hazy. But we know this: Google will be launch­ing a “col­lab­o­ra­tive research pro­gram to explore the dig­i­tal human­i­ties” using Google Books. Schol­ars will get up to $50,000 per year, and they’ll come from eight poten­tial dis­ci­plines (archae­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, anthro­pol­o­gy, lin­guis­tics, lit­er­a­ture, clas­sics, phi­los­o­phy & soci­ol­o­gy). And what’s the point of their research? Essen­tial­ly to make Google’s online dig­i­tal library more effec­tive  and friend­ly for researchers. Just last year, a promi­nent aca­d­e­m­ic called Google Books a “Dis­as­ter for Schol­ars” in a high pro­file forum. The new grants should begin to address these con­cerns in some mean­ing­ful ways. For more infor­ma­tion, head over to The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, which has the full sto­ry.

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