“At first, I didn’t realize that AlexanderIII was translating the book; I thought he was just a fastidious Russian reader with a loose command of the English language. It was fun to see people debating the meanings of my thoroughly worked-over phrases…Then I remembered that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights, and realized that AlexanderIII must be translating it for some kind of book-pirating outfit.” Over at The Atlantic, Peter Mountford recounts the experience of watching book piracy in action.
Steal This Curiosity
Some Good Stuff
Two great scoops were passed my way by the intrepid Brian, fresh from his European sojourn. The first is this so-wierd-it-has-to-be-true story about Newt Gingrich being an extremely prolific and friendly Amazon.com customer reviewer. Click here for the must-read gory details.While in Spain, Brian read Robert Hughes’ new book Barcelona: The Great Enchantress from the National Geographic Directions series and noticed on the back cover that Jon Lee Anderson, the New Yorker’s Baghdad correspondent extraordinaire, has a book for the series coming out. It will be about Andalucia. This will be a busy year for Anderson. In the fall, his fantastic Baghdad pieces will be collected in The Fall Of Baghdad and he will also release Guerrillas: Journeys in the Insurgent World, which ought to be quite good.
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Bits
Millions reader Lisa found Booker winner Line of Beauty to be “a more intellectualized, less satirical version of Stephen Fry’s The Liar.” I’m sure Lisa won’t mind if you borrow that line at the next cocktail party.The new Gabriel Garcia Marquez book (Memories of My Melancholy Whores, they’re calling it now) continues to generate headlines. This time Gabo foils the pirates. Go Gabo!At Amazon you can watch Jon Stewart make an ISBN joke whilst hawking his book America. Just click on the link and then check out the “Amazon.com Exclusives.”Spotted on the El: Truman Capote’s “unfinished novel” Answered Prayers.
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Monday Linkday
The Guardian gives us Booker-winner Line of Beauty “condensed in the style of the original.”Some of you may have already seen this one: The 100 Greatest Books of all Time, also from the Guardian. How many have you read? I’m at 24, and I love that Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim makes the list. To anyone who is looking for a recommendation on what to read right now: get Lucky Jim, you’ll love it.Weren’t we talking about ISBNs the other day? Here’s a new blog about ISBNs and “book information” by a former Amazon employee and the creator of isbn.nu.Steve Landsburg asks: Too many books? I’m not completely sure I see his point. He seems to be implying that people only read one book a year. Furthermore, publishers fall all over themselves trying to create a blockbuster book; it’s far more cost-effective to promote a few guaranteed big sellers than a lot of risky titles. Sad but true. Perhaps the better thing to do is not to bemoan the inevitable Da Vinci Codes but to instead look for creative, cost-effective ways to promote riskier books.Malcolm Gladwell, author of the trendsetting book about trendsetting, The Tipping Point, has new book coming out called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, in which he “reveals that what we think of as decisions made in the blink of an eye are much more complicated than assumed.”
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Monday Linkday
Don’t bother looking for that book you need, a robot will do it for you. Will browsing disappear as robots take over libraries?Mad Max Perkins, “currently a senior executive for a major New York publisher,” has entered the world of blogs. Who is this masked man?Moleskine, maker of the world’s greatest notebooks, has added the Story Board Notebook to its ever expanding line of notebook products. “Advertising creatives, graphic designers, filmmakers, and cartoonists” rejoice!I enjoyed reading an excerpt of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found by Suketu Mehta. A good pick for anyone with an interest in the subcontinent.
Noted News Items
Paul Auster is still getting mileage out of a short story that appeared in the New York Times on Christmas day 1990. “Auggie Wren’s Christmas Story” was subsequently released as a limited edition book illustrated by Brian Cronin. The story became the inspiration for the films Smoke and Blue in the Face. Now, Henry Holt is releasing another edition of the story. This time the book is illustrated by an Argentinean artist named, cryptically, ISOL. Here’s the story if you want to read it.The London Review of Books is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, the Guardian sits down with LRB editor, Mary-Kay Wilmers.The CS Monitor continues to provide its capsule reviews of the National Book Award nominees. Here are the reviews for the young adult category.
Monday Linkday
I’ve mentioned here before that I’m currently getting my masters in new media journalism in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. As such, expect to see the occasional post on the topic from here on out. To that end, I want to mention Dan Gillmor’s book We the Media. Gillmor is well-known for his blog which is, broadly speaking, about the blogging phenomenon itself. The book takes on the question of where blogs fit into the panoply of the media. It’s worth a look for anyone who’s wondered if these here blogs are good for anything beyond killing time in their cubicles. Best of all, the entire book is available for free at the publisher’s website.That’s enough new media for now. In other news Michael Chabon’s new Sherlock Holmes tale, The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection, is out tomorrow. We’ll see what the reviews bring, but in the meantime, take a look at this excerpt.Finally, have a look at this: A Colorado man is compiling “The Great Library Card Collection.”
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I’m one of these pirate translators.
Several years ago I’ve translated two novels. The Angel of Pain by Brian Stableford and The Singer’s Crown by Elaine Isaak.
Probably because of the bad karma both publishers were ruined. Somebody from the first one downloaded an edited copy of Angel on the pirate web-sites. I don’t know who. Later I got acquainted with Brian and presented him copy of his Empire of Fear in Russian, pirate edition too. That was all I could do.
What about Singer’s Crown, the translated text is on my hard drive now and I do not know what to do with it. To my regret I didn’t get any answer from Elaine Isaak to my message on Facebook.
Well… things could be worse. Recently I have read a book by Nora Roberts, Naked in Death. It was dull and I could not understand why is it popular among English-speaking readers. Then I noticed a strange thing in the story – multicharged flint pistol. I’ve downloaded English text to check and discovered that there are no flint pistols in the book at all! Only revolvers. I read further and revealed that the translator has changed… well… everything. He erazed all mentions of the future technologies. When the protagonist reads online-news he writes – newspaper. When there are cyber-dogs, he writes just dogs. Revolvers – flint guns, lasers – just guns, videophone – telephone and so on. At the same time he added more emotions. I could not find the man. It seems that he has no blog or page in the Web. I feel pity for Nora Roberts because Russian readers will think that her In Death books are common harlequin novels.