More and more books digitally published

"A shrinking economy and rising technology have transformed how, and how many, books are being published. But the number of "on-demand" books, a category featuring works with tiny, digitally stored print runs, topped 285,000 in 2008, the first time they outnumbered traditional texts. In 2006, there were fewer than 22,000 on-demand titles, which have become an increasingly popular way to bring old books back in print or keep recent releases from going out of print".

50+ new ideas that defy doom and gloom

Among 50+ innovations from trendwatching.com's latest monthly briefing:

Baker Tweet is a technology that alerts customers via Twitter any time a fresh batch of baked goods emerges from a participating bakery’s oven.

Hollrr encourages fans of specific products for spreading the word to their friends via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, and rewards them with deposits into Amazon Flexible Payment Accounts.

ING Wegwijzer, an application built for the T-Mobile G1 (Google) phone, allows users to locate the nearest ATM simply by pointing their phone's camera in any direction, with nearby ATMs showing up on the display.

BillMyParents allows parents to monitor their children’s online spending by forwarding any attempted purchases to the parent for them to deny or authorize with a credit card number.

The Printed Blog is an independent outlet that aggregates user-generated, online content, and publishes it in print to create a fully tactile newspaper that functions like a Web feed, but can still be spread out across the breakfast table or enjoyed on the train.

University Library security staff taser a student

The long running saga in which staff of the UCLA library in Los Angeles tasered a student has now been settled with UCLA paying the student $220,000 - almost worth the trauma?

Pen Pusher Magazine

Sir Peter Stothard, Editor of the Times Literary Supplement

extolls on his blog the virtues of Pen Pusher Magazine. Within his comments is the following piece.

"In Hilary Mantel's new novel, Wolf Hall Thomas Cromwell, silky facilitator of King Henry's marriage to his second wife, has his own quiet reveries of resting his hand upon Anne's shoulder, 'following with his thumb the scooped hollow between her collarbone and her throat. .his forefinger tracking the line of her breast'. Mantel paints a very modern portrait of Cromwell, an enlightened sceptic of a bloody age, but not as modern a piece of sexual fantasy as that in Niven Govinden's short story, Tudor Girls, in the latest issue of the often surprising Pen Pusher Magazine.Govinden's hero is a punter in Romsey who chooses a lap-dancer dressed as the Tudor queen on his first visit to a Gentleman's Club".

The magazine also has a piece where Simon Callow talks to Henrietta Bredin about how he got closer to Dickens, Shakespeare and Wilde through the intense and complex medium of the one-man play.

Flu aint what it used to be?

The UK TLS also has a piece from 1922: Charles Singer's review of Influenza, edited by P. G. Crookshank, published in the TLS of June 8, 1922.

"Influenza is a subject in which we have all of us, perforce, an interest. Looked at from the point of view of the world as a whole it is, even among great epidemic diseases, a mighty and terrible slayer. None kills so many in so short a time, none is more dramatic, none leaves such an aftermath of ill-health and broken lives. The outbreak of disease which coincided almost exactly with the termination of the war is still fresh in our memories. We watched the influenza gleaning for but a few weeks over a world in which war had been leaping for four years, and the gleaner gathered more than the reaper".

Q&A with Vikas Swarup, author of Q and A (Slumdog Millionaire) and Six Suspects is here

S cribd Store: YouTube for Documents Becomes iTunes for Documents

"Online document sharing site Scribd has launched Scribd Store; a marketplace where publishers can sell original written works. This move comes at a time when ebook piracy is said to be at its peak (Scribd, as one of the biggest document sharing sites out there, is often mentioned in these reports), and is therefore a welcome move both for Scribd, which is trying toclean up its name, and for publishers such as Lonely Planet, OReilly Media, Berrett-Koehler and others, which partnered with Scribd for the Store launch". More here

RARE BOOK REVIEW reports that:

"a href= "www.christies.com" target=new>Christie’s, London, is preparing an eye-catching June sale of ‘Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts,’ with approximately 300 lots ranging from early medieval illuminated manuscripts to a rich selection of 20th century classic novels and autograph letters. Famed English novelists from the 17th through to the 20th century are particularly well represented, with a fine single-owner collection of Dickens’ books, letters and manuscripts, which includes a superb first edition of the enduring favourite, A Christmas Carol (estimated at £14,000-16,000).

For the 007-lover’s eyes only: a first edition copy of Ian Fleming's most controversial novel, Live and Let Die (estimated at £2,000-4,000) likely to tempt any avid collector to live dangerously and splash out.Also of interest is an intriguing selection of personal mementos including a revealing letter written by JRR Tolkien, in which he both discusses The Lord of the Rings, and discloses his grief at the death of his close friend C.S. Lewis (estimated at £3,000-5,000).

Sure not to bore any keen Romantic is an unusual letter written by Byron whilst living in Pisa, in which the poet thanks Captain John Hay for the gift of a boar (estimated at £1,000-1,500)".

Ruth Padel, First Woman Chosen As Oxford Professor of Poetry

The New York Times reports "A 301-year male only streak is broken with the appointment of Ruth Padel as the new Oxford professor of poetry, the first woman to hold the post since it was established in 1708. Ms. Padel, the great-great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin, was chosen on Saturday following a controversial contest for the position. The controversy surrounding the contest was the withdrawal of another candidate, Derek Walcott, after news surfaced about

sexual harassment claims made against him by a Harvard student in 1982. A dossier containing the details had been sent anonymously to 200 Oxford academics. Mr. Walcotts withdrawal left Ms. Padel and the Indian poet and critic Arvind Mehrotra in consideration."

Ten of the best femme fatales from John Mullan in The UK Guardian include

Circe

One of the earliest femmes fatales in western literature is also one of the few to be tamed. Having turned Odysseus's men into pigs, the lovely sorceress beckons the hero into her bed in Homer's Odyssey. However, he has been armed by Hermes with the protective herb Moly and told how to guard his manhood from her wiles.

Nana

First appearing on the Paris stage in the part of Venus, the eponymous protagonist of Zola's novel becomes a courtesan who bewitches men and drives them to folly or disaster. One of them kills himself (with a pair of scissors) when she rejects him. She leaves a trail of male egos and corpses in her wake, on her way to a very nasty end indeed.

Lulu

At the end of the 19th century audiences were deliciously shocked by the sexy heroine/villainess of an infamous pair of plays by Frank Wedekind, Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box. Lulu sexually intoxicates her lovers, before destroying or abandoning them. She ends up confronting Jack the Ripper.

Brigid O'Shaughnessy

In Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon, Brigid has hired private eye Sam Spade to protect her. Spade sleeps with Brigid even though he knows that she killed his former partner, Miles Archer. In the end, he turns her in.

The 10 worst mothers in Literature

Jennifer Schuessler says "Take My Mother, Please". If there is one person who personifies selflessness, un-wavering love and caring the first to come to mind should be your mother. She cradled you for your fist nine months and held your hand though all the challenges life could throw at you. Like with all true heroes books are littered with examples of hundreds of miracle moms from the classic Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter, who taught her daughter it's not shameful to have pride in ones self, to the more contemporary Mrs. Weasley the super poor super mom who took in Harry Potter like he was her own son. However not all the mother's in literature come out smelling like roses. Abandonment, abuse, and adultery are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bottom of the barrel of fictional mothers. To help you forget that time your mom forgot your birthday BookFinder.com has compiled a list of the 10 worst mothers in fiction.

Academic reviewing

Professor Mary Beard writes in her UK TLS blog on the perils of academic book reviewing.

"The second gig was today, just before I left. It was a ‘brown bag lunch” on the “politics of reviewing”. I kicked off for half an hour or so, talking about how Classics books get chosen to be reviewed in the TLS (a much less devious process than most people suspect), what the basic ground rules are and various bits of “good advice” in the fine old craft of reviewing.

Near the top of the list for me is “never say anything in a review that you wouldn’t say to the author’s face”. I don’t think any author minds disagreement. I mean if everyone agreed with what you said in a book, it couldn’t possibly be really interesting could it. What they mind is nastiness. I said this with some feeling, having just had what I considered an onslaught, rather than a review, from a colleague in California that certainly did not pass the ‘Beard nastiness test’!

That said, brown-nosing is no better than nastiness. If reviewing is part of the gate-keeping of “standards”, we don’t want any more people (and I can assure you there are more than you imagine) who say that they will only review a book if they can be favourable . . .

Then we had a good discussion. Someone asked exactly how you could be critical but not nasty in a review. I think the answer is to engage with the author’s arguments, then say why you disagree (I made a good friend that way once) - while avoiding adjectives like ‘simplistic’ and ‘nugatory’. I would also steer clear of phrases like “Beard appears not to be aware of . . .”. I quite often decide not to mention something in a book - because I don’t think it is worth mentioning. And it’s extremely irritating when some reviewer assumes I just don’t know about it.

We also talked about book blogs, about the ‘essay style’ of book reviews, about how to make money from books (errr …yes), and whether agents were good things. If you are about to sign a six-figure deal with Harper Collins, I’m sure they are. But I suspect that most of my academic friends have them as status symbols. The cost of being able to drop “my agent” into the conversation with colleagues every now and then is, of course, 10% of their modest book earnings.

Quote of the Week

"If high heels were so wonderful, men would be wearing them". Sue Grafton.

Odd Book Title

Daddy was an undertaker. By McDill Gassman. New York Vantage Press. 1952.

Debbie Campbell from the National Library reports that strangely there is no copy held in an Australian library, but the record is here.

Pun of the Week

If a car is owned by a movie star, is it a "os-car"?