Archive for the ‘internet’ Category

Twitterature - Classic Literature Retold in “Tweets”

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

The Telegraph reports that two American students have been commissioned by Penguin to write a compilation called Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books, Now Presented in Twenty Tweets or Less.

The book will be made up of classic novels, abridged in the style of Tweets. (For those not familiar with the lingo, Tweets are short messages sent via the social networking site Twitter.)

At this time, it’s not known what literary masterpieces will be dramitically pared down but the book is expected to be released this autumn.

“New Book Smell” In a Can

Monday, June 8th, 2009

Remember a week or so ago when I lamented the idea of a future with e-readers in place of books? I focused particularly on the olfactory absence:

“The part that devastates me perhaps most of all is the idea of losing that bookstore smell. I don’t believe it will ever come to that entirely, and if it does it is a long way off, but the notion was jarring. The smell of new bookstores is different from used bookstores, is different from libraries, is different from antiquarian collections, but they all have the musty, spicy, underlying smell of paper at their root, and my nose knows nothing better. I have difficulty imagining walking into an e-reader factory, closing my eyes, inhaling and smiling.”

can-newbook Well…. I can’t say for sure whether or not this is a joke, but for the record, THIS IS NOT THE SAME THING.

From the web site:

Does your Kindle leave you feeling like there’s something missing from your reading experience?

Have you been avoiding e-books because they just don’t smell right?

If you’ve been hesitant to jump on the e-book bandwagon, you’re not alone. Book lovers everywhere have resisted digital books because they still don’t compare to the experience of reading a good old fashioned paper book.

But all of that is changing thanks to Smell of Books™, a revolutionary new aerosol e-book enhancer.

Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book.

Is it real? Or are they kidding? Lord, let them be kidding.

Especially about this bit:

Smell of Books™ is available in five designer aromas. There’s a Smell of Books™ scent for every type of book lover.

New Book Smell
Classic Musty Smell
Scent of Sensibility
Eau You Have Cats
Crunchy Bacon Scent

Otherwise….kill me.

Moby Dick Tweeted in its Entirety on Twitter

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

moby-dickThere’s….not much to say besides the headline, really… almost a year ago, a twitter user made a tongue-in-cheek comment that it would be cool if someone tweeted all of Moby Dick.

A light bulb went off for a twitter user named danco (Dan Coulter), and he endeavored to make it happen, under a separate Twitter account (complete with whale wallpaper, natch). 9 1/2 months and 12,849 updates later - that’s around 45 tweets a day, as twitter updates have a 140 character limit - the book’s last line: “It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.” was tweeted yesterday, May 13th, at 7:08 a.m.

Danco is quick to assure audiences that it was a bot, not him, doing the day-in, day-out tweeting.

A book as a tweet

Tuesday, May 12th, 2009

A picture is worth one thousand words, but in today’s Telegraph there is a man who has rendered literary masterpieces down to 140 characters, the maximum Twitter allows.

So Catcher in the Rye simply becomes:
jdsalinger: Rich kid thinks everyone is fake except for his little sister. Has breakdown. @markchapman is now following @johnlennon

Pride and Prejudice is shortened to:
janeaustin: Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

or Bridget Jones’s Diary
helenfielding: RT @janeaustin Woman meets man called Darcy who seems horrible. He turns out to be nice really. They get together.

…. It kind of puts a whole new spin on the term short story.

If you like you can follow us on Twitter @AbeBooks … we post random book musings a couple of times a day. Also, a Twitter jargon guide is available here which you may find helpful if you are brand new to the whole Twitter thing.

Dickens url for anti-twitter types

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Turn even the most ugly and garbled URLs into the prose of Charles Dickens… it’s like tinyURL but longer and you can quote it a cocktail parties to sound educated. It’sDickensURL.com

Also a great way to fight back for everyone in the anti-twitter club, who is looking to poke a stick in the eye of 140 characters.

Happy Birthday Shakespeare, You Mountain of Mad Flesh!

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

shakespeareOh man. This is so great.

Today is the day widely recognized/celebrated as William Shakespeare’s birthday. By my calculations, the bard would be turning 445 today. Huh. No spring chicken. So, in honour of William Shakespeare’s birthday* today, check out this fantastic Shakespeare Insult Generator.

Among my favourites that I saw:

“[Thou] mountain of mad flesh!”
“Thou art the rudeliest welcome to this world.”
“[Thou art] like the toad, ugly and venomous.”
“Thou puking sheep-biting baggage!”

and my very favourite:

“Thou wimpled rump-fed hugger-mugger!”

Aw, Willie. You say the sweetest things.

*from Shakespeare’s wikipedia page: “William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, a successful glover and alderman originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised on 26 April 1564. His unknown birthday is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George’s Day. This date, which can be traced back to an eighteenth-century scholar’s mistake, has proved appealing because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son.”

Teabagging for the Right Wing: Nine Books About Tea

Wednesday, April 15th, 2009

The er.. “wit” of the MSNBC news team and their teabag and teabagging reference heavy discussions of reactions to Obama’s tax plans. I found it pretty funny. But then, I’m juvenile.

And more importantly, Here are 9 Books about Tea and Teabags! Having cut way, way down on the lifegiving necta… er.. I mean, coffee, I’m enjoying trying different teas these days. Today I had a delicious mug of Pomegranate-Raspberry green tea. Mmm, antioxidants. Anybody have a recommendation for a good Earl Grey? I find Twinings positively wimpy.

On to the books!

9 Words That Came From Science Fiction

Monday, April 6th, 2009

amazing-stories-june-1927I came across this interesting list via blog.oup.com. It’s 9 words that while you think they originated from real science, they actually first appeared in science fiction.

I love etymology and I love science-fiction, so this is really cool. I was especially surprised by #3. Zero-gravity and zero-g were originally fictional terms?! Arthur C. Clarke, you’re the bee’s knees. Just more proof that the real cool kids in town are the nerds (she said, hopefully).

Nine Words You Might Think Came from Science but
Which Are Really from Science Fiction

1. Robotics. This is probably the most well-known of these, since Isaac Asimov is famous for (among many other things) his three laws of robotics. Even so, I include it because it is one of the only actual sciences to have been first named in a science fiction story (”Liar!”, 1941). Asimov also named the related occupation (roboticist) and the adjective robotic.

2. Genetic engineering. The other science that received its name from a science fiction story, in this case Jack Williamson’s novel Dragon’s Island, which was coincidentally published in the same year as “Liar!” The occupation of genetic engineer took a few more years to be named, this time by Poul Anderson.

3. Zero-gravity/zero-g. A defining feature of life in outer space (sans artificial gravity, of course). The first known use of “zero-gravity” is from Jack Binder (better known for his work as an artist) in 1938, and actually refers to the gravityless state of the center of the Earth’s core. Arthur C. Clarke gave us “zero-g” in his 1952 novel Islands in the Sky.

4. Deep space. One of the other defining features of outer space is its essential emptiness. In science fiction, this phrase most commonly refers to a region of empty space between stars or that is remote from the home world. E. E. “Doc” Smith seems to have coined this phrase in 1934. The more common use in the sciences refers to the region of space outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.

5. Ion drive. An ion drive is a type of spaceship engine that creates propulsion by emitting charged particles in the direction opposite of the one you want to travel. The earliest citation in Brave New Words is again from Jack Williamson (”The Equalizer”, 1947). A number of spacecraft have used this technology, beginning in the 1970s.

6. Pressure suit. A suit that maintains a stable pressure around its occupant; useful in both space exploration and high-altitude flights. This is another one from the fertile mind of E. E. Smith. Curiously, his pressure suits were furred, an innovation not, alas, replicated by NASA.

7. Virus. Computer virus, that is. Dave Gerrold (of “The Trouble With Tribbles” fame) was apparently the first to make the verbal analogy between biological viruses and self-replicating computer programs, in his 1972 story “When Harlie Was One.”

8. Worm. Another type of self-replicating computer program. So named by John Brunner in his 1975 novel Shockwave Rider.

9. Gas giant. A large planet, like Jupiter or Neptune, that is composed largely of gaseous material. The first known use of this term is from a story (Solar Plexus) by James Blish; the odd thing about it is that it was first used in a reprint of the story, 11 years after the story was first published. Whether this is because Blish conceived of the term in the intervening years or read it somewhere else, or whether it was in the original manuscript and got edited out is impossible to say at this point.

The House That Science-Fiction Built

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

robert-heinlein-house Fine, fine, so you’re too cheap to shell out the $116 grand required to buy first editions of every Hugo Award and Nebula Award winner ever.

Maybe you’d rather buy the house built by Sci-Fi/Fantasy author Robert Heinlein, the brilliant mind behind Starship Troopers?

jetpackActually, at $650,000.00, it doesn’t seem a bad deal for four bedrooms, four bathrooms and 4456 square feet in Colorado. Although what’s with the desert section in the yard there?

But it’d be pretty tempting, because you just KNOW there’s going to be a secret room full of jetpacks, with a launchpad and a control panel. And it TOTALLY has to have a holodeck. And like…a SPACE SHOWER of some kind.

Yup.

BBC Book Quiz - How Many have You Read?

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

a-fine-balance Via Elizaphanian. How many of these 100 books have you read? It’s an interesting mix of classics and modern bestsellers.

Mine marked below for 36, or just over a third. According to the BBC, the average is six. I have a hard time believing that. It’s a depressing notion.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x)
6 The Bible - ()
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ( )
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (x)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ()
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier ()
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien (x)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()le-petit-prince
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x )
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( )
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams (x)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x) to-kill-a-mockingbird
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (x )
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (x)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (x)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (X)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (x)
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (x)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (x)
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (x)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ( )
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (x)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ( )
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ( )
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (x)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie () the-remains-of-the-day
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ( )
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ( )
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Inferno - Dante ( )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ( )
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell (x)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (x)
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ( )
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (x)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ()
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad () the-lovely-bones
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ( )
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (X)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()

What’s your count?

Of the above books I’ve read, my top five favourites would be:

5. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
4. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
3. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
2. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

time-travelers-wife
Also very good is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, and I’m very excited to hear that she has a new one coming out called Her Fearful Symmetry (William Blake! Man, I love when I get a reference. Makes me feel so smart.), which according to Amazon.com is due out in October 2009.

10 Things Found on the London Underground (and found in books!)

Monday, February 16th, 2009

A case of dentures found on the London Underground

A case of dentures found on the London Underground

I really enjoyed this slideshow of photographs depicting10 items found on the London Underground that the Guardian posted. The list consists of:

1. A camera
2. A case full of dentures
3. A safari pith helmet
4. A skateboard
5. A full-size taxidermied fox
6. An early-model motorola phone (which looks fit for a museum)
7. A taxidermied blowfish (pufferfish)
8. A panoply of umbrellas (three pictured)
9. A child’s toy ape
10. A gas mask

Fascinating. Scrolling through I couldn’t help imagining the circumstances under which some of these objects were left behind. Does London have a drunken taxidermist stumbling around, forlornly searching for his fox and blowfish? Was the gas mask abandoned by a passenger who decided the end wasn’t coming after all? How do you leave behind your teeth?!

I was also reminded of one of my favourite features we’ve done on AbeBooks. In case you missed it the first time around, check out Found in Books, a compendium of all the weird, wonderful and occasionally disgusting objects people have found abandoned in books. The list includes:

-human teeth
-bacon
-thousands of dollars cash
-a cockroach
-a condom (unused)
-a cotton swab (used)

and much, much more.

AbeBooks on Twitter

Friday, January 30th, 2009

I spent the morning getting signed up on Twitter. As AbeBooks’ resident technophobe (yes, I know I work for an internet company but still….), I have been putting off this day for a long, long time. People have been telling me about Twitter for eons and I’ve smiled politely and quickly changed the subject. Then Shauna at BookFinder went on and I’m not going to let her beat me, especially as I’m supposed to be Abe’s PR person.

My first impression - blimey, people make contact/tweet very quickly. There are some very welcoming folks on there. Lots of publishers too. Lots of book folks. A few authors. I feel I have a lot to learn but I know we heard about John Updike’s death earlier this week through Twitter and that was 15 minutes before Associated Press posted the news. I know Neil Gaiman was twittering about winning the Newbery Award for children’s literature.

There have been several major newspaper articles about Twitter in recent times and I’m sure it’s going to become bigger and bigger, and expand beyond the early adopting tech community.

My next question is how much time should I devote to Twittering?

God, I hope I don’t become addicted. (Find AbeBooks on Twitter here.)

Encyclopedia Britannica goes all Wikipedia

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

I found this story mildly amusing this morning. Encyclopedia Britannica is inviting readers to contribute and edit entries on a new section of its website on order to challenge the domination of Wikipedia.

Hmmm… let’s see - Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 and has 12 million articles. God knows how many millions of people use it every day. Encyclopedia Britannica has been around for 240 years and is oldest English-language encyclopedia still in print.

Did it take eight years for Encyclopedia Britannica to realise that Wikipedia was making it obsolete? Didn’t they see what happened to the music industry which buried its head in the sand and hoped downloads and iTunes would just go away? Stable door — bolted — horse!

Demand for The Recently Deflowered Girl

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

The Recently Deflowered GirlHave you heard of a book called The Recently Deflowered Girl by Hyacinthe Phypps, or should I say Edward Gorey? Last week this book was the second most searched for book title on AbeBooks.com after Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. The book was first published in 1965 but has been out-of-print for years. However, the blogosphere has reignited interest in this title.

The book is a parody – written in the 1960s – of earlier styles of etiquette. It instructs young ladies on what to say after having lost their virginity in a variety of situations - Deflowerment by Marimba Player, Deflowerment on a Cross-Country Bus, Deflowerment by a Famous Crooner, and so on.

Apparently, a blogger discovered a copy on their 84-year-old landlord’s bookshelf and posted scans on their livejournal blog. After that, it spread like wildfire.

Check out this blog to see some of the book’s pages. Many of you will know Gorey - a prolific author and illustrator who earned a cult following for his quirky and macabre illustrations.

We have sold all the cheaper copies of this book now and only have four copies left – two in German and two English language editions for $375 and $450.

If Jane Austen Was On Facebook

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

Do you wonder what Pride & Prejudice could have looked like if Jane Austen had access to technology and social networking? Well wonder no more, thanks to Austenbook!

Austenbook tells the classic tale of the Bennets and Mr. Darcy through Facebook news feeds.  If you’ve read Pride & Prejudice, or any other Austen book, the  clever little annotations such as “Elizabeth Bennet promises never to dance with Mr. Darcy” and “Caroline Bingley is all astonishment” are highly entertaining.

Austenbook creator DeeDee Baldwin credits her inspiration to Sarah Schmelling, who wrote a Facebook news feed version of Hamlet.  “Hamlet thinks it’s annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies“…”Horatio says well that was tragic.”