We couldn’t help but notice that our blog was napping all afternoon. Apparently, the second the power in Los Angeles went out, the site decided to climb into the hammock and nap. We are uncertain as why the blog could take the rest of the day off while we had to pretend to work, but clearly we have less pull with those in charge of our life than we thought.
We interrupt your regularly scheduled blog reading to point you to an exciting new product. Someone let us share our thoughts on a book we recently read. We’ll be doing this regularly at Paperback Reader. Too Wilde To Tame by Janelle Denison
It is one of those days when not much is catching our attention, except, of course, this lovely quote from the BBC, circa 2005: A Day In The Life, the Beatles’ most ambitious work to date, featured what Lennon described as “a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world”. This is where we suggest that sometimes it’s helpful to pay attention to what you write. Beatles hailed ‘best of British’ – The 1967 Beatles track A Day In The Life has been hailed the best British song of all time.
No, this is simply to answer small practical questions, to help all you puzzled movie consumers out there: Should you read the book before you see the movie? Does it matter if they change the book? If you know how it ends, what’s the point in seeing it? Hollywood Follows the Reader – When Filmmakers Go by the Book, Should Filmgoers Go Buy It Too?
Let us, for a moment, ponder the act of editing books. There are many in the publishing ranks who complain that they don’t so much edit as administer. Oh sure, every interview you read with an editor talks about the hands-on approach and collaborative process. . .given the continual output of major label publishers versus available and experienced staff, just how much care and feeding can an editor do? Jonthan Karp who is running Warner’s “Twelve” imprint thinks he knows how to change the business model. Note: there are two critical steps: I love books. So even though I thought
Something about the statement that S.E. Hinton is rarely interviewed sent us to our trusty friend, Google. And sure enough, when her novel Hawkes Harbor was released last year, there were interviews. It’s always a relief to know that the brain still functions, at least on one cylinder. Okay, maybe the novel didn’t do so well, but she popped out of the woodwork for a moment. Hinton doesn’t have a new book nor, technically, anything else new, but there’s this little rerelease of the film The Outsiders. Even a reclusive author cannot stand firm against a marketing juggernaut. Overall, the
The point about the return visit is not the infantile pleasure of repetition, but the possibility of surprise. A good work of art never stays quite the same: it ambushes you, outwits you. A first exposure can provide the primitive excitement of wanting to know what happens next, a second provides the opportunity to register details, a third brings a sense of the underpinning joints and girders that make up the structure. And so it goes on. The arts column: ambushed by the unexpected – again – Rupert Christiansen acclaims the surprising possibilities of repetition
Today, Holtzbrinck, the corporate parent of fine publishers like Audio Renaissance, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Henry Holt, Picador, St. Martin’s Press, and Tor/Forge, left the competition in the dust. What’s that, you say, how could this be? What happened when I wasn’t paying attention? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re kidding you. Sure, Holtzbrinck is the first publisher to take advantage of podcast technology as a marketing tool. You can hear fine authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Frost, and H.G. Wells reading from their upcoming novels. There is a menu of weekly selections and a featured title (also known as the
Ron Hogan is guest hosting Galleycat this week (Sarah Weinman did the job last week) and, in addition to returning the site to our list of regular haunts, reminds us of a word we haven’t encountered in a while: fnord. It’s also nice that someone else out there copped to the fact that Dan Brown merely updated the works of Robert Anton Wilson. . . Pining for the Fnords Robert Anton Wilson
While we wait in vain for a decent production of Northanger Abbey, we like to contemplate Jane Austen’s reactions to her increasing popularity. One would have thought her star would fall (or shoot or whatever it is that stars on the wane do) about the time Hugh Grant donned a cravat. Instead, Pride and Prejudice is being made into a motion picture event for like the thousandth time. Not that we’re complaining, but it does feel a bit strange. Shouldn’t we do a bit of Edith Wharton worshipping as well? C’mon, it’s time to spread the love. After all, shouldn’t
