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The photo Paul mentions: http://ww4.hdnux.com/photos/04/25/76/113… (If the direct link doesn't work, it's the second-from-the-last [#29] in this slideshow.)

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Orange No More

Posted by on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 4:32 PM

Ouch:

Britain's Orange Prize for Fiction, which is annually awarded to a female author, will cease to be orange after the 2012 award is presented next week. That's because the Orange Prize is sponsored by Orange, a British mobile communications company, which after 17 years has decided to end its association with the prize.

According to the Bookseller, Orange plans to move its arts support to movie projects.

Maybe it's time for someone to write the 354,932nd article predicting the death of books, now.

Superhero Comic Book to Feature Gay Wedding

Posted by on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 12:29 PM

The Mary Sue says:

Marvel Comics has decided to take their characters in a new direction, one that hasn’t been explored in their pages before. Today, the publisher announced that their character Northstar would be proposing to his long-time boyfriend Kyle in the pages of Astonishing X-Men #50. And ABC’s The View had the exclusive.

Northstar, of course, has long been Marvel's token gay character. (Before that, he was Marvel's token elf. I'm not kidding.) Marvel will take some shit from the usual bigots*, but this is pretty much as safe as "controversial" can get. When Archie Comics is three months ahead of you, you're not breaking any ground.

* I predict, for instance, that all six of the Million Moms will pretend that comics are still sold to children and not grown-ass men in their 30s and 40s. What about the imaginary children who still read comic books? Oh, the outrage!

Better Than Nailing Books to the Wall

Posted by on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 8:09 AM

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The image to the left of this paragraph is a book, a great collection of short stories written by Lynne Tillman titled Someday This Will Be Funny. (I reviewed Tillman's book a little over a year ago.) The image to the left of this paragraph is also a collection of tiny books by Lynne Tillman, with each story in Someday This Will Be Funny printed as its own booklet. AND the image to the left of this paragraph is a framed, interactive piece of art to hang on your wall. You can arrange the colorful books inside the frame in any order you wish. (Check out a slideshow of the book/art object right here.)

Producing a book as an art object, so you can keep the book in your life even when you're not actively reading, is a great idea. I'm leery of the price—$195 before the book ships, $250 after—but I'd love to see this format applied to other collections.

Monday, May 21, 2012

The Bechdel Test

Posted by on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:18 PM

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Practically the first thing Alison Bechdel did when she stood in front of a packed-out University Book Store on Friday was apologize for writing a "kind of weird book." One has to wonder if Bechdel's abashedness had anything to do with Dwight Garner's drubbing of her new memoir, Are You My Mother?, in the New York Times earlier this month, in which he called it "not nearly so good" as Bechdel's first memoir, Fun Home, and accused it of being "therapized and flat" with "no real narrative." ("If Fun Home was a book about a funeral home," Garner sniped, "Are You My Mother? is merely funereal." Er, zing?)

Here's the thing: Only a shitty critic would take a writer to task for not writing the same book twice....

(Keep reading.)

Let's All Watch a British Bookstore Chain Kill Itself

Posted by on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 11:35 AM

Last night, the CEO of British chain bookseller Waterstones announced that his company was going to sell Amazon's Kindles in its stores, and they would be selling Kindle e-books on their site. Watch the announcement right here:

This video reminds me of something I wrote in my eulogy for Borders Books and Music almost a year ago, when Borders announced that Amazon.com was going to handle Borders' e-commerce side:

There's a photo of Jeff Bezos and then-Borders president and CEO Greg Josefowicz shaking hands to celebrate the partnership. Josefowicz has weatherman hair and a broad smile, and he's beaming past the camera with the cocksure giddiness of a guy who thinks he just got rid of all his problems because he sold his dumb old cow for a handful of really cool magic beans. But when you pull your eyes away from Josefowicz's superheroic chin, you notice that Jeff Bezos is smiling directly into the camera with keen shark eyes. His smile is more relaxed, a little more candid than Josefowicz's photo-op-ready grin. It's the face of someone who's thinking, I finally got you, you son of a bitch.

It's a photograph of the exact second that Borders died.

The clock started ticking for Waterstones the second they announced this partnership. I don't know how long it'll be, but Waterstones will be gutted just as surely as Borders was by this decision.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Do Elephants Resent Being Fed Tobacco?

Posted by on Fri, May 18, 2012 at 3:16 PM

Spring has sproinged, as has my reinvigorated interest in A Book About a Thousand Things, published in 1946.

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  • baatt

I have known people like Charles the Wise—what's worse, I've worked for people like Charles the Wise. (I bet you have, too. There are lots of 'em out there. Those people are always shitty bosses who only get shitty work out of their employees.)

And I have never imagined that modern humans would use a valuable commodity like tobacco as zoo fodder.

Come Listen to Kid's Books Tomorrow at Elliott Bay Book Company

Posted by on Fri, May 18, 2012 at 1:54 PM

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This is just a reminder, because I told you about this on Tuesday and now Tuesday seems like ages ago: Tomorrow, from 11am to 3pm, Sherman Alexie, a gaggle of poets, Congressman Jim McDermott, and I will be reading our favorite kid's books aloud in the reading room at Elliott Bay Book Company. This is a fundraiser for First Book, a great nonprofit that provides books to children in need. There will be raffles and a silent auction and other fun stuff, but even if you don't have any money right now, you should come and listen to a few stories. The lineup of books is pretty great. (I'll be reading The Monster at the End of This Book at 2:30 pm, but the event will be kicked off with a reading of Where the Wild Things Are, which is especially relevant this month.)

And if you can't make it but you'd still like to help First Book buy books for children, the donation page is right here. A $15 donation will buy six books for a child.

Interview with a Book Censor

Posted by on Fri, May 18, 2012 at 8:08 AM

Here's an interview with Kuwait's top book censor:

“As a censor, I read a book from beginning to the end, word by word. In case the censor makes a mistake, the head of the department will be responsible for this mistake, as they should also read the book. The time to finish censoring a book depends on the kind of the book. For instance, a philosophical book needs about four days to read,” Dalal added...Working as a censor is interesting. “I like this work. It gives us experience, information and we always learn something new. It takes about a year or a year and a half to become a censor, as the person is first employed as a censor assistant. The employee first starts slow in reading and it takes him a week or days to finish a book. Also, beginners are not given political or religious books in the beginning as these are difficult. Instead we give them children’s books or some scientific books, which are easy,” said Dalal.

It's funny how anything can sound banal if you do it for a living.

(Via Disinformation.)

Thursday, May 17, 2012

"The Erotic Bestselling Novel, Read by Gilbert Gottfried"

Posted by on Thu, May 17, 2012 at 5:30 PM

Now that Bea Arthur is gone, nobody says "I'll agree to the fisting, but I'd really like to claim your ass" like Gilbert Gottfried.

And if you're wondering: Yes, the book is just as terrible as it sounds.

(Via Matt Ruff on Twitter.)

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

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Tuesday, May 15, 2012

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Carlos Fuentes

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Friday, May 11, 2012

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Thursday, May 10, 2012

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Almost Paradise

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Tuesday, May 8, 2012

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Subliminal Messages

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RIP, Maurice Sendak

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Monday, May 7, 2012

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Useless Human Sex

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Friday, May 4, 2012

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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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  • The Bechdel Test Only an Idiot Would Fail to Recognize the Layered Genius of Are You My Mother?