Toron­to writer Robert Boy­czuk has released the short sto­ry col­lec­tion Hor­ror Sto­ry and Oth­er Hor­ror Sto­ries in trade paper­back. You can pur­chase it on Ama­zon, or down­load it in a free PDF for­mat here. Also now avail­able is a free audio/mp3 ver­sion of Boy­czuk’s short sto­ry, “Falling”. These finds were high­light­ed by Cory Doc­torow over at Boing­Boing. Doc­torow has else­where called Boy­czuk a “supreme­ly tal­ent­ed short-sto­ry writer.” For more infor­ma­tion on all this, browse this press release.

What are the 1000 best nov­els? The Guardian thinks it knows. This list was put togeth­er by The Guardian’s review team and a pan­el of experts. As you’ll see, the defin­i­tive list is help­ful­ly sub­di­vid­ed into themes: love, crime, com­e­dy, fam­i­ly and self, state of the nation, sci­ence fic­tion and fan­ta­sy, war and trav­el.

On that note, I should also high­light a col­lec­tion of Life-Chang­ing Books put togeth­er by our read­ers. You’ll find many good reads here as well.

Between 1968 and 1972, Stew­art Brand pub­lished The Whole Earth Cat­a­log. For Kevin Kel­ly, the Cat­a­log was essen­tial­ly “a paper-based data­base offer­ing thou­sands of hacks, tips, tools, sug­ges­tions, and pos­si­bil­i­ties for opti­miz­ing your life.” For Steve Jobs, it was a “Bible” of his gen­er­a­tion, a kind of Google 35 years before Google came along. (On a side note, I high­ly rec­om­mend the com­mence­ment speech where Jobs made those com­ments.) The very good news is that The Whole Earth Cat­a­log and some relat­ed pub­li­ca­tions are now avail­able online. You can read them for free, or down­load them for a fee. Start delv­ing into things here.

While we’re on this sub­ject, I should also high­light a project that has more recent­ly occu­pied Stew­art Brand’s time.  The Sem­i­nars About Long Term Think­ing is a month­ly speak­ing series host­ed by Brand and orga­nized by the Long Now Foun­da­tion, which hopes to pro­vide a coun­ter­point to today’s “faster/cheaper” mind set and to pro­mote “slower/better” think­ing. You can access the thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nars as a pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) and oth­er­wise find it host­ed in our Ideas & Cul­ture Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Have a good week­end.

via Boing Boing

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Des­jardins asks “Need a lit­tle Tol­stoy while you’re wait­ing in line? How about some Mark Twain on the sub­way? Booksin­my­phone puts — sur­prise! — books in your phone, for free.” For more details on how to down­load clas­sics to your (java-enabled) mobile phone, check out their FAQ.  

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The New York Times thinks that e‑books may have final­ly turned the cor­ner in 2008. The Kin­dle is sold out until Feb­ru­ary (which mess­es up my Christ­mas plans). Sales of Sony’s e‑book read­er have tripled over last sea­son. And we’re now see­ing e‑books hit the best­seller list. The dig­i­tal age for books may be upon us.

Each year, The New York Times names its 100 Notable Books. Then, they short­en the list and name their top ten.

The Times pub­lished 100 Notable Books of 2008 last week­end, and now we have The 10 Best Books of 2008. We’ve list­ed the books below, along with links to the first chap­ter of most works. For more insight into what the book review team found spe­cial about each book, just click here.

Fic­tion

• Dan­ger­ous Laugh­ter: Thir­teen Sto­ries by Steven Mill­hauser (Excerpt)
• A Mer­cy by Toni Mor­ri­son (First Chap­ter)
• Nether­land by Joseph O’Neill (First Chap­ter)
• 2666 by Rober­to Bolaño (Excerpt)
• Unac­cus­tomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri (Excerpt)

Non-Fic­tion

• The Dark Side: The Inside Sto­ry of How the War on Ter­ror Turned Into a War on Amer­i­can Ideals by Jane May­er
• The For­ev­er War by Dex­ter Filkins (First Chap­ter)
• Noth­ing to be Fright­ened Of by Julian Barnes (First Chap­ter)
• This Repub­lic of Suf­fer­ing by Drew Gilpin Faust (First Chap­ter)
• The World Is What It Is: The Autho­rized Biog­ra­phy of V. S. Naipaul (First Chap­ter)

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Indig­na­tion is Philip Roth’s 29th book and his third nov­el in the past three years. Pret­ty good for a writer work­ing at 75. In this extend­ed inter­view with Michael Kras­ny (iTunes — Feed — MP3), Roth talks about Indig­na­tion, which takes read­ers back to the Kore­an War and col­lege life in con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­ca.

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