Who Killed JFK? Two New Studies

in Books, History, Politics | May 21st, 2007

Jfkimage_2
Whether you think John F. Kennedy was a great pres­i­dent or just a guy
who enjoyed sul­try birth­day
ser­e­nades (see clip below), you have to admit
his hold on America’s cul­tur­al imag­i­na­tion is still pow­er­ful four
decades after his assas­si­na­tion. Two major new works of his­to­ry tack­le
the ques­tion and, pre­dictably, come down on oppo­site sides of it. David
Talbot’s Broth­ers: The Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kennedy Years offers new evi­dence fur­ther­ing the great con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry, while Vin­cent Bugliosi’s Reclaim­ing His­to­ry: The Assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy agrees with offi­cial his­to­ry and the War­ren Com­mis­sion.

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing thing about these lat­est prod­ucts of the
Kennedy indus­try is the fact that both books are tak­ing advan­tage of
new media for­mats to com­bat the tra­di­tion­al prob­lem with Big His­to­ry
texts–weight. Bugliosi’s tome comes in at a back-wrench­ing 1,612
pages, so be thank­ful that his pub­lish­ers includ­ed the many end­notes on
an accom­pa­ny­ing CD. (You would be well-advised to save a few months and
read the New York Times review here.) Talbot’s Broth­ers is only a third as long, but that’s still almost 500 pages–so why not enjoy it as an eBook instead, or just check out the excerpt on Salon? Or take in its New York Times review here. If your eyes are tired already, rest assured that both authors also appeared on the Leonard Lopate show (Bugliosi mp3; Tal­bot mp3 ). And if you hap­pen to live in the Bay area, you can go see Tal­bot will be in San Fran­cis­co pro­mot­ing the book tomor­row, May 22.

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The Book World Goes Sensibly Digital

in Audio Books, Books | May 18th, 2007

There are some ear­ly signs that pub­lish­ers and book­sellers may be see­ing the light.

Until recent­ly, the book world applied an irra­tional log­ic to down­load­able audio­books and pod­casts. As we not­ed back in Feb­ru­ary, the paper ver­sion of the best­selling busi­ness book, The Long Tail, ran con­sumers $16.47 on Ama­zon. And yet the cheap­er-to-pro­duce audio ver­sion implau­si­bly amount­ed to $31.95 on iTunes and $27.99 on Audi­ble. Did it make sense? Hard­ly.

Since Feb­ru­ary, a lit­tle bit of rea­son has been inject­ed into the mar­ket. As the The New York Times recent­ly not­ed, the pub­lish­er Hen­ry Holt made a smart move. They took the pop­u­lar pod­cast, The Gram­mar Girl (iTunes Feed Web Site), and with­in days spun off an hour­long audio­book priced at a sane $4.95. The next thing you know, it became the best­selling audio­book on iTunes. Here, the audio­book for­mat let pub­lish­ers respond to a mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ty — and far more quick­ly than they ever could have with a tra­di­tion­al book. (A tra­di­tion­al Gram­mar Girl book won’t come out until next year.)

Ratio­nal act #2: Some pub­lish­ers are now releas­ing audio ver­sions of new books before issu­ing the actu­al hard copies. Why? Because, they’ve found that dig­i­tal copies can gen­er­ate buzz and greater sales for paper copies. And yes, in these sit­u­a­tions, the dig­i­tal and paper ver­sions are com­pa­ra­bly priced.

Final­ly, book­sellers are now using audio to inform con­sumers and moti­vate them to click “Add to Shop­ping Cart” a lit­tle more often. Take for exam­ple the new line of pod­casts from Ama­zon. Cre­at­ed by in-house edi­tors, Ama­zon Wire (iTunes — Feed ) offers inter­views and exclu­sives with authors of new books. Ama­zon Book­Clips (iTunes — Feed ) puts a spot­light on up-and-com­ing and best­selling authors. And with Sig­nif­i­cant Sev­en (iTunes — Feed), Ama­zon points you to new must-read titles. How well inte­grat­ed into Ama­zon’s sales efforts, and how effec­tive these pod­casts will be at gen­er­at­ing sales, all remains to be seen. But it at least points to a more sen­si­ble way of bring­ing the dig­i­tal and paper worlds togeth­er.

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The Death of the Book Review?

in Books, Video - Arts & Culture | May 11th, 2007



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Posts are fly­ing around the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere lament­ing the Death of Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism. Now, by my count this par­tic­u­lar demise has been pre­dict­ed at least three times in the past few decades, so why wor­ry now? The short answer is that more books are pub­lished annu­al­ly than ever, and now there are few­er book review­ers. The LA Times recent­ly fold­ed its free­stand­ing book review into the rest of the week­end paper and news­pa­per staffs around the coun­try are trim­ming review posi­tions in favor of syn­di­cat­ed wire ser­vice reviews.

Michael Con­nel­ly, a crime fic­tion writer, pub­lished an op-ed in the LA Times protest­ing the move and he paints a dire pic­ture of our cul­tur­al future:

The truth is that the book and news­pa­per busi­ness­es share the same
dread­ful fear: that peo­ple will stop read­ing. And the fear may be
well-found­ed. Across the coun­try, news­pa­per cir­cu­la­tions are down — and
this is clear­ly part of the rea­son for the cuts to book sec­tions. At
the same time, the book busi­ness increas­ing­ly relies on an aging
cus­tomer base that may not be refu­el­ing itself with enough new read­ers.

Should we blame cash-strapped news­pa­per com­pa­nies or a cul­ture that’s shift­ing away from tra­di­tion­al media alto­geth­er? Ladies and gen­tle­men, start your iPods–to lend rea­soned analy­sis, we now turn to Steven Col­bert, who inter­viewed Salman Rushdie on this sub­ject ear­li­er this week (click below or watch the full show on iTunes):

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20+ Great Book & Literature Blogs

in Books | May 9th, 2007

Below, you’ll find a list of 20 fine lit­er­ary blogs. Like our pod­cast col­lec­tions, this list will grow over time. In fact, it will become part of a larg­er list of great cul­ture blogs. Over the com­ing weeks, we’ll roll out new install­ments and then mash them togeth­er into one larg­er list. Stay tuned for more.

If you feel that we’re miss­ing some extra­or­di­nary blogs, please feel free to **@******re.com/”>email us.

  • Blog of a Book Slut: Book­slut’s edi­tor-in-chief, Jes­sa Crispin, pro­vides links and com­men­tary for those who love to read. The pop­u­lar relat­ed web­site includes fea­ture sto­ries, author inter­views, reviews, columns about book-relat­ed con­tent, etc.
  • Book­Dad­dy: It’s your source for intel­li­gent book blath­er. The stat­ed mis­sion of the site is to “pon­der print media, lit­er­a­cy & pub­lish­ing. Any­thing on wood pulp, pix­els or stone is up for dis­cus­sion.”
  • Books, Inq: This blog offers a behind-the-scenes look at a book-review edi­tor’s world. In this case, the book review edi­tor is Frank Wil­son, of the Philadel­phia Inquir­er.
  • Book World: What you get here is one wom­an’s attempt to read what’s worth read­ing and say some­thing about it along the way.
  • Chekhov’s Mis­tress: An oft-cit­ed lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Bud Parr, a book lover who also runs a net­work of lit­er­ary blogs called Metax­u­Cafe.
  • Con­fes­sions of an Idio­syn­crat­ic Mind: Sarah Wein­man puts togeth­er here “a respect­ed resource for com­men­tary on crime and mys­tery fic­tion.”
  • Crit­i­cal Mass: Offer­ing com­men­tary on lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, pub­lish­ing, and writ­ing, this blog is writ­ten by the Board of Direc­tors of the non-prof­it that issues the year­ly Nation­al Book Crit­ics Cir­cle Awards.
  • Eve’s Alexan­dria: A nice­ly bal­anced mul­ti-per­son lit­er­ary blog com­ing out of the UK.
  • Lau­rable’s Poet­ry Weblog: A poet­ry weblog that spe­cial­izes in con­nect­ing read­ers with audio of poets read­ing their work.
  • Maud New­ton: A wide­ly-read blog that spe­cial­izes in pub­lish­ing & writ­ing indus­try news, plus occa­sion­al lit­er­ary links, amuse­ments, pol­i­tics, and rants.
  • Moor­ish Girl: A well regard­ed book and lit­er­a­ture blog writ­ten by Laila Lala­mi, author of Hope and Oth­er Dan­ger­ous Pur­suits.
  • Rake’s Progress: Named by The Guardian as one of the 10 best book blogs.
  • ReadyS­teady­Blog: Run by Mark Thwaite, this is an “inde­pen­dent book review web­site … devot­ed to review­ing the very best books in lit­er­ary fic­tion, poet­ry, his­to­ry and phi­los­o­phy.”
  • Slate Books: Even though tech­ni­cal­ly not a blog, it should be on your read­ing list.
  • So Many Books: Giv­en the tagline ‘the agony and the ecsta­sy of a read­ing life”, here’s a laud­ed blog that takes you into the read­ing world of Stephanie Hollmichel.
  • The Ele­gant Vari­a­tion: A well-reviewed and respect­ed book blog that tends to give spe­cial atten­tion to the LA lit­er­ary scene. Fea­tures a real­ly exten­sive blogroll that’s worth pick­ing through.
  • The Guardian Book Blog: It’s not exact­ly your aver­age inde­pen­dent book blog, but it’s got valu­able con­tent and it’s worth your time.
  • The Keny­on Review Blog: If you’re a writer, you sure­ly know The Keny­on Review, and you should also get to know their blog.
  • The Lit­blog Co-Op: A use­ful blog that unites the “lead­ing lit­er­ary
    weblogs for the pur­pose of draw­ing atten­tion to the best of
    con­tem­po­rary fic­tion, authors and press­es, strug­gling to be noticed in
    a flood­ed mar­ket­place.”
  • This Space: A lit­er­ary blog writ­ten by Stephen Mitchel­more, a blog­ger who Ready Steady Book deems “the finest writer we have in the lit­er­ary blo­gos­phere.”
  • Vulpes Lib­ris: “Vulpes Lib­ris: A mul­ti-nation­al pack of book­fox­es blog­ging, review­ing and chat­ting about books and book mat­ters. Par­tic­i­pa­tion wel­come.”
  • Words With­out Bor­ders Blog — This weblog is the online com­ple­ment to Words With­out Bor­ders: The Online Mag­a­zine for Inter­na­tion­al Lit­er­a­ture. And, yes, as you’d expect, it’s a lit­er­a­ture blog with an inter­na­tion­al focus.

Stay tuned for more to come!

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Authors@Google: Video Talks From the Epicenter of the Universe

in Books, Google, Video - Arts & Culture | April 28th, 2007

More good news for book fans: Google has launched a new col­lec­tion of videos called Authors@Google. The videos fea­ture talks by authors, writ­ing across many gen­res (lit­er­ary fic­tion to sci­ence fic­tion, soci­ol­o­gy to tech­nol­o­gy, pol­i­tics to busi­ness) who have made recent vis­its to Google campuses.You can access the talks via a new home­page, or just go imme­di­ate­ly to the video archive itself. And there, you’ll find talks by Mar­tin Amis (House of Meet­ings) and Jonathan Lethem (You Don’t Love Me Yet: A Nov­el), but also ones by Strobe Tal­bott, Bob & Lee Woodruff, Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton, and Car­ly Fiorina.To get a bet­ter feel for Authors@Google, we’ve includ­ed a clip below from Jonathan Lethem, who wrote Moth­er­less Brook­lyn, a favorite of mine that offers a tru­ly unique, lit­er­ary take on the tra­di­tion­al detec­tive nov­el, and which always leaves me feel­ing a bit home­sick for Brook­lyn. For more infor­ma­tion on Authors@Google, click here.Tell a Friend About Open Cul­ture

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New SciFi and Horror Podcasts

in Books, Sci Fi | April 9th, 2007

Here’s a lit­tle ear can­dy for the fan of adven­ture­some lit­er­a­ture. Over the past week, Escape­pod (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) released anoth­er one of its pop­u­lar short sto­ries, “Start The Clock.” You’ll also find in the feed (and pre­sum­ably soon on iTunes) an audio ver­sion of Isaac Asi­mov’s “Night­fall,” which was pub­lished first in 1941, in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion. Great com­bo here of new and old.

Next, Pseudo­pod (iTunes — Feed — Web Site), the world’s first audio hor­ror mag­a­zine, has issued two new sto­ries in recent weeks: Stephanie Bur­gis’ “Stitch­ing Time” and Dave Thompson’s “Last Respects.” We think you’ll like them. (Thanks to Boing­Bo­ing for the heads up on these.)

Final­ly, we want­ed to high­light Stranger Things, (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). This series fea­tures sto­ries of ordi­nary peo­ple stum­bling into strange worlds (a la The Twi­light Zone). This is not just your every­day pod­cast. The sto­ries are cre­ative, and they’re told/acted out in very high qual­i­ty video. This puts it on the cut­ting-edge of what’s being done with pod­cast­ing. Def­i­nite­ly have a look.

Oth­er free audio books with­in these gen­res:

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Nietzsche, Melville, Jane Austen & More: The Latest Audio Book Classics Released by Librivox

in Books | April 3rd, 2007

Nietzsche_4Through­out March, the folks at Lib­rivox were putting on the full court

press. Stag­ing their own ver­sion of March Mad­ness, Lib­rivox and its army of vol­un­teers com­plet­ed 70 audio record­ings of pub­lic domain texts. Among them, you’ll find some essen­tial clas­sics in lit­er­a­ture and phi­los­o­phy. The list of new addi­tions starts with Jane Austen’s Sense and Sen­si­bil­i­ty (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files) and Her­man Melville’s Moby Dick (full zip file — indi­vid­ual mp3 files), but it also extends to oth­er time-test­ed clas­sics. Let’s list them quick­ly:

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School) — Pod­cast Primer

 


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Free Podcasts of Classic American and British Thrillers

in Books, Literature | March 6th, 2007

 

Drjekyllandmrhyde_2Among the grow­ing col­lec­tions of free audio book pod­casts, you’ll find a large num­ber of “thrillers”
that grew out of the Amer­i­can and British lit­er­ary tra­di­tions. It’s per­haps safe to say that the vol­un­teers who record these books like a good, fear-induc­ing read. But who does­n’t?

The list of sus­pense­ful nov­els avail­able as free pod­casts starts with the “mon­ster nov­els” of 19th cen­tu­ry Britain. These nov­els, which fre­quent­ly offered a round­about com­men­tary on the anx­i­eties pro­duced by a soci­ety in the midst of rapid indus­tri­al­iza­tion and wide­spread colo­nial involve­ment, include Mary Shel­ley’s Franken­stein (1818), Robert Louis Steven­son’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr. Hyde (1886), and Bram Stok­er’s Drac­u­la (1897). Mean­while, across the pond, Amer­i­ca was pro­duc­ing its own dis­tinc­tive thrillers. In the trove of free audio books, you get Wash­ing­ton Irv­ing’s clas­sic 1820 short sto­ry, The Leg­end of Sleepy Hol­low (lis­ten here or here) as well as Edgar Allan Poe’s great short tales: The Tell Tale Heart (1843), The Raven from 1845 (lis­ten here or here), and The Cask of Amon­til­la­do (1846). (Amaz­ing that he wrote all of these before he died at 40.) Last­ly, we’d also point you to the famous ghost sto­ry, The Turn of the Screw (lis­ten here and here), writ­ten by one of Amer­i­ca’s greats, Hen­ry James.

You’ll note that some of these pod­casts come from Lib­rivox, and that’s because Lib­rivox, with the help of vol­un­teers, has quick­ly put togeth­er a strong col­lec­tion of audio texts from the pub­lic domain. If you like audio ver­sions of the clas­sics, then you’ll want to spend some time review­ing their cat­a­logue, and, in the mean­time, enjoy these sus­pense­ful tales.

P.S. If you haven’t seen it before, check out our recent favorite: The War of the Worlds on Pod­cast: How H.G. Wells and Orson Welles Riv­et­ed A Nation

See Open Cul­ture’s Pod­cast Col­lec­tions:

Arts & Cul­ture — Audio Books — For­eign Lan­guage Lessons — News & Infor­ma­tion — Sci­ence — Tech­nol­o­gy — Uni­ver­si­ty (Gen­er­al) — Uni­ver­si­ty (B‑School)

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