Mark Twain’s New Book

in Books, Literature | April 20th, 2009

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

in Books, Film, Literature | April 19th, 2009

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.

Photo Animation Goodness

in Random | April 19th, 2009

Give this a minute. It gets quite good once it gets going. Thanks Philip for send­ing this along. (Read­ers always feel free to send intel­li­gent audio & video our way.)

John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things (1961)

in Music | April 16th, 2009

Rewind the video­tape to 1961. John Coltrane, Eric Dol­phy, Reg­gie Work­man, and Elvin Jones hit the stage in Baden Baden, Ger­many and give you a very smooth ver­sion of “My Favorite Things.” A jazz clas­sic, no doubt. And cer­tain­ly a bril­liant bit of archival footage.

Find us on Twit­ter: twitter.com/openculture

David Sedaris Reads “Of Mice and Men”

in Comedy | April 16th, 2009

David Sedaris fans, this is a quick one for you.  Here, Sedaris reads from his newish book, When You are Engulfed in Flames. The sto­ry is called “Of Mice and Men” (his sto­ry, not Stein­beck­’s), and you can lis­ten to it here or via iTunes.

And just for good mea­sure, I’m throw­ing in a pret­ty good Sedaris imper­son­ation. Call it “David Sedaris Deliv­ers a Piz­za.”

Crime Fiction: Download and Listen

in Audio Books | April 11th, 2009

Seth Har­wood is bring­ing crime writ­ing into the new world of Web 2.0. Since 2006, Har­wood has been pod­cast­ing his own crime fic­tion, includ­ing a book called Jack Wakes Up, which you can down­load (for free) via iTunes, RSS Feed, or MP3. (Ran­dom House will be releas­ing Jack Wakes Up in print next month for $10.25.) This expe­ri­ence got Seth think­ing about the pow­er of pod­casts, and he soon took the next log­i­cal step, launch­ing Crimewav.com, a web­site devot­ed to pod­cast­ing crime sto­ries (not just his own) to an audi­ence world­wide. On Crime­wav, you’ll find some gems, includ­ing Dashiell Ham­met­t’s first sto­ry (1923), “The Bar­ber and His Wife” (mp3). Plus, you’ll stum­ble upon a delet­ed chap­ter from Michael Con­nel­ly’s lat­est NYT best­seller, The Brass Ver­dict, read by Con­nel­ly him­self (mp3). Lots of good pieces to explore. And if this sort of fic­tion is your thing, then let me direct you to two oth­er good resources. First, an archive of Agatha Christie’s radio mys­ter­ies, and then the free works of best­selling hor­ror author, Scott Sigler. Enjoy.

Good Novels For Hard Times

in Books | April 11th, 2009

ArtBabble: The New Destination for Art Videos

in Art | April 11th, 2009

World’s Most Interesting Bookstores

in Books | April 8th, 2009

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.

The Internet’s Librarian

in Web/Tech | April 8th, 2009

“Brew­ster Kahle wants to cre­ate a free, online col­lec­tion of human knowl­edge. It sounds impos­si­bly idealistic—but he is mak­ing progress.”

More on Kahle’s mis­sion here.

via @Harvard_Press