‘Book Bites’ for Tuesday 12th May 2009
May 12, 2009 by Rob
Filed under Book Bites
Palahniuk talks ‘Pygmy’ – Lia Grainger over at the National Post blog has put up the transcript of her recent interview with Chuck Palahniuk in promotion of his newly released novel Pygmy. It’s a nice little interview with minimal spoilers, but it’s also one that left me somewhat bewildered about Palahniuk’s tenth published novel. That’s always the way with Chuck though isn’t it? 
).
NY Times state the obvious on book piracy – Worth reading more for the opinions of a number of authors on the subject, rather than the rather obvious ‘revelation’ that with the rise in popularity for electronic readers has come a rise in book piracy, the NY Times has posted a lengthy article on the whole nasty business.
Heavens knows how they’re going to fix this piracy problem because it’s a problem that’s sure to keep growing. The very act of copying is unpreventable so it’s down to policing, and that, as Russell Davis president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America says in the article, ‘is like a game of Whac-a-Mole.’
Entire books in a single tweet? Enough Already! – In promotion of Tim Collins’ new book out this week The Little Book of Twitter (non-affiliate link), the Telegraph is reporting on the latest Twitter trend of summarising classics works down to a single 140 character tweet. Such a thing wouldn’t normally bother me, because I thought it was just a flash-in-the-pan trend, but I noticed today that Penguin Book UK (@PenguinBooks) were wholeheartedly promoting the practice, and that scares me. If someone as big as Penguin are jumping on the ‘tweet classics’ bandwagon then it’s likely to go viral. Here’s hoping that Stephen Fry (@stephenfry) doesn’t pick up on it, or Twitter is doomed to being a spoiler-fest. Innovation and experimentation I love, but in my opinion this is one birdie hop too far!
‘Book Bites’ – bringing you tasty bite-size morsels of bookish news and delight, from around the web.
Similar posts
Rob, a self-confessed bibliophile, is without any hope of rehabilitation. He gets unnaturally excited over anything book-shaped, and if book sniffing were a crime then he would have been locked up years ago (which wouldn't bother him in the slightest provided his cell were lined with books)
