Call of the Wild first edition
The journalist fails to point out the irony of alias - there was also much controversy and debate about London’s death. Was it suicide? Was it an overdose of morphine?
A first edition of this classic book isn’t cheap - I wonder if Michael owned one. I suspect he did.
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.
Desperate times call for desperate measures…I guess.
A Wellington School in New Zealand has resorted to bribing its students to read. Read two books and you get a can of Coke. Reading five earns a coupon for Subway. Reach the great total of ten books and the prize is a movie ticket.
In West Bend, Wisconsin, four elderly folks got together to sue the American Library Association for $120,000 ($30,000 per plaintiff) and - get this - the right to publicly burn or by other means destroy a book they found so offensive they claim to have been personally harmed just by viewing it (Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block) in the West Bend Library.
Oh - the four litigious library victims’ lawsuit also called for the resignation of the mayor, as well as calling for a grand jury to studiously examine the book to see whether it could be called obscene and declared a hate crime.
But the good news is, for those of you who hadn’t heard from Righteous Indignation in a while and were worried it might be sick….nope, not to worry. It’s alive and well and currently living in Wisconsin.
According to this article in the Globe and Mail, Yann Martel, author of the Booker Prize-winning fantastical novel Life of Pi has spent the last two years sending books to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Martel met Harper in March of 2007 for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Canada Council for the Arts, and was struck by Harper’s coldness and perceived indifference to the Arts. Martel became curious about him, wondering what made him tick. He decided that every two weeks he would send the Prime Minister a book of his own choosing that he thought would benefit Harper.
You can see more at Martel’s web site whatisstephenharperreading.ca but the first book sent was The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy. Some of the other choices have included Animal Farm by George Orwell, Candide by Voltaire, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Drown by Junot Diaz, The Good Earthby Pearl S. Buck, and many, many more - 57 so far and counting.
What to say about all this? Firstly, Yann Martel and I appear to have very similar taste in books. Secondly, hey Yann Martel - I can be busy and enigmatic and indifferent…if I snub you, will you start sending me books? I promise to have my staff (read: one of my friends) respond.
Recently a friend of mine was telling me about potty-training her daughter, and some of the surprisingly emotional struggles her little girl had with it, and how they employed help from the well-known Japanese book Everyone Poops. I wondered whether there were many books about poop. There are! Many exist for educational purposes - the history of people pooping, fossilized poop as a way to know more about history, how to identify various animals’ poop in the woods, and more. There are also some children’s humour books about the subject, books about parenting and potty-training, and a few just plain weird or rude. Here are some of the most poopular - I mean popular.
Also, here’s a fun game for kids called Who Pooped? by the Minnesota Zoo.
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.”
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.
What a grim but intriguing subject - people who have died playing or watching baseball. Death At The Ballpark: A Comprehensive Study of Game-Related Fatalities of Players, Other Personnel And Spectators in Amateur and Professional Baseball, 1862-2007 doesn’t really have a catchy title but it is packed with tragic tales. Slate reports.
Lightning is another improbably frequent killer (though perhaps it’s less improbable when you consider that baseball is played in summer, typically on flat fields surrounded by metal bleachers and fences). During a 1949 amateur game in Florida, the third baseman, shortstop, and second baseman were all killed by a single lightning bolt, which struck the backstop, then shot around the infield as though completing a double play.
I was going to say “I’m speechless”, but then I thought instead of saying (in my best movie-preview-guy voiceover voice):
“They already said the pen was mightier than the sword. Now, the Tactical Pen from Tuff-writer shows them all how very, very right they were.”
*cue feisty music, maybe with trumpets*
The pens come in many models with names like Frontline Series: “Stealth Black”, “Sniper Gray” or “Desert Brown”. If they need another name, I’d like to throw my hat in and suggest “Morning Napalm”.
And while the site doesn’t exactly state clearly that it’s a pen for stabbing people…I’m pretty sure it’s a pen for stabbing people.
Taken from the FAQ:
Q: Why do I need a tactical / defense pen?
A: Because it’s a dangerous world out there and the price of being unprepared is just too high. With the growth of non-permissive environments (places where guns, knives, pepper-sprays and sharp sticks are prohibited) people’s options for personal defense tools are becoming more limited all the time. Tactical flashlights and defense pens are multi-use tools which can and should be carried at all times. Their multi-use nature limits restrictions as well as excuses for not having them when you need them most.
Q: Couldn’t I just carry a knife?
A: The Tuff-Writer isn’t designed to be a replacement for a knife. It isn’t designed to replace a flashlight either. It’s a supplemental tool which soon becomes an essential piece of gear for any prepared individual. Afterall, even the best knife isn’t doing you much good when you have to leave it behind in your car / home.
I love this story from Book Expo America about Paul Auster, who discovered that his 1999 novel, Timbuktu, had also been turned into a children’s book by his publisher - yet his publisher had never told him about it.
There’s two possible takes on this 1) Publishers can’t be trusted further than you can throw them 2) Publishers can very, very stupid.
The children’s version has a friendly fluffy dog while the adult version has a rather more threatening canine.
