See Grown-Ups Read

by: Alexandra Alter

R.J. Palacio's best-selling novel "Wonder" was born in a moment of panic. She was getting milkshakes with her two sons in Brooklyn when she saw a little girl with a severe facial deformity. She rushed her sons away as her three-year-old began to cry. She instantly regretted it, and wished she'd stayed to talk to the girl. That night, she scribbled the first sentence of a novel on a Post-it Note: "My name is Ian. To me, I'm an ordinary kid."

She wrote the novel—the story of a 10-year-old boy with a horrible facial disfigurement who struggles to fit in—with a middle-school reader in mind, because her oldest son was that age. "I wrote something I thought a fifth-grader would like, with short chapters, lots of action, sentences that weren't too complicated," she says.

But after the novel was released in February 2012, in a bright, cartoonish hardcover edition clearly aimed at 8- to 12-year-olds, something unexpected happened. Prominent adult novelists, including Emily Giffin and thriller writer Brad Meltzer, heaped praise on the book and urged their fans to read it. Fan mail began pouring in from adult readers, not only from parents and teachers who embraced the book's anti-bullying message, but from single people who found the narrative sophisticated and moving. In the U.K. and five other countries, publishers released adult editions of the novel. "Wonder" shot to the top of the best-seller list and has hovered there for nearly two years, selling more than a million copies.

Illustration by Kagan McLeod

Fans of "Wonder" say it defies categorization. "To look at 'Wonder' and say that's a book for young readers is a complete disservice," said Mr. Meltzer, who recommended the title to his 35,000-plus Twitter followers. "To me, a good book is a good book."

Middle-grade books have become a booming publishing category, fueled in part by adult fans who read "Harry Potter" and fell in love with the genre. J.K. Rowling's books, which sold more than 450 million copies, reintroduced millions of adults to the addictive pleasures of children's literature and created a new class of genre-agnostic reader who will pick up anything that's buzzy and compelling, even if it's written for 8 year olds. Far from being an anomaly, "Harry Potter" paved the way for a new crop of blockbuster children's books that are appealing to readers of all ages. Recent hits include Rick Riordan's mythology-tinged fantasy books, which have sold have sold some 35 million copies; Rachel Renee Russell's "Dork Diaries," which has 13 million copies in print; and Jeff Kinney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," which has sold more than 115 million copies. The eighth and latest book in Mr. Kinney's series, "Hard Luck," which came out last month, sold more than a million copies in its first week, and had a massive first printing of 5.5 million copies. It's currently No. 1 on Amazon and tops The Wall Street Journal's fiction best-seller lists.

"People don't think of it as reading down anymore," says Seira Wilson, children's and teen-books editor at Amazon. "There's less of a stigma."

The growing appeal of children's literature reflects a broader cultural shift as the taste gap between generations collapses. Pop culture today—from frothy hit songs to clever Pixar movies—increasingly caters to both parents and kids. Hip urban parents ride skateboards, play videogames and eat gourmet Popsicles, while their children check their cellphones and sport skinny jeans. Rock bands like They Might Be Giants and Bare Naked Ladies have released children's albums. The Sundance Film Festival recently announced that it will start screening children's movies "to reach our youngest independent-film fans." It's no wonder that parents and children who watch the same TV shows, listen to the same bands and wear the same clothes have similar taste in literature.

"It used to be that kids would emulate what their parents were reading, and now it's the reverse," said David Baldacci, a best-selling crime novelist who will release a new middle-grade fantasy novel with Scholastic next spring. "A lot of the most interesting work in fiction is coming out of that genre."

Mr. Baldacci is one of several big-name authors who are angling to get in on the action. Blockbuster novelists like John Grisham and James Patterson have launched children's books series in recent years to extend their reach, often bringing their adult fans along with them. (Mr. Grisham jokingly said that he created his "Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer" character after Harry Potter knocked him off his usual No. 1 spot on the best-seller list.) Commercial juggernaut Mr. Patterson recently launched a new middle-grade series, "Treasure Hunters," and will add another, "House of Robots," next year, further expanding his line of books for young readers, which have sold 27 million copies and now include seven series. Mr. Patterson says he prefers writing kids books to "murdering people on my pages."

Neil Gaiman, author of best-selling adult fantasy books like "American Gods," says he's often surprised, and slightly chagrined, when adults read his children's books. This fall, at a London reading of his best-selling middle-grade book, "Fortunately, the Milk," he was unnerved to see that the crowd of 2,500 people was mostly adults. The illustrated book features dinosaurs, pirates and aliens. Sometimes, he gets mail from grown-ups who read not just his young-adult books, but his picture books for very young readers. "Occasionally I feel like apologizing to them," Mr. Gaiman said. "You see these reviews on Amazon for 'Chu's Day,' a book really aimed at kids that can't quite read yet, that say, 'I'm a big fan of Mr. Gaiman's novels but I found this a little thin.' "

Some children's-book authors are deliberately shaping their books for adults. Mr. Kinney, author of the mega best-selling series, "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," said he first envisioned his illustrated books about a middle-school kid named Greg as wry cartoons for adults. His first draft was 1,300 illustrated pages. His publisher, Abrams, convinced him to target kids, arguing that the sassy young narrator would appeal to children, and adults would follow. Mr. Kinney was skeptical at first. He thought kids might miss the fact that his protagonist, Greg, is an unreliable narrator (not to mention a bad role model). But it proved a savvy move. "The books have found a much bigger readership by going through the kids," Mr. Kinney says.

Mr. Kinney says he still writes for adults, and is often surprised to see children at his public appearances. "I'm so focused on the adult reader that it's always a strange thing for me to get out on the road and meet lots of kids," he said.

Children's books have evolved in recent years to meet the tastes and expectations of multigenerational audiences. Many children's book covers have gotten more muted and mature looking—better for the self-conscious adult reader to pull out on the bus or subway. The stories themselves have grown longer and more complex. "The House of Hades," the fourth installment Mr. Riordan's "Heroes of Olympus" series, is nearly 600 pages long. The first four books in his series weigh in at around 2,300 pages, which makes C.S. Lewis's seven-book epic, "The Chronicles of Narnia," seem relatively slim at around 1,400 pages.

Middle-grade authors are tackling tougher and more realistic themes, making their works appealing for adult book clubs. Sharon Draper's best-selling middle-grade novel "Out of My Mind" is narrated by a paralyzed girl with cerebral palsy. In "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan, a 12-year-old genius struggles to cope after her parents die in a car accident. "Wonder" took off as a crossover hit in part because it deals with bullying and life-threatening disorders, themes that made it a popular title with book clubs, teachers and librarians.

"The quality of the literature for children out there is just astounding," said Erin Clarke, an editor at Knopf Books for Young Readers, who edited "Wonder." "It's been that way for a long time, but the general population is just realizing it."

In an entertainment landscape where hits often come and go in a flash, the word-of-mouth sensation "Wonder" is developing the aura of a classic. E-book sales were up nearly 150% in 2013 over 2012, suggesting a growing adult audience.

R.J. Palacio's real name is Raquel Jaramillo. She lives on the first floor of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with her husband, their two sons, Joseph, 9, and Caleb, 17, and their two rescue dogs. She used her mother's maiden name as a pen name to avoid awkwardness at work. Ms. Jaramillo has worked in publishing for more than 20 years, as an art director at Henry Holt and then as the director of children's books at Workman Publishing. Her husband is the executive art director at Simon & Schuster Children's Books. She knew many of the editors at major children's-book imprints and didn't want to appear to be cashing in on her connections.

Ms. Jaramillo, 50, started writing "Wonder" six years ago, right after she saw the disfigured girl in the ice-cream store. "I obsessed about it all day," she says. With two kids and a full-time job, she had little time to write, so she would wake up at midnight and write until three in the morning. She kept her odd nocturnal schedule for a year, working in a cluttered walk-in closet that serves as her home office.

"Wonder" opens as Auggie prepares to enroll in a Manhattan private school, after years of being home-schooled. He is devastated when he overhears his classmates making cruel remarks about him. "I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse," he says in the book's opening pages. The novel alternates between Auggie's narration and the confessions of those around him, including his big sister, Via, and his friends, Jack and Summer.

Bits of Ms. Jaramillo's life wound up on the page: the adoption of a dog named Bear, her mother's sudden death in the middle of the night, her job (Auggie's mother is a former children's book illustrator). She re-created the ice-cream store incident from Jack's point of view, as Jack remembers gasping in alarm when he first saw Auggie in front of an ice cream store when they were both 5.

"Wonder" wasn't an easy sell at first. Ms. Jaramillo's literary agent, Alyssa Eisner Henkin, says several publishers rejected the manuscript because they worried it would only appeal to a "special needs" niche. Knopf bought it and had modest expectations, printing just 22,500 copies in February 2012.

The audience proved much broader than anyone imagined. The novel has gone through 38 reprints, selling more than a million copies. Foreign rights sold in 36 countries, and six publishers overseas released adult editions of "Wonder." Requests for an author appearance poured in from schools, libraries and book clubs. Ms. Jaramillo is working on a spinoff to "Wonder," which will distill the novel's message into a book of precepts.

Lions Gate optioned the film rights and hired a screenwriter to adapt it. Impatient fans who can't wait for the film have already taken to YouTube with their own amateur movies based on the book.

A few months ago, Knopf released a collector's edition of "Wonder" that includes 10 pages of fan letters, emails and cards, many from adults. "I've now joined the increasing legions of grown men reduced to tears," a man named Nick Langley wrote. Another note came from Rosalind Gordon, a 91-year-old woman from Connecticut who emailed the author to say that the book brought back memories of being taunted in a lunchroom more than 77 years ago. "I understand what Auggie felt," she wrote. "I had no scars, but I was a skinny, vulnerable teenager."

Must-Reads for 8- or 80-Year-Olds

A sampling of books written for kids that adults will love too.

Flora & Ulysses

Enlarge Image

Kate DiCamillo

A quirky story about Flora, a cynical 10-year-old girl who befriends a squirrel with superpowers, including the ability to write poetry.

Navigating Early

Clare Vanderpool

At the end of World War II, two boys set out on the Appalachian Trail in an
adventure tale reminiscent of 'Huckleberry Finn.'

 Counting by 7s

Holly Goldberg Sloan

A 12-year-old genius and outsider counts by
sevens to cope with her parents' sudden death in
a car accident.

 Out of My Mind

Sharon Draper

A wrenching novel
narrated by a smart,
perceptive wheelchair-bound 11-year-old girl with
cerebral palsy.

from: Wall Street Journal

The Library Designed Like a Bookstore

by: Jeff

When the city of Almere, The Netherlands commissioned Concrete Architectural Associates to design their new public library, they asked for a library that was less like a library and more like a bookstore.

The result was a space that looks and feels like a high-end store but provides all the services of a modern library. The 16,000+ shelf-feet of books are arranged by lifestyle categories that would be at home in a bookstore (travel, health, etc), and all books are displayed cover out. This combination, Concrete says, fosters browsing and discovery, rather than the more conventional library system of finding a particular book’s cataloging number and then searching for it specifically in stack-like shelving.

Seating is also built into the shelving areas, much like I remember from my favorite Borders, along with study and work areas. A cafe sits next to the computer workstations, and the children’s area has big, movable foam pieces for seating and play.

Seems pretty great to me? Thoughts from heavy library users or librarians?

 

 

 

____________________________

from: BookRiot

Vancouver Public Library Named Best In The World

Vancouverites are bound to feel a surge of pride following yesterday's news that the Vancouver Public Library has been named the best in the world.

Tied for first place with Montreal, Vancouver's libraries are the cream of the crop according to a study by scholars at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf.

"Public Libraries in the Knowledge Society: Core Services of Libraries in Informational World Cities," conducted by researchers in the university's Department of Information Science, ranked the digital and physical libraries of 31 cities around the world.

The final tally was based on each city's overall score.

“Vancouver is a world-class city and we’re extremely pleased and humbled to be recognized as a top world-class library,” Vancouver Public Library chief librarian Sandra Singh said in a news release.

“It’s gratifying to be in such esteemed library company, and we’re excited to be playing a part in highlighting Vancouver on the world map through our work supporting an informed, engaged and connected city.”

Other cities in the top ranks include Chicago, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Toronto.


from: Huffington Post

A Literary Look Back at 2013

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, all 10 columnists look back at 2013 and answer: What was the most interesting literary development — welcome or lamentable — of the year? 

That something subtitled “Book 2” might be called the most interesting literary development of the year surprises me; also surprising to me is that something I feel comfortable terming “the most interesting literary development” includes a long section detailing the narrator’s attendance at “Rhythm Time,” a music class for infants. But Book 2 (of six) of the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard’s 3,600-page autobiographical novel of family life, “My Struggle,” reveals that the tome grows only more substantive, comical and artistically singular as it proceeds.
— Rivka Galchen

 

The first ever Lahore Literary Festival — not because it was the largest such festival in the world, or the most star-studded, and not because festivals are in and of themselves always good things, but rather because, at the sight of its 800-seat main auditorium filled repeatedly beyond capacity, every stair and aisle occupied in the giddiest breach of fire safety, and with so many hundreds more keen but unable to squeeze into this or that talk, most of them half my age or younger, I began to think that, laments to the contrary notwithstanding, the ranks of readers are in fact growing, in Pakistan and I suspect across Asia and Africa, and that this is a wonderful development, worth our taking a minute to cheer.
— Mohsin Hamid

 

Earlier this year, in a 6,400-word newspaper essay taken from his book “The Kraus Project,” Jonathan Franzen set out some of his objections to — and anxieties about — Internet culture. The article was many things: angry, mournful, brilliant, occasionally dotty. The widespread mockery it received was only depressingly crude. For the sin of casting doubt on the Truth and Beauty of Twitter, Franzen was swiftly branded a Luddite, an elitist, a pretentious old fart and a misogynist. The yakkers, braggers and bullies did themselves proud.
— Zoë Heller

 

I’ve been fascinated by the use of graphic novels and comic biographies to introduce important episodes in modern American social justice movements. These books almost certainly find readers who may be unfamiliar with — or might otherwise be uninterested in — some of the most influential activists of the 20th century. Two recent favorites: “March: Book 1,” a collaboration between Representative John Lewis of Georgia, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell, about Lewis’s lifelong work on civil rights; and Peter Bagge’s “Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story,” which translates Sanger’s colorful life and vital work on behalf of women’s reproductive rights into a dynamic, relatively upbeat biography. — Anna Holmes

 

For a while there, after the 2008 crash, it seemed possible that publishing would follow the music and journalism businesses into meltdown. The best literary news of 2013 is that, as Evan Hughes reported in The New Republic, books have not succumbed to the downward-spiraling revenue trend: Sales of books in all formats actually grew by almost $2 billion in the last five years, and e-books have turned out to complement printed books without replacing them. It’s easy to see why writers should be happy — they can continue to get paid for their work — but this is equally good news for readers, who still need publishers to find, foster and distribute good writing.
— Adam Kirsch

 

What’s with this new business of writers making public statements about their career moves? Last year, Philip Roth announced his decision to “retire” from writing fiction. This past June, Alice Munro declared she was closing up shop. Also this year, the estimable Lee Siegel used The New Yorker’s literary blog to tell the world that he wasn’t writing negative reviews any longer. All this is a bit meta for my taste — a further blurring of the crucial line between public and private, real and virtual that should distinguish authors’ meaningful utterances from chatter. Writers should publish (or not), rather than publicize. The rest is noise.
— Daniel Mendelsohn

 

Years ago, some recurring references in Cesare Pavese’s journals and Nietzsche’s writings alerted me to Giacomo Leopardi, and to his reputation as one of the 19th century’s greatest writers and thinkers. An American friend sent me an anthology in English, and I savored its brief selections, marveling at his iconoclastic and cosmopolitan mind, which seemed as much at home in India as in ancient Rome, and which was presciently skeptical of our own contemporary beliefs and superstitions about technology and progress. With the publication of his mammoth “Zibaldone” (a “hodgepodge of thoughts”) earlier this year, an intellectual feast is now available to Anglophone readers.
— Pankaj Mishra

 

Like most people, I suppose, I’m never thrilled to be asked to donate money, but I was pleased to learn that Archipelago Books recently launched a campaign, via Kickstarter, to support its worthy and invaluable mission: publishing books in translation (in this case, a hardcover edition of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s “My Struggle: Book 1”). The excellent online magazine Guernica has also turned to Kickstarter to raise funds, with successful results. It’s a great idea, and important for people to know about: Some of our most valuable cultural institutions can be kept alive if we all cook at home one night and divert the money saved to the literary cause.
— Francine Prose

 

Few writers’ unpublished work represents as huge a volume of their total output as Emily Dickinson’s. She published only 10 poems during her lifetime but left behind thousands more, some neatly sewn into handmade books, others scribbled in fragments on envelopes and candy wrappers and stray scraps of paper, at times festooned with dried flowers or clippings of illustrations. Happily, as of this year, many (not all) of the widely scattered contents of Dickinson’s archive have been gathered on a publicly accessible, searchable website. To wander at will through the papers of America’s most visionary and idiosyncratic poet is, in her words, to “dwell in Possibility — / A fairer house than Prose.”
— Dana Stevens

 

In early October, two psychology researchers reported that people who had read examples of literary fiction, as distinct from popular fiction and nonfiction, performed better on tests of empathy. At a time when reading literary fiction can seem as marginal an activity as there ever was, news of its measurable utility elicits feelings of vindication and relief. But our reactions are in some ways more telling than the study itself. So a short story by Don DeLillo proves more useful in at least one way than an article called “How the Potato Changed the World.” To pit DeLillo against the potato is absurd, not to mention unfair to the potato.
— Jennifer Szalai

from: NY Times

Literary Feuds of 2013

by: Rachel Arons

As 2013 draws to a close, we give you our second-annual look at the scuffles, controversies, and feisty debates that have helped keep the literary world lively over the past year. Among this year’s conflicts, presented here in rough chronological order, a few themes emerge: clashes over the function of online literary criticism, questions about gender and literature, and struggles over who controls an artist’s legacy and fortune. A few of the items show what happens when closed-mindedness leads to controversy; others stand as proof that people are still engaged and passionate about the state of literature. In several instances, Page-Turner decided to enter the fray.

Claire Messud and likeability. When Claire Messud’s book “The Woman Upstairs” came out, in the spring, Publishers Weekly asked her whether she would want to be “friends” with her novel’s protagonist, Nora, an angry and frustrated schoolteacher, whose outlook the interviewer called “grim.” “For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that?” Messud replied. “Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? … If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities.” Messud’s response—she later said on a New York Times Book Review podcast that she found the question “gendered”—prompted debates about the role of likeability in fiction, and the double standard by which female protagonists’ personalities are judged. Page-Turner held a forum on the issue, gathering thoughts from Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Franzen, Rivka Galchen, and other writers about the relationship between likeability and literary merit. “I have no problem with liking a character,” said Donald Antrim. “But if that’s the reason I’m reading, I’ll put the book down.”

Rachel Kushner and “mansplaining.” On the heels of the likeability debate came another one concerning female writers and double standards. In Tablet’s review of Rachel Kushner’s well-received novel “The Flamethrowers,” in May, Adam Kirsch critiqued the book for being “too cool” and “too stylish,” calling it a “macho novel”—even though it’s written by, and is about, a woman. “The novel itself is, if not ‘mansplaining,’ at least always insisting on its own mystique,” wrote Kirsch, referring to the term for a man speaking down to a woman. Shortly after the review appeared, Kushner addressed Kirsch’s remarks on Facebook. “There are various things going on here,” she wrote, “one of which may be the idea that women are supposed to write ‘like women’ … and secondly, a sense of the writer as self-consciously ‘cool.’ But, Adam Kirsch, with all due respect, there is nothing ‘cool’ about writing novels.” In a response to Kirsch at Flavorwire, Emily Temple wrote that his “underlying bias is—again, again!—that you can only be a writer or a female writer, and if you are the latter kind, all sorts of special filters and considerations may be applied.”

Women writers and only children. In June, the Atlantic ran an excerpt of the book “One and Only,” by Lauren Sandler, under the prescriptive headline “The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid.” In the article, Sandler noted that many of the female writers she most admires—Susan Sontag, Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion—had only one child, and discussed the freedom from domestic concerns that writers like Mary McCarthy and Elizabeth Hardwick enjoyed by limiting the size of their broods. “With one you can move,” Sandler quoted Alice Walker, another mother of one, “with more than one you’re a sitting duck.” The article spawned a lively debate about writers, women, and family size (Rebecca Mead weighed in at Page-Turner), beginning with a response by Zadie Smith in the comments section of Sandler’s piece. “I have two children,” she wrote. “Dickens had ten—I think Tolstoy did, too. Did anyone for one moment worry that those men were becoming too father-ish to be writer-esque? Does the fact that Heidi Julavitz, Nikita Lalwani, Nicole Krauss, Jhumpa Lahiri … have multiple children make them lesser writers? … The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.”

Jonathan Franzen vs. the modern world. In September, the Guardian ran an excerpt of Jonathan Franzen’s annotations for “The Kraus Project,” his book of translated essays by the Viennese critic Karl Kraus. The article, entitled “What’s Wrong With the Modern World,” showed Franzen in high cantankerous form, lambasting Jeff Bezos, bewailing our “media-saturated, technology-crazed, apocalypse-haunted historical moment,” and criticizing Salman Rushdie for having “succumbed” to Twitter. Rushdie responded on Twitter (“enjoy your ivory tower”), and other critics chimed in to take issue with Franzen’s chronic issue-taking. At Page-Turner, Maria Bustillos wrote about why Franzen pushes so many buttons, and suggested a cure for his alienation from the Internet: Come join us!

The Booker Prize and American vs. British literary awards. The Man Booker Prize, which was first awarded in 1969, has, in the past, always gone to the best English-language novel of the year from the U.K., Ireland, Zimbabwe, and British Commonwealth countries. When the chairman of the Booker Prize Foundation announced, in September, that, beginning in 2014, the award would be open to English-language novels from writers across the globe, many in Britain worried that the change would allow American literature to assume a worrisome cultural dominance. “It’s rather like a British company being taken over by some worldwide conglomerate,” the British author and television host Melvyn Bragg told the Times. In an article in the Guardian, the British novelist Philip Hensher, a past Booker finalist and judge, said that American novels were likely to win a disproportionate number of future awards “simply through an economic superpower exerting its own literary tastes.” At Page-Turner, Ian Crouch chronicled the American literary scene’s transition from “overlooked backwater” to major international player, and unearthed the whiff of “Old World snobbery” among the Booker isolationists.
 Harper Lee vs. the Monroe County Heritage Museum. The small museum in Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Alabama sells “To Kill a Mockingbird”-themed merchandise in its gift shop; its Web site URL is tokillamockingbird.com. This fall, Lee sued the museum, alleging that the institution has taken advantage of her legacy without offering compensation. The suit asserts that the Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, which takes place in the fictional town of Maycomb, was “inspired by Ms Lee’s home,” but that “the setting, plot and characters are products of Ms Lee’s imagination”; it also accuses the town of Monroeville of a “desire to capitalize” on her book’s fame (the town’s logo features a mockingbird and the cupola of the local courthouse). The museum has called the lawsuit “false” and “meritless,” saying that the gift shop generated only twenty-eight thousand dollars last year and used “every penny” of that money to further its mission of education and historical preservation.
The battle over Gore Vidal’s estate. The year before he died, in 2012, Gore Vidal altered his will and bequeathed his entire estate to Harvard University. Last month, Tim Teeman reported in the Times that several of Vidal’s relatives are now challenging that will, saying that Vidal was not mentally sound when he wrote it, and that he had promised parts of his fortune—which is estimated at thirty-seven million dollars—to them. Most surprising about the article was the fact that Vidal’s nephew, the film director and screenwriter Burr Steers, and half sister, Nina Straight, used their interview with the Times to imply that Vidal had engaged in, as Straight put it, “Jerry Sandusky acts” during his lifetime—a detail that quickly spread to other news outlets.

Buzzfeed Books and negative criticism. The recurring debate about the value of negative book reviews flared up again last month, when Buzzfeed—which launched a books section on its Web site over the summer—hired Isaac Fitzgerald, a co-owner of the Rumpus and former director of publicity at McSweeney’s, as its first books editor. In an interview with the Poynter Institute about the new position, Fitzgerald said that he planned to publish book reviews on the site, but not negative ones. “Why waste breath talking smack about something?” he said. “You see it in so many old media-type places, the scathing takedown rip.” The comments earned Fitzgerald taunting criticism from Tom Scocca at Gawker, an anti-snobbery defense from Michelle Dean, and a pro-niceness Op-Ed by Bob Garfield in the New York Times. (Last week, Scocca followed up with a lengthy anti-niceness treatise, “On Smarm.”) At Page-Turner, Lee Siegel wrote about laying down his hatchet, and Maria Bustillos parsed the various reactions while encouraging “honest and serious engagement” with the ideas in books, niceness notwithstanding. “When real engagement is present,” she wrote, “no snark is too sneering; without it, no praise is worth a sou.”

Deborah Solomon vs. the Rockwell Family In her five-hundred page biography of Norman Rockwell, “American Mirror,” which came out last month (and was reviewed by Peter Schjeldahl on Page-Turner), Deborah Solomon—a former columnist for the New York Times Magazine and frequent contributor to the New York Times—argues for the importance of Rockwell’s work, which has often been dismissed by the art world as low-brow schmaltz. She also implies that Rockwell may have been gay, writing that the artist “demonstrated an intense need for emotional and physical closeness with men,” and that his marriages may have been a strategy for “controlling his homoerotic desires.” Though Solomon is careful to note that there is no evidence that Rockwell ever had sex with men, her suggestions about Rockwell’s sexuality have enraged Rockwell’s surviving family members, who released a statement denouncing Solomon’s “false and unsubstantiated” claims. In an interview with the Times, Rockwell’s granddaughter, Abigail Rockwell, said that the book’s portrait of her grandfather as a “closeted homosexual” is “dangerously becoming fact.” “She layers the whole biography with these innuendos,” Abigail said. “These things she’s writing about Norman Rockwell are simply not true.” Solomon, who devoted only a tiny portion of her book to the question of Rockwell’s sexuality, said that she’d prefer to keep the focus on his work.

Correction: This post originally mischaracterized the origin of the word “mansplaining” and has been adjusted.

from: The New Yorker

Libraries reinvent themselves for the 21st Century

by: Tom Mullaney

For centuries, the defining role of the library has been as a repository of books. Now, in the 21st century, the library faces perhaps its most momentous challenge: Americans are moving away increasingly from the printed page to digital screens for information and communication.

Library leaders nationwide are adapting to this shift by reimagining the library as an engaged community center. The role of librarians is being re-branded to reflect their expertise as content curators and trusted navigators in an ever-expanding ocean of information — in whatever format it may exist.

Core issues — including technology integration, new services, institutional identity and right-sizing collections (consider the flap over New York Public Library’s proposed redesign) — are under active review. Last month, the American Library Association announced it had received a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to establish a Center for the Future of Libraries.

What will the nation’s 9,000 public libraries be like in 2020 and beyond? Starting this summer, when the ALA hosted its annual conference here in Chicago — its theme was “Transforming Libraries, Ourselves” — Printers Row Journal began examining this question. Visits to several new and recently renovated Chicagoland libraries, reports from other cities, and interviews with library directors offer clues.

Space

Walk into Arlington Heights Memorial Library, whose renovations were completed this year, and you'll see an expansive, open space. Several dividing walls have been removed. One section of the library, Marketplace, mimics a supermarket aisle, with 20,000 books, DVDs and music CDs. Books are divided by category — Cookbooks, Health, Jobs & Money and Trending — and shelved with covers, rather than spines, facing out.

The attractive display is so popular, reports library executive director Jason Kuhl, that although it occupies only 10 percent of floor space, Marketplace accounts for more than one-quarter of the library's 2.6 million circulation. "It's much easier to find a cookbook here than under its 641.5 (Dewey Decimal System) classification," Kuhl says.

This is just one example of how libraries have begun to rethink library design. Striking architecture — LEED-certified, energy efficient with green roofs — and an expanded portfolio of practices that broaden the library's community impact are central. For cities without the funds to build new libraries from scratch, a promising solution lies in repurposing abandoned and vacant commercial properties. The city of McAllen, Texas, purchased a vacant 123,000-square-foot former Walmart that MSR, a Minneapolis architectural firm, transformed into a new main library.

In existing libraries, former storage areas and the elimination of stacks of reference books and magazine back issues have enabled architects to give old spaces new life. A study of the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicated that 59 percent of library users want more comfortable reading areas. Glenview Public Library and Arlington Heights Memorial Library both feature living room-like spaces with plush chairs and fireplaces.

Another major trend in library design, digital studios, began as a way to entice a younger, digitally savvy audience. Now, library directors report, adults are flocking to them to convert old photographs and vinyl discs to digital formats and to create podcasts. Local businesses are using studios to make marketing videos.

Traditionally, libraries have served two populations: young children and adults. Teenagers were a lost demographic.

"That's a group that libraries tend to lose, especially when they turn 16," says Kuhl. "It's a group that wants to create their own space, which is one thing that was keeping them from the library. They never felt welcome."

In addition to digital studios, libraries nationwide have begun to offer dedicated, tech-rich teen spaces. Arlington's library has The Hub, a large glassed-in room where teens study in groups, play video games or design products with a 3-D printer. The Vortex is Bolingbrook's similar space in the Fountaindale Public Library. Staff at both sites report the spaces are packed every afternoon after school.

The New York Public Library opened its first full-floor dedicated teen space in a branch last year. The design, which won a 2013 American Institute of Architects/American Library Association Building Award, converted 4,400 square feet of unused space into a colorful environment with bleacher-style seating, akin to what project architect Lyn Rice calls "a clubhouse where teens can be themselves and a little louder."

The Chicago Public Library has its YouMedia teen showcase at Harold Washington Library Center and four branches. Library Commissioner Brian Bannon said YouMedia will debut in six additional branches next year along with 12 roving pop-up venues around the city.

Chicago's Harold Washington Library had the misfortune to open in 1991, just before the start of the digital era. The floor plan thus follows a traditional spatial arrangement for furnishings, reading areas and book display. Bannon said a spatial study is underway to introduce "some experiments" — including the newly installed Innovation Lab, which features a 3-D printer — and to create a more contemporary environment.

"We are looking at ways in which to align our services with what our patrons need," he says.

Library staff are working with IDEO, a "human-centered" design practice, to update the building's functional program. This fall, staff held the Library Redesign Challenge, a pop-up display in the lobby that asked patrons what changes they'd like to see. Among user suggestions were better Wi-Fi, lounge areas with couches, more enclosed spaces and "nooks everywhere with good lamps."

Services

A Pew Internet and American Life Project study this year found that 91 percent of Americans 16 years or older say public libraries are important to their communities. Yet just 22 percent say they know most of the services their libraries offer now, and 31 percent said they know little or nothing about such offerings.

Libraries are abuzz with services that go beyond traditional fare to offer more active programming for patrons. The title of a recent talk at the Wisconsin Library Association sums up the new philosophy in programming: "From Repository to Experience: Library Becomes a Verb."

New initiatives include Glenview's drive-up window for customers' pick-up orders; Oak Park, Skokie and Arlington public libraries' off-site book discussions; and Arlington's tech "petting zoo," which allows patrons to test various models of computer tablets.

Chicago Public Library recently rolled out several new services. All of its 80 branches offer Teacher in the Library, an after-school program to aid students with homework. In the summer, Chicago instituted the Summer Learning Challenge to counteract students' usual "summer slide" after school lets out: 71,000 students read a reported 2.1 million books.

Barbara Stripling, president of the American Library Association, says these initiatives mark "a huge shift in turning libraries into learning centers." Many who lost their jobs in the 2008 crash started their own companies from home. Arlington Heights Memorial Library's response was to open its Business Center. Library director Kuhl says entrepreneurs and business owners come for coaching and guidance on financial, marketing and tech matters that they couldn't otherwise afford. The Harold Washington Library Center offers a similar program with its recently launched Geeks in Residence program.

Libraries here and nationally are adding more meeting rooms for patrons to use for business appointments, community gatherings or private study. Glenview's community rooms are separate from the library area so meetings can be held after library hours.

Both suburban libraries feature computer labs where patrons learn tech skills. Arlington programs more than 50 tech classes each month on Microsoft Office and social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter. Standard computer use is down slightly, reports Kuhl, but tech classes are booming.

"It's more about learning the tool than just providing the tool," he said.

Such an attitude reflects an emerging commitment by libraries to lifelong learning. The fast pace of new knowledge, college's high cost, plus the need to gain or maintain professional skills, will drive the demand for more adult courses now through 2020. A current hot topic among librarians involves introducing massive open online courses, or MOOCs. Margaret Donnellan Todd, County of Los Angeles Public Librarian, recently told a professional audience that she has put MOOCs into the library's new strategic plan.

"In the future, we see the library becoming a local meeting place for people enrolled in specific MOOCs," Todd said. "We also believe we may offer group MOOC viewing — perhaps for literacy-based classes, GED prep and courses from Gage's Ed2Go platform."

Storytelling

Librarians have been touting their shift to community learning centers for about a decade, yet public perception lags behind, said Bannon, the Chicago Public Library commissioner.

"The challenge is that so many people perceive the brand of a public library solely with the checking out of a physical object," he said, noting that the library system is the city's most visited cultural institution, registering 12 million visitors annually. "Libraries of the future will be less about stuff we are providing than about how we are connecting with our communities."

And yet a recent Urban Libraries Council report argued that libraries' "stature as civic engagement leaders is far from confirmed." According to the report, libraries need to change both how they view themselves and how community stakeholders' view them.

Two responses the library profession has mounted to meet this challenge are Edge, a $5.6 million tech initiative supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and California State Library's Story Map.

Stacey Aldrich, California's former state librarian and currently deputy secretary of education and commissioner for Pennsylvania libraries, and Michael Margolis, an adviser who teaches "transformational storytelling," unveiled an illustrated story map at the state library conference November 2012. Although libraries are reportedly the most trusted government bodies, Margolis said, that esteem doesn't always translate into public financial support. The map's introduction states that it was designed to "help librarians reframe community conversations taking place regarding the compelling ways libraries are adapting to the 21st century."

Edge, a more ambitious undertaking being tested for national launch next month, will develop the first set of national benchmarks to improve public access to technology services and demonstrate libraries' community impact. The Edge grant was a response to the field's demand for "a tool or resource to capture and explain the services they were providing," according to Chris Jowaisas, the Gates Foundation's senior program officer for global libraries. He noted that, as more areas of national life — taxes, employment, health care — move online, libraries need better research to guide their interactions with technology and local communities.

Testing has been underway for the last year in seven state library systems nationwide, including Chicago. After completing the assessment, libraries will receive recommendations and resources to make informed decisions.

The Edge tool kit is designed to improve the technology services a library provides, encourage sharing of best practices among library peers nationwide, and enhance engagement with community decision-makers, according to an Edge statement.

After Edge's rollout, the library association's new Center for the Future of Libraries plans to host forums with assorted library stakeholders to address common issues. A library summit is planned for May, said library association president Stripling. Fifty thought leaders will be invited, half from the library community.

"We will pay attention to what and how we measure value," she said. "Part of what we're doing is figuring out how we can be accountable to our funders."

Tom Mullaney is a Chicago freelance journalist.

21st century library services

If you haven't been to your local library in a year or more, it's time to go. Here's a glimpse of some of the relatively new services available at local libraries.
→Digital studios: Arlington Heights Memorial Library, Fountaindale Public Library (Bolingbrook), Skokie Public Library
→Dedicated teen zones: Arlington Heights, Fountaindale (Bolingbrook), Chicago Public Library (various locations), Evanston Public Library, Glenview Public Library, Oak Park Public Library, Skokie
→Conference rooms: Arlington Heights (14), Chicago (varies by location), Evanston (14), Glenview (8), Oak Park (5), Skokie (16)
→Computer and social media classes: Arlington, Glenview, Oak Park, Skokie
→Small business/technology centers: Arlington, Chicago, Skokie
→3-D printers: Arlington, Fountaindale (Bolingbrook), Chicago, Evanston

For details, visit: 
Arlington Heights Memorial Library at ahml.info.
Fountaindale Public Library (Bolingbrook) at fountaindale.org.
Chicago Public Library at chipublib.org.
Evanston Public Library at epl.org.
Glenview Public Library at glenviewpl.org.
Oak Park Public Library at oppl.org.
Skokie Public Library at skokie.lib.il.us.

from: Chicago Tribune

In Qatar, Booksellers Face Book-by-Book Censorship Bottleneck

by: Roger Tagholm

DOHA: Say what you like about Gulf countries, they do know how to put up a good tower. Doha, the capital of Qatar, is a perfect example. It’s an architect’s paradise with each structure seemingly trying to outdo its neighbor — to be taller, or more angular, or more unusual, shinier, fatter, thinner, than the one that’s just been completed. This competition seems to extend right through the region, with Sharjah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar each watching the other to see what its neighbor has produced: it’s as if one day there will be a giant ‘bling-off’ to work out who is the shiniest, fattest, thinnest, tallest, pointiest of them all.

In Doha, where the 24th Doha International Book Fair was held last week (and I was a guest) the effect is breathtaking and impressive. The Corniche area in downtown, looking out to sea, is memorable. Yet it also highlights some of the contradictions of this part of the world. These gleaming towers represent huge (literally) forward vision — a vision that extends to all manner of initiatives to boost reading among the young, and any number of digitization and archiving initiatives – but these ideas sit at odds with some of the other systems that are in place.

It’s not just the fact of censorship — it’s more the way the censorship works. Speak to any bookseller – and, sadly, there aren’t many in Doha – and they all tell you the same story. At the moment, retailers have to submit one copy of every title they receive to the Ministry of Culture for approval, even if the same book has already been approved for another retailer. It’s an Orwellian situation that is not without a comic side. “We’re still waiting for clearance for The Gruffalo even though it’s for sale elsewhere,” said Richard Peers-Weaver, Purchasing Manager of WHSmith, with a weary smile. “We have around 70% of our stock still tied up at the Ministry awaiting approval. It’s very frustrating, particularly when we have customers coming in and expecting to see certain things.”

Like other retailers, Smiths employs an Arabic speaking gofer as a liaison with the Ministry where, as with so much in the Gulf, expediting a service is all about building relationships. A good deal of self-censorship takes place, with buyers not even taking something in the first place because they know it won’t get through, and everyone recognizing the sensitivities in areas you would expect: sexual content, alcohol, blasphemy, gay material.

Booksellers seem perfectly understanding about this – indeed, they respect the views of the nation in which they are trading – but they are gritting their teeth at the camel’s pace slowness of the current checking system for titles. It also seems as if the Ministry of Culture itself is overrun with books, rather like a scene from one of those early William Boyd novels about hapless African states (which Qatar certainly isn’t). Put simply, the titles are coming in faster than they can be checked and it seems like they don’t have enough staff.

Which is why there was some good news just last week. Emma House, Director of Publisher Relations at the UK Publishers Association, who has been involved with the UK Guest of Honor scheme, met with the Minister of Culture, Dr Hamad Al Kawari, and raised the concerns over the approval process.

Speaking to Publishing Perspectives at the fair, Dr Al Kawari said: “We talked about it today and we have solved the problem. There will be no more checking more than once. We have to avoid the bureaucracy. I’m sure there is a technological solution. It will be easy.”

Of course, as ever with such things, there is a touch of ‘well, let’s see,’ or ‘inshallah’ (God willing) if you like. But at least some sounds have been made in a positive direction, and it does seem as if what is required is a web solution– somewhere booksellers could check whether a title had been given clearance, rather in the way the Booksellers Association in the UK used to list release dates of embargoed titles on its site.

It’s worth noting that, rather than seeming the faceless “man from the Ministry,” Dr Al Kawari is urbane and good-humored, certainly interested in books and keen to talk. He is currently reading Rumi’s Forty Rules of Love, Segolene Royale’s Cette belle idee du courage and a photographic study Sands of Arabia, which looks at the Gulf before the discovery of oil.

He has also had two books of his own published, one a collection of his newspaper articles and the other his dissertation on political science, a subject he studied at the State University of New York.

As for censorship, it seems it’s not as restrictive as the authorities might like. Ten minutes wandering the aisles at the fair and it was easy to find Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden, her famous study of women’s sexual fantasies, and a novel called Tease by Immodest Blaize, the cover of which shouts: ‘Packed full of glamour, revenge and oodles of sex’.

It wouldn’t have got past the Ministry, but titles arriving for the book fair don’t have to submitted – just one of those little loopholes that can make a few days here so fascinating….

from: Publishing Perspectives

The best literary spats of 2013

From Bret Easton Ellis's denouncement of Alice Munro to the Team Nigella backlash, John Dugdale looks back on the writers' rows of the year.
by: John Dugdale

Hilary Mantel v Daily Mail

After discussing various queens in her LRB lecture "Royal Bodies", Hilary Mantel (who had just collected another prize, the Costa book of the year) came to the Duchess of Cambridge. In contrast to Diana ("more royal than the family she joined"), she argued, Kate seemed "a shop window mannequin" apparently "designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile … precision-made, machine-made". Ripped out of context in the Mail as an "astonishing attack" on the nation's darling and heir-bearer, this made for a fine brouhaha, with leader writers, trolls and Messrs Cameron and Miliband doing most of the Mantel-bashing. But the Mail itself staged a debate between Julie Burchill (defending Mantel and calling Kate "Diana Lite") and AN Wilson. Mantel's defenders elsewhere included Sam Leith and Hadley Freeman.

Man Booker prize v British authors

After unveiling the 2013 prize's shortlist, Booker organisers were forced, by a newspaper leak, into a hastily arranged announcement that the 2014 prize would welcome all UK‑published fiction in English. Reaction from British authors was overwhelmingly hostile, with AS Byatt, Julian Barnes, Melvyn Bragg, Jim Crace, Antonia Fraser, Linda Grant, Philip Hensher, Howard Jacobson and Jeanette Winterson all anti. Among leading novelists, only AL Kennedy and Eleanor Catton came out in favour including Americans and others and publishers and agents (having US novelists on their lists too) tended to be pro or neutral. Meanwhile, the side-feud between the Booker and the new Folio prize (which from the outset had said Americans would be eligible) continued, as the rival award issued a statement* expressing "surprise" and faux-concern that the Booker had decided to "abandon its parameters", ie possibly mischievously positing an identity crisis. Booker types insisted, to widespread disbelief, that the move's timing (and its new "e-academy") had nothing to do with the upstart award.

Jonathan Franzen v Amazon, Twitter and Rushdie

Perhaps because it embraced the entirety of the contemporary west, Franzen's denunciation in a Guardian essay of "technoconsumerism" – which distracts us from impending disaster by enslaving us to online shopping (with Amazon's Jeff Bezos called a "horseman of the apocalypse") and social media – offered little for his many critics to get a handle on – except for his criticism of Salman Rushdie for "succumbing" to Twitter, and a follow-up radio interview on the Today programme criticising publishers for requiring authors to tweet. @SalmanRushdie pointed out that he, Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Nathan Englander and Gary Shteyngart were all avid tweeters, and told him to "enjoy your ivory tower" (although Rushdie has since announced a social media sabbatical). Other writers on Twitter, such as @sophiehannahCB1, joined in, with the most sarcastic reaction coming from @Tao_Lin, who seemingly mocked Franzen's apocalyptic scenario with a tweet urging his followers: "INVASION RED ALERT RED ALERT MAN THE BATTLE STATIONS".

Bret Easton Ellis v everyone

In a year of largely anaemic American spats, only the American Psycho author fulfilled predictions that Twitter might revive the dying art of feuding. What makes Easton Ellis so widely disliked, besides apparent misogyny, is his penchant for attacking revered figures who are either dead or elderly and frail: David Foster Wallace was slated early on in 2013, and @BretEastonEllis wasted no time, after Alice Munro's Nobel prize was announced, in denouncing her as "completely overrated … The Nobel is a joke and has been for ages". Luckily for other writers, his focus now is on films: a key target this year was British screenwriter Kelly Marcel, who got the gig he wanted as adapter of 50 Shades of Grey.

Nigella critics v Team Nigella

As with Hilary Mantel, criticising or ridiculing the bestselling author and TV cook was largely a task for news editors, trolls and columnists, but some of them were also writers of books: the Telegraph's Allison Pearson, for example, took a sceptical line early on ("No one envies the Domestic Goddess now") in the trial of two former aides to Lawson and Charles Saatchi. Since Lawson gave evidence, authors have increasingly lined up on the other side. The Observer writer and novelist, Elizabeth Day, hailed her "cool and confident" performance. Salman Rushdie was photographed dining with her, after tweeting "the courage, clarity, truth-telling and dignity of @Nigella_Lawson [are] in stark contrast to Saatchi's mendacious bullying. Good riddance!". Other supporters have included @stephenfry, @caitlinmoran and @lenadunham ("she could blow rails off my face and I'd still be #TeamNigella").

from: The Guardian

Out of Print, Maybe, but Not Out of Mind

by: David Streitfeld

SAN FRANCISCO — Books are dead. Long live the book.

Even as the universe of printed matter continues to shrivel, the book — or at least some of its best-known features — is showing remarkable staying power online. The idea is apparently embedded so deeply in the collective unconsciousness that no one can bear to leave it behind.

 

Amazon brags that on its latest e-reader, “the pages are virtually indistinguishable from a physical book.” It recently introduced the Page Flip feature, which mimics the act of skimming. Bookshelves in living rooms may be becoming a thing of the past, but order an e-book from iBooks and Apple promises it “downloads to your bookshelf” immediately.

 

Some functions of physical books that seem to have no digital place are nevertheless being retained. An author’s autograph on a cherished title looked as if it would become a relic. But Apple just applied for a patent to embed autographs in electronic titles. Publishers still commission covers for e-books even though their function — to catch the roving eye in a crowded store — no longer exists.

 

What makes all this activity particularly striking is what is not happening. Some features may be getting a second life online, but efforts to reimagine the core experience of the book have stumbled. Dozens of publishing start-ups tried harnessing social reading apps or multimedia, but few caught on.

 

Social Books, which let users leave public comments on particular passages and comment on passages selected by others, became Rethink Books and then faltered. Push Pop Press, whose avowed aim was to reimagine the book by mixing text, images, audio, video and interactive graphics, was acquired by Facebook in 2011 and heard from no more. Copia, another highly publicized social reading platform, changed its business model to become a classroom learning tool.

 

The latest to stumble is Small Demons, which explores the interrelationship among books. Users who were struck by the Ziegfeld Follies in “The Great Gatsby,” for instance, could follow a link to the dancers’ appearance in 67 other books. Small Demons said it would close this month without a new investor.

 

“A lot of these solutions were born out of a programmer’s ability to do something rather than the reader’s enthusiasm for things they need,” said Peter Meyers, author of “Breaking the Page,” a forthcoming look at the digital transformation of books. “We pursued distractions and called them enhancements.”

 

With the new era so slow to arrive, some experts in the future of the book seem to be getting a little weary of the topic.

 

Bob Stein, a pioneering digital innovator, wrote recently that “people often ask me to expound on the ‘future of the book.’ ” Since Mr. Stein is founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book, one might think he would expect and even welcome this. He does not. “Frankly,” he wrote, “I can’t stand the question.”

 

There is even a movement of sorts proclaiming that the most innovative delivery mechanisms for stories is happening not online, but in physical books. Its manifesto is printed on the cover of a new volume, “Fully Booked: Ink on Paper: Design & Concepts for New Publications,” mocking the notion of the Internet as the latest thing. “The Internet is not dead,” the cover proclaims. “Digital will not disappear. Print will not kill the web. It’s easy to forget that when physical books were invented, news websites ignored them, and then laughed at them as a niche pursuit for geeks.”

 

Books have come full circle. For much of the 20th century, they were regarded as one of the triumphs of design: simple to use, cheap to produce, nearly indestructible, highly portable, energy-efficient. They were the best means of transmitting knowledge the human race had ever known.

 

Then came the Internet. Books suddenly seemed in need of an overhaul.

 

“The physical book had become a pretty limited thing, dead to design outside of its cover,” said Peter Brantley, who runs Books in Browsers, a technology conference in San Francisco. “Then all the constraints were gone.”

 

The notion that books require too much time to read dates back, at least, to midcentury entrepreneurial operations like Reader’s Digest and CliffsNotes, which offered up predigested texts. So some start-ups chose a basic approach: Take a text and break it up.

 

Safari Flow, a service from Safari Books, offers chapters of technical manuals for a $29 monthly subscription fee. Inkling does the same with more consumer-oriented titles like cookbooks. If you want only the chapter on pasta, you can buy it for $4.99 instead of having to buy the whole book.

 

Citia is a New York start-up with a much more ambitious approach. Working in collaboration with an author, Citia editors take a nonfiction book and reorganize its ideas onto digital cards that can be read on different devices and sent through social networks.

 

“The ability to commit 10 or 15 hours to a book is going to be an increasingly fraught decision,” said Mr. Meyers, who came across Citia in the course of his research and found it so intriguing that he became its vice president for editorial and content innovation. “So we need ways to liberate the ideas trapped inside them.”

One of the first books given the Citia treatment was Kevin Kelly’s “What Technology Wants.” Material directly from the book is in quotation marks and the author is referred to in the third person, which lends a somewhat academic distance to the summaries. Sections of the book are summarized on one card, then the reader can drill down into subsections on cards hidden underneath.

The author liked the result. “I was stunned by the amount of work Citia did,” Mr. Kelly said. “They wrote a digest of the entire book, idea by idea.”

 

And yet, he wrote “What Technology Wants” to present his ideas. If they were going to be reorganized by someone else, what was the point of writing the original book? Maybe he should have written the book on cards in the first place.

 

The very thoroughness of the Citia approach might be discouraging other authors from signing up. Since its debut in the spring of 2012, Citia has done cards for only four books. It recently branched out into other media with track notes for Snoop Lion, the rapper formerly known as Snoop Dogg, and is negotiating with advertising and talent agencies, financial service firms and consumer product companies.

 

“All companies are becoming media companies,” Mr. Meyers said. “They all need to tell stories about their products.”

 

What to label these stories is another question. The Internet by its nature breaks down borders and unfreezes text. Put a book online and set it free to grow and shrink with new arguments, be broken up and reassembled as readers demand, and it might be only nostalgia that calls it by its old name.

 

Some formats, after all, simply outlive their need. CD-ROMs — compact discs that contained multimedia applications — were thought to herald the future of storytelling, but that business model did not survive the rise of the web. Video arcades disappeared when home computers became sophisticated gaming platforms.

 

“We will continue to recognize books as books as they migrate to the Internet, but our understanding of storytelling will inevitably expand,” Mr. Brantley said. Among the presentations at Books in Browsers this fall: “A Book Isn’t a Book Isn’t a Book” and “The Death of the Reader.”

 

Much of the design innovation at the moment, Mr. Brantley believes, is not coming from publishers, who must still wrestle with delivering both digital and physical books. Instead it is being developed by a tech community that “doesn’t think about stories as the end product. Instead, they think about storytelling platforms that will enable new forms of both authoring and reading.”

 

He cited the enormous success of Wattpad, a Canadian start-up that advertises itself as the world’s largest storytelling community. There are 10 million stories on the site. That is enough to fill a million — for lack of a better term — books.

from: NYTimes

Who says children's books can't be great literature

The University of Kent did. But any serious reader should know that this is preposterous
by: SF Said

It's been a strange few days. On Friday afternoon, I uploaded a screenshot of a university website to Twitter. A few minutes later, it went viral; over the weekend, the internet went ballistic. On Monday, the university changed its website.

It was all started by Richard Cooper (@RichardHCooper), a University of Kent graduate who was considering taking a creative writing course there. But he was troubled by a statement on their site.

"We love great literature," it said. "We are excited by writing that changes the reader, and ultimately – even if it is in a very small way – the world. We love writing that is full of ideas, but that is also playful, funny and affecting. You won't write mass-market thrillers or children's fiction on our programmes. You'll be encouraged to look deep inside yourself for your own truth and your own experiences, and also outside yourself at the contemporary world around you. Then you'll work out how to turn what you find into writing that has depth, risk and originality but is always compelling and readable."

By the time I saw this, a number of children's writers including Philip Reeve had already protested. At first, the University couldn't see the problem. I tweeted the screenshot so everyone could see it and judge for themselves. It was picked up by the Guardian Children's Books feed, then by writers such as Patrick Ness and Michael Rosen, and is still being retweeted every few minutes, often accompanied by expressions of outrage and dismay.

It's not hard to understand why. The statement sets up a rhetorical system that places "great literature" in opposition to children's fiction and thrillers, making them mutually exclusive. It implies that children's fiction cannot be great literature, and appears to belittle children's fiction as a form that by definition cannot do the things great literature can.

And yet, by every criterion listed, children's fiction is entirely capable of being great literature. Indeed, if you're looking for writing that changes the reader and the world, there may be no better form. I work with the CLPE (Centre For Literacy in Primary Education). I've visited countless schools and seen for myself the life-changing power of children's books. It's impossible to overstate the transformative effects they can have upon individual readers – and collectively, across generations, upon the world.

I already suspected this from my own experience. The books I read as a child shaped my deepest beliefs. When I was at university, my friends and I were thrilled to discover that our childhood favourites seemed even more powerful than we remembered. This was true of classic authors such as George MacDonald, Rudyard Kipling, E Nesbit and Tove Jansson; or 1960s writers like Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Peter Dickinson and Ursula Le Guin.

In the work of such authors, we found stories that were compelling and readable; that had depth, risk and originality; that offered all the imaginative space and possibilities we wanted from literature. Garner and Cooper made connections between ancient myth and contemporary reality; Dickinson dealt with human origins, with politics and war; Le Guin with the interconnectedness of all life. These books were tackling the biggest ideas and questions imaginable.

That was the kind of literature I wanted to write, and that was when I made the choice to do it in children's fiction. I may or may not succeed, but I've never doubted the form itself. That's why I found the Kent statement so hard to take.

The twitstorm showed me how many other people share my feelings. Authors, critics, publishers, teachers, booksellers, librarians, readers around the world: suddenly, there were hundreds of voices expressing exactly these beliefs. I'm far from the only one enthusing about Philip Pullman and JK Rowling, David Almond and Meg Rosoff, Malorie Blackman and Jacqueline Wilson, MT Anderson and Sally Gardner …

The list could go on. But Kent has now apologised for its statement, changed it, and asked for children's literature recommendations. If you have some, please tweet them @UniKentWriting. I'll be following them on Twitter, but now I think it's time to get back to actually writing books.

from: Guardian

E-Readers Mark A New Chapter In The Developing World

by: Lynn Neary

A former Amazon executive who helped Jeff Bezos turn shopping into a digital experience has set out to end illiteracy. David Risher is now the head of Worldreader, a nonprofit organization that brings e-books to kids in developing countries through Kindles and cellphones.

Risher was traveling around the world with his family when he got the idea for Worldreader. They were doing volunteer work at an orphanage in Ecuador when he saw a building with a big padlock on the door. He asked a woman who worked there what was inside, and she said, "It's the library."

"I asked, 'Why is it locked up?' And she said it took too long for books to get there," says Risher. "[The books] came by boat and by the time they got there, they were uninteresting to the kids. And I said, 'Well, can we take a look inside? I'd like to see this.' And she said, 'I think I've lost the key.' "

This, Risher thought, can be fixed. If it's so hard to give kids access to physical books, why not give them e-books and the digital devices they would need to read them? Risher had joined Amazon at its beginning, helping it grow into the dominant online retailer it is today. He felt he could apply some of the lessons he had learned at Amazon to the problem of illiteracy.

"We were really trying to change people's behavior, but once that started to happen, of course it took off because it was convenient and because the prices were lower," says Risher. "In a way, we are trying to do something very similar here. ... Here's a culture where reading has never really gotten a chance to take off because the access to books is so limited. So we make it easy for people to get access to books and we try to put books on the e-readers that are appealing to kids and interesting to teachers so that we can, over time, help people shift a little in their behavior and their mindset."

Working through schools and local governments, Worldreader launched its first program in Ghana and is now in nine African countries. As of last month, Worldreader says, it has put more than 700,000 e-books in the hands of some 12,000 children.

Donations from corporate partners and individuals help pay for the Kindles. E-books are donated by authors and publishers in both Western countries and the countries where the schools are located. Risher says it may seem counterintuitive to use e-readers in schools in poor, developing countries, but it actually makes a lot of sense.

"[E-readers] turn out to be remarkably well-adapted to the developing world, in part because they don't take very much power, they are very portable. It's almost like having an entire library in your hand and, like all technology, they get less and less expensive over time," Risher says.

A study of the Worldreaders pilot program in Ghana was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Tony Bloome, a senior education technology specialist with USAID, says the initial results were mostly positive.

"We definitely found that it provided more access to materials. That wasn't surprising at all," says Bloome. "I think kids' appreciation and use of technology is somewhat universal in terms of the excitement — so much so [that] the kids would sit on their devices because they were concerned they would be stolen. And that led to one of the challenges we had in terms of breakage."

Worldreader has responded to the breakage problem with tougher e-readers and training for students and teachers in how to handle them. Even with the breakage problem, though, the USAID study found the program to be cost effective. It also found that kids who had never used a computer before learned to use e-readers quickly and it didn't take them long to find games and music. But Bloome says that their excitement was contagious.

"Especially with the group that was able to take the e-readers home, basically the young people became rock stars in regards to being able to introduce their parents or other kids in the community to e-readers," he says. "But really focused on content, which is really exciting. It's about the provision of reading materials."

Bloome says USAID is still assessing how the access to books is affecting learning in primary grades. In the meantime, Worldreader is moving on to smaller devices with a program that created an e-reader app for cellphones used in developing countries. Risher says the potential for getting access to books on cellphones is huge.

"It really is the best way to get books into people's hands where the physical infrastructure isn't very good, the roads are bad, gas costs too much ... but you can beam books through the cellphone network just like you can make a phone call — and that's really the thing that changes kids' lives."
Risher says he knows Worldreader alone won't solve illiteracy, but he hopes it can be a catalyst for change.

from: NPR

Fixed pricing project gets green light in Quebec

Nearly 16 months after the Québec publishing industry began its quest for fixed pricing on new titles, they finally got what they wanted...sort of. The Minister of Culture and Communications, Maka Kotto, announced earlier this week that the Québec government would go ahead with a planned law, after the holidays, that would fix a 10% discount limit on new releases for the first nine months after publication. Kotto said that the measure would help "protect Québec's identity and culture" and that books were not to be "treated like any other commodity."

The measure, if implemented, would be applied to paper and digital books. However, the Québec government did not say how it plans to apply the measure to international online resellers. The ALQ (Quebec's Independent Booksellers' Association) was especially thrilled with the news as they have been fighting off bookstore foreclosures the past few years. In a recent alliance with book publishers, the ALQ spearheaded a movement called Sauvons les livres (Save the books) that put additional pressure on the government to move on the issue by using bolder actions designed to gain public attention and support. Sauvons les livres succeeded in making quite a ruckus at Montreal's annual book gathering, the Salon du Livre, notably putting up a picket line where Kotto was giving an address.

As it stands, the proposed law would be limited to a 36 month trial and reevaluated at the end of that period to measure its impact on independent booksellers. The government would then decide whether to maintain or to rescind the law. Katherine Fafard of the ALQ said that booksellers cried for joy when they heard the news, "It's the oxygen that booksellers needed to go on. And 36 months is exactly what the ALQ was asking for in order to make the transition towards digital books...everybody is in agreement that this law won't solve all of our problems."

As it is a minority government, the 36 month trial period is also seen as a necessary measure to gain the support of the opposition, the Québec Liberal Party. The fate of the future bill now lies in the hands of the opposition which has been opposed to any such price fixing in the past. However, Christine St-Pierre, the former Liberal Minister of Culture, was spotted at the Salon du Livre wearing a Sauvons les livres pin attached to her lapel. Perhaps the wind has finally turned in Québec in favor of price fixing legislation after 30 years of being on the shelf.

from: Publisher's Weekly