It started as an audio podcast (iTunes — RSS Feed — MP3) and now it’s being released in print by Random House today. Seth Harwood’s Jack Wakes Up is out, and you can read the first three chapters as a free pdf here. A couple of weeks back, we featured a short video showing how Harwood has used web 2.0 (podcasts, videos, etc.) to get his crime fiction in front of new audiences. If you’re a writer, no matter what your age, you’ll want to see what Seth is doing here. It’s smart and let’s you take charge of your literary career. In the meantime, you can follow his enthusiastic book launch over on Twitter: @sethharwood. And we’re at @openculture, bringing even more bits of open culture to the world.
Jack Wakes Up: Get the First Three Chapters Here
Free PDF Download of The Alchemyst
A quick fyi: You can download a free PDF of Michael Scott’s Young Adult novel, The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. It runs about 375 pages and is available for a limited time thanks to Powell’s web site. Get it free here. Or buy a copy (and read user reviews) here.
World Digital Library
Another big digital archive went live this week. Backed by the United Nations, the World Digital Library wants to centralize cultural treasures from around the world. Manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings — they will all be absorbed into this growing online collection, and users will be able to navigate through these materials in seven different languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian). The collection (to which Google contributed $3 million in 2005) now hosts about 1,250 artifacts, a fraction of what it will eventually include. The initial collection features some gems. Take for example the Tale of the Genji, a Japanese text from the early 11th century that’s often considered “the first great novel in world literature.” You can also take a close look at some Oracle Bones from China circa 1200 BC. Or how about these iconic photos from The Great Depression or these shots of the great Jackie Robinson. To learn more about this new digital archive, read this piece in The Washington Post.
Web 2.0 to Book Deal in 3 Minutes
After Seth Harwood got his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he began publishing in traditional magazines and journals, as most young writers do. But those publications were slow to launch his career. Things changed, however, once he started publishing online. And they really changed when he released his crime novel Jack Wakes Up as a free podcast (via iTunes, RSS Feed, & MP3) and distributed it through social networks. Web 2.0 broadened the reach of his work, attracted fans worldwide, and ultimately landed Harwood a nice book deal with Random House. (RH will be publishing Jack Wakes Up in print early next month). In the short video above, Harwood gives you a quick look inside the making of his podcast, and how it brings exposure to his work. If you’re an up-and-coming writer, there’s certainly something here to think about. You can find out more about Seth’s work at SethHarwood.com.
Mark Twain’s New Book
Mark Twain died nearly a century ago but that hasn’t slowed him down. Twain has a new book coming out today. It’s called “Who is Mark Twain,” and it brings together 24 previously unpublished stories, one of which you can read over at The Wall Street Journal. The piece is entitled “Frank Fuller and My First New York Lecture.” Here you go. Served up fresh.
J.G.Ballard on Sensation
J.G. Ballard, the author of Crash and Empire died at 78 this weekend. Here we have a short interview from 1986 where he talks about how violent sensations now lubricate our modern world. It’s this line of thinking that finds its way into Crash, a controversial book that David Cronenberg brought to the big screen in 1996.
Good Novels For Hard Times
Not long ago, I flagged a piece by Leon Wieseltier called “The Tolstoy Bailout,” and it makes a great case for why great books matter, especially in these hard times. As he put it, “In tough times, of all times, the worth of the humanities needs no justifying. The reason is that it will take many kinds of sustenance to help people through these troubles. Many people will now have to fall back more on inner resources than on outer ones. They are in need of loans, but they are also in need of meanings…. We are in need of fiscal policy and spiritual policy. And spiritually speaking, literature is a bailout, and so is art, and philosophy, and history, and the rest. … Regression analysis will not get us through the long night. We need to know more about the human heart than the study of consumer behavior can teach. These are the hours when the old Penguin paperbacks must stand us in good stead. It was for now that we read them then.”
With that in mind, I present you with a handy list, “Good Novels for Hard Times,” just published by the San Francisco Chronicle.
You may also want to visit our list of Life Changing Books, as determined by our readers.
World’s Most Interesting Bookstores
Miragebookmark has gathered some notable photos from unconventional bookstores around the globe.
The collection takes you from Holland to Paris, Helsinki, and Porto (Portugal), then to San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Calcutta and beyond.
Worth paying a visit.
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