I make things up and write them down. I hope that one day someone will read them and believe me and then print out a copy for someone else to read. Until then, would you believe me if I told you...
“Literary adaptations look set to sweep the board in Hollywood this year.”
Six of the nine nominations announced this week for Best Picture are based on books, reflecting a recent pattern in which the Oscar lists have consistently and gratifyingly affirmed cinema’s dependence on literature.
“That is one thing I am sure of amid my many uncertainties regarding the literary vocation: deep inside, a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life, never mind the social, political, or financial rewards of what he might achieve through it.”
-Mario Vargas Llosa, Letters to a Young Novelist
“The Revenge of the Paperback Book”
“Neglected by publishers in recent years, the mass-market paperback format remains highly desirable for its accessibility, both in terms of portability/usability and its low production and purchase costs,” Michaels says. He believes the paperback provides the ideal format for creating experimental books and experimental design to enhance “a reader’s reception of content.”
I came across this via BookForum.
Here’s the thing about book trailers: I feel there’s a collision of two artistic worlds where one most certainly loses out.
A book trailer immediately translates the book. It places specific glasses on the reader’s eyes. A reader loses the ability to recreate the story in his head. I become more interested, if it’s a well-created and visually appealing trailer, in continuing to see (or see as I’ve been asked to see) the story as a visual piece. I’m not automatically compelled to go and read the book now that my mind has been tainted.
A bad book trailer does nothing for the book or writer.
(Source: youtube.com)
I don’t think I’ve ever been ashamed. However, I have felt that if my eyes wander, it means one or more of these issues:
But if the second issue is the main reason, and if it occurs again and again, another problem arises: when do I scrap the book in its entirety? This bothers me more.
We live in a timed world. I buy faster than I can read. Spend more time on a book that may never recover? or move on?
“The principle is simple. You enter a search term – be it a place, a person, a thing, a song, a band, a movie – and Small Demons very efficiently throws up all the novels it has on its database that mention that thing, with the relevant passages highlighted, and, crucially, hyperlinks within those extracts to other mentions.”
Good article, perspective. I like the lining at the end regarding the fact that readers of the plagiarized works were the first to toss up flags, not software:
There is a great deal of difference between what is knowable and what is known, and the internet has increasingly smudged that distinction. Too often, technology can become a kind of prosthetic memory. Having all of Mozart’s operas on iTunes isn’t the same as having listened to all of Mozart’s operas. “Text-mining” vast swathes of literature to discover the preponderance of the words “hope” and “happiness” in the 19th century isn’t the same as an intimate knowledge of the books, with all their ironies and enigmas. If nothing else, the sad affair of QR Markham’s patchwork thriller shows that real reading still exists – if not, perhaps, among certain publishers.
This is not a bookcase. This is my bedside stump.
Last night I lassoed all the stray books I haven’t read. Some purchased in curiosity, others on sale, others were handed to me.
It’s obvious I’m quicker in the acquisition than in the consumption. It’s time I lose myself.
Excellent.
Today marks 25 years since the loss of artist Andy Warhol.
(via SFMOMA)
Trucks carrying the large, precast concrete letters of Mansilla+Tuñón’s Fine Arts museum of Castellón in order of their display in 1999....
Awesome ads for Stihl out of Australia from the very talented team at WhybinTBWATequila.
Soap Flakes by Nathalie StÄmpfli
Oliver works it on Tumblr, Beckett theme by Jonathan Beckett
