Falling Man 9–11

in Books | September 11th, 2007

On the anniver­sary of the Sep­tem­ber 11th attacks, it seems fit­ting to call atten­tion to Don DeLil­lo’s Falling Man, a recent addi­tion to the grow­ing body of fic­tion now known as “9/11 nov­el.” How­ev­er you may feel about DeLil­lo’s writ­ing style (we often find that it grates), Falling Man adept­ly cap­tures the emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal haze that sur­round­ed NYC in the wake of the attacks. In inter­views with Guer­ni­ca and NPR’s All Things Con­sid­ered, DeLil­lo talks about the influ­ences that led him to explore the attacks and their after­math from the per­spec­tive of both a ter­ror­ist and a sur­vivor. If lis­ten­ing to the book is more your speed, check out the audio ver­sion at Ama­zon or the down­load at Audi­ble.

This guest post was writ­ten by Noah Elkin.

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Meet Larry David (in Video)

in Comedy, Media, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | September 11th, 2007

HBO just start­ed air­ing the sixth sea­son of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, so it seemed fit­ting to serve up this lengthy inter­view with Lar­ry David. The talk is very fun­ny. No shock there. But it also gets into some good sub­stance. How Lar­ry got into com­e­dy; how he strug­gled dur­ing his ear­ly standup years and had to scratch togeth­er mon­ey for a can of Chef Boyardee; how he approach­es writ­ing com­e­dy; how he has gen­er­at­ed ideas for the most mem­o­rable episodes of “Curb” and Sein­feld — it all gets touched on here.

We have includ­ed the first part below, plus links to the oth­er sev­en seg­ments. For more Lar­ry David inter­views, check out the 60 Min­utes piece on Lar­ry from this past week­end. You can watch it online here.

Part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

Life-Changing Books Now on Google’s “My Library”

in Books, Google, Web/Tech | September 10th, 2007

A few weeks ago, our read­ers con­tributed to cre­at­ing a list of books that left an indeli­ble mark on their lives. You can review the orig­i­nal post here. But we fig­ured why not add them to our “My Library” page on Google, a new prod­uct that we briefly men­tioned yes­ter­day. You can access the col­lec­tion here (or get it by rss feed). And, as you’ll see, we also import­ed to the list all of our users’ com­ments on the indi­vid­ual books. Explore the list, find a great read, and pass it along to a wor­thy friend.

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Google’s “My Library” (and Other Bookish Social Networks)

in Google | September 10th, 2007

As part of Google’s push into the dig­i­tal book mar­ket (see Fri­day’s post), the com­pa­ny launched last week My Library, which lets you cre­ate lists of your own books, search the con­tent of your book inven­to­ry by key­word, and then share your book lists with friends. (You can see exam­ples of these book lists here and here, and also get Google’s offi­cial spiel on the project here.) It’s a nice idea for stu­dents and schol­ars, but will it have much take-up with the broad­er read­ing pub­lic? I’m skep­ti­cal, but you tell me? We’ve got many bona fide read­ers here. Will you be sink­ing time into build­ing your Google Library? Or are you instead ever-refin­ing your Face­book pro­file and shar­ing book­lists there? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Check out the Visu­al Book­shelf app on Face­book, which offers an effec­tive way of shar­ing your books with your social net­work. Also be sure to scan Deeplink­ing’s com­pi­la­tion, The Big List of Book­ish Social Net­works. Final­ly, if you cre­ate a book­list on Google Library (start mak­ing one here), send the urls our way and we’ll post them.

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The Digital Tipping Point: The Wild Ride from Podcast to Book Deal

in Books, Media | September 10th, 2007

Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly announced last week that Lars Brown­worth, a New York high school teacher, will pub­lish with Crown (a Ran­dom House divi­sion) a new book that cov­ers “1,200 years of Byzan­tine his­to­ry, exam­in­ing the culture’s for­got­ten role in pre­serv­ing clas­si­cal thought, con­nect­ing East and West, and build­ing mod­ern West­ern soci­ety.” It’s expect­ed to hit the book­stores in ear­ly 2009.

There’s lots to say about this deal, but we want­ed to delve a lit­tle into the back­sto­ry, and par­tic­u­lar­ly how an unex­pect­ed chain of events, all built into Web 2.0, made this deal pos­si­ble. (And, yes, we’ll also touch briefly on where Open Cul­ture fits into the pic­ture.)

The sto­ry begins in March 2005, back when Brown­worth start­ed dis­trib­ut­ing on iTunes an edu­ca­tion­al pod­cast called 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site). Released in install­ments, the pod­casts gave users the rare abil­i­ty to down­load a com­plete aca­d­e­m­ic course to their MP3 play­er, any­time, any­where, for free. Brown­worth was a pio­neer, and by late 2006, peo­ple start­ed tak­ing notice. In Decem­ber, Wired men­tioned 12 Byzan­tine Rulers in a short web fea­ture, which net­ted the pod­cast a small uptick in down­loads. Then, days lat­er, our fledg­ling blog fol­lowed up with a short piece — The Hottest Course on iTunes (and the Future of Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion). From there, things got inter­est­ing. Our post got almost imme­di­ate­ly picked up on Digg.com, a mas­sive­ly pop­u­lar web­site, and its users cat­a­pult­ed the sto­ry to Dig­g’s home­page. Down­loads of Brown­worth’s pod­casts surged; the pow­er of Web 2.0 was kick­ing in. Brown­worth spec­u­lat­ed dur­ing an inter­view last week that the “Digg effect” wide­ly broad­ened the expo­sure of his pod­cast, and, soon enough, The New York Times was knock­ing on his door. By late Jan­u­ary, the pil­lar of Amer­i­can jour­nal­ism pub­lished a flat­ter­ing fea­ture: His­to­ry Teacher Becomes Pod­cast Celebri­ty. Then, it all start­ed again. Pod­cast down­loads spiked high­er, far exceed­ing the pre­vi­ous wave from Digg. More arti­cles and an NPR inter­view fol­lowed. Next came the book agents’ calls. … That’s, in short, how we got to last week’s announce­ment.

Brown­worth’s sto­ry, although unusu­al, is part of a grow­ing trend. Book pub­lish­ers seem increas­ing­ly will­ing to let the wis­dom of crowds iden­ti­fy pod­casts that trans­late into mar­ketable books, and then let the pod­casts stim­u­late book sales. This year, Mignon Fog­a­r­ty notably inked deals to release spin­off books and audio­books of her pop­u­lar Gram­mar Girl pod­cast (iTunes — Feed — Web Site). And giv­en that 12 Byzan­tine Rulers has been down­loaded 735,000 times just this year, Brown­worth and his new pub­lish­er felt right­ly jus­ti­fied in tak­ing a sim­i­lar approach.

We’ll grad­u­al­ly find out whether this devel­op­ing mod­el pro­vides a way for inno­v­a­tive pod­cast­ers to mon­e­tize their suc­cess­ful con­tent. In the mean­time, Lars is giv­ing it all a good go. He recent­ly gave up his New York teach­ing job, relo­cat­ed to North Car­oli­na (where his broth­er Anders pro­vides tech­nol­o­gy and busi­ness sup­port), and is now ded­i­cat­ing him­self full-time to pod­cast­ing and writ­ing. It’s a big change, but a change worth mak­ing. “Web 2.0 has enabled me,” Brown­worth says, “to do things that I nev­er would have been able to do oth­er­wise. It’s a bit hum­bling to find myself on the ground floor of a rev­o­lu­tion, but this move is undoubt­ed­ly the most excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty I’ve ever had.”

We’re pleased to have played even a bit part in Brown­worth’s suc­cess. Keep an eye out for his book and, until then, give his pod­cast a good lis­ten: 12 Byzan­tine Rulers: The His­to­ry of the Byzan­tine Empire (iTunes — Feed — Site).

A Blogging Scholarship

in Uncategorized | September 9th, 2007

An orga­ni­za­tion called Col­lege Schol­ar­ships is offer­ing a $10,000 schol­ar­ship this year for a col­lege stu­dent who blogs about “unique and inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion about you and/or things you are pas­sion­ate about.” We’re not shilling for a nom­i­na­tion here, but per­haps you know an aspir­ing blog­ger some­where who could use the extra cash.

This con­test rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion: are there any col­lege stu­dents out there who sup­port their edu­ca­tion through blog­ging? It’s not a far stretch from work­ing part-time (or full-time) to help pay the bills, but blog­ging seems like an unlike­ly way to earn enough mon­ey to buy books, let alone pay tuition.

New eBook Initiatives from Amazon and Google

in Books, Google, Technology | September 7th, 2007

In case you missed it, The New York Times pub­lished a piece yes­ter­day pre­view­ing two new efforts to bring elec­tron­ic books to the mass mar­ket. In Octo­ber, Amazon.com will roll out the Kin­dle (check out leaked pic­tures here), an ebook read­er, priced some­where between $400 to $500, that will wire­less­ly con­nect to an e‑book store on Amazon’s site, from which read­ers can down­load books in elec­tron­ic for­mat. (Think iTunes for ebooks.) Mean­while, Google will start “charg­ing users for full online access to the dig­i­tal copies of some books in its data­base” and share rev­enue with pub­lish­ers. The whole idea here is to dis­rupt the $35 bil­lion book mar­ket in much the same way that the Apple has dis­lo­cat­ed the music mar­ket with the iPod. But whether con­sumers will see dig­i­tal books as hav­ing com­pa­ra­ble advan­tages to the iPod remains TBD, and the doubters are cer­tain­ly out there. Read more here. And, in the mean­time, if you want a lot of free audio­books, check out our Audio­book Pod­cast Col­lec­tion.

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America’s Bloggiest Cities and Neighborhoods

in Uncategorized | September 5th, 2007

Steven Berlin John­son, of Every­thing Bad Is Good For You fame, has been at work recent­ly crunch­ing num­bers to come up with Amer­i­ca’s most blog-tas­tic locales. The results may sur­prise you–based on “place­blogs,” Boston leads the cities chart and Clin­ton Hill, Brook­lyn tops neigh­bor­hoods.

One aspect of Web 2.0 that seems to be just tak­ing off now is geo­t­ag­ging. Yes, we have Google Earth and the ancien regime of Mapquest. But more and more peo­ple are upload­ing geo­t­agged pho­tos, blog posts, et cetera, mak­ing all sorts of new projects pos­si­ble from the 9/11 Archive to HousingMaps.com. How long before geo­t­ag­ging becomes as ubiq­ui­tous as blog­ging is today?

On the Road: The Original Scroll

in Books | August 31st, 2007

Jack Ker­ouac’s “On the Road” is turn­ing 50 this month, some­thing we recent­ly not­ed. And to com­mem­o­rate the event, Viking has just pub­lished the orig­i­nal draft of the nov­el (check it out here) that Ker­ouac banged out in three quick weeks, in a New York apart­ment, on eight long sheets of trac­ing paper, which he lat­er taped togeth­er to cre­ate a 120-foot scroll (see pho­to). This new pub­li­ca­tion offers a repro­duc­tion of Ker­ouac’s first draft and lets you see how the beat clas­sic changed from ini­tial draft to pub­li­ca­tion. In the scroll, Ker­ouac uses the real names of friends instead of pseu­do­nyms, and some of the details are a lit­tle more graph­ic. If you want to see footage of Ker­ouac read­ing from “On the Road,” feel free to refer back to our post on August 15.

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What New Yorkers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

in Music | August 31st, 2007

We’re tak­ing you back to 1980, to the evening when John Lennon was shot in New York City. This sound file lets you lis­ten in on what New York­ers heard that evening — Decem­ber 8 — as they switched from one radio sta­tion to anoth­er. The event was cov­ered across the radio dial, and you hear the news media start­ing to piece togeth­er exact­ly what hap­pened at the Dako­ta. This record­ing was put online by Beware of the Blog, which we indexed in our list of MP3 Music Blogs.

As an aside, Beware of the Blog has also post­ed some mp3 files that fea­ture jazz singer Keely Smith singing cov­ers of var­i­ous Bea­t­les’ songs. Here is her ver­sion of “Do You Want to Know a Secret.” Last­ly, if you haven’t already, you should check out the 3‑hour Rolling Stone inter­view with John Lennon that we men­tioned in our recent piece, The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day. It gives you a lot of insight into the man, his good traits and bad.