BMW got huge publicity and probably sold a few cars with their BMW Films campaign a few years back, in which the company commissioned several famous directors to create short films that featured various BMW models. Now BMW is trying again with BMW Audiobooks, “a unique series of specially-commissioned short stories showcasing the work of some of the finest contemporary writing talent.” A new story will be available for download every two weeks. Now, this being BMW, I’m sure the product placement will be done in a classy way, but I can’t help but think that this does little more than turn “some of the finest contemporary writing talent” into shills writing ad copy. And lest BMW think they are being innovative, it should be known that another car company was seen paying an author to get characters into its cars less than two years ago.
BMW Audiobooks
A New Travel Book
Strolling around the bookstore the other day, a book with a startling cover and a wacky title caught my eye. At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig is a humorous travelogue about one of South America’s more obscure countries, Paraguay. Pig is the first book by John Gimlett who has written articles for a number of travel magazines over the years. This excerpt is definitely worth a peek.
The challenges of digital magazine editions
An article in the Wall Street Journal talks up some of the drawbacks of the 8 DVD-ROM Complete New Yorker set:Web-savvy users accustomed to navigating easily through online content find The Complete New Yorker a bit of an anachronism. Each page of content is literally a picture of a magazine page. Readers can’t copy text from a story and paste it elsewhere. They can’t search for keywords within the text of articles, only within titles and abstracts. If they want to jump from issue to issue, or article to article, they first have to go back to the index and sometimes change DVDs.The problem obviously isn’t the technology, it’s the 1976 law that requires publishers to get permission from free-lancers before republishing their work in another medium. The lawyers have determined that anything before 1976 is fair game to be converted into a new format. And while most publishers negotiated away the rights of free-lancers in this realm in the mid-1990s, there still remains a legal limbo for material published in between the two dates. Based on case arising from a similar set put out by National Geographic in 1997, by simply creating digital versions of the magazine pages, publishers are in the clear, and this is the route that the New Yorker has taken. The article linked above also looks at how this issue is affecting similar archiving efforts by other venerable magazines like Harper’s Magazine and the Atlantic Monthly.(via and via)
A Blog in Nepal
I’m going to digress from the book talk here, if I may. I’ve been blogging for a couple of years now, and I really enjoy it. I post when I feel like it, I write about books, and a handful of people visit every day. Discussions ensue; it’s all very fun. But when I see folks blogging in Iraq and other dangerous locales, I wonder if I would join the fray in a situation where blogging is more than a diversion or a hobby – where blogging is an act of courage or defiance.Lately, I’ve been following the situation in Nepal. The king has dissolved the government and basically shut down the press. I was curious to see if any blogs in Nepal are defying the press ban, and I found this one: a group blog called United We Blog! The most recent post from the blog’s administrator concludes with this warning, “Do Not Blog About Political Matters for the time being,” but a previous post puts it this way, “Because of my basic human rights, like right to express, speak and writing, are suspended and I am in no position to express my feeling or opinion regarding the royal takeover. Here in Nepal, press freedom is being curtailed and, according to the government, our website can’t report on political issues.”He also says this about the ban: “For the first time in my life, I knew the importance of this site, a place to express myself, ourself… A great forum to share ideas.”Part of me wants to write to these guys to let them know that their words, despite the censorship, are reaching us, but at the same time, I would not want to encourage them to put themselves in danger by communicating with us. I think, perhaps, the larger point I’m trying to make is that – thanks to blogs – we can now peer behind walls of censorship to see the people oppressed by it. If anyone else stumbles onto any more Nepalese blogs, please let us know.
Edith Grossman Tilting at Windmills
Edith Grossman has lately become the definitive translator when it comes to Spanish-language fiction. She is responsible for producing the English-language editions of the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (including his upcoming autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale), Mario Vargas Llosa (most recently The Feast of the Goat), and of course she brought The Adventures and Misadventures of Maqroll by Alvaro Mutis to American readers. Now, for the first time, she turns her translator’s pen to a classic. Her beautiful edition of Cervantes’ Don Quixote has just been put out by Ecco, and, having never read the book, I will be delighted to turn my attention to this new edition soon.New CoetzeeMy friend and trusted fellow reader Brian informed me that he has read recently lauded author, J. M. Coetzee’s new novel Elizabeth Costello, and that he found it quite good and thought-provoking (better than Disgrace, anyway, which is his point of reference for Coetzee). So I was mildly surprised when I saw that the book received an unflattering and somewhat dismissive capsule review in last week’s New Yorker. The New York Times Book Review, however, confirms Brian’s assessment of a dense and philosophical, yet readable book.Amazon’s Mega SearchLast week Amazon announced their mind-boggling new search feature, which allows users to search the complete text of tens of thousands of new books. Talking to readers and checking out the buzz on the internet, I encountered a wide range of reactions to this new development, ranging from anger at Amazon’s ever-widening reach and annoyance at the plethora of extraneous results when searching for book titles or authors to exultation at this vast resource that has suddenly appeared at our fingertips. Meanwhile, the New York Times covers authors’ concerns. Any thoughts, press the comment button below and let us know.
Jonathan Safran Foer: The Collected Blurbs
For Sayonara, Gangsters by Genichiro Takahashi: “Sayonara, Gangsters is one of those rare books that actually defies description… It’s funny, sure. And beautiful. And slightly insane. And haunting. And heart-breaking. But all those words miss the point. The point is you have to read it. So read it.”For The Gangster We Are All Looking For by Le Thi Diem Thuy: “A beautiful, deeply moving story of a family. The more I read, the more I felt the family was mine.”For It’s All Right Now by Charles Chadwick: “This novel is huge — in size, ambition, intelligence, and heart.”For The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done by Sandra Newman: “Sandra Newman has an original way of thinking. The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done is often hysterically funny, profoundly strange, and unbearably beautiful. Often all at once.”For My Life with Corpses by Wylene Dunbar: “My Life with Corpses is overwhelming: in its beauty, emotional force, and uniqueness. While I finished the book a few weeks ago already, I have the strange feeling that I’m still reading it — it’s that resonant.”For Please Don’t Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope: “I am in awe of Zoe Trope. This book is more than the kind of good story we’ve become satisfied with. It’s more than interesting. It’s art.”For The Know-It-All by A.J. Jacobs: “The Know-It-All is funny, original, and strangely heroic. I found myself rooting on Jacobs’s quixotic, totally endearing quest.”For The Noodle Maker by Ma Jian: “The Noodle Maker is hugely entertaining and deeply serious. It’s something to celebrate.”
Operation Homecoming Hits PBS
Millions contributor Ben penned a post in February about a documentary called Operation Homecoming about the National Endowment of the Arts’ (NEA) program of the same name which is designed to help soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan put their experiences into words. (One participant in the program was Brian Turner whose book of poetry Here, Bullet was reviewed here a few months back.)As was noted in a comment on the original post, Operation Homecoming is also going to be covered as part of a PBS package called America at a Crossroads. That series is set to air beginning this weekend. The 11-part, six-night series covers “the war on terrorism, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan’ the experience of American troops serving abroad, the struggle for balance within the Muslim world, and global perspectives on America’s role overseas.” The Operation Homecoming installment airs Monday at 10pm (check your local listings, of course.)
Juvenile Fun with Famous Poetry
A couple of years ago at my old job as a group of us frittered away the last hours of the night shift, my coworker Lucia, who runs the world’s coolest online book store, entertained us with a fun little trick. She discovered that if you take William Carlos Williams’ famous poem about chickens, “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and use Babelfish to translate from English into a foreign language and back to English, the results are quite amusing. Remembering this just the other day, I decided it would be fun to share this game with you:The original:So much dependsupona red wheelbarrowglazed with rainwaterbeside the whitechickens.English –> Dutch –> English:This way much hang from a red wheel wheelbarrow vitrified with rain water beside the white chickensEnglish –> German –> English:hangs as much after a red wheel truck off glazed with rain water beside the white chickensEnglish –> Japanese –> English:So side of the white chicken where the rainwater and the gloss which depend on the red monocycle can be appliedEnglish –> Portuguese –> English:thus very it depends in top of a red stand on hand of the wheel vitrified with water on rain to the side of the white hensEnglish –> Chinese (simp) –> English:Extremely is decided to a red wheel handcart to enamels with the rain water nearby the white chickenAnd finally… my favorite: English –> Korean –> English:Lapse in the rain adjacent waters which depends in the deep-red wheel grave the wheel me in the side of the white chicken