Category Archives: The Book

Mobi Dick: Sci-fi, the Internet and eBooks

In Print is Dead, in the chapter about eBooks, I describe how we usually find fault with science fiction books and movies:
In every book or film or piece of art from the last century that has depicted the future – from Jules Verne to George Lucas – we usually fault it twice: first for the [...] Continue reading

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Ass the Dust: Sat on a good book lately?

Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing wrote last week about another instance of someone using books in an, uh, interesting way. This time books are being used to create what Doctorow calls a “marvelous” chair (pictured above). And while I’ve written about a number of design uses involving books or bookcases in the past (including sticking [...] Continue reading

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Queue and Apple: Excitement over the newest iPhone

Last week Apple introduced its newest iteration of the iPhone, the 3G, and people around the world lined up outside stores (sometimes overnight) to be one of the first ones to get it. Now, while this has become routine (people have been known to join a line outside of an Apple store without really knowing [...] Continue reading

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Paper or plastic? Franzen’s “harsh” view of online reading

Via MJ Rose’s blog, today I found what seems to be the third part of a four-part conversation with Corrections author Jonathan Franzen. After making what seems to me some terribly shaky reasoning when it comes to publishing work about the lives of his friends and family (Franzen says that it hurts them less [...] Continue reading

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The Futurist on the “21st Century Writer”

Last week, a reader turned me on to an article entitled “The 21st Century Writer,” which happens to be the current cover story for The Futurist magazine. Written by the magazine’s senior editor, Patrick Tucker, the article is one of the best ones I’ve seen in a long time to discuss the evolving role of [...] Continue reading

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The Powerpoint and the Glory: Reading great works at work

Today I came across the website Read at Work, which was created by the New Zealand Book Council in order to encourage people to, well, read at work. When you click to enter the website, it expands to fit the entire screen, and is perfectly designed to look like a PC desktop (which is a [...] Continue reading

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Less Cowbell: Novels without borders

One of the most common themes that runs through the future of the book debate is, well, the idea of the book itself. Or rather, what a book is or should be. Most people consider a work like The Great Gatsby to be a book. After all, when someone says they love The Great Gatsby, [...] Continue reading

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New Winterson Novel: Bradbury is not the only fruit

A colleague and fellow writer recently sent me a number of passages from The Stone Gods, Jeanette Winterson’s recent novel. The book has a section set in a futuristic, post-apocalyptic (and post-print) world. In fact, the quotes below remind me very much of Bradbury’s dystopian classic Fahrenheit 451.
From The Stone Gods, page 49:
“We were flying [...] Continue reading

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Taking a Shining to the Economist: Apocalypse Soonish?

The Economist’s June 5th edition has an article entitled “Unbound,” which sounds fairly benign until you read the sub-headline: “Publishers worry as new technologies transform their industry.” Oh, and there’s also a grinning picture of Jeff Bezos with the caption “You’re all doomed!,” as if Bezos is attacking the publishing industry Jack Torrance-style, with his [...] Continue reading

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Bock to the Future: A website for writers talks about books

This week on the the website Red Room, writer Naomi Bock has posted the first of what’s planned to be a two-part article entitled “The Future of the Book.” That this article is appearing on Red Room (a site whose tagline is ”Where the writers are”) makes perfect sense; more and more authors are heading [...] Continue reading

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