The God Machine was first conceived by Da Vinci, who called it “The Elliptico Godsmackulator.” So brilliant.
This Week in God: Da Vinci Code Edition
“That’s Totally Book!”
If you hear kids throwing the word "book" around a lot more than you're used to, don't assume that a new literary craze is sweeping the land. According to some cultural observers, "book" is becoming a substitute for "cool" thanks to the pervasive influence of text messaging.As some of you are no doubt aware, when the "T9" predictive text function is activated your cell phone will try to guess the word you're typing as you key it in on those frustrating number keypads. As it turns out, when you try to type in "cool" - that is, 2-6-6-5 - phones will, by default, suggest "book," and, according to some, the kids are running with it, and "book" has become another word for "cool." So, all you teachers out there, your work is officially done. Books are now cool, literally. (via Zorn)
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Chabon Leaves the Internet
Michael Chabon's official Web site doesn't get much attention from the author. He'll post longer items from time to time as well as the occasional cryptic note about the various projects he's working on. Chabon has now, however, decided to pack it in with this Web site business:Lately I have been suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury that makes typing a chore and clicking an agony. As I have been spending less time online I have found that I've lost interest in the web as a whole, and in my site in particular. I'm tired of having to maintain www.michaelchabon.com, but I hate that it gets stale, and so quickly. Yet I don't feel comfortable with or have any interest in getting somebody else to do it for me. So I've decided, not without regret, to take it down, a little at a time, starting with the posting of my monthly Details column.On the other hand, Chabon's new novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union will be arriving in May.
Guest appearances at the LBC blog
With recent postings devoted to the second Litblog Co-op pick, Steve Stern's Angel of Forgetfulness, the LBC Blog is living up to its promise. This weekend, Stern's editor Paul Slovak posted his comments about the book and also delved into details about some of the other writers he works with including T.C. Boyle and William T. Vollmann. Also making a guest appearance was Stern himself, who responded to the dialogue about his book that Derik and Dan had going last week.
J.K. Rowling’s Busy Retirement
For someone who's not writing any more books about Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling sure is doing a lot of dabbling. She sold The Tales of Beedle the Bard a "book of five wizarding fairy tales, referenced in the last book of the Harry Potter series" to Amazon for close to $4 million in a charity auction. And now she's sold an 800-word Potter prequel at another charity auction for $48,858 (that's $59 a word, as USA Today notes).If two makes a trend, then I wonder, will Rowling spend her post-Potter career gamely agreeing produce bits of Potter ephemera for various auctions, thus filling out the Potter world in a seemingly unplanned way? Does it matter if the average Potter fan never gets to see them?Perhaps more importantly, will all this dabbling eventually convince Rowling to pick up the pen and write another Potter book? It certainly won't quiet the speculation. Rowling professes to have no plans to write another full-length Potter, but if she does it certainly won't be the first time a pop-culture phenomenon reappeared after a long hiatus. Indiana Jones and Star Wars come to mind and we all know how those turned out.
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Exclusive: The First Lines of Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue
We're already looking ahead to a number of exciting titles coming this fall, and near the top of that list is Michael Chabon's new novel Telegraph Avenue. Much is now emerging about this new novel, set for release in September, but we've heard that it grew out of an abortive TV project of the same name, which was said to detail the lives of families of different races living in Oakland and Berkeley, something that is evident in the book's opening paragraphs:
A white boy rode flatfoot on a skateboard, towed along, hand to shoulder, by a black boy pedaling a brakeless fixed-gear bike. Dark August morning, deep in the Flatlands. Hiss of tires. Granular unraveling of skateboard wheels against asphalt. Summer-time Berkeley giving off her old-lady smell, nine different styles of jasmine and a squirt of he-cat.
The black boy raised up, let go of the handlebars. The white boy uncoupled the cars of their little train. Crossing his arms, the black boy gripped his T-shirt at the hem and scissored it over his head. He lingered inside the shirt, in no kind of hurry, as they rolled toward the next pool of ebbing streetlight. In a moment, maybe, the black boy would tug the T-shirt the rest of the way off and fly it like a banner from his back pocket. The white boy would kick, push, and reach out, feeling for the spark of bare brown skin against his palm. But for now the kid on the skateboard just coasted along behind the blind daredevil, drafting.
Keep an eye out for our big second-half preview in less than a month, which will include more on Telegraph Avenue and dozens of other books coming this fall and beyond.