British artist illustrates the war

As some of you may know, my very good friend Cem has been travelling through some remote parts of the world. The other day, in a very long email, he asked me whether or not I thought he should stay in northern Thailand or keep on moving toward the Middle East which is, ostensibly, his final destination... here is my advice (plus a little plug for the record label, which he had asked about): Sorry I haven't gotten back to you sooner, your email took me 4 days to read. Seriously though, what I wouldn't give to be in your place with your dilemma... should I go to this frighteningly exotic place or this other one? My jealousy aside, I'm not sure I can make this decision for you, but I might be able to give you a little insight. First, you have to decide, irrespective of the girl or whatever gig you have set up in Thailand, whether this adventure is all about getting to the destination (i.e. Cairo and the Middle East) or allowing yourself to be follow the whims of the world and just be wherever you end up... like Maqroll. I think both are perfectly admirable plans, but you have to pick one or the other. Secondly, I don't know how tuned in you are to world events right now given your isolation, but American soldiers are dying every couple of days in Iraq, and the situation seems, to me anyway, to still be very much up in the air, with a guerilla war still a possibility, however remote. I'm sure that Cairo and Istanbul and Amman are all plenty safe, but I guess you should figure out if you prefer to be in the Middle East soon (while there is still uncertainty) or later when things have calmed down. So there you have it... no easy answers just more dilemmas. I love what you're doing, and if and when you get settled somewhere, I am coming to visit. In other news, the website for my record label is www.realisticrecords.net so tell all your indie friends to check it out. There are mp3s up and pictures of the recoys reunion show/record release party. You can also buy the album there (It's called Recoys Rekoys) and it's a vinyl only run of 1000. Since that is almost sold out though, we'll probably get a cd together soon enough.Now if there are any world travellers out there who are aspiring to do the sort of thing that my friend Cem is doing, I suggest you pick up The World's Most Dangerous Places by Robert Young Pelton. It's a very informative and wildly entertain look at some of the more hazardous corners of the planet. As if to underline his fealty for sticky situations, Pelton himself was kidnapped by leftist rebels in Columbia earlier this year. He was later released.

At GalleyCat, Ron points to a New York Times story - coming four months after the fact - about how a mention of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman boosted book sales. You expect the Times to be a little more on top of things.In a similar "old news" vein, having followed the Google Book Search story pretty closely, I clicked over to Charles Arthur's story on the topic in the Guardian - which usually has pretty great book coverage - and was disappointed to find it to be a rehash of old news with a healthy dash of scaremongering about how Google could start printing on demand the books they've scanned and sell them to customers (oh, please!). Pretty weak stuff. I did however enjoy the story Arthur linked to, Victor Keegan's account of trying to get some of his writing published by a print on demand publisher, just to see how the process works.

In the Guardian, Tim Adams bemoans the shrinking selection and big budget marketing fees wrought by ongoing consolidation in the British bookselling industry (taking their cues from the American chain stores, it seems.) Behind this trend is the head buyer of Waterstone's, a man named Scott Pack.(via Using Books Weblog)