I’ll be blunt. Life in the Booksquare mail room has not been kind to me since my last post. In the last few weeks I’ve been inundated with more books than ever before. It’s almost as if some of you took my complaint as a challenge. In the past week alone I’ve received dozens of books that are so poorly targeted I can’t even get the cleaning crew to take them off my hands. There’s a sci-fi novel about a kilted astronaut, scores of knitting themed romances, and yet another book featuring a large breasted woman wielding an enormous sword

After years of to-ing and fro-ing, Google and the Authors Guild/Association of American Publishers have reached a settlement regarding Google’s BookSearch program. Yes. It’s true. For a mere $125 million (pocket change, really, for Google), the program is back on track and the publishing industry is ready to play nice with the world’s largest search engine. Whoo-hoo! Sorry, feeling a bit sarcastic here. First glance, it looks like a big win for Google. Yes, there is that $125 million, which is parsed into various buckets, including a good sum earmarked for the creation of a “Book Rights Registry” — something

Once upon a time, we lived in this lovely world where countries were separated by vast oceans and passports were needed to cross into new regions. Children like me imagined that countries were carefully cordoned off, fences or laser beams or something (land sharks?) protecting territorial rights. Now that I know it’s not true, I wonder how it is that we weren’t invaded by the Communists — it turns out they could have simply walked across the border and taken away our freedom. Territorial rights are these fun, interesting things coveted and nurtured by entertainment media. In some ways, it’s