a) Hemingway reclines!
I’m not sure what drives the site Libraryland, other than it’s motto: “I pledge to read the printed word.” Maybe that’s enough.
Libraryland is a homage to book culture. Whoever maintains it has curated a simple, wonderful, and wry collection of quotes, scanned pages, and pictures from the world of books and its ephemera.
Absent of commentary, it’s a digital scrap book of the profound, the idle, and the almost forgotten quips from the literary world.
I will not say the old adage is moot, but cover design has become pretty central to the book experience. This is especially the case when it comes to browsing shelves for your next read.
The Book Cover Archive shows off how book makers try to catch readers attention. The site is a huge, searchable database that celebrates the best and brightest of cover design industry right now.
As a design-freak, I love sites like this. It makes my eyes greedy and my soul a little jealous (Wouldn’t it be fun to make art like that all the time?).
In a perfect world, libraries would be able to constantly update book covers to keep up with design trends. Realistically, it’d be impossible.
Online, though, it’s different. Online catalogue records could reflect newer designs for covers of older books. This can help breathe new life into editions passed over by browsers as dated. It’s an easy way to capitalize on marketing trends and cash in on the cues readers expect from book covers.
In the graphic designer part of my life, I’ve had some practical experience in the book cover field.
Pretty nice, right? The poetry inside is good, too.
One of my favourite CBC Radio shows, Ideas, has posted a podcast on the future of the book. It’s a round table discussion with perspectives from publishers, editors, and writers with, of course, a decidedly Canadian outlook.
Ideas host Paul Kennedy moderates a panel from the 2010Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Two publishers (Yvonne Hunter from Penguin Canada and Kim McArthur from McArthur Books) and an academic/author/blogger (Andrew Piper from McGill) discuss the uncertain future of an endangered species. [Listen here.]
This episode is a really good cross-section of the issues around the evolving world of eBooks, print books, and the push and pull between them.
A few things have got me to thinking.
I’m always surprised when the debate over the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn returns. I’m not sure why that is. I shouldn’t be. According to the ALA it is among the top five most challenged books in the United States. The controversy, as we all should know, stems largely from the representations of Jim and the vocabulary attached to him. But don’t worry, someone has come up with a way to solve the problem.
From the New York Times:
Throughout the book — 219 times in all — the word “nigger” is replaced by “slave,” a substitution that was made by NewSouth Books, a publisher based in Alabama, which plans to release the edition in February.
Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University at Montgomery, approached the publisher with the idea in July. Mr. Gribben said Tuesday that he had been teaching Mark Twainfor decades and always hesitated before reading aloud the common racial epithet, which is used liberally in the book, a reflection of social attitudes in the mid-19th century…
“I’m by no means sanitizing Mark Twain,” Mr. Gribben said. “The sharp social critiques are in there. The humor is intact. I just had the idea to get us away from obsessing about this one word, and just let the stories stand alone.” (The book also substitutes “Indian” for “injun.”) [full article here]
Except that of course he is sanitizing it. Gibben’s scheme to end the book’s contentiousness is an end run around the book itself, a way to make it easier to swallow Twain’s social criticisms. A nice spoonful of sugar.
But, carbo-loading your literature isn’t the best idea. Read the rest of this entry »