Kindle users can start borrowing e-books from their local libraries. This seems innocuous enough. But what about the proliferation of textbook rentals (e.g. the type on Chegg)? Some believe it may put us on the road to serfdom.
Checking Out And Renting
Reading and Rock and Roll
The latest episode of WNYC’s Soundcheck features Jennifer Egan discussing her rock-inflected novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and Bookslut’s Michael Schaub talking up other “essential rock fiction.” (Thanks, Derek)
Dune in the Age of Aquarius
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Fifty Shades of Sociological Commentary
In her new book, Hard-Core Romance, Eva Illouz has published the first serious, book-length academic analysis of the Fifty Shades of Grey. The critically-panned Fifty Shades trilogy, originally a Twilight fan fiction, has sold 32 million copies in the US so far. At The New Republic, William Giraldi seizes the opportunity for a brutal send-up of author E. L. James and the “dreck” she represents. “At least people are reading,” he writes, “You’ve no doubt heard that before. But we don’t say of the diabetic obese, At least people are eating.” Pair with The Millions’ essay on literary predecessors in published fan fiction.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Gould; Foster; Netzer; Sohn; Rotert; Jacob; Canobbio; Wallace; Weil; Beckett
Out this week: Friendship by Emily Gould; God Is an Astronaut by Alyson Foster; How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer; The Actress by Amy Sohn; Last Night at the Blue Angel by Rebecca Rotert; The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob; Three Light-Years by Andrea Canobbio; The Sacred River by Wendy Wallace; The Great Glass Sea by Josh Weil; and a previously unpublished short story by Samuel Beckett.
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If public libraries cannot lend eBooks, it is only a matter of time before “your local library” is converted into a Starbucks. I wish this were not the case, I’m a librarian and I hate to think that libraries would be so quickly dismissed, but it is the reality of the situation. If you want to live in a world with public libraries, you should be grateful for, if not celebrate, Amazon’s contract with Overdrive.