Last week, Junot Diaz landed the Pulitzer Prize for fiction with his debut novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. The book, which Diaz took 11 years to write, also won the National Book Critics Circle Award for best novel of 2007. Below, we have Diaz speaking last year about his prize winning book at Google. (Get more Google author talks here.) You can also catch his interview on NPR’s Fresh air (iTunes — Feed — Stream here).
Free Digital Fiction from Penguin
Penguin is presenting six stories, by six authors, over six weeks, in a series called We Tell Stories. And they’re using the web to tell these stories in original ways. One story, The 21 Steps, gets told over Google Maps — an approach that scores points for creativity, but also tires a little quickly. You can access all six stories here. Also check out our extensive collection of free audiobooks here.
The Automated Publishing House
The New York Times has a great article on a professor of management science who has founded an almost completely automated publishing company. The 200,000 books he’s published sound, well, terrible, and terribly overpriced: “Among the books published under his name are ‘The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea’ ($24.95 and 168 pages long); ‘Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers’ ($28.95 for 126 pages); and ‘The 2007–2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6‑Feet by 9‑Feet or Smaller in India’ ($495 for 144 pages).”
But Philip M. Parker, the man behind them, is nothing if not ambitious. He’s also programming his machines to generate language-learning crosswords (i.e. clues in one language, answers in another), acrostic poetry, and even scripts for game shows and videogames. All of this reminds me of a novel by Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age. In it, engineers of the future design a sort of artificially intelligent primer for young girls–the book generates stories and lessons on the fly. Maybe Parker’s read this one before.
The Perfect Library
Get the “ultimate reading list,” according to the Telegraph. The booklist (access here) ranges from “classics and sci-fi to poetry, biographies and books that changed the world.” And while you’re at it, check out this list of life-changing books created by our very own readers.
The New York Literary Canon
As a New Yorker living rather permanently in sunny California, I feel somewhat obliged to mention this: New York Magazine has pulled together a list of “26 works of lapidary New Yorkitude” — that is, highly literary books that obsess over the great city. On the list, you’ll find works by Norman Mailer, Bernard Malamud, Don Delillo, Woody Allen, and beyond. You can snag the full list here.
The Power of Organizing Without Organizations
At The Berkman Center for Internet and Society (at Harvard Law School), Clay Shirky gave a talk on his highly touted new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. You can catch his talk here: video for computer or portable device — high res video — mp3 audio. And sample some of his other writing here.
The Kindle: Amazon Has a Winner
When Amazon’s Kindle hit the streets last November, the critics gave the newfangled ebook reader mixed reviews. The customers, however, have been saying something a little bit different. Sales have been brisk, a bit too brisk actually. Waiting up to six weeks to get the Kindle, customers have been getting huffy, and last week Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, had to post an apology on Amazon’s homepage. If you’re wondering what makes the $399 Kindle so sought after, Lifehacker’s review does a good job of summing up its virtues. In the meantime, if you want to get your hands on one, get in line.
Eat, Pray, Love @ Google
Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love has been on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 weeks. If you haven’t read it yet, then you may want to spend some time with Gilbert’s talk at Google. While her talk and reading didn’t completely strike a chord with me, it may well with you. So here you go (and, yes, we’ve added the video to our YouTube Playlist):
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